Welcome to Master b two b, the world's first and only un webinar series. We're taking on the key issues for manufacturers and distributors in a debate style format. We're gonna have some fun today. We're talking about conversion rate. My name is Brian Beck. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Andy Hoare again. Andy is a leader in b to b ecommerce, a thought leader, seven years in b to b ecommerce at Forrester Research, a long career before that. And today, he's the CEO Paradigm b to b, releasing some awesome research. We'll talk about that a little later. Andy, great to be here again with you today. Yeah. Great to be here as well. And what did you tell me? The phrase that you said, not to be outdone. Is that what you told me to say? Is that is that what I think? That's what I said. Mhmm. Not to be outdone. Brian Beck is here today as well. So Brian for those who don't know Brian, he's a twenty year ecommerce veteran. He was a practitioner for many years on both the b two c side and the b two b side. He's been a consultant. And, he's the author of a great book called Billion Dollar b two b ecommerce. I highly recommend it. And he'd even paid me to say that. So, Brian, great to hear. That's right, Andy. Well, hey. We've got a great topic today. We're talking again about conversion rate. But, folks, this is a debate. We want you to weigh in. During this debate, you're gonna have a chance to, vote at the end of each one of our three rounds. At the very end of our session today, we'll reveal the winner of the debate. So stick around for that. Really excited to to see that. So, Annie, hot topic. Right? Conversion rate. Should should b two b companies use that as a measure of success as they're, you know, aligning their their teams and and really setting marching orders for everyone? And, you know, as a as a seventeen year veteran, Andy, I love this myself. If you're aligning your teams around the incorrect metrics, you're not gonna get the result you want. You know? It's it's kind of like the North Barca. And, you know, I've used conversion rate, and I'm I'm leaning towards conversion rate as you're as you're gonna tell here, today. You know, and and that's my team today. And I really do think it's a metric that's critical as we move into this. So and I think the industry agrees. I mean, we have two fantastic teams to that are joining the debate, today. We'll introduce them in a few minutes. But as usual, Andy, we did our post on LinkedIn on social. We got over six thousand, about sixty five hundred views, likes, shares, and comments, you know, and we got people joining here today. You know, again, it's the who's who. We've got Brady Corporation here, Caterpillar's here, Keysight, Konica Minolta. I see Sonapar's here. Sarah's here from Eaton Corporation. Sir Sir Eduardo, hi, Sarah. Zebra Technologies is on. Who are you seeing, Andy, joining? Yeah. I'm looking here to see Ricky Hernandez from Avery Products. Yeah. Hey, Rick. Carlos Camacho from Boston Scientific, Sylvia Popka from Snap on, and more. So we've got a who's who as always. Yeah. No. That's great. And so, you know, we we posed the question on LinkedIn, the, you know, the question of the debate, which is, is conversion rate the true measures of success in b two b, or are there other metrics? And it ends up being a misleading, place to emphasize. And, you know, I think a a couple of quotes, Sandy, I just wanna here's some of our practitioners, the folks in our in our community of of b two b ecommerce folks. Stacy Hanks, who, thank you, Stacy, for joining today too. She's the VP of global digital commerce at SureWorks. She thinks conversion rate is important, but not the only metric. Right? So this goes to kinda your argument. She says, I wanna answer both, right, when we ask the question. Conversion is a great high level metric to report out outside of ecom in particular if you have a consistent enough history with your products. But many any good ecom leader knows that there are another four to eight metrics that must be managed to really understand conversion rate. Interesting perspective. One other I wanna read, from one of our former, contenders, Andy, is Colin Cronin. He's director of ecom at Lisha Biosystems. He called into question one of the core issues here. He said, it can be hard to clearly define conversion rate in b two b where you likely have a similar set or a smaller set of customers that can interact with you in a variety of different purchasing paths. Is it purely a digital metric? Does it take into account cross channel interactions? Great point, Colin. Again, thank you for joining us today. You know, this is this is a this is really a key issue, Andy. So when you when you look at this, I want you frame it up a little bit for us, mister Dataman, and and and tell us, you know, define for us what, what the issues are. Go ahead. I need a cape for that as Data Man. Data Man. I think you should have that as your your, you know, your cape. Yes. Your your costume. Go ahead. Yeah. So let's take a look at a a a couple of slides here with you together. So, really, this is a discussion about the top of the funnel, the classic marketing funnel versus the bottom of the funnel. You know, conversion generally lives at the bottom of the funnel, and it is kind of metric where people can point to it and say, look. This was a success we had. You know? We got this number of people who bought. It's very closely tied to revenue and if done well, profitability. So it's a popular metric in that regard. However, there's another school of thought that really the top of the funnel, measures and metrics matter as much if not more because garbage in, garbage out. You don't get high quality leads. If you don't score them well, the conversion rate can be deceptive. Some other people pointed out too that you may have a, a marketing campaign that's maybe not quite as focused or targeted, and you drive a lot of denominator like calculations, which we'll get to in a moment. And it and it screws with the conversion rate, not through any fault of the conversion rate, but because of the quality and quantity of the traffic. So there are a couple of schools of thought, and there's still yet another piece here, which is on the other side of the funnel, which you don't often see. But if you could take the funnel and then go to the bottom after conversion, I mean, which is more longitudinal measures like customer lifetime value and things like, you know, customer satisfaction scoring. