Optimizing Your Shopify Conversion Rate

I know so many of you are Shopify store owners. A majority of our community is. And so when it comes to making sure your Shopify store has the highest conversion rate possible based on the amount of traffic that you're running to your store today, we're gonna dig into the details. I'm so excited to have my friend Josh Orr, the CEO of Streamline Retail, as a repeat guest on the podcast to talk about really enhancing your Shopify store to Today we're going to talk about what makes stores convert at the highest rates, what apps you should be using, and also because I love this question, what does community over competition really mean and how can you be living in that motto on a daily basis? Josh is a real life friend of mine. He is super genuine and I'm so excited to have him on the podcast.

Today.

You guys meet my friend Josh Orr, the founder and CEO at Streamline Retail. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast this week. I'm so pumped, Josh Orr, to have you back on the show. Thanks for being with me.

It is so good to be here.

Ashley, I am so thankful you recently had me on your podcast and we had so much fun. I think talking, probably even off recording, that we decided to do this again. We talk about all kinds of things outside of retail, which I appreciate so much, is just our friendship and the genuine nature of how we both have the heart to serve people and can laugh and agree and disagree on so many different topics. But at the end of the day, like live in community over competition together, I just want to thank you for that.

Oh, thank you, Ashley. I so appreciate our friendship. You've been a good friend these last few years.

You've talked on your podcast about community over competition and what that means to me. I want to reframe and ask that question to you about if a store comes. You know, every, every store owner that you and I work with, I think has faced this battle of someone's copying my stuff, someone's, someone's moving in next door. How do I handle these feelings that I'm having inside of competition? Because in business we're all competitive, right? We all want to win. So I wanted to ask you that question of how do you handle that with your community when they ask you that question? And how do you view community over competition?

That's a good question. You know, I first, like, I want to acknowledge the feeling when someone's stealing your brand, stealing your strategy, stealing, stealing your vibe, whatever it is that they're taking one, like, acknowledge that it's okay to be upset, it's okay to feel hurt because it sucks. Like, it's injustice and that just stings and it's okay to feel that way. But I think the thing is, like, what's next? What's after that? And can it be something that inspires you and says, like, okay, I need to up my game, I need to take things to the next level? Or are you going to let it hold. Hold you back? Because the thing about copiers is, like, all they're ever going to do is copy until they can grow into their own person and start developing their own thing, they are always going to be one step behind you. So recognize that and say, like, okay, you know what? I'm the person that's a step ahead of them and they could copy, but they can't do what I'm about to do next. And so be inspired by the thing you're about to do. And, like, take the compliment of people. Copy what is worthy of copying. And a lot of times I do believe that a lot of people are copying sometimes without bad intentions, they don't realize they're copying. They just see it as normal. And until they grow and develop, you know, I've seen it. I've talked to people who are like, yeah, when I started, I looked at this boutique and this boutique and I just took their stuff. And then they realized, like, oh, my gosh, that's not my customer at all. And they shifted, and that is a huge piece. And that's something that we talked about was, like, how do we also give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt of, like, they probably just don't know what they're doing yet. We don't have to take it so personal. So that's the advice that I would give to that person. Because that. But it sucks. And it's okay that it sucks.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so spot on. And I think about, like you said, when so many stores get started, they kind of look at all these other stores they're inspired by and they go down that path, right? And then they launch a Website. And then they're like, wait, it's not converting. No one's buying anything. Right. And for me, I know inside of retail bootcamp and inside of what we teach, everything always goes back to the customer. And I think like the miss for a lot of people is I may have launched a website that looks like somebody else's, but I have no idea who my customer is. I know you feel the same way. Talk to me about when you first work with a store owner and you're having that conversation of, okay, you want your website to convert, but really who are you marketing to? How can store owners better get to know their customers so that they really build a customer centric brand that then they can launch a website for?

Oh my gosh, I love this question. Is it okay if I someone answer a different question?

Sure.

Because I actually think it comes down to three elements within this. The first is you as the entrepreneur. And I think a lot of us, we skip past this and we jump to, we jump to things that are related to brand building and all good things. But if we don't tackle first, like who we are as an entrepreneur and saying like, okay, where do I want to be a year from now, two years from now, and how do I become the person capable of running that business? And that means that we're investing in ourselves. We're listening to podcasts like this one and we're in courses and we're. We're in community to grow.

Yeah.

