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I guest today knows Web and commerce inside and out. Every time I catch up with there I feel like she's just blown through targets, her growner team that much better. In a prior role she was ahead of e Common Webb. That logged me in, and now she's the VP of Web and commerce at Toast. Please welcome today's guest, Kara Goodman. You're listening to sea sweet blueprint, the show for sea sweet leaders. Here we discussed no bys approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show. Ay, Karen, thanks for joining me, thanks for having me. I feel like every time we catch up, your team has like grown and gotten that much better. I give is it? Is there bribery involved? Is it? Is it like gremlins where you if you feed them or after midnight they start doubling, like what's the trick there? No, I mean I think. I think it's all about like the recipe for success and just bringing on, you know, people that really passionate about driving results, and and not just business results but a really proud of like the output of their work. So that's what we we tend to look for when we're building teams and when we were talked about teams. It's like how do you get exponential out of a team rather than just one for one? And a big part of that is data and testing and and how do you inform the rogue maps? I'm curious you know what you folks are doing over there at toast, or what you've done historically, even as you incorporate testing, and how do you have that inform your robot? Yeah, so I think this the recipe sort of applies anywhere. We can't just rely on a be testing to inform the entire digital experience. So it's really, really important that you're augmenting that test data with other things, whether it be, you know, user testing, and there are tools out there that will actually build panels for you for your specific customer type and you can get real information from them in terms of sentiment, in terms of what they like what they dislike on your site. So adding that context into data, to pure ab testing data and then also using other methods of customer research and information that you have the kind of pull the full story together and create that digital and experience. There's been an argument going back and forth on if you should you use data to settle arguments or not, and I'm curious have you, how do you fall in that argument? Have you've been using it to settle arguments? I am a very data driven person, but I feel like data without context can lead you in the wrong direction. Like so, for example, like lessons learn from the past. You can use a be testing data inform which page wins, but if you don't know the why behind it and you don't know what your visitors are really looking for, it's easy to miss certain things and often they just come to your site wanting to check the box on a free you know, major proof points and and intach. That's usually like. You know, is this product secure? Is Its stable? Is it reliable? If you miss those simple things that people want to know, you can you can go a little bit too in depth with with data without context. I think what are the simple things that people want to know, like what are what it's what's your foundation of like the Hey, let's not mess this stuff up. Well, I think with with any SASS business, it's always reliability. I think people in general want to make sure your products reliable, is going to stay up, going to be secure, they're not going to have issues with it day to day or if there are issues. You know, offline modes usually something that comes up that people want to see, and that's true for any SASS business. But I think it's you know, we tend to want to create these beautiful, really inviting experiences that are seamless and fluid and and and the little stuff kind of gets lost. That usually the most important I think. Yeah, and seem less. I know that in some stuff we've worked on together. You... |
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...know there's some times where things fall down between marketing and ECOM and payment and you know, sometimes you're going from one experience to now a completely jarring different experience and it's like should I put my credit card info in here, because it feels like I just got sent to a completely different company. I'm curious how you kind of since you've got marketing and ECOMM, how are you or Webin e coom right, how do you kind of ensure that seamlessness between marketing and ECOMM and the purchase flows? Yeah, so I think this is is where data is important to understand, like what the major flows are on your site, like row. You know, somebody hits your home page. What are they doing? What are the common trends that you're seeing in the data and solving for those experiences first and so I think looking at the end of the data up front to have a baseline understanding of how people are leveraging your site today is really, really important to figure out what your path forward is. consistencies in in design is something that's come up a lot, I think, with multiple teams that I've had and the importance of that, and I think if you focus on that piece from the most common journeys, that's where you should be spending your time, versus these granular pages where you're not getting an account of visitors. That's probably not the most impactful thing to be spending your time on just to focus on it for the sake of consistency. Right. But to your point, ECOMM flows, major high traffic pages, pricing pages tend to be one of those areas that you really have to think through in terms of the end and journey and makes making sure that's consistent, intuitive, simple, simple, simple, is another big thing that tends to come up in any business. Like I said, I think we tend to overcomplicate based on our own internal, you know, view of what that flow should look like, especially when you're looking at it every day, but at the end of the day, the best, you know, feedback you're going to Gettis is from