Ben Jesson from Conversion Rate Experts Tells Us How He Grew a Client 7x in 3 years!

Alright guys, welcome back to another episode of Growing Your Agency. I'm your host Ryan Shank. Today we're super excited, we have Ben Jesson from Conversion Rate Experts. Ben, thank you so much for joining us.

Great to be here, Ryan. Nice to meet.

Yeah, great, great to meet you. So I was on your site and I know that you're obviously focused on a particular aspect of the agency and the marketing funnel. Sounds like from the name it's the conversion rate, but tell me a little bit about how you got started with the business and really what you guys are focused on for your clients.

Sure, so we started the company, it's called Conversion Experts, in 2006, and me and my co-founder Dr. Karl Blanks previously worked in-house in the telecoms industry, so we were client-side marketers, and we took a business that was struggling, the whole industry was in decline 15% year on year, And we doubled it, tripled it, and then doubled it in 3 successive years through mainly—

Double, triple, double.

Yeah, yeah.

Amazing.

So yeah, those were the 3 years before we started Conversion Experts. And yeah, it was— we were already good at getting traffic. We were getting loads of traffic. We were number 1 in the search engines for all of our kind of target phrases. And we went to a conference in 2005. It was the Webmaster World Conference in Las Vegas. And we went with a goal of how do we get more visitors to this website that we were working on at the time. And we walked up and down the expo hall asking all the SEO companies, how do we get more traffic, how do we get more visitors? And pretty much all of them said, you're doing pretty much everything you can, you're number one for so many things. It just so happened that Google Analytics was launched at that same event. Google had recently acquired Urchin and relaunched it as Google Analytics.

Interesting. I didn't know that.

That's cool. Yeah, yeah, we came, we came back kind of thinking, yeah, it's not all about the traffic. We need to be more focused on converting our visitors into customers. So we got back, and my co-founder Carl, his background is in science, and he used to run things like A/B tests and multivariate tests in his previous life as a material scientist.

Love it.

We very quickly got into A/B testing and multivariate testing. And taking a very scientific approach to understanding your visitors and improving the content and testing the content in order to turn those visitors into customers. And that was really the catalyst for growing the telecoms company at a time when it was— yeah, the whole industry was shrinking 15% year on year. In 2006, Google launched a tool called Google Website Optimizer. We were really excited about this because It was free, it was split testing for the masses, anyone with a Google AdWords account I think could use Google Website Optimizer, and we just had a lot of success and we were very excited that what we were kind of calling conversion rate optimization was something that could become mainstream. So we wrote an article called 101 Easy Ways to Use Google Website Optimizer that coincided with the launch of Google Website Optimizer. We were still working in telecoms industry back then at the time. And the article went viral. It was number 1 on—

Really?

Delicious and all of those back then, the social bookmarking websites. They're not around or they're not so prominent anymore, but back then if you were top of Digg and Delicious, you'd gone viral. We were on Alexa.com's moves and shakers list, the 3rd fastest growing website in the world the week we launched. And the following day we woke up to an email off Google, who, their product manager Tom Leung invited us to become a Google partner. To help Google advertisers to improve their conversion rates with Google Website Optimizer. So that's the origin story of the business. It was, we'd done it in-house, had a lot of success, wrote an article about how we run experiments and about the kind of things that we test. It also went viral. Google contacted us and that's how we created the company.

Got it. So talk to me about your clients today. Obviously, you know, you're focused on the conversion rate, right? And you're putting out amazing content that's going viral. Talk to me about the type of clients that you're working with today. And, you know, what is the conversation like when you're initially talking to them? Are you talking to them about conversion rate and using terms like that? Are you talking to them about like getting new business and growing their business and that sort of thing?

A bit of both. All of our clients come from inbound sources, so we're not kind of out there pitching, we're not out there kind of hitting the phones and doing outbound. So to a degree, because, because our client flow is inbound, they're already looking for the types of services that we offer, or they're already kind of into the kind of content that we produce.

Sure.

It is normally quite specific. So people come to us knowing that conversion optimization is either an opportunity or it's something that they can improve or something they need to improve. So those are the kind of conversations that we start off with. Got it. And it's with lots of different types of companies. We work with kind of smaller, fast-growing companies that are either looking to take things to the next level or they've just been funded and they're under pressure to grow and to grow quickly.