But then second is this piece and that's the customer. And the cut it all always starts with the customer. I think a mistake people make is they jump to brand and we start with logos and fonts and colors and websites. And if we don't go to our customer first, we're setting ourselves up for failure. And so for our clients, because we do this program where we're like designing and developing the site and teaching strategy to grow and all this cool stuff. But we start with the customer and we teach it in three stages. The first is, is like, who are they demographically? This is the easy stuff. I always encourage, like, have one perfect customer be your customer is not a 50 year old and a 25 year old. It is a 33 year old mom with two kids who loves wine on Friday night. And like that is exactly who they are. So what's their age? What's their income? Are they married? Do they have kids? These are just demographics. They're objective. Then we go a layer deeper and we say, how does this person shop for what you sell? What concerns do they have? What things do they look for? Because the way you shop, if you're a retailer, you're a professional shopper and if you aren't careful, you're going to assume that they shop just like you do, which they may not. So we want to understand what questions do they ask? If they're in a dressing room, what comments are they going to say about a dress? Well, that lets us know the copy that we can put other places. And then I go, then the third layer is their deeper desires. Like what things are they excited about in the future, what things are they scared of and where this starts? When we start to understand this, let's go like that 33 year old mom, let's say that she, you know, she was who she was in college and she started her career and then she got married and she had kids and now she is a wife and she is a mom and that is her identity. But she knows and she has this deep pain of like, I still want to be me, I'm still who I am. Well, what if our brand is what's capable of saying you can still be that you want to be an awesome wife, an awful awesome mom, great. But let's not forget that you are who you are. Our brand can start to speak to that and solve that problem for them. So we understand their demographics, how they shop for what you sell and then like what their deeper desires are. And then that takes us to the last piece which is brand. And that's where those start to tie together. And we say, okay, what is it that solves that customer's problem and how could I inspire them, motivate them, solve their problems and so on.

I love that. I love it because I feel like I say this every day. We're not here just to sell a product, right? It's not about me saying here's this, buy it, but it's, you're really kind of goes back to brand story, right? Like you are the wise guide trying to make a hero out of like you're the boutique owner is the hero, right? Trying to solve the customer's problems. And we have to really think about how do we solve those problems from the very get go with all of our content, with our merchandising, with how we lay out the website and then we offer those products as a, as a solution, right? As the final step of the process. But it's not product first. So how do you take all of that and translate it onto your website when you first start to decide, okay, what, what is happening on this website? Why is it converting or not converting? How do you start to break that down and where do you start to look?

Yeah, so I, you know, the thing that I've always said forever is it's always about experience. And one of the things that I love about brick and mortar retail is like, they get in store experience. They understand how to craft an incredible first impression. How anyone could walk in and feel like they're in the right place. And then we can know the questions to ask to guide them towards what they are going to end up leaving with that day. Well, online, what does that start to translate to? Well, let's think about that first impression. Someone walks into your store, okay. Like, why are we doing what we do? Sure, we want them to feel welcome, but more importantly, we want them to feel like they're in the right place. And if we miss that piece, like, that's our conversion rate right there. That's that back button. Because people land on the site and don't immediately know that. And so what would bring about the feeling of this is a site for people like me? Well, maybe instead of a picture of a storefront and welcome to my store or new arrivals, instead it's copy that fall finds like the perfect sweater, the cozy sweater or something along, because that's what their customer is trying to think about, that immediate image and copy that someone resonates with. So that's typically where I start is to think through, like, even if you don't have a storefront, what if you did? What would the questions look like that you're going to ask, you know, and another small example of this is, you know, let someone walks in, they feel like they're in the right place. You then are like, hey, what brings you in? They're, I'm looking for a dress. Well, you don't just turn around and hand them four dresses and be like, hey, here's our four newest dresses. No, you're going to follow up with a question. Oh, what for? So what would that look like in our navigation? If customers could shop by occasion, they could shop by the style that they're looking of the dress they're looking for. They could shop by the length of the dress they're looking for. The way that we're building these features in kind of allow us to take the kind of questions we're asking in store or would ask in store and put that into an online experience so that way we can actually serve them like we were in person.

That's so absolutely true. With that navigation, with the collections and even thinking about your homepage, like your hero image as your storefront window and keeping that dynamic and merchandise and speaking to your customer and the seasonality that you're in together. If we were going to do this, if we were going to walk through someone's website like homepage top to bottom and ask questions about what's converting and what's not, how can I improve my overall conversion? Let's go through it step by step. Can we do that like top down from a homepage of a website? So talk to me about what should be at the very top.