the the people that are visiting your site, and so that's where the baseline data comes in. Is Sort of married with user testing, is sort of married with AB testing, and then you kind of paint your full picture from there. Yeah, and also really having that culture of data across all of those teams so that they can, you know, they'll trust it. And but what I always find funny is, like you hear culture of data all over the place, but like what the hell does that really mean on the daytoday basis and how do you actually make it happen in your teams? I'm curious, you know, with with you and your team, what does what does that mean, the culture of data, and how how is that kind of growth path been into being a culture data? Yeah, so I'd say a few different ways. I think we use it. One as a baseline, as I mentioned, two in terms of we use it as a part of our prioritization framework into marrying that with things like level of effort, other tasks that have to get down across the business support of other key company objectives, and so we use it in that framework, making sure we're looking at the potential impact of the experiences we want to change up front so that we're not wasting our time if it's really not worth the effort. I think that's one thing that, you know, we say over and over again with all the teams I've had in the past, like, let's make sure that this is the most meaningful initiative we could possibly be working on and whether, regardless of the KPI, write whatever you're trying to achieve and really spending time on those things versus, you know, twenty small things. Yeah, that makes nonsense, that to look for those high impact areas. But then it's also like are we missing some of the high impact areas? And that's when machine learning come into play, right and the can it? Can it help discover things that we just don't have enough time in the day to be able to look for each thing and tested and let it play out. And you know, and I'm always trying to find the balance between what's the promise of machine learning versus what's actually helping out there, and I'm curious if you found any of the promise to be real yet, or is it still early days? Haven't found any of the promise to be real yet, but I think the idea and the concept of moving beyond a be testing, because... |
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...you mentioned it right it's really tough to develop a rapid piece of testing when you can't isolate really high traffic experiences from each other and make sure you're getting the appropriate data back that you're looking for. And so I think in the future of machine learning, like as these tools develop, the idea of changing experiences in real time is going to be key to accelerating pace and delivery of business results and of better experiences for the for the visitor as well. And so you know, I think it's probably a little early on to get there because, like I said before, I wouldn't just want to know which pages are performing well. I would want to have the context behind why, in the the engagement with the page, of Scroll data, what two people, what resonates with people? Is Your message being heard? And so you know, I think just rapid changes to pages in improved performance is great, but again and I would look for a tool that also gives you that context in terms of a heat map, in terms of user feedback, all of that, all of that stuff, and I don't know that there's least I haven't found a tool out there quite yet, but I'd love to think that's the direction it is going in. Yeah, it always takes longer than you want. You know, I feel like there were so many multivariate tools out for so long and I feel like cheese. It felt like there was a decade of people talking about multivariate but so many people, like clients that I'd work with, there like we can't even really get proper AB testing working. And it was it was all the organization, usually the organizational challenges or tech debt type of challenges. Right, is that it's not really architected in a way that we could do that or I you know, I'm an e common. I can't get the web team to do the tooling that I need them to do to get they be testing in the multivariate testing in place. And curious some of your stories from the trenches on, like you know, how do you actually just elevate from simple ab testing to doing more? Like I said, I think it's about having the full picture up front and so before we even design a page where we're pretty sure of the structure it should have, we're pretty sure of the proof points we need to hit and what content we need to present on that page. In the same thing with imagery. So I think as long as you're pulling in the context ahead of time and marrying that data, you should have a pretty strong hypothesis at that point that the test is going to be a win, and so that that's the way we do things to accelerate our pace. Two results. And you know, I think it can't just be pure a be testing alone, because then you don't really know the why and then how do you create, you know, end to end digital or journeys without understanding that why it's really tough to have a win on one page and then know where, which direction, to go in next, if you don't have have the context. Yeah, and I feel like I don't know this is true, but some of my observations have been also having web and ECOM under the same roof and really building the highly performing teams across the too. It seems to have really worked for you. Yeah, I think that. Sometimes I hear people talk about them as two separate things, like Webin e commerce. Right, but if you think about if you think about the journey, you know, a visitor coming your site isn't distinguishing them as two different experiences. They're either flowing in and in most cases with SASS businesses are, you know, take asking for a Gen Demo, generating a lead, or they're purchasing through ECOMM, depending on the type of business you're serving. But I think that's why the experience needs to be thought through holistically, because those ECOMM visitors, they come from somewhere where. How do you acquire them top of funnel? And how do you think through that end to end, even post conversion? Like what is that entire end to end journey? And if you think through that, you look at the trends, you look at the data, you should be able to piece to get there that end end story pretty seamlessly. But that has to be in the context of the rest of the experience on the site as well. So I think of them as kind of inputs into a broader web journey. Yeah, and if you want to think about the lifetime value of your customer, you.. |
