Onboarding Funnels
Welcome back everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. It's Friday. We're gonna take a look back at the week. Brian Haitman.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir, man. I am I am I'm like three days into to recovering from from going up to Boston on Tuesday night to see Pearl Jam at Fenway Park which was pretty cool. I got a last minute ticket from from a friend and I've never I had never seen them before so that was a really really cool show. I I've never been to a show at a at a ballpark like Interesting. Which is pretty awesome.
Brian Casel:But yeah. I mean, I spent basically most of the day on Wednesday napping which then made me not sleep well at all on Wednesday night. So, Thursday night was another Or, Thursday day was another recovery day and now Friday, I'm I think I'm just back to normal now.
Jordan Gal:That's how old you are? Three days to recover.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This is going to concerts in your forties. This is what happened.
Jordan Gal:It's like, you know, make it the middle of the week. That's that's gonna cost me a lot of
Brian Casel:yeah.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well, here, I don't know. Life is nice and boring again. School, soccer games, you know, and a lot of work. Work has ticked up.
Jordan Gal:My entire mood and outlook in the world is now dictated by sign ups. Yeah. And so I'm I'm there now.
Brian Casel:Story of my life.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Right. It's like self serve means your mood is dictated by how your sign ups are. That hour, that day, that
Brian Casel:Man, this is this is the theme of our show for ten for the last ten years. And and this is so true. We've talked about it many times. It is so incredibly true and definitely super true for me right now. Not Both with Clarity Flow and the consulting stuff.
Brian Casel:You know, I'm I'm booking projects. I have projects now and I and I just booked another one that sets me up in a pretty comfortable spot for the fall. I I would love to to book one more but rewind like two or three months ago and I was like, I don't know where where my next consulting project is gonna come from. Right. And you know, a couple weeks of like totally freaking out and and everything and and But you know, that and that's like the feast and famine.
Brian Casel:But now now it's sort of on this like steady flow of both pretty regular sign ups and growth on Clarity Flow and consulting is going pretty well. So it's like my headspace is like comfortable and cool and like the polar opposite from where I was three months ago.
Jordan Gal:Okay. You know. It's funny. Like you you do need to know. I think both of us have done this long enough that you know when you're riding high, you gotta relax because it's coming down soon and then the opposite of when you're not feeling good.
Jordan Gal:So that's helpful. But you're still in the moment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's still like things that really frustrate me right now and it's more the other thing which is like, okay, now I'm really busy and what I actually really wanna be focused on and building, I don't I don't I can't carve out enough time to actually do that. So that's the thing that I'm frustrated with, but it's still sort of like a good problem to have. Oh, yeah. A A few a few months ago, It was more like an existential existential threat to to my livelihood here.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. So it it is perspective issue.
Brian Casel:To be to be overly dramatic about it.
Jordan Gal:I mean, whatever. It's how it feels. Yeah. My my wife was laughing at me because a few weeks ago when we would get more than one sign up in a day, I was like, okay. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Momentum. And now, if we get less than 10 sign ups in a day, I'm like, there's gotta be something wrong with the sign up process. Of course.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's been me forever, I guess. Any any like twenty four hour period where where there's no activity, I'm like, what's down? What what happens? Yes.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm pinging the team guys. Can we just can we just double check? Could we double check mobile? You know?
Brian Casel:Oh. Oh. It's just Oh. It's because it's Saturday night right now and nobody's on my Oh.
Jordan Gal:I'm the only one thinking about this.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We have a two step sign up process right now where you put your URL in, we generate the agent, then you create an account. And so the ratio between the two is a is a number that I fixate on also. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan Gal:Is it a 40%, 30%, 50% conversion from URL to account? So if that falls out of whack, even if the sign ups are still good, I'm still like pinging the team saying what's going on, what's wrong, do we have any errors, can we look into it?
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think this is sort of a theme for today for both of us. Right? A little bit of onboarding design user flow work. I I made a tweak recently on on Clarity Flow I could talk about that that's working surprisingly well.
Brian Casel:But yeah. What what do you got?
Jordan Gal:I I have something similar. You know, what what has helped me in in that mood conversation that we were just having is trying not to get ahead of myself on the funnel. And I'm saying, look, we're early. We're we're basically just building this thing out. And so I'm I'm focusing on being happy that we have accomplished or or we've got the green light on the first step of the funnel.
Jordan Gal:So the most important thing for us is that it feels like we built something that people want. Like, it's working. Like, there's a problem and people come across our solution and then they sign up. So, like, I I'm allowing that to make me generally happy about where we are and I don't look too far into the funnel like monetization and pricing plans and retention. I know that's a dumpster fire and I will get there.
Jordan Gal:But I'm not letting that like affect my mood. Where we are right now is activation and onboarding. So this conversation with you is very timely. I have I have a lot of questions I wanna ask for advice. Or if you wanna get into the change that you made recently and talk about the results there.
Jordan Gal:But that's where I would like to spend most of the time in this conversation is not like what should we do now, but like how do we think about it? That
Brian Casel:that has
Jordan Gal:been the challenge.
Brian Casel:Well, okay. Yeah. I mean, before I get into that that stuff, one thing about what you're just saying about the the levels of the funnel and where you're focused on. I I think what you're what you say makes total sense, like taking it one step at a time like first like just do people even care to even put their email address or sign up or they're Or put in their website like that's a that's a green light that that's great. And then and then you know focusing on conversion and account sign ups and stuff.