Okay, so I want to do that, but I actually, I created a framework for like, for literally like how do you figure out what do you need to look at first? Because I started having these conversations with people where I'm like, hey, let's talk about your goals. Where are you wanting to be? How's your site doing? And people would jump to like geo fencing and site personalization and really complex things. And then I go, well, tell me about your customer. So first off, to answer your question directly, if you're going to leave this episode doing anything, if you could put a hero up, that a hero is that big image at the top, that someone lands on your page and knows they are in the right place, that your site is for people like them, which goes back to understanding who is your customer, Start there and then say what would make them feel like they're in the right place. That is the one thing that you need to leave this episode doing. And honestly, if you need templates for that, we have free ones@streamlineretail.com boutiquehub you can go there, put your email in, we'll give you canva templates for you to get this stuff in order. So that's like we're talking about a five minute change here. Yeah, so that's thing number one. But this framework, the idea was like people are jumping to really complex things, but I don't think most people know where to start. And there's a ton of conversion checklists out there, but even there it's like a thousand things and no one has time for that. And so I started to think of like Maslow's hierarchy of deans where like, you know, you need food and water and then at the top you have self actualization. Well, you don't take someone who doesn't have clean water and put them at a Tony Robbins event and think that they're going to be jumping up and down. You have to Start with the basics. And so I created this framework and I just want to share like the bottom four because they're the most important. So if you think of it like a pyramid at the bottom is the thing that I don't want people to skip over and that is site function. Like, actually, does your site just function as it should? I have this very successful client whose conversion rate totally tanked. They were like, I don't get it, like, what's going on? And I clicked on their new arrivals and I think it went to tops. And I clicked on tops and it went to the wrong collection. The site wasn't functioning as it was supposed to. So do your buttons work as they're supposed to? Is your site loading correctly on mobile? These are the things that I think we assume work, especially if you worked with a developer, but you're changing your site all the time and we just want to always like once a month go through, click through your site and just make sure it's functioning right. You're going to lose a massive amount of conversion just off that one. The second one is connection. Does your customer land and know they're in the right place? And then the next two is, one is your superpower. What do you do best? And how clearly is that communicated? A great example of this is like if you look at Vici collection, they are amazing at dresses and if you look in their navigation, they have clothing and you can hover over clothing and there's tops and bottoms and all these things, but in dresses. But if you look at their top navigation, there's also dresses and you can hover that and navigate dresses in a different way. That's their superpower, that's what they are best at. So for your brand, what are you best at and how could that be conveyed in your navigation in a featured collection across your site and then service, what kind of questions would you ask? How is that in your navigation? How is that in your collections? And these four things, I think if you can master them and then generally just follow best practice for everything else, I think you're on the path to having a high converting super successful site because all the other stuff's like psychology optimization and stuff like that. That yes, it's good, but I think if we focus there too long, we're obsessing over getting from 1.67 to 1.668. We need to look at like what's going to take me from 1.5 to 2.5.

Yeah.

And that's that lower level stuff because that Connection piece is the, is the one that a lot of people love to skip over because we're scared of losing out on other business. But if we can master that one. I like, I've seen multiple brands that got to 4 or 5,6 million a year online, really only being good at the bottom two. Their site worked and people knew they were in the right place. And if we can just focus there, you don't need the fancy site, you don't need all the other stuff. Those two alone are powerful enough to build a high converting site.

I love that. Talk to me about that. Like overall, that's homepage, whole site. Can we narrow that focus down to a product page for a second? Because I think you have to have all of the good things on the homepage in the site to get them even to click on a product page. But then on the product page, the next step is, okay, how do I now get this into the cart and get that money into my pocket? So what do you think are common things people are missing on a product page that may be affecting their conversion rate?