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that as well. But just as a reminder, when we say conversion rate, this is generally what we're talking about. Now we could have there have been books written about stuff like this, so there will be debate. But just for the purposes of today's discussion, you know, you can see there's a simple mathematical formula. It's It's really the number of conversions, which is sales transactions over the number of visits. Now there's debate over whether the visit is a page visit. Is it a unique visit? That's another discussion for another day. But this is how people generally calculate conversion rate. Like I said, though, there's some debate about whether other measures matter more. In fact, that's the name of one of the teams, the right team, the one I'm on this time. And so you can see on the next slide that, you know, there are metrics such as share of wallet, which is really just the amount of spent on a particular product divided by the total amount spent in the category. There's some interesting questions about this one, though, and some of our our, practitioners weighed in on this online. But one of the questions here about the the dominators, how do you measure that? How do you get that information? How do you know it's accurate? So there are some issues around share of wealth, but it is a very popular metric for sure. Couple others here, customer satisfaction metrics. I mean, there's some kind of classic ones like the CSAT scoring, but, you know, MPS is popular. Everything has its flaws, and it'll make it sound like there's one true metric here. And then some more unconventional ones like customer effort scoring. But, you know, some people will say, look. This is the most important metric focusing on customer satisfaction. So there's a lot of different ways to approach this, which is what this debate is all about. But in the end, the reason we're having this debate is because of things like customer lifetime value. That's what everybody wants to measure. Now, again, this is an entire other discussion. This is a longitudinal one. You gotta do it over the course of time. There are things like churn that are involved in this. People heavily involved in this kind of thing know that it is not easy at all to measure accurately measure customer lifetime value, but this is the goal is to get to something like this. But why? Well, the why is because and I've always loved this quote, from Peter Drucker. This is way back in nine nineteen fifty four. So almost seventy years ago, he was right then and he's right now, and he said, what gets measured gets managed. I've seen so many different versions of this quote, but it's accurate because, like you said at the very top, Brian, if you don't measure the right thing, you're probably not gonna be successful because you're focused in the wrong area. So this is a really critical debate. No question. And, you know, Andy, you know, I'd encourage the folks who are listening and as you're thinking about your your your votes, think about, in my experience, conversion rate is an indicator of all the really success across all the metrics. So in my experience, I've seen it if you're focused there, helping to lift some of those other metrics as well versus some of Andy's happy metrics, you know, so the ones he just shared. So we'll have the debate, guys. This is gonna be a lot of fun. We we have some awesome, that was a great setup, Andy. Thank you. We have some awesome contenders joining us today, and we call our folks contenders, not panelists because they are fighting for a cause here. So my team is the conversion rate team, and we're gonna talk about why conversion rate rules and why it is that why it is a an important measure and the measure to focus on. The first one on my team is Rob, the hacksaw howl. Rob, welcome. He is he is a wicked smart contender. He cuts through that crap. Wow. I like this this description here, Rob. To build breakthrough ecommerce operations. He's the SVP at four billion dollar building, building products distributor foundation building materials. He knows that that conversion rate is really a galvanizing force. He says, conversion is hands down the best way to focus team efforts, gain alignment, and communicate success to the CEO and board. Rob, welcome. Thanks, guys. Glad to be here. Alright. And I hear TSA, absconded with your, with your, hacksaw. Is that true? Yeah. Tried tried to bring the hacksaw through and was, given a stern reminder that they're not allowed on board. So next week. Alright. Well, good try. Good try. Good try. I like the spirit. Alright. Our next contender on team conversion rate is Brian The Mahler McGlynn Mahler. Alright. Let's maul him up there, Brian. This digital veteran masters masters maul's mediocre arguments masterfully. That's a mouthful. Say that ten times. Brian Brian serves as the general manager of Coveo. It's an industry leading personalization and search solution. He's got twenty years of digital on his side, guys. This he's a heavyweight. He believes that b two b companies that concentrate on conversion as their core metric exceed their peers in digital success every time. Brian, welcome. Great to be here, and hopefully, we can preach some of the converted. Those who don't convert by force, well, force. He's going Jerry Springer on his Andy. I love it. Alright. Go ahead and introduce our team. Oh, he's gonna need it because you're probably gonna lose today. So on the winning team, other metrics matter more or other measures matter more. We've got Catherine Nakobra Chen. So this digital diva, knows the secret to creating success in BVcommerce, and it isn't focusing on conversion rate, Brian. A veteran of Granger and currently at a company called Wolseley, which is, it's a powerhouse in the HVAC space. She's the director of digital e business there, and she says ecommerce conversion rate woefully underestimates the impact that digital has on the business. So interestingly enough, she's saying that, hey. It's maybe a good digital metric, but not even the best digital metric. So, Catherine, welcome. Thanks so much. Happy to be here. And, Brian, I don't know. Today might be the day that you're outdone, so get ready. I don't know. Alright, Catherine. Keep it up. And rounding out the team is Mark the pugilist picket. Don't mess with this marine. The pugilist pummels pathetic points with ease as the VP of digital growth at three billion dollar distributor, Embassy Industrial, and he's come prepared. Look. He's he's suiting up as we speak. A veteran of Staples, Sears, and KPMG, Mark brings two decades of digital experience to the fight and says, digital executives, beware. Concentrate on conversion rate at your own risk. The focus is shortsighted and can cost you your job. I don't know about you. I don't wanna mess with this guy. He's got a no problem on, and I think he's got gloves too. So I'm glad he's on my team. Thanks, Andy. Brian, well, I think you already know what's about to happen. Oh, man. Happy to be here. I love the helmet, man. It's awesome. Alright. Andy, I think it's I think it's about that time. Are you ready? Let's rumble. Ring the bell. There it is. Andy, I'm gonna keep time. Go for it. Alright. Let's jump right in. Let's get right to the hot topic, which is, is conversion rate the most important success metric in b to b ecommerce? Let's go to conversion rate rules first. Let's go to you first, mister Rob Howe, the hacksaw. What say you? Alright, Andy. I would argue that at the end of the day, we're all in the making it easier to do business business, and we're also tasked with growing sales and improving margin regardless of the industry or whether you're in commerce or marketing. And that's why measuring conversion is is really one of the best ways to measure how well, specifically, how efficiently, you're able to do those things. Alright. Short and sweet and to the point. So, mister McGlynn, the Mahler, before you throw the chair, give us your thoughts. I'll throw the chair in a minute, guys, but gotta see how this goes. Conversion rate. You look at a conversion rate. It's a measure of efficiency, and that dictates what your digital spend goes into. Ultimately, all of that to attract customers and bring that in, how efficient you are at your stages inside of your b to b commerce funnel is gonna yield sales, profitability, Barca. It all comes down to how efficient that is. That's the competitive