Expert Insights: Taylor & Shaun from Oddit

Welcome Taylor and Shaun! What was your motivation to start Oddit? 

It came pretty organically. 

Taylor, myself and another business partner had actually invested in a performance marketing agency and with our backgrounds in branding, marketing and product design we were offering a unique lens on a lot of the customers that were coming through the agency. We reflected on the digital ecosystem of brands, moreso than running ad strategies. 

So when we came into that performance world, we saw so many brands spending up to $100k/month - and they weren't spending a dime on their website. Once the site was built, it rarely evolved. 

At that time, Taylor and I didn't really know exactly what “CRO” was. But we did know how to remove friction in a product journey. But we started selling little reports with hypothesis based tests to increase conversion. We called that “brand-first CRO” which has stuck. Those reports were loved and that’s when we decided to create Oddit to solely focus on that. 

You’re offering quite a unique take on CRO, can you expand on that a little more vs. what traditional CRO experts might provide? 

Well first of all, our services aren’t “ongoing” which is quite different from what others offer. We audit your site and give you unfiltered feedback on what you need to improve to be in a position of confidence to drive traffic to your site. We focus on making sure that your digital brand elements, storytelling, headlines, UX, navigation etc all come together to build a little trust package that gets the consumer to feel warm and at ease when navigating your site. 

And unintentionally, we did get grouped into the CRO category - labeled as “the best in CRO” - but with that, we get some doubters from the pure-play CRO experts who ask us about which data we analyze, or brands who want to provide us with Google Analytics access etc. Don’t get us wrong, data is obviously extremely important, split testing, modifying, analyzing, all vital, it’s just not where we fit in in the CRO ecosystem. We’ve partnered with very solid traditional CRO companies that handle this on an ongoing basis for our customers after we’re done with the initial Oddit.

Oddit wants to help brands build a solid foundation and frictionless experience first. 

You guys see a lot of D2C merchants. What are the 4 most crucial areas that brands need to pay attention to to improve conversion rates? 

It depends on where a brand is driving traffic to - but we mostly spend time on these 3 things: 

1. The homepage
2. The PDP
3. Reviews
4. The creative assets (photography etc)
   

On the homepage, the biggest lacking thing is telling a story. Most of the brands just boast clever & punchy copy - but we’re always so surprised at how many fail to actually plainly describe what the hell they offer by the end of the first section. Everyone's trying to be cheeky and funny, when they just need to speak clearly. 

On product pages, which is the last line of defense before customers add to cart - brands are overthinking, overselling, when they should prioritize which key values to drive home. Many brands are just so focused on fitting every bit of info above the fold, almost like a long-winder TV script - jammed in the top section. 

For reviews, D2C brands absolutely need to be doing eveyrthing they can to highlight these - it's truly one of the most important aspects of any eCommerce store. I mean, what else do customers reallllly care about?

And finally on creative assets: So many brands are over producing or art directing their assets. Social proof, actual human interaction with products is really overlooked. You’ve got to convince your customers that your product isn’t just used in someone’s photography studio and that actual real humans are loving it. There’s a balance to strike between humanized and lifestyle imagery. 

On the homepage, the PDP and the imagery: Can you share 3 brands you’ve worked with who are doing well on those areas? 

We could give you quite a few that are all doing a good job of it, but here’s 2  that are doing homepage and PDP specifically well:

Homepage: Hims - They do a good job of surfacing customer needs to drive action vs product titles for example, which customers don’t always understand instantly.

PDP: Grummies - The do a really good job of making every option accessible and clearly communicating pricing (per bottle which is most important and always missed when users are buying multiples). They then tell the product story really well, and surface all the options again in higher fidelity.

Imagery: Starface - This brand is pretty interesting as they almost exclusively use UGC for their imagery across the site. We think it fits perfectly with their brand, builds trust and adds a nice human touch.