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..kind of need to organize your experiences around the lifetime, not just the individual kind of moments in time right and and have that experience. So how have you been building these teams? Like how do you get them from well performing to highly performing teams. I think it's really really adoption of this mindset in this recipe that we use for success. And and then I also mentioned like who we look for really hungry people. I think in, like I said, whatever facet of work they're doing, whether it's development, like, how do you bring in passionate people that had take a lot of pride in their work and value, you know, uptime and stability of the site like that? That is just as important as a business result. And so I think we look for a certain personality type that that loves to drivers ault whatever, regardless of the KPI, you know, has the similar growth mindset and and is able to think through prioritization really critically. And then I guess the last pieces is the collaboration. The team has to function and work well together, they have to be transparent and direct with each other and they have to want to work and win as a unit and as a team. And so one of the things we've done is developing like core team values, the way we work day day and a day out, and some people think that's fluff. I used to think that as well, but I think it's resonated really well with with past teams that I've had in terms of how they want to work with each other. And I think you know when they you have that direct conversation, you know the little tiffs in the the BS kind of you know, falls off, falls off a plate. Can I say BS on this? No, I definitely used to fall into that camp to where I'm like you know my I'd see stuff is fluff, but I just love the value of the it. To me it's almost less about the values and more about the fact that you just have a common language to your values. Right. It helps accelerate those conversations or it's like, instead of just being really frustrated with someone, you'd be like hey, like one of our values is be a team player, and like you're not being a team player and here's why. They it just helps not just the conversation but even helps you formulate your own thoughts to whoever you're having the issue with. Right, personally, like my whole issue is I sometimes there's a takes too much time from when I'm originally frustrated to when I can actually verbalize it. But people before I can verbalize it, everyone knows that I'm already annoyed. So I've gotten into the habit of just saying, like I'm frustrated and I don't know why, and that like and like I'll know in a little bit and like that even just helps people kind of chill out a little bit so they don't think that I'm like holding back or anything. Yeah, and I think when you have those direct, transparent conversations again like that, that gets you to resolution sooner. It also provides the ability to like kind of sort out differences and get over get over the issue a lot quicker versus just like letting it stew and fester and distracting everybody from the end goal, because that's usually the same in every scenario. It's just how do we get there? Yeah, and two things that I've been really narrowing in on for teams is having, in general, the right mix of a risk profile that they're willing to take on. I recently interviewed to be hard, and he's an author, journalist. Any he wrote about the first CIA team into Afghanistan and like that was their secret to success. Is like they could make consensus driven decisions, but it's because they all shared the same in general risk profile right and in that combined with growth. The thing I'm always curious about, though, because, like, if you have a team that like they're all high risk profile and they're all growth centered, some of the fundamentals can start to get lost, right and you can start to just like go off the reservation. How do you balance? Have you found ways to kind of balance those, those two things that keep it grounded while also maintaining that growth culture? Yeah, I think with with any site, there's always going to be the opportunity for a low hanging fruit just in terms of where you can optimize, and then there's a next level of okay, like how do you innovate from there? And so those are definitely two layers that you need to make sure you're stacked on each other to.. |
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...ensure the growth and to ensure you know, you're not creating this or putting all your eggs in one basket on the innovative piece of that. So, like I said, we always look at the impact of anything we do ahead of time and think through the prioritization of that sort of winds up being kind of a mix of both. You talked about machine learning, right, and so if that's one area that makes sense to go into and spend the time to look at that. That's considered like a growth project, right, versus your typical road map where you've backed into the numbers, you've looked at the context in the sentiment, you've heard from customers and visitors and you've married all that together to kind of build your road map. The growth piece. In my mind, the innovation piece is just a layer on top of that. So making sure your car about the time to focus on those efforts and explore them as well as important. It's not always easy, but it's important and we've