secret. Okay. Well, let's now hear the correct side of the argument. Let's go to Mark. And, Mark, you know, why are they wrong? Why is this why is conversion rate not the best metric? And, in fact, there are other measures that are, in fact, better. Surely. Absolutely. You know, I like those guys, but they're wrong. I think, when we look at conversion rate, it's sort of it's what I consider to be the gateway drug. It's every other metric. Right? So we're looking at conversion rate, and rapidly, what happens next is, is it the top of funnel or the bottom of the funnel? Right? So now we have to start discussing where these micro conversions taking place. There's so many other pieces to what is conversion rate or what creates the conversion rate traffic quality. Are they actually converting in the bottom of the funnel as it relates to the traffic sources and the unique visitors? So many different elements to it that it just simply by itself is akin to saying, how much revenue do we make this week? Right? Well, there's a whole explanation that comes with it. So I'm about to put the helmet back on. Yeah. Wow. I was like, that's fairly tame. I thought, you know, he's calmed himself down, but it might be rope a dope. You know? He might be lying. It's rope a dope. We're not buying it. It's rope a dope. Well, Catherine, let's get you in on this one. You have a thought too here. Yeah. Glad to agree with Mark for sure. You know, conversion rate, critical metric, but can't be looked at in isolation. Right? So there's so many other factors. Andy, you showed some of those at the, the opening of this session. You know, we we also look at from a operational perspective, you know, reduced cost to serve, the productivity increases that we see. There's metrics all around that. We even look at, what we call, you know, self serve events. So the number of times and the frequency that users can self serve online. And so it goes beyond ecommerce. Right? But there's, obviously engagement play there, and those are other metrics that we also pay attention to. Excellent. Well said. Okay. So let's go to the next question. Now we've won the first question, of course, Brian. We'll give you a chance here. Can conversion rate be measured effectively cross channel? Now this is really important because conversion rate right now, as we showed in the slide, was a is sort of perceived to be a single channel, digital channel only metric. Let's hear what some people have to say about this. But let's go with the other measures matter more team first. So let's go to you first, Catherine. Let's continue with you. You know, can it be measured effectively across channel? So I'm gonna say no. And if anyone's figured it out, please let me know. I think it's one of the most difficult things right now. Right? So we know that so many people, especially in the b two b world, they are initiating their purchase journey online. They're doing their research online, and then they Barca completing their purchase in an offline, channel. So it could be through an outside sales rep, an inside sales rep. They could be stopping in to a branch. They could be sending an email. The reality is this research is happening online. The conversion the end conversion or the end purchase is happening offline. I have not figured out how to connect the dots. And so much so that, you know, there was actually just a discussion this morning where we had a customer start an order online, probably very, very common, then call in, right, to negotiate a price and to talk about, you know, a quantity buy and things like that. Well, for the person at the counter or the inside sales rep to actually address that question, they they currently with our current systems, they don't have visibility to that, you know, pending in progress order. So what are they doing? They're initiating a brand new order at the counter. So we've ultimately severed that tie, right, between the initial, lead. So, again, I find it think it's very challenging. If anyone has the answer, you know, I'm all ears. So attribution is not easy. Why don't you wrap it up for us, Mark? Yeah. I think that that's where we it is about attribution, and it may not show up as an event that's taking place in a specific channel. But if you measure it in terms of customer contact or engagement with the brand wholesale brand, and if you look at that holistically, I think then you can say, okay. Well, in that case, we we we touched or we've engaged with x amount of customers this week or this month or this whatever quarter. And of those that we engaged with directly through other means, we've activated them in serve several channels or or or, or in other ways that are offline. We've measured their their propensity to to either purchase or what they intend to purchase. We can see what that looks like. So you can't I don't know that you can measure it, to Catherine's point, in isolation by itself, saying that, hey. Chat produces x amount of revenue for us in terms of these convertible events. But rather when we look at it from a customer standpoint in terms of customer engagement, right, with the brand overall and how we touch them, I think then you get to your answer, which is we're converting x amount of customers that we touch no matter the channel. Well, let's give, Brian, McGlynn, and Rob Howe a chance to to tell us a little bit more about how they handle the cross channel dimension related to conversion rates. So let's go to you first, Brian. What are your thoughts on this? Well, I think if you look at it altogether, I think Barca made good point on that. From where we're at, going across multiple channels, you think about it from all the way from purchase, all the way through to support, all the way through with various different components that's in there. And and, ultimately, it come back to conversion rate as, as a measure of efficiency. You can look at it from a digital perspective. You can look at it from an overall ad spend perspective where what it is to bring people into stores, bring people into branches at this point as well. Ultimately, there is an efficiency measurement to go into it at this point. So whether even from a vector, what's the efficiency of self help? You can look at the conversion rate of people finding their answer versus actually going in to going in. We've looked at it from self help efficiency or call deflection in many cases as well. So these are the sorts of measures we look at. They certainly go in, but, ultimately, it's that level of efficiency of what your goal is and how you hit that. And from there, it can be an aggregate across channel. Absolutely. But it is a it's certainly attribution is what comes in. We got forty seconds left. So, Rob, you know, take us home on this one. What are your thoughts? Sure. Well, I think there is some level of agreement that, you know, cross channel attribution or quantifying digitally influence revenue is is a challenge, especially when there's multiple stakeholders at the the b two b table. But I guess I would draw a distinction between the on and the offline in the sense that if you're going to a branch, chances are you need something that day. And so your conversion rate likely should be higher, unless you're like me and you need to go to Lowe's three times to complete just about any, you know, project at home. Multiple visits, you know, building a cart over the course of a day or a week is not uncommon in in b two b, but, you know, you better have the