Brian Casel:But but like I know that you're not quite at the the the conversion and and focusing on like the paying customers and everything. But I feel like there's I don't know what the right answer is to this. But like, I feel like so much of that equation is like attracting the right people at the at the front of the funnel. Like knowing which people really have the pain and and want to pay and then and then optimizing to get those people visiting the homepage for the first time. Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:You know? You know what that makes me think that that feedback right now is extremely qualitative. It is individual conversations and individual statements and these little facts that bubble up and then it's a filter on whether or not we should pay attention to what this person says or not. Yeah. So an example this morning, I'm going through intercom conversations and I see a a user saying, can't wait to do it.
Jordan Gal:Can't wait to tell all my friends about this, but I cannot launch until you give me this feature.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And the feature is something that we just pushed into development and is going to QA on Monday. So, like, it's a little dangerous to to to take that in as like great feedback because we're right. But but but it's qualitative so you don't actually know. But Yeah. You know, it's this a feature that we kept hearing and people said, I love that it can take a message for me, but that does not help me unless you send me a notification that I got a new message.
Jordan Gal:Otherwise, I don't even know they called. We were like, oops. You know, okay. You're you're right. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So that feels like the type of feedback around conversion and ICP. And then of course, Rock. Rock, I have to give a lot of credit. He's very marketing minded for a CTO. He saw that and pinged me and said, I don't see that on the website.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So that's a feature you kept hearing. We built it. We we we are about to launch it. This person says they can't launch without it. Like, get get the thing on the on the website now.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Because it yeah. So it's that feedback between the conversion portion and the activation monetization and it goes back into the marketing to refine ICP because that is another problem. It is kind of for another day but it does need to be ongoing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Earlier this week, we we did finally like publicly launch everything with the appointments like calendar scheduling and and flow.
Brian Casel:And that's been one of those things where like we we've launched like really big features like this before that we've spent months building and then because customers tell us that they really want it and then reality is they don't actually use it all that much. I feel like appointments, it's good to see like it's actually being used like fairly heavily like right out of the gate in in the first week. Like customers are connecting their calendars and using it and we put it right on the pricing page and everything. It's it's it's a pillar feature that we're that we're promoting now. Okay.
Brian Casel:And I think that's helping. And we've had some conversions this week since it came out. Alright. But the the tweak that I made Yeah. That I wanna talk about is Alright.
Brian Casel:So I've been talking about We've been doing this pricing experiment for the last month and a half now. We don't have any trial. It's just come to the site, you pick a plan, you pay for it upfront. We we offer our money back guarantee but So
Jordan Gal:they're just paying for the first month?
Brian Casel:Yes. Okay.
Jordan Gal:So it's like, let's just say, $50 a month, you come in, you put your credit card, you pay $50, you have a month of usage.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It starts at 50. We we have a we have a 40 our current pricing is $49.99, $1.99. Okay. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You're so that's been going actually pretty well for the last six weeks. At first I thought it would be a short lived experiment and now I'm leaning more the other way. I think it's probably here to stay because it's working pretty well. We'll see. I still wanna see how the rest of this month plays out in next month.
Brian Casel:So that worked fairly well and then about two weeks ago, one or two weeks ago, I made one more tweak on the site, like on the homepage and basically every page of the of the marketing site. The the big call to action button, the most prominent one, the the pink button used to be the one that points you straight to the page where you can pick a plan and purchase.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Now, and then there was like a secondary thing here and there where it'd like, if you wanna see a demo, click this small link over here and you can you can view our demo.
Jordan Gal:That's for video, passive, they can watch it
Brian Casel:on their own. Yeah. They can watch a video. Okay. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's flipped. The big CTA is sending them to the demo and there's small CTAs, small links, not even buttons that say, when you're ready, check out pricing and sign up is over here. But first big big button, go watch the demo.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So not not sign up for a demo, request a demo, it's see the demo.
Brian Casel:Right. I'm on the now. Sign up for the demo. We've we've since removed the blogger for that.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Little dangerous on that. Even I would say the word demo is is a little dangerous also, maybe something to experiment with. Okay. So I'm on your site now.
Jordan Gal:I click on see a demo and you get to a big page with a video.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Now the demo video is something I've actually planned to rerecord pretty soon. But but the the idea now is really embracing this idea of like, we don't have a trial. So we so we don't expect you to be ready to buy when you first land on the site.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:We shouldn't like
Jordan Gal:Shouldn't feel like a risk.
Brian Casel:Right. We we want you to come here and spend some time and watch the videos and really understand what this product is all about. And when feel really compelled, you can you can follow the link over to the pricing page and purchase. I think this does a number of things. First of all, it just helps our our traffic flows.
Brian Casel:Second of all, it really well qualifies the people who do decide to buy. Mhmm. I I It's only two weeks in but I I hypothesis here is that it's going to reduce churn because we're we're bringing in more educated customers. I think I've no And so since launching this change, since like flipping the CTA, my fear was like, oh we're gonna like sign ups are gonna be killed. No one's gonna be able to even find the sign up button.