Are these like B2B, you know, SaaS companies? Is it e-commerce? Is it direct-to-consumer kind of, you know, brands like a sock company or mattress company? I guess I'm more specifically looking for, you know, types of businesses.

Every single one of those. Literally including a mattress company we've helped. So we've been doing this now for so long, we've kind of worked with lots of different types of business. We focus very much on the fundamentals of what it takes to grow a business using conversion optimization. So they are transferable across different industry verticals. And over the years, we've just built up so much experience. We log all of our winning experiments in a database so that we know—

Is that a custom database that you build, or is it like an Airtable or anything?

And it's nothing fancy in terms of technology, but for every winning experiment that we have, we write up a report of the client we were working on, the goal of the website, the industry vertical, the type of website funnel, and the reasons why the visitors weren't converting, and then the creative that won the split test. And then over the years, we've created a database of that. So whenever we start in a particular vertical or with any particular type of client, we can actually revisit all of the things that have worked well previously. Obviously, if anyone that knows anything about us, and if you don't, it's not about the creative, it's about understanding the visitors and the research. So you have to do that research first, but once you understand why a website's funnel isn't converting, then we can draw upon our experience of things that have worked in that situation in the past. So it's very bespoke to the client, but at the same time we're drawing on the experience that we've got as a business.

That's amazing. So, so talk to me, you know, about your own process today. Obviously, you know, your leads are coming inbound right now. You're talking to them about conversion rate and they're seeking you out for that. But what does it look like from there? Are you taking— are you getting them on a call? Are you doing an analysis of their current website and their current conversion rate or current ad spend and then giving them a proposal? Like, I guess, what is your own kind of like sales funnel look like when you're bringing on a new client?

Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. So as far as how we attract people to our website, we do lots of content marketing. So we publish lots of articles. We published a book last year called Making Websites Win. That did pretty well. We appear on podcasts like this. So we very much get attention through education, through giving away valuable content, and it is valuable stuff. We get lots of comments, people saying, we can't believe you put that in the book. It's kind of Yeah, you guys are giving it all away, but there's so much to it that even if we tried, we couldn't give it all away. So we're constantly trying to give away valuable content. That in turn gets us, I guess, subscribers or followers or interested parties. Of those, there's a certain segment that we're probably not a great fit for in terms of a client relationship. Yeah. And then those that are of a certain scale where the ROI of conversion optimisation is just so blindingly obvious that it's a great investment for them, and that's most businesses by the way, then they would contact us where we would either have a strategy session where we just do a screen sharing session, we talk about their website, we talk about our methodology, the kind of things that have worked in the past in that industry vertical, we show them client testimonials and case studies, we've got tonnes of them, we've got over 80 video interviews with our clients, talk about how we've grown the business with people.

Yeah, no, I love it. So when, you know, after they come on board, I guess, what does the process look like? Like, do you have, you know, and I guess in parallel to that, talk to me a little bit about your team. Like, they come on board, do you set them up with, you know, in project management software? And then do you, you know, assign them an account manager? Do the creatives, do you do all of that in-house? It's kind of a large question, by the way. So just curious, you know, on what happens, I guess, like post post-closing or post-engagement of a new client?

Yeah, so as far as who the clients speak to, we don't have kind of— we don't have salespeople that are separate to the client delivery team, so the people that our prospects speak to are people that have actually worked on client projects. So it's not like— there's no juniors in our business, and there's no kind of low-level team members. You're always speaking to someone that's actually grown a web business, So we have the sales call with whoever's the best person in that time zone or with the most experience in that kind of market for the strategy session or the sales call. Then they're onboarded onto project management software. We use Basecamp for that. It works great for our needs. And we have an onboarding process, which is obviously kind of templated in Basecamp to a degree. We have a methodology that we follow for all of our clients. The methodology doesn't stay the same, it evolves constantly.

Sure.