accurate inventory and accurate pricing and and everything ready to rock and roll when your customers hit your branch. So it's a different standard depending on, you know, the channel, but it's, yeah. I'm with Catherine on, you know, if anybody sorted out, you know, perfect model for cross channel attribution, let me know. Well, we're seeing Alright, Andy. Comments. Yeah. We seem to be getting comments on that very issue about cross channel attribution. So, Brian, I think that wraps up round one. It does. Let's go ahead and go to the poll question, Robert. So go ahead and pop that one. Yeah. Matt Lando said, hey. There's never just one metric. The digital commerce channel may just be top of funnel, as Catherine observes. Thanks for that comment, Matt. You know, Andy, I got I've got two kinda so go question. Right? So is conversion rate the the most important success metric in b two b commerce? Yes or no? So do your voting while you're voting, Brian, what'd you think? I have I have two point well, great debate. I mean, these are the points. Right? So, I I have two points to make here. First is, you know, I I believe that, that conversion rate is tightly tied to other metrics, and you can drive yourself crazy, Andy, trying to measure everything. If you're doing a good job with conversion, I think you're gonna see those other metrics come into pass. The second is, listen, I think we have to broaden the the metric the measure of conversion. I mean, the the Puget said it he said it himself. He said it's a gateway drug into every other metric. I believe that. I think we have to broaden it and look at attribution. And and and, guys, the way I've seen that done is really through, CRM. Right? In looking at, you know, the the the the metric, like, for example, Catherine's example, when they, you know, when the person is in the branch and buying, well, if we have a CRM system that's measuring and tying those transactions back together, that's something that can help us understand that the it's a digitally influenced sale. Right? These are we're gonna be a lot of in b two b, we have a lot of logged in customers. Right? This is why I'm gonna continue to argue that conversion rate is something that's critical for you to focus on as you're leading metric. Because if you're doing a good job at removing friction, if you're doing a good job at closing the loop and understanding that attribution, it's gonna help you tune all kinds of aspects in your business. I won't reveal the rest of my arguments there yet, Andy, but, there's there's other things I think it it really helps you do better on when you focus on conversion. But what did you think? I'm just gonna couple quick points on the attribution issue. I thought, on on LinkedIn, Eric from Master Lock, Jay Schneider, they all said the same thing, which attribution is the holy grail of digital marketing efforts. Not easy to do, but if somebody can crack that code and there are a lot of people who have tried, and it's not impossible, but it is challenging. That's that's an important issue. But I wanna say one thing. Richard Isaac from Real Decoy shared some thoughts with with me about this. He made a really good point. He's like, forget about multi or, cross channel attribution. What about single channel attribution? In particular, what if somebody would browse on a b two b website, find two things they wanna buy, buy the first, put the second one in the cart, and let it sit there for a couple of days or get approval. Is that how do you measure that conversion? What what caused that? Or people pointed out, what if somebody goes into a branch and buys it, but it's still sitting in their cart? I mean, I think single channel attribution is difficult because in a b two b variety, these are group purchases. So I think that's, also worth considering here. Just tying activity to a purchase in general is difficult. So conversion rate to me is a problematic metric because it's hard to measure. Yeah. I think well, we solved it with coupon codes. You need coupon codes at Harbor Freight Tools fifteen years ago, Andy. So I I don't know. I mean, CRM is the answer, I think. But, well, we gotta go to next round. So let's go ahead and bring up the round two bell. Ding. Ding. Ding. Thank you. This one's mine. Here, we're gonna be talking about using search to predict buying intent in b two b ecommerce. And, you know, we're gonna bring conversion rate into the debate too here. Conversion rate is all about, you know, the manifestation of buyer intent. So and it you know, is search a signal? Our first question, is can b two b sellers successfully predict buyer intent just from search inquiries? And we're gonna go to team conversion rate rules here first. And, mister McGlynn, the Mahler, I wanna direct this question your way. What are your thoughts? Well, this has been clear. We we built a business on it, and it's an area where we look at search based on the question. You can get a good sense for the type of question, what someone's looking at. Are they searching for information? Have they looked at it? What have they viewed on? What have they clicked on? What have they engaged on? And based on that, it's, absolutely. We can look at it with as we say, AI gets things less wrong in a lot of cases. We can get good views on where it comes in and someone's intent. A good measure of eliminating friction for sure in my opinion. So, mister Hacksaw, even though you forgot your hacksaw, you have some you have some good some good examples here too. You wanna you wanna weigh in? Sure. Yeah. So I I absolutely think that search can be a great predictor of buyer intent because, you you know, looking back at, stints in wine and spirits and in aerospace start with wine and spirits. Our customers were most often searching by brand and size, very clearly expressing what they were, what they were seeking out. And then in aerospace, it was even more specific where they may be, looking for a specific part number, an SKU. Sometimes it was even, a a superseded part. Right? So we knew we knew what they were looking for, and reducing the the friction meant, you know, presenting the right product or or an alternative that was available and in stock. But maybe I'll just I'll close by saying this point by saying, regardless of whether you're buying an airplane part or a beautiful bottle of of, old world wine, b to b customers are most often buying. They're not shopping. And so that's where search and being really precise and predicting intent really matters. Alright. Good point. Thank you. Thank you, mister Hacksaw. Okay. Let's go to the team. Other matter measures matter more, and let's go to the, pugilist first. A pugilist. Mister Pickett, what what say you, sir? Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a there's a case to be made. I think Rob and Brian made it, in terms of search and its value. But I to measure intent, specifically, by virtue of search, I think is a it's sort of like, it's it's it's one of those things. It it there's a bit of a conundrum. Right? Because everyone that's actually searching isn't necessarily intending to purchase, certainly not in that moment, which goes back to conversion. But secondarily, there's other reasons why you wouldn't be searching. Right? You could be, trying to obviously, you're trying to find something. We, as an example, MSC, we have over two million SKUs. Right? So there's intention in terms of what you're searching for and what you're trying to find, but it might be the list build or it may be to, you know, preserve for another period. What we've been trying to do, at MSC is is decipher what exactly is the signal that says that they're looking to build a list for comparison shopping maybe, or or they're simply, just doing some research on a product by itself. Right? Because they don't know what the magnetic drill press that's three quarter inch chuck on it. Like, they may not understand that. Right? And they're trying to figure out what's the best one to do. What's the best one to do? Mister pugilist, what do they do with that that list? Do they do they buy? Well, that's my point there, sir. So I'm saying that that that that list may be for research purposes, it may be the comparison shot. Okay. Right? And that happens all the time. We just you know? And you have to figure that out. And there are things that can help you figure out whether or not they're looking to comparison shop, by the way. So yeah. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Let's go to the COBRA Chen. COBRA Chen, you wanna add anything to that? Yeah. I'll just, you know, take it a step further. I think Mark is exactly right that, you can't just look at searches as, you know, the buying intent. I think, we know, again, as we mentioned in the first round, right, lots of people are are just are searching. They're doing research. In any in many cases, in our business in particular, the one doing the research may not be the one making the final decision. Right? It could be a contractor doing research or a designer doing research, but then the homeowner is gonna make the decision. So perhaps they're, you know, the user and use the user at the time on the site is building, a quote or an estimate to present to to an end user. So, it's not I don't think it's enough to show intent. The other thing too, though, the type of search. Right? So if we talk about part number search Mhmm. People keying in an exact part number, likely, that there's an intention to buy there. They know exactly the part that they want. But if they're doing a broad keyword search or they're starting to navigate through, the product categories and they're effectively, you know, browsing or or, you know, shopping as as some of the, comments have have noted, then I think, again, like, you you just can't you can't, assume the intent there just from that type of behavior. Interesting. Yeah. Good good points, guys. I think both you know, there's there's arguments both ways. So some some, you know, some of us have been in ecommerce for a long all of us have for a long time. You know, argue that, you know, there's there's value in in inserting product recommendations into the journey. In in, you know, search and dising is what we used to call it in the retail side, which is merchandising search results. You know? And that's a better way a way to deliver a better digital experience. But, you know, when we think about, you know, search, is it is it better to, you know, practice really a better practice just to focus on eliminating friction from the cycle versus trying to guess what buyers want. So let's go to let's go over to, mister mister Pickett, Pugilist first on this question, about, you know, what's a better way to deliver deliver a digital experience here? Absolutely. It's about removing friction. There's I mean, you can tackle the other elements later. Right? You can improve your your your ability to produce a a a quantifiably accurate search. But the truth of the matter is is that friction is all friction can absolutely off ramp the entire experience. Right? Mhmm. And so and we've seen this in a number of different places, not to mention them by name. But when you have a very poor experience in general, that is friction. Right? And the more friction you you add to the process for purchase or for research or for any any intent that the buyer is coming or the researcher or the type of persona that's coming or any any friction that's in that's, created is gonna off ramp that experience. Right? And that creates its own set of problems going forward. So I believe in that first. You start there. You know? Make sure that you meet the customer where they are and helping them accomplish what they need to do. If you can do that first, the rest of it should flow. Right? Ideally. So So, Cobra Chen, anything to add to that? No. I'm I'm with Mark. I think, yeah, absolutely need to reduce friction on the way. But then, you know, the other metrics that we think about, you know, how how do we look at increasing average order value. You know, previous, like, we used to always talk about the idea of, like, how do you get the customer to to add a line. So I think, you know, removing friction for sure, but at the same time, understanding who your customer is and starting to personalize that that journey Mhmm. And providing relevant relevant, opportunities, I think, is also important. But can't you use conversion rate to measure whether or not you're reducing too much friction into the cycle around the product recommendations? Anyway, mister Howell, let's give our other team a chance to respond here. We got about forty five seconds or forty seconds left. Rob Hacksaw, what do you say? Yeah. So as a member of the, efficiency rules team or the, the conversion rate rules team, I should say, we talked a lot about removing efficiency. So I'm I'm gonna say something that may be a little controversial, but there's a point at which we can potentially make things too efficient, especially if we've got objectives around cross selling and upselling. And I would be I I'd imagine every single person around the the ring here and and in the audience probably has goals like that. And so it's maybe less about removing all friction, and it's more about the right amount. So we're producing light instead of heat. Interesting. Interesting. And mister mister Mueller McGlynn, you guys have built an entire huge business on on this whole, product racks and search and personalization. What say you? Any closing any any quick closing remarks before we go to the poll? Yeah. I mean, I think you look at it from conversion. Conversion is really a couple of areas. Right? We remove friction from what clients would see at this point, certainly to get to the right answers if if we can detect the intent if they're getting that around there. At the same time, we detect buying signals. There's opportunities to recommend, other replacement products. A lot of our clients have come in where, especially with supply chain constraints and other parts, can we use recommendations as a way to get people in and and really not necessarily upsell, but to actually help close the deal and convert more by part of the experiences out there as well. So it comes down to it's an important measure, and it certainly can go into by the ad dollar spent Right. Going back in using search and recs to ultimately do what the customer's intending to do. Yep. No. That's great. So I think we need to go to our poll question. Let's go ahead and bring that up, Robert. And the question is, can b two b sellers successfully predict buyer intent just from from search and inquiries? Yes or no? And, Andy, we had a few comments come in. You know, Steven Zawar said, hey. Long tail search may provide more insights. Steven from Schneider, Bill Carrier said, hey. When when was the last time a customer typed a question in on a b to b commerce site? Interesting comments. What what are your thoughts, Andy, on