Brian Casel:Right? But the opposite was true. Like we we might have even had more conversions since flipping this change on. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Okay. You further away
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And converting better.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm I'm sort of nudging them through toward the demo page before they get to the pricing and and purchase page. It's like multiple steps, adding more time in their buying decision and Mhmm. That seems to actually be helping. Okay. I I didn't spend a lot of time digging into like, alright, how much exact How many seconds are people spending on each page?
Brian Casel:I got I don't I'm just too busy. Yep. But but the but yeah. And and I think the other thing just qualitatively like like stepping back. I I think I'm noticing that more of the new customers who've just paid, they are engaging with Kat, our customer success person more.
Brian Casel:Which is great. Because the worst thing is when somebody signs up and they never even talk to support and then they cancel. And she does outreach to every new customer.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I think like more of them are not only responding but like you know, she uses video async support and they're they're responding on video and like we have like really engaged customers coming in. It's it's like a heavy support load. Like they're doing multiple weeks of questioning questions and she she she essentially coaches them and advises them on how to set up their coaching business.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:Which is great. I mean, it's working you know. So so I feel like that back end of the funnel is is working pretty well and now if we can just I think I think what I need to do more of on the marketing funnel is like, I'm going to rerecord the the demo video. It doesn't even include some of our latest features. And yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, you know. And then and then we can talk. This will be like another conversation. Maybe later in this episode. I don't know.
Brian Casel:But I feel like that funnel is working but the other thing that I'm starting to think about is like what's what's a plan for like a higher higher end more revenue per customer type of plan. And it might be like an API type thing. So we can get Okay. That later.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I I was going to ask you about the the higher tiers and you know we when I do the math and I do some fantasy math, some you know base case, bad case, good case type of a thing and I look at traffic, I look at accounts created, and then the key step between account created and convert to paid, that's obviously a very big factor, that percentage. And then and then you're multiplying that by an average revenue per user.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And that is where I keep an eye and I think to myself, well, I gotta I gotta figure out how to make that higher.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Because without it, it sounds it sounds really painful. If if we if we're at $50 average revenue per user, we it's not that we have problems, we just have a taller task. It's just much harder to get the number of users there. But if it's 80, it's different. If a 110, it's different.
Jordan Gal:You know back my mind at all times.
Brian Casel:We made a big step forward on that when we switched from Zip Message to Clarity Flow. We Okay. We were way too low priced under the Zip Message days. That brought our ARPU up from like, it used to be somewhere around 26, 27. Now it's now it's closer to like 99 because most most customers end up on the 99 plan.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Cool. Yeah. We we have an issue with usage Using the number of minutes used as the key metric is is a challenge. I want to include in the mix actual features.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So that companies that use more of the features get more value, need those types of more complex features, pay more even if they don't use more minutes necessarily. They'll probably go hand in hand but I don't want all of our pricing be based on the number of minutes. I've seen competitors come out that are just usage based and that to me sounds awful.
Brian Casel:I've I've toyed with usage based a number of times like minutes, you know, minute like recording minutes on Clarity Flow for for pricing and it just never worked. Like, I didn't really launch with it but like I I talked to customers about it so many times and like everyone hates it. Everyone doesn't want to be, you know, penalized based on like the number of you know, the amount of time that their customers call into their business or or that they're talking to their customers like, they don't wanna be even thinking about how much is this costing every time. You know?
Jordan Gal:That's right. That's right.
Brian Casel:Just be
Jordan Gal:in a bucket. Be happy.
Brian Casel:This bucket satisfies you. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah. Okay. Some of the things you brought up
Brian Casel:later in the episode, I do wanna talk about like ARPU like we're you know, we're you know, between we're like closer to 99 but now I'm starting to think about like what is the one that that can get us into the hundreds because we have a higher plan but it's not really doing much. So yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think it's a it's a it's a key problem.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. So what do you got on your end?
Jordan Gal:So what what you were mentioning before I was gonna say some of the things that you mentioned was really was under the surface. You're talking about you're talking about making your own rules for onboarding, activation, the decision process on whether to buy trial versus no trial. And what I got from that under the surface is if you look at it and just want to apply best practices, that does not sound like the right approach these days. It really requires a thought process focused on the user, focused on your specific solution, the good things about your solution, the bad things, and then you layer in like your situation, how you wanna handle things. Do you want volume?
Jordan Gal:Do you want quality? Do you want some combination?
Brian Casel:I mean, that's also like I I am all always 99% focused on my own product and my own customers and what they're telling me. I don't really I I definitely don't ever look at competitors in terms of what does their product do. I know who who our competitors are and I know Especially I know who our competitors are based on who our customers tell us our competitors are. Like I could see other I think this is a big misconception that people have about competitors. We know who the other players in this market are
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I found that like most of the other players that I'm aware of, my customers don't even Either they don't know about them or they don't think of them as competitors. And there's really only like two or three that my that my actual customers verbally tell me like, yeah, we we're switching from them or we're considering them.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, that's who I think about. But even then, I I don't even know what their products look like. I I only really care about like what are my customers actually requesting and what are blockers for them, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's an interesting problem. It's very, you know, egocentric of the company to think about their competitive landscape. Our customers, the people that sign up, they come up with the craziest competitors. The craziest things we've never heard of.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The worst looking junk on the Internet. People told me like, oh, I I went on ClickBank and bought some AI bot thing that I uploaded to my phone like just the craziest things. And the comparison we're like focused on and looking at their advertising and all that. I don't think anyone has ever brought up. No.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So our focus right now is is is rethinking our onboarding activation and admin. And I I I put all three of those into the same breath because they feel inseparable. Oh, man. But I I don't know how to approach it right now.