Absolutely, that's a great question. So one, your product imagery, a lot of us love to overcomplicate this and we'll either be scared of it and so we'll use vendor images, which is typically not a great thing, or we'll jump and think we have to go buy really fancy cameras. But I can tell you every multimillion dollar retail business, boutique retail business we're working with is using an iPhone for their product photos, every single one of them. So your product photos get like taking basic good ones that show and a lot of times we think they all have to be lifestyle. It's okay to have like one styled look that kind of gives the vibe of the outfit a side, a back and up close. If there's a detail that's important, that's all that's needed. And then you have. Of course we want the description, the name of the product to be clear on what it actually is. And then a lot of the secret sauce I think is in. Well, there's a few things I could keep going over. The product description is so important. A lot of us just want to talk about what it is. And we'll put the washes, wash instructions, the fabric and incise guide or whatever. And those are good things. But we want to communicate like, what does this do for you? A dress is not 100% cotton. A dress is an amazing date night that you're going to feel beautiful with your husband. And it's made of cotton and it can be dry clean only, like whatever that thing is. So we want to start with what does it do for you? And that could literally be one line. It could be one line of what it does for you and then moving to what it does. And then the last thing on the product page that I think is important is keeping people in a buying journey when they're shopping through a site like our brain when we are shopping and you all should take advantage of this is dripping dopamine. The feel good feeling. And then we get to the product page and you work so hard to get them there, then they're like, hey, what if I don't love it? How do I return it? And so they scroll to the bottom, they click on returns, they read it. Let's assume, best case scenario that 80% of people click back to the product that they were on before and then they complete the purchase. We just lost the opportunity to sell the 20% of our traffic. So instead using a little tab that says shipping and returns on the product page, they can click over. I'm not even telling you what your shipping and returns policy needs to be. I'm saying you need to answer that core question from the product page. Yes, those simple things, those simple little details can make a massive impact on conversion. And if I were to go like one layer deeper, I love conveying like the superpower and service side. So having really good curated related items or like a complete the outfit where you have your product image, put the products that are in that product image available for purchase right there. That's like a next layer. Take the things I talked about first, get those done and then as you have capacity, adding those other pieces is kind of that next level thing to do.

Yeah, that shop the look app has become so popular for that reason. Because you've got to give. I always think about this, right, Like a boutique. Typically a boutique owner, their superpower is styling pieces. Whether it's fashion or it's home decor, it's kids or whatever. Like you're the tastemaker. And so we, as we do in life and in society, that whatever we're good at, other people certainly should be good at, when in fact the opposite is true. They're coming to us to shop with us, because we are, we have that vision that maybe they lack. And that's why they come in to a storefront and would say, I'll take everything on the mannequin or I'll take everything merchandise together on the wall. And so as a boutique, like if we remember that we solve that problem for people, if we can present it that way in our site and merchandise in that way, boy, people are going to not only buy more and buy often, but look at what that does to our average order value and our units per transaction and all those important metrics. So question, Josh, if you were going to reverse engineer this and someone's looking at their site and they're like, okay, each week I'm going to measure these three metrics to really understand what is the health and performance of my site and how can I watch it improve or decline over time. What would three of the most important metrics to measure be in terms of your overall site health and performance?

That's a good question. I mean, so the first thing I'm going to look at is traffic. How many people are we actually getting to our site? What this is measuring is all the other activity that you're spending your time and your energy on. If you're spending so much energy on reels and posting and ads and your traffic is not increasing, that tells you that you have a problem somewhere else. And so we need to go and diagnose that problem. Why are people not visiting my site like they need to? The next one that's important, and this seems so obvious, is your conversion rate. How many people are actually landing on your page and clicking through now here, like, the rule of thumb is 2%. Like, if you have a 2% conversion rate, you're doing really well. I think the thing that can skew this some is is a lot of us, like, if we have a super warm audience, like we just built our following on Instagram, we have a Facebook group and that's the only traffic that we're getting. Your conversion rate should be 3, 4% because it's kind of like surveying your family for how great you are. Like, it should be a 100% response rate of good. And so when we're dealing with warm, we expect higher. And if you're just starting to run Facebook ads, you might expect a hit to your conversion rate, and that's okay. And so if your conversion rate is not doing incredible, the backup metric you could look at is the percentage of people that are adding to cart because that at least tells you that you're starting to move in the right direction. They may not be completing the purchase, but you are getting them into your world. You're capturing their email and all of that, so that way you can start to retarget them. And then the last metric I want to look at is the return customer rate. This tells us, okay, how is everything after the purchase? Because the profitability of your business is not on the first purchase, it is how fast can we get to the second, the third, the fourth and really create loyalty and a habit of shopping with you. And so that when we have a high, a high return, return customer rate, you know, industry would say it's like 30%. I think for an independent business it should be like 50 to 60%. And if we're not there, we need to say, okay, like are there some automations we can put in place? How's our welcome flow doing? The welcome flow is the first few emails someone gets when they join your list. How is it doing it pulling people into the brand? What things could we start to experiment with to get them coming back? So again it's traffic conversion rate and then your return customer rate.

