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Hey, y’all! Welcome back to episode 16 of the Southern Fried eCommerce Podcast from EYStudios. This is our last episode of the year and to celebrate we are having a Festivus-themed episode. Festivus is a fictional holiday created by Seinfeld now celebrated in real life on December 23rd each year. One of the Festivus traditions is “The Airing of Grievances” where instead of sharing what you’re thankful for, you relieve the built-up stress of the holidays and tell your relatives what you really think. In this episode co-hosts Jay Brimberry and Emily Faulkner will be airing their eCommerce grievances alongside special guest CEO Eric Yonge.
Eric began the podcast by bringing up some personal grievances against Emily, particularly the outrageous claim that The Dark Knight is a trash movie. Jay warned that this podcast was for eCommerce grievances, not personal ones otherwise this could get dangerous. Eric agreed but not before throwing a much-deserved barb Emily’s way: she doesn’t like The Dark Knight but she does like The Force Awakens. Make of her tastes what you will. Moving beyond personal movie grievances, Jay turned their attention to the first grievance of the episode:
The Perfect Platform Does Not Exist.
Jay’s issue concerns platforms saying that they’re the “perfect platform” and pushing a “one-size fits all” mentality in their marketing when that’s not the reality.
JAY: My hope for 2022 is that platforms really begin to stake a claim into specialties and the things that they’re great. Right now everybody’s trying to be big into B2B, and rightfully so. I believe that Shopify has some stuff coming out for B2B, obviously, Magento has been doing B2B, BigCommerce is making a big play in B2B, you have some of these larger platforms that are big players, etc. The fact of the matter is, B2B is so intricate, so business-rules driven, that not every platform can be a great B2B option. There’s still plenty of B2C to capture but we see this chase for money. ‘Okay this is an untapped industry, we got to be there.’ And I get that’s what technology does but in that pursuit platforms and agencies — this isn’t just a platform problem — can make promises that they’re ill-equipped to follow through with…This year, my goodness, have you seen a platform thus far that hasn’t repped headless or hasn’t repped PWA? I don’t know. It’s just every platform is trying to be everything to every little customer. What is your specialty? Let’s find out what that specialty is, let’s make sure there’s a good enough niche there, and let’s go after that specialty. Instead of ‘well our specialty is just the eCommerce merchant.’ That’s a huge specialty right there. Not every platform can be everything to everybody…I think that platforms need to be a little bit more responsible in laying out what they do well.
ERIC: That’s a good point. I think a lot of this comes down to maybe an unclear understanding or definition of the types of merchants involved. I mean look at how nebulous the term mid-market is, right? You go to one platform and they’ll say we define the mid-market as merchants doing $5 to $15 mil and then you go to another platform and they say mid-market starts at $50 to $100 mil. And some of these terms mean nothing to merchants but the point is, we’re talking about marketing, you first have to know what the audience is before you market to them. And as we know the difference between a $5 million dollar merchant versus a $50 million dollar merchant is very, very different. So we have to think about the ways to market to them really on an individual basis versus something that’s treated out of whole cloth.
Jay acknowledged that businesses want to make money and don’t want to shoehorn themselves into a niche and then become unable to accept new types of clients. However, he thinks that some marketing verbiage creates grey areas of truth and can possibly misguide merchants. Emily agreed.
EMILY: Like what you were saying where everyone keeps saying that they’re the perfect platform. If everybody is saying they’re special then nobody’s special. You’re not showcasing why you are actually the perfect pick for them. Listen, I’m with you, everybody is trying to get these customers, everybody is trying to get them on their platforms but if you’re not getting the right customers to your platform you’re doing them a disservice. Because if they come to that conclusion and they decide to leave, then it wasn’t worth it in the first place. So you should really think about what makes you special. What makes those customers gravitate towards you and stay with you? And that helps us too! And if we’re all working together, we all get the client, so we’re all happy.
ERIC: That’s a really good point Emily and I think it’s the generalist vs. the specialist route…the point is the merchants need to know: ‘why do I need to hire you?’ ‘why you?’ And so what I’ve found is that by being above board and saying ‘this is what we’re really good at, this is why people hire us. They hire us for this, this, and this.’ You know? ‘If you’re expecting this, that’s not what you’re going to get here.’ I have never encountered a merchant where they’re turned off by that. If anything, let’s say it is negative, they appreciate the candor of knowing what they will not get with you and so I think that’s really important to do. Like you said Jay, nobody’s lying but I think that creating parameters around ‘this is what you can expect with our platform’ will really help. Because when that dialogue is not in play, what happens is it falls to the partner, it falls to us [EYStudios] to have to define that to the merchant. And we never want to be in a position where we have to say that the platform may have a problem.
