Latest / Talk Commerce / Justin Aronstein on Mobile1st Strategies That Drive Revenue Growth
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:01.454) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Justin Aronstein. Justin, go ahead and an introduction for yourself. You just told me your last name and I feel like I've already butchered it. But tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life. Justin Aronstein (00:15.626) yeah, my name is Justin Aronstein Chief Product Officer at Mobile1st. We help stores make more money by making their value worth more. Passion in life is biking and making it safer for people to bike and walk in their daily life. Brent Peterson (00:33.176) That's awesome, I love that. I think you're, are you in Austin? Justin Aronstein (00:36.782) I'm in Austin, Texas. Yeah, live in pretty close to Central Austin. Brent Peterson (00:38.51) Uh, yeah, my, my preliminary, my first trip to Austin, be like 2011. I was going to meet a partner manager from Magento, which is now Adobe. And he said, Brent, you know, and I'd done marathon before. So he said, Oh yeah. Why don't you come on an easy 50 mile bike ride? And, uh, yeah, I had no idea. There was all these, there's Hills like it's Hill country, right? And, uh, yeah. And he's a, he's a, he's an A. Justin Aronstein (01:01.624) there are hills. Yeah, there's real hills. Yeah. Brent Peterson (01:08.608) a rider, A team, whatever it's called. So, and I'm a C and I'm, I'm, maybe I'm a B now, but I was a C at the time and I was so exhausted. We got like 35 miles and I'm like, God, I'm just so, I'm, I'm through like, I'm so tired. anyways, so yeah, that was my, that was my introduction to Austin. But my other little, little side thing is my 400 meter PR is on the Austin high school track. Justin Aronstein (01:09.688) Okay. huh. Yeah. huh. Justin Aronstein (01:19.28) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (01:26.959) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (01:34.148) Okay. Brent Peterson (01:34.178) So I did join a running group because I went there all the time after that. And went every, you know, every month or so. And I joined a running team that stores not downtown anymore, but there's all these younger people and I'm older and there's like, come on, Peterson, got to get around blah, blah. So I got my inexplicably got my PR anyways. Well, it's not, we won't talk about Austin and, and, and sports, but let's, let's, you know what I gotta do? I got to do my free joke before we get into anything else. So. Justin Aronstein (01:37.241) ever. Justin Aronstein (01:52.484) That's awesome. That was very cool. Brent Peterson (02:03.022) Justin, I do this thing called the free joke project. I'm just going to tell you a joke and you just give me a rating 8 through 13. So I got a good one. I got a good one for you today. Actually, this is my deep thought for today. When you clean out a vacuum cleaner, you become a vacuum cleaner. Justin Aronstein (02:20.996) Nine. Brent Peterson (02:22.206) All right, thank you. Well, that's good. Thanks. right. All right. So tell us about Mobile first. Justin Aronstein (02:29.946) Yeah, so we've been around for a couple years now. We actually started as a software product, helping people visualize what their site was going to look like in mobile. This was really before Chrome was doing this. And there were a bunch of tools on the market, and we were one of them. The market became crowded and really killed by Chrome DevTools, which really made it very easy to understand what your site was going to look like on mobile. So we pivoted more to our services business. And our service is really centered around this single key metric of revenue per visitor. How do we increase revenue per visitor? And so we don't drive traffic. We don't have a team that does Facebook or Google Ads. We don't have a team that does email. Our team is solely focused on what does it take to increase the value of someone that lands on your page? And to do that, we're really focused on finding insights. And these insights, and we have a hierarchy of insights, but these insights really come down to what is the user looking, what is the shopper looking for, why are they on your site, and how do you help them get there, and how do you help them find exactly what they're looking for and feel safe and secure in making a decision to purchase with you. And then we also look at business intelligence of, how are people using your site? How do we dive in the analytics? But our best insights always come directly from the user. And then what we do is we verify those insights through experiments. So we run A-B tests on your site to understand, the customers thought X, so we built a new experience. What is it better? And how much better is that? And here is the revenue per visitor increase. because of our insights and our new experience on your site. Brent Peterson (04:29.038) Yeah, that's awesome. I can speak from experience with PayPal. They had an initiative probably 10 years ago for mobile experience. And I remember one of the interesting things was they did experiments that got people and then some things that you would think would bring more conversions. And I don't remember what it was right now, but some of those thought patterns