this, on that debate? Well, I I like how, Brian phrased it. I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna jump over to the site for a sec. See. That AI makes it less wrong. And I think that's a good way to phrase it. I think it's an open question about how accurate, you know, AI is in producing, producing search intent, identifying search intent, but it's inarguable that it does. It is clearly the case. This has been proven quantitatively that that this software is actually a pretty good job of identifying people's intent. Where it's complicated in b two b is that you have multiple buyers, you have different channels. It gets harder to do that in b to b than I think it is perhaps in b to c. But Steven Devore did make that point about the long tail, and I think that's right. I mean, it depends on what product it is, depends on what circumstance it is, but it isn't a question of the software. It's more the circumstance. So So this is it's another part of my argument here, Andy. So I think and and, yeah, thank you for that, Steven. You know, I think we can use conversion rate as a great metric here as well. Now here let me throw out a benchmark for you all all to be thinking about. In ecommerce, your conversion rate from search should be something like five times the conversion rate of other channels. People that just come to your come to your site, excuse me, and just sort of search and don't use and and navigate, don't use search. So So we think about conversion rate as a directional north star. You can then take conversion. You can take this metric, and you could break it down by customer segment, new versus returning, how are they converting. We'll talk about, you know, top of funnel in a minute. You can apply conversion to almost any scenario, and it will tell you how well you're doing in removing friction and delivering a great customer experience. Now, Andy, to your point, though, we do have to broaden the definition. So I think that's important. The attribution question's a big one. We need to go to our next round. So let's go ahead and roll the, the the bell. Round three. Here we go. Alright, Andy. This one's yours. I'm gonna keep time for us. Go ahead. Yeah. So we wanna kinda tackle the top of the funnel, question here, which is, you know, doesn't generating quality traffic to begin with matter more when matter more when converting the traffic? So it was the point I made at the beginning. Like, if you're focused on the conversion rate and you're not focused on lead scoring, seeing the, you know, the quality of the traffic coming in, Yeah. Aren't you focused in the wrong area? I guess that would be the argument of the, other measures matter more team. So let's go to Mark first on this one. Mark, you mentioned this yourself. I mean, do do you think a fixation on conversion rate is actually wrong headed and that you should be more focused on stuff higher up in the funnel? Yeah. And I I don't even believe we have a debate about this, to be quite honest. Right? Like, this this is one of these that one of these the top of funnel metric by itself is is really gonna help you understand the quality of the traffic that you're creating, right, ideally. There are other things that we could argue about that as well. But it's gonna talk to you really about the quality of that traffic. And and especially if you're looking at purchase behavior, you'll know immediately whether or not it's working. That's why you see that top of funnel, metric being created in the way of, add to carts. Right? So that's true. But, again, right, everything that happens at the top of the funnel was not meant for purchase related activity. Some of it is about leads. Some of it is more of an awareness driver. Depending on how you are crafting your campaigns or what tactics you're using, ideally, you would wanna be able to, build those with more you know, build the awareness with more organic channels versus some of your paid channels. So, I mean, my position going forward is, yeah, you you know, you have to you have to be really super focused on the quality of traffic that you're driving depending on what you're expecting to yield from it. Right? Either purchase activity in our business or lead activity, which are the two biggest pieces of, of of of traffic for us in terms of what we're looking to to measure. Right? So, Catherine, I assume you're, on board with this. You agree? Yeah. Fully, fully agree. Not really much to add. I think, you know, filling top of funnel with quality leads is how you generate demand. Right? And so without that demand, what are we converting on? So I think, again, everything that Mark said is bang on. Well, let's see what the other team has to say about this. So conversion rate rules. I mean, I'll help you here. At at the end of the day, you gotta convert. I mean, you can't just generate a bunch of quality leads and have a really bad site experience and not convert anybody. So, currently, the conversion rate matters too, doesn't it? Let's go to, let's go to Brian first on this one. Yep. It's all about when I look at it, and, certainly, we run our own b two b business. I think we we all do even in as a software provider, top of funnel is absolutely important, but it's every stage we look at the entire system. Is there leakage in the system? So if you convert more, some of the parts can do massive amounts. So converting from a lead into a warm lead, to a qualified lead, and ultimately to a purchase, all those items are in there. In every incremental tweak that you can do, certainly, you can have the best quality leads in at the top. But if you have a bad conversion process or a leaky conversion process, the efficiency loss is massive throughout the entire system. Yeah. So, Rob, what would you add to this? I mean, you're you're living and breathing this every day. I mean, it really is a question of resources. Right? I mean, in perfect perfect world, we do all this stuff. Right? But you can't do all this stuff. So you've chosen to focus more on the conversion rate because at the end of the day, you gotta deliver sales. Right? Right. So tell us why why that matters more to you than, say, the top of the funnel stock. Well, the the cost to acquire customers, especially in b two b, is is can be quite high. Right? And, measuring efficiency of of conversion is, you know, is a is a great way to understand how well you're, you're actually, in many cases, selling to the well, always to the bottom to customers at the bottom of that funnel. But for us, you know, we're we're constantly looking at how do we continue to convert our more analog customers to a lower cost to serve digital channel. And, I think a lot of b two b companies that I've either worked for, consulted to, you know, commiserated with peers with is is everybody is is often just trying to, to convert their existing base of customers in many ways to digital. And that's that's where conversion is at the bottom of the funnel is even more important than having a really, really large top of funnel. So let's toss out the funnel metaphor for a moment and go with another way to look at this, which is a journey. And, Rob, let's stick with you. So you talked about, I think, quite well about how it is and why it is that you have to focus on conversion. It's expensive. You know, you got at the end of the day, you gotta deliver on this. You're you're gonna get fired if you don't convert people. Right? I mean, that's what your job is. That's right. How