In this episode of "The Conversion Show," Erik Christiansen, CEO of Justuno, interviews Alex Courselle, Founder and CEO of KARL Mission a conversion rate optimization (CRO) agency. With over a decade of experience in CRO, Alex shared some invaluable insights that are relevant as we approach the holiday season. Alex discusses the science behind unlocking successful conversions, the art of building trust with customers, and the rising trend of focusing on SEO due to increasing costs.

Erik and Alex discuss:

• The significance of analyzing mobile and desktop traffic
• The tactful application of product recommendations and upsells
• The need for engaging content
• The DNA of successful CRO clients
• Where businesses fall short in understanding client personas

Host: Erik Christiansen, CEO of Justuno

Guest: Alex Courselle, Founder & CEO of KARL Mission

Transcript:

Erik 00:00:50

Welcome back to the Conversion Show. Today I have a special guest that I think anyone going into this holiday season is going to be very excited about. With me today is Alex Courselle, who has ten-plus years in CRO and is founder CEO of KARL Mission. So if you are in front of a computer, check out karlmission.com You'll get the whole breakdown.

Erik 00:01:14

But welcome to the show Alex.

Alex 00:01:17

Thank you so much for having me. That's pretty cool.

Erik 00:01:20

So for today's show, it is November 6th. And everyone's gearing up. You know they've hit play. Everyone's already started their cyber sales. because you know it's not just one day anymore. We're all getting the emails. But there's still more to be done. Every website can always be optimized. Campaigns can always be updated. So today what we're going to do for our listeners is really hear, you know, with Alex's experience, what's trending, what is top of mind with CRO today. And see if we can't get some insights that maybe you can still apply to your sites for this holiday season. So with that, I'm putting you on the spot right off the bat, Alex. But before we do that, let's set the stage for your background. Ten years in CRO, it's very rare for us to come across talent and experience like yours.

Erik 00:02:20

So could you just share with the crowd, what you're doing at KARL Mission and how you got there?

Alex 00:02:27

Yeah. For sure. So. Basically, I started in design and I went into SEO. I stayed in that cluster of digital marketing kind of roles, up to that time I was production director. And then our company, I started being bought by a prospect, and then the option was open to do whatever. So I just decided to start into CRO. It was back in Paris and a prospect and very interesting because at the time there were no merch products and people didn't understand it as well. So it needs to be, you know, easy to understand for everyone. So I had to create the packages and everything. So I really started from scratch. My whole experience didn't really have much guidance or anything. So it was really it was a bit the Western at the time. I felt like the field was empty, the street was empty, no building, nothing.

Alex 00:03:24

You know, we just had like optimizely as a tool, a bit of a b testing started to show up at that time, but it was like, you know, click their Crazy Egg, Hotjar that was the tools was already there. You know, since that time, and I worked in agencies for like my whole life, my whole career. So it came to a point that I was like, okay, I'm going to I'm going to open my own business. We're going to do many because that's the product that I care the most with SEO, but because both of them clash, and that happens quite a lot in agencies. So it's quite it's quite interesting. We can talk about it a bit later, but it clashed between the two units quite often. And, and then yeah, my emergency and the value that we wanted is to really be genuine and work with people that have genuine products, genuine services, genuine businesses. And we wanted to not be rich, but just, you know, like change a bit the face of the word when it comes to CRM.

Alex 00:04:21

I explained to the newbies that you have powers. You can decide to use them for the good or the bad and decide for what you want to use your skills, your craft. You know at the end of your career what will stand out, you know, is it helping some non-profit organization or anything? Yeah. So that's where that's where we went. And since then we've been really meeting the right genuine people that we can work on. In the long run. That's what is good as well. To work with genuine people is we have where longer contracts, where longer commitments. Our Agency has no contracts. So people can actually stop when they want. It's plug-and-play. No, no, no knife under the throat with a two month, 2 or 3 months notice or anything. We just keep it casual and we just make it as genuine as possible.

Erik 00:05:11

The you mentioned who you work with is critical. And you know, what is the the DNA of the successful clients you work with that understand the value that CRO is bringing to them.

Alex 00:05:27

I think it's, it's to start with, the clients are quite aware of what CRO is. So people that have like that education, the other thing is I feel like there's two things happening on the market. There are some people who just learn about CRO and learn how to use it. Some people think it's just like, tips and tricks around there. Some understand that there's a science behind it. So people that understand the science behind those guys are going to win because they're going to cover all the basics, which is quite important. You know, they're going to have a real tracking plan. They're going to really track that data. They have real numbers that they can improve. That's the first step. And when it comes to the second step I feel like they actually care. They care about making the customer experience better. And you know what was customer service 20 years ago. And now it's user experience. That's a bit how I would do an analogy about it is like if you don't invest in your user experience, you know, you're going to have more to pay on your customer service.

Alex 00:06:34

We have airline companies that ask us to do CRO for them to decrease the number of calls on their call center. And that makes sense because we actually, you know, we just look at like the top 20 top 50 queries that we're getting from the call centers, and we put them on the FAQs. Right. Like very simple type of process. But it saves a lot of time to everyone, especially to the users that can find these answers really quickly.

Erik 00:06:59

Our belief is that the foundation of great conversion is incredible customer experience. So, you know, it's it's often working with brands that that are customer centric in the end or you're the results are going to fall out from trying to figure out how to create incredible experience. Like you mentioned, it's those little low-hanging fruits.

Alex 00:07:20

Yeah. For sure for us as well. Like one of the things that I focus the most on, and some people will find it quite annoying when I say that, but I really focus above the full strategy.

Alex 00:07:34

I really focus above the fold strategy. Like what people can see, I can, I can see. So far, attention span on desktop is like 3 to 5 seconds. On mobile, I can even be less if you don't have a strategy above the fold and people don't understand what you're doing, what you're about, you know, you trust. And so how are you going to tell your stories? And you didn't have like a proper thinking about how you're going to roll it out, then you're going to miss out. So if you're lucky and you've been spending some ads at the same time, it's it's really too bad.

Erik 00:08:05

So between science and care, the care is the clear obvious. One of you have to be customer-centric and just constantly thinking about how to make the customer experience better. So to make that happen, you have to have a science behind it. Can you share more of like of, you know, your your model with the science side of it?

Alex 00:08:28

Yeah for sure.

Alex 00:08:29

So when it comes to the science, I'm very old school. So like everyone in the team knows, you know, like I've been training everyone for quite a while. Mike been in the business with me for eight years and she's she's my number two there. And basically what is interesting is I ask them to always cover the basics. So always to go to Google Analytics, you know, to check the data. For me, it's very important that I know the numbers better than my clients know their numbers, because then we can have real conversations, because now we on the same standing point where I u