didn't get validated until you actually did the test, right? Justin Aronstein (04:47.3) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (04:55.237) Yep. Brent Peterson (04:55.444) One of the easy ones I remember was just put a little padlock on your buy button. And for whatever reason, people love that. But there was other ones that I can't remember, they did the opposite. Like something you would think would do it would turn it around and people would buy less. Justin Aronstein (05:00.4) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (05:04.235) it. Justin Aronstein (05:11.066) Totally, totally. And I think just to build on that a little, so one, we don't just work with mobile. It's a name. And we are, as we think about things, most people's traffic's on mobile. So we are mobile first, but not mobile only. But I think one of the big things out there is everyone's like, you're just reducing friction, right? There's all this friction on my site, and I just got to reduce the friction. Well, how long have you been using the internet, Brent Peterson (05:34.968) Yeah, 94, something like that, 93. Yeah. Justin Aronstein (05:37.006) Yeah, so 30 years, right? So if there's like, if you want to buy something, you figured out how to do it, you will make that happen. Even if there's like even a bug on the site, you'll be like, okay, I can figure out how to buy this thing. So friction isn't what's stopping your shoppers from buying from you. It's that you haven't created an emotional connection of your product, your company and buying right now. that they've decided, we're gonna go shop somewhere else, or I don't need this product right now. And so that is what we do is tap into that emotional connection of, hey, you need this now. This friction of the strong belief really does not. Brent Peterson (06:22.414) Yeah, I think you're, I'll agree with you partially. I think if you're on a brand that you don't know about, think friction is a big barrier. And especially maybe nowadays with shipping, like you get to the cart and then all of a sudden like what shipping is $25. Are you kidding me? This whole product is $25. And that's when I dump out, right? And that's, that's definitely friction. like if I'm on Amazon, like they often do offer friction. They're just trying to get you to fill up whatever to get your buy now. Justin Aronstein (06:41.412) Totally. yeah, yeah. Justin Aronstein (06:50.625) Okay. Brent Peterson (06:53.178) Normally I live in I live in Hawaii for most of the year So by now in Hawaii if you're buying something on Prime, it's a week or two to get it. It's never two days And I'm right now in Minneapolis and like I was like I want I want this thing Why would it take a week to get it? And I realized I'm shipping to Kona instead of Minneapolis. I switched to Minneapolis I get it I get it today literally like you can have it by 8 p.m. Or I could have it in two weeks anyways Justin Aronstein (06:53.37) Totally. Justin Aronstein (06:57.264) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (07:03.737) Alright. Justin Aronstein (07:14.649) huh. Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (07:21.367) Alright. Brent Peterson (07:21.806) They do offer some friction, but I think you're right in the fact that, I trust Amazon. This is what I want. And actually by the time I get to the point, it's just, it's not a necessity. Well, maybe it was, I don't know, but it's just something that you like some kind of staple you need or want, right? But there are those other things where the friction is like, no, I really don't need this. Like if you give them that thought. So talk about the, where friction helps and where it doesn't help. Justin Aronstein (07:37.017) Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (07:43.364) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (07:48.504) Yeah, so I think one of the big places that friction helps is as people are deciding on what the right product is. So when you type into Google, Hey, I'm looking for a comforter for my bed. They're going to give you shopping results, Google shopping. And most of those results are going to be sponsored. And it's not necessarily obvious to you which ones are sponsored, which ones are organic, but you may want to click those Google shopping results. And for most stores, that is probably about 30 to 40 % of traffic, just Google shopping, like just that single channel, maybe a little less if you do a lot of social. So it's really important. But when you click that, you may not actually be on the exact product you're looking for, at least the current Google results. You just said, hey, I want a brown comforter, maybe suede, whatever. But you might not be the right product, but this company might have the right products. And you may not actually know that based on the Google shopping results. So a place that you can add friction actually is showing your lineup of products at the top of the page for people coming in through Google shopping and say, you're looking at a brown suede. Right now you're on this brown suede comforter. Just so know, we have these five others and show it actually before the product they clicked on. Because right now they're just browsing for products. They haven't made a choice yet. They're still trying to