Jordan Gal:So the the team, the people relevant on this. Right? The designer we're working with, Francois, the product people, myself, the the Sam who's also go to market. We got together. We did like a long call and we tried to put our heads together and say, how do we think about this?
Jordan Gal:One of the things that I think was really helpful that we did is we took a document out and we wrote down all of these all the milestones, all the things that happened, the events that happened. Finding us, putting in your URL, getting a phone number, forwarding the phone number, choosing a voice, like all these individual steps that people take. Putting in their business info, uploading training stuff, changing things like all we we try to put down these are all the potential markers. Which ones are absolutely required? Which ones are frivolous?
Jordan Gal:Which ones are nice to have? Which ones have to be done in order for you to get any value whatsoever? So we tried to look at it in that way. And then we said, cool. We have a document.
Jordan Gal:Here's like a bunch of boring stuff, but at least we have it documented now that you need to do all this stuff. So we know we're not gonna forget it. Let's go off on our own and let's come back in a few days and see where people are. Like, let's take a stab at it. Like, either design it, write it in bullet point format, step one, step two, step three, sketch it out on a piece of paper, whatever is good for you.
Jordan Gal:We did that on Wednesday. We said cool. Let's come back on Friday. Right? Each of
Brian Casel:you doing your own version of that? Yes.
Jordan Gal:To kind of brainstorm on our own and come back Friday and put our heads together.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Friday morning comes around. It's where we are now. And everyone's in the same boat. Everyone's, I'm stuck. I I got a blank piece of paper.
Jordan Gal:I'm thinking about it all day. Imagining it. I'm looking at what we currently have and I don't know where to start. Everyone's like, I don't It's like a blank page problem. Like, don't really know where to start.
Brian Casel:Maybe I'm unclear on the same thing that you're all unclear on. It's like what is the actual question? What's the What are you trying to solve for right now?
Jordan Gal:What we're trying to solve for is the ability for a new visitor to go from where they are at moment zero, like they get to our site or a landing page or something. The first interaction with our with our product, with our marketing materials. How do we get them from there to forwarding their phone number to to to the Rosie agent? Okay? That that initial time.
Jordan Gal:So I think about the admin and the onboarding a little bit separately and and and that's actually one of my questions. Should we try to do this all at once or should this be very incremental? Like, let's just improve this part of the process. This step, then this step, then this step. Or do we wanna think about all of it as one big picture so that it's all cohesive and so on?
Brian Casel:Alright. So I'm not super familiar with all the details of how the product is set up. Alright. But here's my gut assumption. Sure.
Brian Casel:Or guess at this problem. This is probably gonna be way off.
Pippin Williamson:Whatever.
Brian Casel:Step one, they put in their their website URL as you have it on your homepage. Right?
Jordan Gal:Current step one.
Brian Casel:So they're not registered yet though. They've only put in a website URL. Yep. Step two, I I'm guessing you can like get You can use AI to to get To gather some information about that website. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And then and then like make some like basic common smart assumptions about like This is weird to think out loud on a podcast. So like basics. Stuff that's not gonna be way off that they're gonna need to have to wanna change. And then, I I guess the the thing that they have to actually take action on is is getting their phone number. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, but they're probably not gonna be ready for that quite yet. That's gonna come later.
Jordan Gal:Right. There's there's there are few steps before they are ready. Like
Brian Casel:In terms of like the the training stuff, I was thinking like the the training, whatever defaults that you can put in, I know every business is gonna have different training and and stuff, but there's probably some stuff that is super common, like like business hours. Right? Like Yep. Or or what is your address? You know?
Brian Casel:Yep. Like, if they if there could be a simple thing like, are your business hours Monday through Friday nine to five? And like, it just defaults to that. And then they can say like, no, actually we're open until seven. So then they can just tweak that.
Brian Casel:And is your address this? Because our AI found it on your website. And so at least right there, you already have two bits of training data pre built
Jordan Gal:in. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We have things like services you offer. Yes. Open hours.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So So like technically, it's not ideal, but technically they could launch with just that. Like just an AI bot that that own All it ever knows is like some basic service offerings, your address and your hours. Right? If they do no other actions, at least you have that.
Brian Casel:Of course, they're They could they could see and they could add to it over time but like that's enough to have something. Yes. Yes. And then and then from there, it's like, alright, do you wanna use it and then get your phone number and sign up?
Jordan Gal:Right. Or or or test it.
Brian Casel:Test So, I I guess, I don't know how your testing system works, but like, they they could test it and then hear it and then if you want then from there it's like the the sign up registration.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right. Right. So it's like confidence building. What what is your thought on the first time experience?
Jordan Gal:Do you view that as a unique experience that has a unique set of screens? Or do you admin versus
Brian Casel:like just add like use the admin as is? Yeah. I Look, I think all these questions it it I I I don't like how, again, so many people in our circles, our industry like try to There is one right way to do this. There is
Jordan Gal:not Right.
Brian Casel:One right way to do this. Okay. Every product is completely different. I've gone back and forth on this multiple times in Clarity Flow. Right now, we're we're in a phase where we actually have killed our whole wizard system and now it's like you just We drop you into the actual interface and you can you can explore on your own but we have little pointers.