do you participate in the earlier stages of the journey? Tell us a bit more about how you what you think about that. Yeah. It's a great question. Again, regardless of industry, we're we're often going to market with with a field sales team, an inside sales team. You've got branches involved. And so I think for us, it's it's often, aligning with everyone. At the end of the day, wherever the conversion happens, it's a win for the company. And as digital leaders, the the better that we, can stitch together CRM, commerce, marketing, field sales in a way that, allows us to execute better is really, at the end of the day, a win. And so as dodgy as the, the conversion metric, you know, cross channel attribution metrics can be, account growth is account growth, and we're just happy to see, you know, the business continue to to thrive in that way. So, Brian, let's get you, Brian McGlynn. Let's get you a quick thought on this one, and we'll transition to the other team to wrap up the round. So, Brian, what what are your thoughts on more kind of earlier in the customer journey and and where, you know, you recommend people participate even if you support conversion rate? Yeah. I mean, I think altogether, but early in the journey, this is where it it really comes down to it absolutely has a big impact at this point from looking at it from getting the quality of leads going through and really driving that efficiency. Once again, how well are they being converted? What can be done to use signals to detect at this point by intent, where somebody may be in a buyer group, what they're looking for at this point, and use that to go in and help convert even as they're sourcing out information. So from from this part, we certainly when we work with customers, we work with ourselves at this point. We look at it from across the entire buying spectrum, where they are early in the spectrum, really from there, what kind of signals we can get out of it, and what we can do to really get them ultimately to that goal. Is it information that they're searching? Are they looking for documentation? Are they looking to buy a part? Are they looking to replace a part? These are all the signals that we can see early on. And, really, as we look at it to get it even even, approximately right well, approximately, it can be a thirty percent increase in conversion and and thirty or seventy two percent increase in profit as it may be as well. Yeah. I think it's a very fair point. So just quickly, Catherine and Mark, let's get your thoughts on this. You've been arguing this the whole time, so this should be pretty easy. But give us your final thoughts on, you know, why you think participating earlier in the customer journey matters more than fixating on the customer, and conversion rates. So, Catherine, you go first and then and, Mark, you'll bat cleanup. I think, you know, in a word, right, like you say, it's a journey. Right? And so for us, when we think about it, the journey starts with filling that top of funnel and getting that quality traffic in before like, understanding, you know, who these customers are, what they're looking for, what their intent is, and then starting to sort of funnel them through the experience online. So but for sure, if you don't fill that funnel, then where who are we passing through and who are we converting at the end of the day? Yeah. Mark, if you could, just tell us quickly. You you mentioned we talked earlier about you've had conversations internally with people about an obsession too much of an obsession with conversion rate. Can you just share quickly what what, you know, dimension names, but what that can what that conversation has been about and why you're so adamant about focusing on other metrics beyond just conversion rate? Well, again, I think it's a great it's a great diagnostic. Right? So I'm gonna give some to the other team. Like, it's a great diagnostic. It tells you basically, you know, where you are and a part of your business. But by itself, you're not gonna get you're not gonna understand necessarily the impact of, you know, if you if you're in the lead space and scoring, what you know, are you actually converting these leads? That happens so far down the path that it's not even worth adding it to a conversion sort of, life cycle or where we think about leads being converted, in a traditional digital space. So that's one piece of it. And everyone's intent, again, is not to come to the site. Even though we produce and we sell over two million SKUs, everyone showing up on our site is not necessarily intending to purchase. Right? That doesn't mean that we're not gonna convert them at some other point in time in the future. What it means is that we have to meet them where they are in that moment. And that by itself, if you just look at the amount of traffic that's being created, we may have a really sweet and and and and and great, piece of content we just produced in the way of our Milmax or something like that, and people are really on it. Right? But that's not that's gonna impact our traffic. Quality traffic is gonna be great, but it's not gonna help us for purchase related, behavior. So it it's just look at him. It's just a gateway drug. Right? It's gonna give us a quick understanding of what's going on and keep us keep us, keep us focused on other arguments within it. So Well, Mark, thank you thank you for your thoughts on that. I love the gateway metaphor. Multiple uses of that. That's awesome. So, Brian, I think, that's round three. So That's round three. That's a it was a good arguments, guys. So let's go ahead and bring up the quote. Should or the the question. Should b two b ecommerce execs focus more on optimizing top of the funnel activity or bottom of the funnel metrics like conversion rate. That was a great, great debate there too. A lot of good points. You know, as as Mark was saying and Catherine was agreeing, you know, the quality of traffic, you know, measuring that. You know, I I have found that and, again, I this is why I believe so strongly that conversion. If we expand the definition, I'm gonna lay out my qualifier there. We expand the definition for b two b, or we're thinking about conversion not just online, but across channels. The the it is a great measure of the quality of traffic. Even if it happens two years from now because that lead gets captured in your CRM, it's sourced back to the digital channel that drove it in, and it's influenced along the way by display marketing and emails and all these other things you're touching, you know, the the customer with that you're recording in your CRM, and you're seeing this at the end of the day show up as a as a what, Andy? Not a happiness score, but a conversion. Right. So, anyway, what do you what were your thoughts? I I I love your happiness score. That's really Just say it, man. She means I'm tangible. I'm not telling the CEO about happiness scores. Wants to know what's your freaking conversion, how much revenue you're driving, and how how does that reflect in everything else. But, anyway, go ahead. What are your thoughts? I well, look. I I think to be fair, we put a lot of weight on the back of this little thing called conversion rate. And it's probably, if I'm confessing now, unfair, because what we we didn't do is say, okay. If not conversion, then what other single metric? Right? We've presented a few other ideas. Right. But what other single metric if not con I'm not sure to make your argument for you, Brian, but