figure out what's the right one. So instead of having them go back to Google and refine their search, help them refine their search on your brand. That's some amazing friction to add because you're actually making, to get to the add to cart button, you're going to push it way down the page so you can feature a slider worth of products. So that's one of the key areas where you can really add friction really easily and increase conversions for that channel. Brent Peterson (09:51.149) I remember, and I should have remembered, I should have done a little bit of research on these AOV and things like that, but there was another one that they were touting, not just average order value, but average order value for the life of your customer or average order value for the last three months or something like that. There's so many more metrics that are more important than just average order value and maybe that churn and return rate for a client, average order value for a return client compared to a new client. Justin Aronstein (09:58.713) Yeah. Brent Peterson (10:20.93) Like that return client that buys a second time is so much important than the client who buys the first time. And then figuring out your segments based on that. And we're probably getting way into the weeds here, but you know, how do you look at those, some of those metrics and, then how do you look at them and what would, what are the, like some of them that everybody's touts that aren't that important or you don't think they're that important. Justin Aronstein (10:45.264) I think conversion rates are a vanity metric straight up. I don't think it's really as important. Our key metric is going to be revenue per visitor. if a company is more mature, they're actually looking at lifetime value or 12-month lifetime value. It is one of the really key metrics. And depending on the business, every business is different. For example, a mattress business where you only buy the mattress and pillows every eight years is going to be different than something that has a lot of refills, thinking like a company like Repurpose as an example, that sells things in Target. But if you have a lot of refills, it's something that like, hey, I'm going to be replenishing over and over again. I'm really thinking about LTV and I'm okay actually losing money on that first purchase. Because if my CAC, my cost per acquisition is basically what my margin is, that's probably okay. as long as we have a strategy to get that customer coming back. And that's why subscriptions have become so important in the past three, four, five years, because acquisition costs have been really skyrocketing from a marketing perspective on Google, Facebook, et cetera. And so now if I can get you to say, and get three orders from someone because I got them to a subscription, that's really valuable. So really understanding your cost per acquisition, your margin, your, the exact metric is escaping right, right now, but basically the lifetime value or lifetime margin with your cost per acquisition taken into account is really where you should be focusing. Brent Peterson (12:33.038) Do you think, I mean, I've heard this now a lot going to some of the different e-commerce conferences like e-tail or Shop Talk where they're talking now about the revenue car, Google being so much less important now compared to where it's gonna be maybe with chat GPT and they just announced the browser I think yesterday or the day before and perplexity and the way that the shopping is changing. there's going to be an inflection point that we worry more about how to advertise on chat GPT whenever it's going to happen, right? They're going to use it for free and you're going to advertise. Like there's going to be a point where if you change, right? Justin Aronstein (13:15.28) Yeah, I think that's real. I think right now, if I had to guess, 2 to 5 % of revenue for most stores is coming through AI of some sort. And that's not based on hard numbers, just kind of looking at clients overall. So is that where everyone should be focusing right now to hit their Q4 goal? Probably not. To hit Q4 and to basically make their year, which has probably been a difficult year that may have been impacted by tariffs. You need to be focusing on the channels that you know work and testing new channels. So where is your customer? Where is your customer thinking about you and talking about you and seeing if you can get more eyeballs there? That's probably going to be Facebook, Google for the next 18 months. Should you be testing AI marketing, whether it's perplexity, whether it's ChatGPT once it comes out? Yeah. Do I think it's going to be the most important thing that you test in 2026? Probably not. I think you should be testing other channels. You should be in TikTok shop. There's other channels that I think will be much more important that are emerging for you in 2026. 