Jay agreed and admitted that this grievance probably does come from a place of being a little too defensive of his clients. He wants to make sure they’re not being taken advantage of by marketing and sometimes it can seem too easy to do everything on every platform. For example, he noted, if you were to guess what Wix can do based solely on advertising you would think it was one of the most powerful platforms when in reality it’s a beginner platform. He also noted that there are some platforms he’s never heard of that are popping up daily and making huge claims about their capabilities. He warns eCommerce merchants to be wary about choosing the right platform or ask for advice from an agency like EYStudios. He admitted he could probably continue this grievance for a while but ended it there and turned it over to Eric for his grievance.
Salutations of Cheers, Best, and Stay Safe
Eric’s grievance is with people being too nice in emails and ending them with the words “cheers”, “best”, and “stay safe” prior to their signature. To be clear, he particularly hates this when the email is of a negative nature but the sender still forces a “cheers” at the end like some deranged pub goer. He admits it is a bit of a personal pet peeve but Jay and Emily agree it’s worthy of airing grievances about.
Cheers:
ERIC: Cheers! With an exclamation point, sometimes a comma. I don’t get cheers. You’ll have to explain that.
JAY: It was a show that came out in the 80s that starred Ted Danson and in subsequent seasons you had Kelsey Grammar and Woody Harrelson.
EMILY: Where everybody knows your name.
JAY: It just seems very European. Like I just walked into an Irish pub and everyone turned around to me and said cheers.
EMILY: It is European.
ERIC: Especially when they’re from the South, cheers just does not work.
Best:
ERIC: I guess I don’t know if this is ‘I’m the best’, ‘all the best to you’, what does best imply?
EMILY: You are the best.
JAY: You’re the best around. Nothing’s ever going to keep you down.
EMILY: Is this the musical episode?
Stay Safe:
ERIC: We’re seeing this one pop up with everything going on and I just don’t quite get it.
EMILY: I just like to live fast and loose, Eric.
ERIC: Right? How do you know I’m safe? How do I stay that way? I don’t know.
Eric believes this probably stems from his dislike of companies trying to become too hip. When businesses talk the way people speak he thinks it can come across as snarky and when everybody is doing it it becomes obnoxious. He said that he would prefer to do business with someone who has a sense of humor but isn’t always sarcastic and incapable of being sincere. Jay and Emily agree especially about emails where companies attempt to be snarky and guilt you into signing up via messaging like “I guess you’re too good to open this email.”
Before moving on to the next grievance Eric brought up a popular internet argument at the moment which is the use of “no worries” or “no problem” in response to “thank you” instead of “you’re welcome.” Emily explained that this is a generational problem and poked fun at Eric for joining Jay in “old man territory.”
ERIC: I just thanked you for something! I’m not worried about anything! The proper response is ‘your welcome.’ I’m not worried, I’m just simply thanking you for something. Leave the worry out of it.
EMILY: I say no worries because it’s ‘oh, no problem,’ it stems from that. What you have asked me to do for you was not a problem for me, it was not a worry for me, I hope you’re having a good day, no worries to you brother. Just trying to make sure everybody feels chill.
In that vein, we jump into Emily’s grievance which is not quite as harsh as Eric’s.
Clients Not Passionate About Their Own Business
Emily works with a lot of clients and potential clients concerning marketing and has found that some people simply aren’t passionate about making their business grow.
EMILY: It’s something that’s always just kind of bit me in the back of the head. Sure, we can take this project like ‘just take it we don’t want to think about it we don’t want to worry about it.’ Absolutely, I’m super happy to do that for you, but I want you to be just as passionate about it as I am. I want you to wake up in the morning and be just as jazzed about what we’re trying to do. I’m trying to make money for your business because it’s your product. We’re selling your product! Are you not as excited as I am? Come on, man.
Jay agrees and has this conversation with clients quite often where they want to hand over a task completely.
JAY: They’ll say ‘well this is what we’re paying you for’ and that’s a valid argument. If I go out and I hire somebody to do my deck, the last thing the contractor wants me to be doing is stand over their shoulder saying ‘I think you missed a nail there’ or ‘are you sure that the way you’re applying this stain, are you sure it’s going to take this way?’ and so I think some of it has that the store owner doesn’t want to be overbearing and I think some of it is that they’re extremely busy. But I agree with you. I’ve seen it more here recently — I don’t know if it has to do with 2020, COVID, all that stuff — there is some apathy when it comes to business and the passion business owners have in their business. I don’t see it all the time and maybe it’s just from my side looking in. They’re probably busy with a hundred other things that I’m not thinking about…However, there are people that think that by putting [their site] on autopilot and hiring a good agency, they can get by. And they can, but, meetings two times a month or so, that’s not too much to ask to make sure that we are on the same page with you when it comes to your business.