Brian Casel:Not actual pointers, but like, we orient you based on wherever you go. In this case, I I would go for more of a Close the window. I would go for more of a, we found this info on your website. Click yes if this is if this is correct. If if not, fix it.
Brian Casel:Okay. Now you're all set up. What do you think? And then like if you want to further customize this, come on into your admin area. But for now, you you could be good to go with with the basics.
Jordan Gal:Right. It it's almost like instead of asking for information, it's just allowing them to either confirm or edit information. Yes. Our ideal. It it is more than
Brian Casel:That's the key. I I think like the the fewer blank fields that they have to fill in, the better. Those fields should have some defaults that that they could just be like, oh, that's not quite right. Let me just fix it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm so excited to redo this and then I'm I'm at that moment in the process where you just like encounter all this emotional friction around like, should I hire someone that specializes in this? I can't do it myself. You know, have to like break through it.
Brian Casel:I feel like this kind of thing is not really hireable, to be honest. Like, not for like an outside, know, hired gun to come fix this problem. This is something that's like, you personally and your product people directly in touch with customers and then just making the changes. Like and try and just trying it one way for a few weeks and then tweaking it for the next few weeks, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. It is is definitely not gonna be right right away. Yeah. It it's very frustrating how difficult it is to instrument a analytics around this stuff.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's very
Jordan Gal:frustrating because you're like, oh, cool. We took a stab at it and then you go to Google Analytics, which we we almost insisted on getting Google Analytics to work. Because every other tool we looked at was just like gonna end up at a thousand bucks a month just because of volume. Yeah. Have all the data.
Jordan Gal:It's very frustrating.
Brian Casel:I've been painfully through all of this.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We built our own stuff internally. We use Laravel Nova for some internal stuff and all the numbers are totally different from Google Analytics and impossible.
Brian Casel:I still pay for, but I don't look at it as as much as I should, Mixpanel for this. Okay. I know Amplitude is is another good option. Just don't even Like Google Analytics, I have I have it installed, but I never log into it. I don't plan to log into it.
Brian Casel:I just have it installed.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I use
Brian Casel:plausible for actual traffic analytics. But the the Yeah. So I use Mixpanel which can get pricey. But the the way that I keep the pricing down a little bit on Mixpanel is I'm not using it to track every single page view. For that I can use plausible.
Brian Casel:Right? I only use Mixpanel to send key events. You know? Okay. So that's they charge per event.
Brian Casel:Or they they have usage based on the number of events. And if you're sending page every single page view for every single user as an event, that's gonna drive your pricing up the
Jordan Gal:wall. That's crazy.
Brian Casel:But the If you if you only send events for like when a user converts or when a user does this activation step or when a user does this thing, then it's a little bit more manageable.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Their their website is very interesting. That's just a lot of copy.
Brian Casel:What Mixpanel?
Jordan Gal:No. Plausible. Easy to use and privacy friendly Google Analytics alternative. One screenshot of the product and then a whole bunch of copy. Very interesting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They're good. You know, they're another good one of course is Fathom Analytics. Is it Fathom?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Fathom, love. I love the guys at Fathom. I I have no morals bro, when it comes to tracking. I want all the data.
Brian Casel:Privacy. Yeah. I I think like from a marketing standpoint, like I feel like they've gone a little bit too heavy on the privacy thing because I I agree like I don't care as much. Like Plausible does this essentially the same thing as Fathom. I think there's a few more of these simpler Google Analytics alternatives.
Brian Casel:But yeah, it's it's good. Cool. But yeah, like tracking overall man, it's like I have plausible for traffic. I have mixed panel for like usage based you know, which features and which activation steps are being used. Then I have chart mogul for the sass metrics.
Brian Casel:You know. We have our own custom built stuff and and that hits the database. It's just It's bad. It's all bad. It's so much.
Brian Casel:It's ridiculous.
Jordan Gal:You you know, let's talk let's talk software for a sec. We have been using segment a lot. That's very helpful because at least it feels like you are more in control of events. And then we connected loops. Remember when I thought about building an alternative to loops?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Loop loops is quite good. Is that is that for email? It's email for SaaS.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And Yeah.
Brian Casel:So for that we use customer IO which is also sort of its own it's We use it for email but it's also sort of a events tracker as well.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Speaking of email, you wanna laugh at me for Sure.
Brian Casel:You what I you
Jordan Gal:know what I realized yesterday. Yesterday, we realized we weren't sending an email after someone created an account. Just just no welcome email. Nice. I just used it as an example.
Jordan Gal:I just went to, you know, Slack and was like, this is what happens when we go fast. This is why it's okay to make mistakes.
Brian Casel:I don't
Jordan Gal:we fixed it right away and we're good to go. Don't feel better making mistakes. Go.
Brian Casel:I don't think we have an immediate email on Clarity Flow sign up. We do have an onboarding flow and they they get a first email, but I think it's at least an hour later. It might even be a day later. I gotta check. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:For us, it just felt like a funny thing that we just overlooked. We were like, you know, when when someone signed up, like, we we, you know, we're trying to automate a bunch of stuff. So Facebook is very interesting. Let's talk ads. We're all over the place.
Jordan Gal:Screw
Brian Casel:it. Sure.