2027, I think, yeah, it'll probably be a big place you need to invest. Brent Peterson (14:34.05) Yeah, that's super interesting. I just interviewed Sharon Gee from BigCommerce, who is the product AI chief officer, product AI or whatever, vice president of product AI. And she was very bullish on this idea of making sure your store is ready now for the future of whatever is going to happen with LLMs. And she's very dire about Google and where it sits in the paid ad community. But I do agree that they're all channels, right? They're all going to be channels and maybe your website is less important or even more important depending on how you want to use any one of those channels. How do you kind of factor in the conversions from your website compared to conversions from TikTok and should they buy direct on or go through your website? Where do you see it? Where do you sit on that? Justin Aronstein (15:26.572) Yeah, it's a good question. mean, Big Commerce is obviously selling a product of hey, we're AI ready. And I'll challenge anyone to say that it's going to be in the top three things they need to focus on in 2026. I'll go toe to toe with anyone on that. I think in terms of being AI ready on your store, I think every channel is unique. And you probably need to be where your buyers are. If you are selling something that's under 30, $40 that is targeted towards younger people, you better be on Tip Doc Shop. If you are selling something that would be in a Walmart, that would be in Target, Walgreens, you probably need to be both in those marketplaces, also in Amazon. If you're building a brand, yeah, your DTC store is going to be really important, but you need to be where your buyers are and where they're thinking about you. For a lot of brands that is Amazon, but not every brand. Certain buyers are not on Amazon. I mean, I'll just take my family and we canceled our Amazon membership is we didn't want to buy into that right now. And we're trying to become less consumeristic. So. there's certain buyers that aren't on Amazon, where are they and how do you reach them is really what you need to be thinking about and what channels can you reach them. Brent Peterson (17:01.624) Yeah, do you think there's gonna be a push? I mean, I think there's already a push, like you said, a push back on Amazon, and there's gonna be somebody new that's filtering in. Of course, they said that about Google, right? And it's probably happening, but who knows what's gonna happen if you're that big. I know that, so just switching gears, Mobile1st started in what, 2014 or something like that, and that's when literally everybody was saying you have to start designing for Mobile1st and responsive designs come to out Justin Aronstein (17:25.122) It's been around a while. Brent Peterson (17:31.79) Do you feel like a lot of people are still designing for their desktop first and they're still forgetting that there's this mobile experience that most templated websites seem to handle but a lot of people don't deal with it? Justin Aronstein (17:32.016) Hold. Justin Aronstein (17:46.934) Yes. Yeah, it's a great question. So every designer, every developer, every executive that's doing their job all day, even this conversation, we're both on either laptops or desktop devices. In fact, work monitors have gotten bigger. So we're doing all this work in an environment that's built for big screens. And so that's just where our mind goes. That's where we focus when we're Brent Peterson (17:47.615) Merchants I should say Justin Aronstein (18:14.864) evaluating the designs and everything. We're building it in a desktop environment. And they were like, oh yeah, we have to think about mobile. We have to think mobile as well. And for a lot of these stores, it's a problem because 60 % of the revenue and 70 % of the traffic is on mobile. And I think it is a real problem. it's a, I say it's a real brain shift, like, but when you, a lot of people don't have desktop devices. They're not even knowing that your store exists. So for example, one of our clients is they sell car parts, automotive parts, and they find that traffic spikes, especially on mobile on Saturday and Sunday when everyone's home. when we talk to their customers, they're literally looking at the site when they're looking at their car. So they'll be under their car, they'll have the hood open. and have the site at the same time. So what are the design experiences that are necessary for that? And what are they looking for? And how do you create a really environment around them while they're practicing their hobby? Brent Peterson (19:26.914) Yeah, and I think that's maybe that's where Amazon really got it right. And that's a great example of something where mobile makes sense to really get that one thing there and buy it and go like, agree if you're sitting there and you're under your 65 Dodge Dart GT convertible and you need to fix something that you want this part and you know exactly what you want and you're going to hit go. So that's a great, great example. Justin Aronstein (19:56.132) That's exactly right. Brent Peterson (19:56.431) So one question you probably don't get a lot of, but what about dark mode? Like, do you think that people care about dark mode and light mode? And the only reason I bring this up is because I've been developing an app and we have some beta testers using it and they're using it at night. And for whatever reason we used React in our app and it automatically gave us dark mode. And they're like, we can't see any navigation. I'm like, what do mean you can't see any? I'm looking at my phone during the day. I can see it just fine. Justin Aronstein (20:16.248) Uh-huh. Brent