Constant feedback from our clients. And then they're assigned a lead consultant who's responsible for growing that business. That's their job. And they are highly experienced, like brilliant people, and they come from the kind of top companies that you'd expect them to come from. Got it. They work remotely, and we work remotely with our clients. Everything that we do is measured. It gets A/B tested, and the lead consultant is supported by different departments that we have internally. We have a research department whose goal it is to understand the visitors that don't convert and the ones that do, and to come up with quite a huge research brief that gets shared with the lead consultant and everyone else in the company, because everyone in the company is responsible for contributing test ideas. And they're supported by our design and development team, who are responsible for designing the pages, setting up the tests, and creating any additional functionality or coding. And as I say, we work with a kind of mastermind principle of every week we get all of our team members on a call, the research department presents the research on the client, and then everyone contributes ideas of how they would grow that business. And then it's me and Alton's job to collaborate with the client to figure out a prioritized plan of action of things that we can test. So that was quick.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. What's, I guess, just a couple, a couple last questions as we kind of come up on time here. What, you know, what is one thing that you're doing to attract and retain talent? I know you said you guys are all remote now, but what I've heard from a lot of different agency owners is that it's just incredibly hard to source and then keep top talent, you know, especially as people are remote, you know, kind of opens them up to sort of be at any, any job, any company. And then, you know, also with a remote setting, how do you, you know, kind of keep them really engaged and really kind of like driving towards the same mission as as the founders?

Yeah, so as far as how do we attract top talent, we only look for top talent. And everyone in the company— we've got a reputation for having great clients, for having great results. So, you know, our clients include Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Dropbox. People want to work with clients like these, especially when their work's going to be measured against those companies. It's an exciting prospect. So there's the whole idea of mastery, which appeals to people, you know, kind of being just top of the game. The remote working gives people autonomy and flexibility, which we know is important to talented people, and there's a huge amount of collaboration in the business. Even though we work remotely, the interactions on a daily basis with our team members and the amount of help and collaboration and kind of co-working is really great, and we've got a great culture. In order to retain the people, we've got We've been told our kind of retention rates are like industry, leading industry levels. We use a tool called TinyPulse, and every week that tool surveys our team and they can anonymously give feedback on different aspects of the company. And we've been using that since 2013, and in the last 2 years actually we've won awards from TinyPulse for being the happiest company in our segment in professional services.

That's amazing.

And the great thing about TinyPulse is when you have a remote business, you don't necessarily know how everyone's feeling, how people are reacting to things. You don't kind of get that feeling of all being in the same office, but using a tool like TinyPulse, you actually get that feedback, often feedback that you wouldn't get if you're in the same room as someone. And then you can adjust the company, and you can protect the bits of the culture that people hold dear and are important to them, and then you can eradicate the things that are creeping into the company culture that make people unhappy or aren't quite consistent with our values or the values of the team. So it's a constant way of monitoring a company culture and optimizing it, I guess, in the same way that we optimize web businesses. So that's a pretty cool tool.

All right, awesome. And final question is what we ask all of our guests: what is your morning routine?

Morning routine? Um, Yeah, I walk the kids to school every morning. I find it clears my head. It provides me with a few steps that I wouldn't otherwise have had, and when I'm walking back on my own, I kind of reflect on the day ahead. When I get in, I plan my daily tasks, and they synchronise with my weekly tasks, and I often have a call with a couple of colleagues for them to critique my task list, because it helps to have other people critiquing your task list. And then I, um, yeah, I start my day with the most important tasks and crack on from there. And, and I review my tasks from the previous day to see what kind of interruptions or distractions or things that kind of got in the way. Yeah, I could either have planned for those better or reorganize my work in order to avoid those kind of issues.

Love it. So you go back and kind of reflect on, you know, how you can— on what happened previously, how you could have improved. I love that. Alright, Ben, where can everyone find you?

Our website is conversion-rate-experts.com. Our book is available on Amazon. Our book is called Making Websites Win. It's also available as a free podcast at the moment. If you want to contact me personally, just Ben Jesson on LinkedIn. I'll be happy to connect with the listeners, and yeah, any questions or follow-up content, then just give me a shout.

Amazing. Thank you so much, guys. Ben Jessen, Conversion Rate Experts. Ben, thank you so much for joining us.

Cheers, Ryan.

Great. All right, cheers. Absolutely. Thanks.