Jordan Gal:So Facebook has been very interesting for us. We we ran a split test of two types of Facebook ads. One for registration. So the goal was go to a landing page that we built and sign up. And when you sign up, that's a conversion in Facebook.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Straightforward. The the most, well understood kind of ad campaign. The other side of the test was lead ads. So Facebook allows you to collect information inside Facebook and because of that the data's perfect and all this other stuff and they reward you because they wanna keep people there.
Jordan Gal:Who knows? But the result of that, the conversion is the submission of information. You do get a chance at the last screen to put a CTA. So we do have the last screen is ready to start your trial? Click here.
Jordan Gal:And that takes you over to the landing page. Mhmm. So Facebook, I mean their ad platform is absolutely crazy. My personal Facebook is is not allowed to advertise. I have no idea what I did.
Jordan Gal:I have no idea about anything, but my account is banned. That has made it very difficult for me to see any of the results of our Facebook campaigns because like it's connected to your personal. So we're running this test and I was telling the advertising company, I was like, you got three more days on this test. I hate this. I do not want lead ads.
Jordan Gal:This is and part of it because I just didn't have any visibility. And so a sign up would come up and I wouldn't understand where it was coming from, whatever else. Turns out I was completely wrong and what's happening with these two with the split test is that our cost of conversion, like cost to create an account, is almost identical, but the Facebook lead ads has like 40 leads a day of people filling out the form.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So it's the same cost, but we have all these emails of people who have said, I'm interested and submitted, but didn't go to our website and and So
Brian Casel:on Facebook, through the lead ad, which the lead ad can actually get their email address.
Jordan Gal:They put in like, you you can select which questions you want. We just made it simple. We were like, you know, basically your business URL and your email.
Brian Casel:Okay. So they fill that in on Facebook. Yes. It stays in And then after that, there's like a button that they can click to Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's like the last panel. It's like, you know, one panel is like
Brian Casel:seeing the ad, they fill in their business information, they they do that, but then they don't click the button to go over to Rosie?
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's right. They feel like they're done once they've submitted the
Brian Casel:promise of the ad? Like, what why what what compels them to see an ad and actually take action on it in Facebook? What are they getting? Or what are they trying to get?
Jordan Gal:They're just showing interest. That's it.
Brian Casel:So they see some video
Jordan Gal:about are basically like you shouldn't miss any phone calls. And when you're out on the job, you're losing money when you miss phone calls. And I just found this new tool powered by AI called Rosie and now I don't ever miss any phone calls again. Are you interested in that? You know, click here.
Brian Casel:Are they clicking it and then Facebook is like sucking their data from their Facebook account and and giving that to you as the lead or are they like typing in their business?
Jordan Gal:They're typing in. Yeah. Yeah. They're typing in. It's interesting.
Jordan Gal:It's like it's like a it's like an in between step and you get higher conversion from it. What I what I didn't know until we had the transparency was that the number of people clicking that last panel and going and signing up was almost equivalent on a dollar basis on a cost of a new account as the other campaign. That only goes there. So we were we're basically paying for the the same amount for both types of sign ups?
Brian Casel:If that's the case then isn't the isn't the non lead ad better?
Jordan Gal:No. No. Let let's let's
Brian Casel:Because the the lead ad I I hear what you're saying like, yeah, you're getting their information but they're not even clicking the button like who who's doing that?
Jordan Gal:But enough of them are actually clicking the button that it's base let's just call it a $100. Right? The first campaign doesn't have the lead form. It's just a button that goes to our site and we're paying let's just say we're paying a $100 per sign up.
Brian Casel:Right. Coming to your site and coming into your app.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's right. Then the lead ad was the same thing. Let's just call it again. A $100 per actual sign up that clicked on the last panel and went to our site and signed up for an account.
Jordan Gal:So I was looking at them like this is apples to apples. In my mind, it was apples to apples and we're paying a $100 per and I don't know what's happening with these leads and I don't like it. And it turns out I was totally wrong. We're basically paying let's just again, this is not the right number but a $100 per sign up but we also get like 40 leads with it that didn't sign up.
Brian Casel:So lead ads is like you can also get their information added to your list.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Follow-up with them. Yes. The bringing this up was triggered by the loops conversation because now we went into Zapier and connected
Brian Casel:all the all the emails of people who include including both the people who went all the way into your app and the ones who didn't, you're still getting all their information Yes.
Jordan Gal:To your list. So we don't email the ones that signed up because now they're in that process.
Brian Casel:I see. But whereas the other ones, you're you're just getting the sign up Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But you're missing wasn't
Brian Casel:seeing it and
Jordan Gal:we weren't emailing them and I was like, this is idiotic. I have to go in and like download a CSV once a day and then I email them like twelve hours after they sign up. It didn't make any sense to me. Now that we finally got access and we connect to Zapier loops, now all of a sudden that campaign looks so much better. So I was like, my my instinct, my emotion because I didn't have the transparency was totally totally off.
Jordan Gal:And hopefully we can figure out a process that actually converts some percentage of the people that just filled out the form but didn't go to the site. And then all of a sudden we have like a winner on our hands on on the ad advertising front.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This is why I I I could never get my brain around being a marketer. Because it's like, who What person is just scrolling through Facebook, sees an ad, clicks it, types in their own personal or business information, la de da, and then just drips away and does nothing. Who does that? Like, who actually does that?