EMILY: Absolutely. I love the deck analogy because I think that’s the perfect way to explain this. I will build you the deck. You can go sit inside, drink a cup of coffee, enjoy your day but if I need to come inside to ask ‘what kind of wood do you want to use for this deck?’ I want to know what your input is because you’re going to see it every day, it’s going to be at your house, and I want to make sure we’re doing right by you. ‘Do you like this paint color?’ I want your input on it. I want you to be just as excited about the end result of the deck as you are about the product itself.
JAY: My favorite is — using this analogy — ‘hey, what type of wood do you want to use on this?’ ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ ‘Alright, I’m going to use oak.’ Fast forward to a month later, ‘hey contractor why is this oak, I wanted spruce.’
ERIC: That’s a good point. I’m thinking about the contractors that I’ve hired and we did a good bit of work on her house this year and that sort of thing. And some contractors are definitely better than others because they understand that you don’t know how it all works… I think the hardest thing for me is when I hire contractors even when I’m looking for different bids is when they all say different things. It’s not like the same bit of advice, they all come at it from a different angle and I don’t know — I don’t know what’s true…I think even in eCommerce there is just so much, whether it’s something technical or aesthetic that the business owner just doesn’t understand. And hopefully, we’re the kind of company that helps explain that in a way that’s powerful, that’s palatable, that’s understandable to the business owner why they need to make that decision. That shows that we care about that.
You know, speaking from personal experience, there’s so much on [business owners’] minds: they’re thinking about their people, thinking about paying this bill or just keeping the ship going. Sometimes you’re just kind of worn out by the process and I think when there’s some ignorance involved too that can create some anxiety for the merchant. I think on the flip side of that though, and we can think of many clients here at EYStudios that we work with that are great examples of this, when the merchant throws themselves into the process and they become a part of the brand and they help communicate what’s special about their brand, about their culture, etc. There’s just a sort of interesting alchemy that occurs when that happens because we’re bringing it on our end and they’re bringing it on their end. And there has to be some collaboration. I think when the merchant or the business owner is just kind of hands-off and says ‘well this is what I’m paying you for,’ the lack of collaboration can really hurt the project. I think that any good agency, any good contractor, or whatever type of business we’re looking at, needs to bring a level of leadership. But you have to show up. You have got to care about the process because I think that collaboration really helps the end result.
Jay responded with “passion begets passion.” He then pointed out that EYStudios will always be more passionate about the project you hire us for but if the client doesn’t care at all, the bar is set pretty low.
Eric agreed with that point and recalled how a contractor he hired for a backyard project was more passionate about the project than he was and was constantly coming up with new creative ideas. Eric said this was infectious and that that was the kind of environment he hopes to foster with our own clients.
Stop Saying Stuff Is Easy
Jay’s second grievance of the episode is that anyone — agencies, merchants, clients, etc. — who says that something is easy isn’t trying hard enough.
JAY: What agencies are trying to do is put your mind at ease with ‘oh this is easy’, ‘we can do this with our eyes closed’, ‘this is nothing’. So you’re walking away from the meeting thinking to yourself ‘ok great, this is easy, these people got my back. They know what they’re going to do.’ Listen, since I’ve been at EYStudios we’ve done well over 700, 800 sites. It gets a little bit more difficult each and every time. Not because it’s that much harder but because we care that much more. You don’t want to do the same thing over and over and over again. I had this conversation today with a client that’s in the $3 to $5 million dollar range and they want to be in the $7 to $10 million dollar range and the exact words were, ‘well I want a template because I want to get this thing up to speed and I need it to be easy’ and I said ‘if you want to be easy you will never get to $7 to $10 million dollars. You need to choose one of the two: do you want the revenue growth or do you want ease?’
He continued on to say that it’s easy to think that it’s easy to be a success story with technology taking care of the hard work but with more technology business can get more difficult. “If it’s easy, why are you paying for it,” he said.
ERIC: That’s exactly right. I love how you phrased that and I think that what you’re saying is emblematic of what’s happening in our country and I hate to take it here but I think what’s happening just in our populace is that we’re going to a place where we just gravitate to what is easy and if something is not easy then we want to turn away from it….when I talk to the designers I tell them we have to envision the hardest thing we can think of. If we just go to this thinking it’s easy or we can knock this out whatever there’s no glory in that. There’s no satisfaction in the job well done when you just did something that’s “easy.” I want to go home at the end of the day feeling like I left everything out on the field and the only way to do that is to embrace what’s tough. And work is hard. What we do and what a lot of people do is hard work. But like my dad would say, “if you love what you do you’ll never work another day in your life.” If you love it, the passion that you’re talking about doesn’t feel like a slog. And you know that’s how I feel about EYStudios and what we do: it’s hard work but because I’m passionate about it, the passion supersedes the parts that suck.