I love that. I am so glad that you're here that not only are you listening to the podcast, but you know why you're different because you actually implement what you learn and that sets you apart from everyone else in this industry every single day of the week. So thank you for that. And because I know you love to take action, I want to make sure, if you're not already a part of our community at the Boutique Hub that you have an opportunity to join us. You see, the membership at the Boutique Hub is the core of everything we do and it has been for almost 10 years, which is crazy. We gather together from all 50 states in the United States and seven countries, boutique owners, wholesale brands and our trusted and vetted industry partners on a daily basis to talk about what's really happening, to answer your ongoing questions, to share stories, to learn and grow from and with one another. Inside of the membership at the Boutique Hub, not only do you have access to our daily community, but also our ongoing education. You see, we have live experts, coaching and speaking every single week, two days a week, both retail and in our private wholesale groups. We also have monthly training bundles and content calendars that go out to our members on a regular basis on all kinds of topics. Plus our vetted training library. Our training library is full of tools and templates and videos and how to's checklists, everything from non disclosure agreements that you can learn from, model agreements, content calendars and engagement library videos on how to run Google Ads and Facebook ads, to optimizing your inventory, your buying and how to pay yourself more with profit. First, besides learning, I want to make sure that you also have an opportunity to buy and stock your Store accordingly. So members of the Boutique Hub also have access to so many discounts from vetted and trusted wholesale partners, almost a thousand of them now inside of the hub. And also on our platform, hubventory.com the new wholesale marketplace built by the industry, for the industry. And finally, you guys, your membership, I can tell you how to get it for free. And many members do. And here's why. Membership at the Boutique Hub comes with all kinds of exclusive perks and discounts only open to you, a Boutique Hub member. And when you use those perks and discounts, it saves you often three to four times the amount your membership actually costs, which starts at just $24 a month. So access those perks and those discounts, those wholesale savings, and also make sure you're growing your business to build more revenue with all the trainings happening at the Boutique Hub. You know what, one last thing. I know you like listening to podcasts, but you know what's even better? Meeting in person. And that's one thing I am so thankful for at the Hub. Because at every market in Dallas or Atlanta or Las Vegas or even at our conference for boutique owners, the Boutique Summit members have an opportunity to meet up, learn, and grow together. Together in person. So I want to invite you to join us at theboutiquehub.com backslash join to become a member of our community today. What about any apps that you think are also important for boutique owners that they like? This is my must have list of apps if I'm using Shopify. And do you have any other. Do you have any clients that are not really using Shopify? I feel like, I assume most people use Shopify. Right. Do you see people using many other things besides comments? Sold. That's like a whole nother beast, right?

Sure.

Two parted questions.

A lot of questions. Well, first off, the theme is they're all technology. And the one thing I do always say is the first problem to solve is never technology. It's never the app, it's never the platform. There are strategic things. There's the principles behind why we do what we do. How are we making that first impression? A lot of times we start there, but technology is important. You know, even before we started recording, Ashley and I were talking through the technology that we use in our business because it's important to the experience and it facilitates that. So we only work on Shopify. We used to do some things in Lightspeed, e Comm and BigCommerce. And, you know, they're not like awful platforms or anything. We just really believe that Shopify is, you know, by far the best E commerce platform. And the ecosystem, like you want to do literally anything. Shopify has an app for it, an integration with it, and the ecosystem is what you're getting into a lot. It's not necessarily just the platform, it's the whole world. Yeah. So in regards to apps, like the things that we're. We're looking at a lot. So for shop, the look, which is awesome, we love Picky Story for that because it's what gives you the flexibility to add that piece, like, right underneath on the product, right underneath the. What I call the buy box, that top section underneath that. How can we curate items together for your customers to buy?

Picky Story. Okay.

Picky Story.

I just want to make sure I heard you right. I had not heard of this app, so I'm learning today. I appreciate this.