I do think at the end of the day, the conversion rate is an and a very effective measure. I think one of the challenges is how do you do it? I mean, we've heard about time delays. We've heard about people browsing. We've heard about all sort of ways in cross channel. I think one of the complications of this conversion rate and fixating too much on it, and we both know there are companies that fix it in conversion rate. It's a thing they report. It's what they laud, etcetera. And that's what we're actually addressing here. And should you really focus on conversion rate, almost the exclusion of other things, I think we're gonna see in the polls that, in fact, you can't focus on conversion rate to the exclusion of other things. But if we wanted to be intellectually honest, we should say, okay. If not conversion rate, then what? Yeah. No. Fair enough. My argument on that, Andy, is that if you're focused on it and you measure it right and you're looking cross channel by the way, CRM measures all these things. This is closed loop. This is b two b. We know when the customer logs in. We see them go into the call center. We know they don't have sales calls. I'm just saying, guys. I think that's a cop out, Andy, if you say you can't measure it. So And I wanna make one last point here. I think m we had the Amazon Google debate recently. Right? And it's very much in line with this because what we sort of concluded was that Google really focuses on the top of the funnel, that's their model, and Amazon really focuses on the bottom of the funnel. That's their model. Amazon has to worry about quality traffic coming to their site because if you're going to Amazon, you're probably buying something for a purpose. Right? So they just ignore the top of the funnel at Amazon, really, and focus on conversion. And they've done okay for themselves. So there isn't really one model here that works. And, frankly, it's time for Google to to put up or shut up on Right. On their obsession with the top of the funnel and and just complete disregard for the bottom of the funnel. Alright. Alright. Fine. Well so and Jason just just attacked the question, by the way. And and then Bill Bill Carrier's attacking the question. Everybody's attacking the question. Okay. Fine, guys. We get it. It's it's But they're not attacking the debate, which was actually quite good. That's right. So okay. It's time. We gotta roll on now. It is, we're gonna bring back in, a closing statement. We have a closing argument here for mister McGlynn, the the Mueller. Wanna bring him back in. Brian, you have two minutes to make a closing argument. Go. Yeah. I think when you look at it and Andy and Brian, you put it pretty well. There's really it it's kind of now what? Compared to conversion rate, it's what is the additionally, do you bring in to make measurements as really a North Star metric? Ultimately, many important things. Profitability, we have as long with, conversion rate. We have overall revenue, customer satisfaction, all these things weigh into it. And, clearly, you have to look at it from the entire customer journey piece by piece. Everything plays an important part to look at a healthy ecommerce business. So when you think about it from there, the more you can apply, the more intent you can go into and attack that. Everything you can play at every one of those particular stages is what goes in to provide the sum of parts to an excellent ecommerce experience. And really measuring efficiency along how it lines up to the goals is absolutely a key part. I've come back to conversion. If you can drive effective conversion, you can put more digital advertising. You can put more top of phone. You can make it more effective. And that's where you come into it at this point. By driving it more, ultimately, that will drive more profitability. That'll drive more revenue. That'll ultimately drive more. Just get that machine working well through everything you can put at it at this point. Brian, you handed that silver platter to mister Hoare and his happiness team. That is exactly right. We need to make sure we're measuring hard metrics. Thank you, Brian, very much. Okay, guys. It is time for the decision. I love that. It's so awesome. Alright. Before we get to what you all voted, right, because we're gonna do that in a second, we want to oh, man. I don't wanna reveal this, Andy, but we posted the question on LinkedIn, and let's go ahead and share those results. Is conversion the most important metric to focus on? I got crushed. No. It misses E comm's true impact. Interesting. So I think that that's what our community said when we posted this out on LinkedIn. Now we need to go, and and talk about We're buying it for being fair. We're for being fair. Like I said, it it really you know, you shouldn't compare it to something else. The reason we chose this was because there is an obsession with conversion rate. There are people that just do research on conversion rates. And, you know, that we wanted to kind of address and say, look. Is that worth doing? And I think the answer we're gonna we've seen here, we're gonna see in a second, I haven't seen the results, is that probably it is not. But, anyway, let's see. We will in a second. So I I have three really quick takeaways for us, and then we can get to the poll results. I think, you know, as in terms of summing this up, Andy, there are advantages to, conversion rate as a key metric. The first is I think we've got to expand the definition. I've made that case. Right? Second, it's real time. It also we didn't talk about this too much. It unites the team. It's easy to communicate, and it unites the team. I've lived this myself. Sat in the seat. We're gonna work on we're gonna work on a metric, and this metric finally can be met cut up and measured in many different ways. It can measure the type of customer. It can be used to how effectively you're acquiring new customers. It can be used to as a top of funnel metric to measure the effectiveness of your marketing channels. It can even be measured by customer segment. Right? So I I believe it you know, if you're focusing mainly here, it will lift all those other metrics as well, including Andy's happiness score. Anything you wanna add to that, Andy, before we get to our our poll results? No. I think it's kinda sad and pathetic that you have to make the argument after the argument's been made. I know. It makes it feel better, Brian. Well I know. Let's get to the results. Then we're We gotta get to the results. Okay. Let's let's go. Round one. No. Don't spend time on it. Round two. Round two. No. Man, they can't predict buyer antenna. And let's just see for, you know, for fun. Okay, Brian. Well I got completely obliterated. I'm gonna pronounce I'm gonna pronounce this argument at at one fifty seven seats Alright. Fine. Now. Okay. Catherine and Pugilist, you guys kicked our butts, but Brian and Rob, guys, great arguments. Thank you. Alright. No. It was a great debate. I mean, seriously, it was a great debate. I actually heard some things that were very interesting. I hadn't heard before myself. So Yes. But let's go ahead and wrap it up, Brian. We got two minutes. Yeah. We got a couple announcements we wanna make here, guys, and thank all of our contenders for joining. And we will see you, next time. Thanks for joining. We'll see you next time on our next un webinar. Andy, it was great to do this with you. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Great debate.