Peterson (20:24.622) Right? I mean, do you think that people purposely should be designing in dark mode for people that use dark mode on their computers more often at night? And does it matter? Justin Aronstein (20:36.076) Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's a very specific audience that likes dark mode and it's tech enthusiasts. I think it's a very tech enthusiast kind of thing. Like, hey, I'm going to use dark mode. Whether you enjoy it, you think it's cool, you think it's good for your eyes, whatever it is. talked to my wife, who's a lawyer for the state of Texas. She doesn't know what dark mode is. She's like, why would I want that? Brent Peterson (20:46.23) Okay. Justin Aronstein (21:03.536) But tech enthusiasts, the most developers, most, many developers will put their IDEs in dark mode. And it's really important to them. So for building something for tech enthusiasts, yeah, I think it's necessary. And again, that goes down to knowing your audience and talking to your audience of like, is this, you can ask them like, how often do you use dark mode in your different applications? Is that something you use in your browser? Brent Peterson (21:28.846) Right? Yeah, well, I purposely now have set my computer to go into dark mode at night, just if I'm at night developing something that I can see what it looks like. And then you have to tell, you have to set up your CSS to work in all kinds of different environments now, which is such a pain. I'm sure they'll come up with something even harder. Well, now that there's this OpenAI browser, there'll be a new browser standard or something like it. It's no longer IE6, right? I just got rid of my IE6. Justin Aronstein (21:38.66) Totally. Justin Aronstein (21:45.072) Totally. Brent Peterson (21:58.433) Justin what what like if so we're going I'm not sure when this is gonna come out This will probably come out right around Black Friday, but you know we're right in the edge of this season What kind of advice can you give somebody that? To do now if they haven't done it already for Black Friday, and I'm not saying any code updates Is there something they could do to make sure that they're ready? That I mean you should be in code lockdown if you're big enough, but maybe some people are gonna You know manipulate their card or whatever Justin Aronstein (22:05.849) Awesome. Brent Peterson (22:27.63) which would be, I think, kind of crazy. I always think of things that I can do or that people should do if they haven't done it that they can still do going into the holidays. Justin Aronstein (22:40.226) Yeah, so there's a list of things that your product details page needs to accomplish. So looking at it from the buyer's perspective, the first one is you need to confirm that this is going to solve the shopper's problems or like it's going to make them happy if they purchase this. So for example, if you're selling golf clubs, it... helps you go hit the ball farther or more consistently on the green. Second, you need to confirm that your store is a safe place to shop and you're trustworthy and they're gonna get it in time. Amazon has done this more than anyone. Speed to delivery is so, important. Third, you need to confirm that other people have enjoyed shopping with you and are using this product. And so if you can get these things done, that'll really help it. And then kind of lastly, least important, if this isn't the right product for them, help them find what the right product is. So I think kind of if you can solve all those problems on your product details page, I think you'll Brent Peterson (23:57.123) Yeah, that's a good one. Justin Aronstein (24:07.428) be in a better place. Hard abandonment campaigns and retargeting for a lot of places is an area that you can show up or really do a little more. It is really an opportunity. And if you haven't talked to your customers, give a couple of call. Why did they choose you? What do they value about your business? And put that on your page. Like literally just like when someone says, hey, I value that. They always send me a thank you note. Tell people that you do that. Whatever it is. understand why people choose you and your products and make sure that's on your page. Brent Peterson (24:54.134) That's good, yeah, that's great advice. Justin, we have a few minutes left as I close up the podcast to give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they want. We'll check the plug today. Justin Aronstein (25:03.6) Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Justin Aronstein. I try to give as many insights as possible in the e-commerce world. I kind of have this idea that e-commerce directors earn a really hard job and I try to bring therapy to that through my LinkedIn feed, so follow me there. Mobile1st, we help increase revenue per visitor, so if that's a problem you're having, come check out our website and drop us a line. Feel free to message me on LinkedIn. And have fun. If you're not having fun at your job, you're probably doing it wrong. Brent Peterson (25:37.711) Perfect, all right. I'll make sure we get those on the show notes. Justin, it's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much. Justin Aronstein from Mobile1st Thank you so much. Justin Aronstein (25:45.573) Yeah. Thank you.