[Note: Eric’s dad actually stole that saying from Confucius but EYStudios employees are used to quotes being attributed to Eric’s father.]
Emily agreed and went on a mini diatribe about her love for working at EYStudios. She said it’s the hardest she has ever worked but the best job she’s ever had. Perhaps she started on the egg nog early or perhaps we all really do love our jobs that much.
The Design Continuum
Eric’s second grievance is that design is either too boring or too complicated.
ERIC: What I mean by a design continuum is that we’ve got two sides of the design spectrum. Okay, so on one side we’re seeing design that is so boring, I mean there’s nothing to it. I’ll look at the emails. I’ll look at the way some sites are designed and there’s no thought to it. Goes along with what we’ve been talking about with passion and it’s just nothing. And it’s supposedly these “high-end sites.” What I’d say as a designer is that you’re incorporating a lot of white space and if you want an open, clean look: that’s some of the hardest designs that you’ll ever do. Because you have to be cognizant of all of the layout requirements to pull that design off. You can’t just not do anything. You can’t just not think about the abstract notions of what you’re trying to design. So I’ve just seen these sites that are just so overwhelmingly boring and don’t adhere to any kind of design standard — they’re just kind of there.
And then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you’re seeing these sites that I have no idea how to interact with. They’re fancy and they’ve all these kinds of micro-interactions and huge photos and they’re visually beautiful but as an eCommerce site it’s like ‘what am I supposed to do with this thing?’ ‘how am I supposed to interact with this site?” It’s like a museum piece, it looks interesting but in terms of creating a conversion machine, it fails. So both of these extremes, I think, are very harmful to eCommerce right now. I mean you look at some of the sites that make it on top 10 lists and I look at them and go ‘are you kidding me?’ So what I want to ask next is well how is it converting? What’s the bounce rate? How is this thing actually doing versus how it looks? I think a lot of folks rightfully look at design agencies, brand agencies, like ourselves, and they think ‘well they’re just focusing on making it look pretty.’ And that couldn’t be more opposite of the way we think. It’s not just how it looks. Does it perform? Does it work? So I think designers and various creatives can go too far in one direction or another and the result is an experience that’s lacking.
JAY: I agree and that goes back to what we’re saying about easy. Sometimes you can just tell that there has been absolutely no thought put into this and I’m 100% sure that the designer said ‘this is going to be easy.’ And again, conversions aren’t easy. We’re talking about eCommerce folks! There is a thought process that goes into the design to get a total stranger, that you will never meet, that will never get to know you, won’t know you on a first-name basis, to enter in their credit card information, the gateway to all their finances everything that they have in their bank account, enter that into your portal and click proceed with order…That is a miracle!
Business Jargon and Work Face
The last grievance of the episode is from Emily that discovered this annoyance of hers during the pandemic when we all started working from home. Her grievance is in the form of a question, “why do I have to pretend to talk a certain way?”
EMILY: I think it’s because when we were sitting at home and we’ve been on like these video calls and sometimes were accidentally muting ourselves or maybe somebody’s dog walks in. That’s human. That’s real. That’s organic. So why is it while all of those things are happening, I have to be like ‘oh good sir, thank you so much for taking me up on this call har har har.’ I just want to talk to you. Just ‘I need to talk to you about conversion, these are the things I’m seeing, these are the things I want to do about it, do you like that yes or no?’ Instead of me having to overthink my words or just like using buzzwords — I hate buzzwords! I’m so tired of it. I don’t want to keep talking about ROI, I want to say ‘I want to make you money, can I make you money?’
ERIC: Man those are some good points and I’m thinking back to what Jay shared about platform marketing. The thought just occurred to me with what Emily is sharing: we don’t want all the business. I mean EYStudios. We don’t want every business opportunity that comes our way. I just want the best business. I want to engage with clients that get what we do, that are a joy to work with, and get the value in what we do. And I just wish more companies were like that as well…I think a come one, come all approach creates poor communication and creates that stilted dialogue you’re talking about Emily. I think on the flip side is that there are enough people out there that are hungry for real communication; they just want to talk to somebody that is real. That doesn’t have the pretense and all the garbage Emily is talking about. If you can have a real connection with people that’s what real business is about. The rest is just a transaction. If we can get down to some serious business then we can be real about how we’re talking.
Jay agrees and hopes we’re moving in the direction of more honest communication. However, he does make a point of saying there does need to still be some business decorum. He admits that’s a fine line to walk but a necessary one in business. “You can understand this is a business without being robotic,” he said.
Before Jay got worked up over another grievance, we sent him to go take some blood pressure medication and ended the episode here. Let us know what some of your eCommerce grievances from the past year have been. We wish you a Merry Festivus and a Happy New Year.
We hope you liked this episode of the Southern Fried eCommerce podcast, make sure you subscribe to catch our next episode in the new year!