Yeah. And then so if you think, like, think through the customer journey here. Someone goes to the homepage, then they click through onto a collect, they click tops. Well, then people are like, okay, I might be looking for a tee or something tankless or something from a certain brand or a certain price point. And that's where filters on the side become really important. And so for that, we love power tools. It is an incredible app for that, for adding things like tabs to your product page. We love tabs by station. You can do things that are a universal tab, which would be like shipping and returns. That's the same on every single product. And then it also gives you the ability to have ones that are per product. Let's say you have a size guide where you might have the measurements of the product, but you want to also include the details of the model and what she's wearing. You could put size and fit on a different tab, so that way your product page stays clean and not so cluttered with so many details. And then one that everyone and their dog needs to have and use is AccessIB. AccessIB is not an app in the Shopify themes in the Shopify App Store. It's something that you would get, that you would get directly from them. But ADA compliance is massive and it is so challenging to maintain. Even if your developer did everything that they were supposed to. The first update you make, if you don't continue to maintain it, you just lost it. And the rules around it are so nuanced that it's a challenge for people to maintain. And so we love accessib because this has just become a massive ordeal. I don't. I don't want to Steer the conversation there, but save yourself the legal headache at some point and use something like excessive. It is phenomenal.

I think that's a really good point. And you're hitting on something that's been a huge topic inside of the boutique hub in the last year. So let me, let me frame this into maybe a broader question for you. But what do you think, like overall, what do you think are the biggest risk factors for some of your clients and stores right now? Like, what are the things. I mean, because ada, that is one, like we're all kind of seeing that transpire together. But what do you think are other big risk factors for stores right now as a whole that we need to be on the lookout for? And that could be the economy included.

Yeah, there's a lot of risks. You know, one is like, we have to maintain curiosity, meaning we need to be looking at everything with, is this working? If it worked, why did it work? If, if it didn't, why didn't it? Because algorithms are changing. Apple has turned the whole advertising world on its head. And it's, it's challenging. And like, let's just be real. In 2017, 2018, Facebook ads literally were like an ATM. You put money in, you get money out. And it's more challenging now. And we have a choice of saying I can't grow because of this changed, or we can say I have to do something different in order to grow. So this is not an outside risk. I think this is an internal risk of if we lose that curiosity and we start saying this outside thing, what Apple did is going to impact my business. We have to stay curious and say, okay, like what next? What's going to work next? And then of course, ADA compliance is a massive risk as far as the economy is concerned. You know, the cool thing about an economy is all it's doing like recession. And if we're, and if we're growing, it's just how quickly is money moving throughout the world, throughout our country, throughout our state, throughout our community? It is how fast it's moving. It is not is it moving, it's how quickly is it moving. There is room for you to still carve out your piece within that flow of money. And I think that comes from managing the risk by being at the forefront of your customers mind. Because your customer still is buying clothes, they still are, even if they don't have a job or any of that, which let's just hope that's not your core customer. But even if that's the case, people are still buying and so how could we be in front of them everywhere? If they want to shop online, okay, we're your people. If they want to social shop, where are your people? If they want to go to a store, we're your people. We are in the forefront of their mind. And I think that's one of the primary ways that you make it through a recession is like, even looking back at the Great Depression, you know, you had Chevy and Ford. Ford was dominating. And then the Great Depression hit and they pulled back all their ads, they quit advertising. And in that time, Chevy kept their ad spend, which we use the term ad spend, like it's Facebook ads. Like, they kept advertising. And leaving the Great Depression, Chevy was outselling Ford. It was like 30 to 1. It was unbelievable what they were doing because they kept engaging their customer through the Great Depression, which we're not going into the Great Depression, we're going into a recession. And those are night and day different. So if they can do it during the Great Depression, what could you do now to continue to engage your customer?

I love that you and I could have a whole podcast just on that, because I believe that so firmly. Right? Like, the two things you do not cut, which are both investments in your business that generate roi, are payroll and marketing. Right. Like, you cannot grow a business by cutting expenses, and those are really cutting investments. So I love that you use that analogy because it's so spot on to me. I agree. This is the time right now where we build our business, right?

This is.

This is buying things when they're on sale. This is being able to invest in the future. How do you do that? Exactly? As you just illustrated. So that was so good.

Absolutely.

One more large question on that, Josh. So when you think about your customers that are performing well right now, what do you think your most successful clients have in common?

That's a good question. And there was even, like another risk piece. And I think that this ties into that question is I love that you talked about investment versus, like, what's just an expense. And I think sometimes it's easy to mix those two up. Like, I'll talk to people and we'll mention this strategy, but the software they're on could never do it. And we think that we invested in that software and we have to get a return. Well, it's like, no software is just there to serve your business. Your business is not a software. Your business isn't married to anything. And so I think one of the risk is like seeing, you know, I talked to someone who they were.