Jordan Gal:Like I don't know who these people are. I don't know what's going on out in the world. People act very, very strangely. Right? That's just the reality of marketing on the Internet.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You just don't know what is going on. People do chargebacks. People use prepaid cards and then cancel. Like, a lot of it just doesn't make
Brian Casel:customer on Clarity Flow for over well over a year. His card declines at least every other month, if not every month. Because his debit card is not filled up with the $49 a month to cover the cost.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:What what are we doing here? What are
Jordan Gal:we doing? I don't know. Yeah. We actually just went into Stripe yesterday and disallowed any prepaid cards. Because that that prepaid cards are the single biggest source of frustration.
Jordan Gal:Because people use prepaid cards to, you know, control their expenses but they also do it to control the services that they're signing up for.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yep. I don't know, man. Alright.
Brian Casel:So I've got a So so you had some You you needed some feedback on the onboarding thing. I need a little bit of feedback on this. So so, alright. So like the upper end of the revenue spectrum.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So I feel like we've done a lot of work on product market fit and the funnel and the and the conversion and the no trials stuff like that's We we've done a lot of work there. Always more to do. But now, and and we've just launched a big feature with appointments. There are a couple of other potential new features that we'll do in the next few months. Nothing super major.
Brian Casel:But now, I'm starting to turn my folk, my my thought to what like as a potential new initiative for Clarity Flow is like what to do to get at least a small segment of customers paying a lot more Sure. For for Clarity Flow. Yeah. We have no In our market or at least our customer base, we don't have the concept of like enterprise customers. We're not an enterprise product.
Brian Casel:Okay. We are selling mostly to solo coaches. There are some that are like coaching companies with multiple coaches and things. We we have some of those and and they actually do pay a bit more for for the product. We we have per We have team member pricing.
Brian Casel:But like not not many accounts have that and even if they do, if most customers are paying 99, they might be paying like $1.30, $1.40, something like that.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:We have a higher plan which we call premium. It's it's at $1.99 a month. Very few customers upgrade to that and there's frankly not a huge reason to do it. We we give you access to our API which is super limited right now. We give you webhooks which is somewhat limited.
Brian Casel:I don't know. That's basically it.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So, we've had this request come up for years at this point. This is another one of those things that I have been very very resistant to doing. So the request that comes that This has been happening since Zip Message and it continued on through Clarity Flow to this day. Which is we get some customers who just really really really want to deeply integrate Clarity Flow within their own membership platform. They don't wanna use Clarity Flow alone on its own as its own full platform.
Brian Casel:So most of our customers do. Right? Most of our customers do send their clients into Clarity Flow. They use Clarity Flow as their entire client portal. It runs their whole coaching business.
Brian Casel:That's what we've built it for. We designed it for. That's great.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:But then we we get this this much smaller but much more vocal segment of customers who are like, we need for whatever reason to stay on our Maybe it's a WordPress membership site, or maybe it's a custom built one, maybe it's some other SaaS that's running their their membership site, Their their client portal and they want to embed Clarity Flow inside of that. Is
Jordan Gal:that No. Cosmetic issue? Or is that like a brand issue? Is that how they think of themselves? Like, no we provide everything.
Jordan Gal:We don't want it to.
Brian Casel:Okay. So What is what's Yeah. I'll I'll talk more about what we've done about this problem but I'll I'll get to that in a second. To answer your question, within this group, there are some that frankly my my opinion digging into it on support with them over the years is like, you're making this way more complicated than it than it needs to be or it should be. You should just use Clarity Flow as it is.
Brian Casel:If you wanna use Clarity Flow. Okay. Okay. But then there are some customers in this group who have a legitimate need. Mostly because they are a much bigger business and they have They already have hundreds or thousands of customers in their membership platform.
Brian Casel:That they're not They're just not gonna migrate them all over to to Clarity Flow. And there's not even like a really easy way to do that. It would just be way too disruptive. But they do want the benefits that Clarity Flow offers especially with video communication and async and all this different stuff. Right.
Brian Casel:So they actually do want it like deeply integrated. Okay. Now, okay. What what have I So this this request has come up maybe once a month, if not more over the years. And and they've been very support heavy.
Brian Casel:And and so, what I've done up until now is like we So we currently do not offer any sort of like single sign on capability.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:We don't offer Even our API is super limited. We do offer the ability to like embed parts of Clarity Flow using iframes in your own website. So that that's essentially what they do. But that is limited in a few really kind of annoying ways. Right?
Brian Casel:Think about Clarity Flow. You you can use it with your clients and the other clients actually don't even need to be logged in to respond. Yeah. But when they are logged in, it can identify who they are. And we have other little workarounds to identify who they are with some URL parameters and stuff.
Brian Casel:But when you use it in an iframe in your own website, we are not identifying the other person. Right. And and we don't have a single sign on sync with their login. So you're they're using it in this like logged out state unless they do some super complex custom coding around it. And then and so you know, so so it get it starts to get into very hacky territory at this point.
Brian Casel:And the other thing is like when you communicate on Clarity Flow, you send a message, it's gonna send an email notification about, hey, there's a new message. But that email notification is gonna link you into Clarity Flow. It's not gonna link you into your platform. Yep. Okay.
Brian Casel:So so my approach to this over the years to try to quell these requests, these demands is to say, alright, we don't have single sign on, we're not a fully white labeled platform, but now we offer custom domain mapping. So you can map your own domain to Clarity Flow. A lot of customers actually do that. It's like a big very popular feature for us. That was extremely complex to build.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. That's a good solution. Good solution. And and we also offer custom colors, custom branding Okay. You can slap your logo on it.
Brian Casel:So it starts to become really custom branded like your own client portal. Right? You can put your logo in your email notifications and everything. Colors in there as well. And that's been I think good enough and actually pretty popular with most of our customers.
Brian Casel:And a lot of those features drive them into our into our higher plans. Not the highest but the middle plan. Still to this day, we still get people who who try with a lot of friction to try to embed it and deeply integrate it inside their own membership platform. Despite all this. Right?
Jordan Gal:It sounds like demand, but how much are they willing to pay for that though?
Brian Casel:So so this week we had another one of those customers come through and he's paying for one of our plans and he's doing what I just talked about. And I started I I hopped into the into the support thread with him. I started asking him. I'm like, how Yeah. How valuable is this?
Brian Casel:I I was like, hey, if if we do like a single sign on solution and we put it in our highest plan which cost $1.99, there might even be a setup fee involved. How do you feel about that? He's like, yeah, I would pay for that. Like, Yeah. This my my platform, like you guys are offering stuff that other platforms don't offer and I want it and I That makes perfect sense to me.
Brian Casel:No, that's just one customer. But I but I know that over the years I've had other customers just based on my conversations and understanding what their business is all about, like they're doing really well. Like they have budget to do something serious. Right. They ended up Millions.
Brian Casel:And and most of Yeah. And most of the them end up churning because of the friction that I'm talking about.
Jordan Gal:Right. They they they can't do what they have in mind and they go, fine, we'll go build in WordPress by ourselves. Fine.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or or they actually build something custom like themselves. Like they they have that sort of budget. Mhmm. Not all of them but some of them.
Brian Casel:Right? So so my thought is, so right now I have my team sort of researching like what would be involved in us developing some sort of like single sign on option? And how do we make that available to customers who might be on all different types of platforms. It might be WordPress, it might be something else like what would be required and maybe maybe it even requires us to offer a developer support person for a fee to work with you for a couple weeks to get it up and running for each individual customer. So, I'm I'm sort of open to the idea of like saying like, hey, if you are serious about needing this, you go straight to our top plan and maybe you pay a setup fee but we do have options for you.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know.
Jordan Gal:My very very quick take. I I I gotta call. I gotta jump to but here's my quick take. That's not enough money for the level of complexity you're talking about. And and my worry
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I think I would raise the the top plan
Jordan Gal:mean, look
Brian Casel:just like a contact us.
Jordan Gal:Right. You wanna pay $500 a month. You wanna sign an annual contract like like that territory starts to make more sense. Yeah. What I my gut feeling is that you have other opportunities to mine to get people into higher tiers that are not as complex, that have a larger potential market than than what you're talking about right now unless unless that market would find you because of it.
Jordan Gal:If there if there's a market of coaching companies that are willing to pay $500 a month, a thousand bucks a month because this is really important to them. And if you launch it with a few of them, then the others that want it will come find you and pay you. Maybe that starts to get into the realm of making sense.
Brian Casel:Just based on what I know about Based on what I know about our current customers, I don't There might be some room to like raise our prices a little bit on what they're currently get. Like, what I mean is like, using our product as is. Right? Like, using all the features that we offer, but not in that not really deeply integrating with your existing platform. Just just using Clarity Flow with our custom domains and Clarity Flow Commerce and all that like Yeah.
Brian Casel:There might be a little bit of room to like increase prices a little bit more. But I would say that we're definitely in the ballpark, if not on the upper end of what most
Jordan Gal:Okay. Because they have
Brian Casel:other options. They have plenty of other
Jordan Gal:options. Right.
Brian Casel:Right. You Some lower priced than us. Like Mhmm. You know, like it it's not a matter of like us selling to more coaching companies with teams. I guess there could be some opportunity with that.
Brian Casel:What I'm saying is like we already naturally attract a segment of customers who just really wanna deeply integrate.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And currently, we're just letting them pay for one of our lower plans and try to hack it together.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and it ends up being a a big support headache and they're the highest churning segment. Maybe instead of of that being the case, those customers we say, hey, you belong in the premium plan and we have everything that you need over there.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's a new set of rules because your demand is much higher therefore and it's gonna cost us more we're and not gonna take the risk on getting you set up on this and you walking away next month. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Like the things I wrote down were was like where's the natural breakpoint? Like we found one recently that most people just need a very simple scheduling solution and some people need much more complex and that felt like this natural breakpoint. Oh, okay. So we do this thing Google Calendar for our lower tiers and it's very natural that you're gonna pay more because you need this complexity. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That requires a call and whatever else.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Like I I even even think we could even like remove our iframe embedding feature or hide it or whatever and just not even make that available to regular customers.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And like Totally.
Brian Casel:If you want that plus like some single sign on stuff and some API access, you go into premium, you know.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Mhmm. Okay. Interesting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I I I'm still I'm not even at 50% willing to to do that yet. I'm Right now You noodle. We're doing some technical research on it, but like that that could be a direction that we go at some point. Cool.
Brian Casel:I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I got a boogie. Alright. This Friday. Hope you have a great weekend. Thanks everyone for listening.
Brian Casel:Later, folks.