thought through, you know, longer term, how we resource that appropriately. And not only that, like you've ar two layers of baseline growth, innovation, and then your third is like the Tech Road Map, because you can't forget about that. That's, like I said, that's critical for any ECOMM business, for any business whose site drives the bulk of their their leads. So making sure that's layered in as well and then going through priorization exercise or framework or whatever it is you're using to kind of stack rank those things and make sure you have the investment to support the growth bucket to so not a perfect science, but managing the layers is important. Yeah, and you talked about the baseline a lot, and maybe that's part of it too. Is like there's a difference between growth, just, you know, crazy growth, it's all over the place, versus like Hey, our growth is to continue, we're going to build a new foundation and once we get there, then we're going to build a new foundation on top of that, right on top of that, and that way you worry less about the ground kind of fallen out from under you in the in the pursuit of growth makes it okay to fail. Yeah, exactly. You talked about Tech Road Map in you know, we've had the joy of evaluating software vendors together in the past, and that is a land that can easily be filled with a lot of bs right, and I'm sure like as the VP of Web and commerce, you're inundated with vendors that wanting to sell you the next greatest thing. How do you navigate that as far as like your faceboo challenges internally, and then you're getting this, you know, all this hype of all these software vendors that are out there. How do you navigate that mess? MMM, good question. I think we've got you know, your with your bigger tools, making sure that those companies are in a good spot, like from a financial perspective, from a scale perspective, making sure their road map aligns with where you want to go. And that's, you know, core systems like your cms, like you're AB testing tool, your whatever, using for data, whether it's Hegi, Dobe, whatever the case may be, those tools, you know, you want to make sure you have scale, stability and reliability, and so you know, as long as you have confidence in your stack, I think you're in good shape. If not, those would be the guiding principles used to pick something that's secure, reliable and also probably a little bit longer out in stage, depending on the size of your company. The other tools that we've used are recently, you know, even at well, my last company as well. But the ones that are kind of merging that are super interesting to me tie more to that growth bucket, and so you know, I'm hitch in the AB testing is one piece. User testing is really important, but the way it used to be done in terms of just understanding like friction points with about ten visitors like that gives you a little something that doesn't give you the full picture. And so now there are tools out there that allow you to test an entire journey before you even push it live on your site. They tell you, like I said, customer sentiment, what they like, what they don't like, really giving you like back journey diagnostics to inform where you go. So those are the types of meetings I tend... |
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...to take to explore what's out there now, because that's gonna aid in your growth of the business. The heavy, you know, system ones, if they're working for us, we tend not to reevaluate. It only really comes up when it's not. Not Work it out, but uh so I kind of lean towards more of the growth stack. Yeah, and you know, you talked about earlier in your career seeing some stuff as kind of fluff and having known you now for a while, I'm curious a little bit on the the evolution of your career and, like, you know, things that you know, the way that you viewed the world before versus versus now. Like what if some of the big takeaway has been for you as you've gone through this growth? Yeah, I think you know, when you're type a like me, it's hard to let go of certain things. It's hard to delegate. It's hard to trust, and that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over time, like really leaning on your team, giving them the space to feel empower to make decisions, to go out and create the Road Map and ask for guidance and help along the way, but really being handsoff where I need to. I think has been the hardest lesson. I have control issues to care yeah, the fluffy piece was hard for me too. I feel like I'm getting really soft, George. I do, because I think like, the the end of the day, like your team is critical and and in really important to how you operate day to day and the results you drive and how motivated they are and how happy they are makes a real difference. And so making sure, especially in a remote world where you have those connections with people, you're connecting them with on a human level, just versus like the first question that comes out of your mouth being like what the numbers look like yesterday? So that's been a big transition for me. Feelings and emotions. Holy who am I? Who? What have I become? No, but I think that's that's another big lesson learned. And the third just like, like I mentioned, like there are playbooks, there are recipes that work, and making sure you use that mindset and then like layer on the innovation piece and make sure making sure your car about carving out the space for that. Is something I didn't hadn't taken the time to do in the past, but it's really critical to growth. So that would probably be the third lesson, making sure you're carving out the space to think two years and had three years ahead, while creating that nice foundational baseline that gives you confidence in what you have in your road mountain. Those are great and the playbooks one is interesting because I love playbooks more than anybody, but the rate of change is just it. It seems to be getting so much faster and faster. You know, I used to be able to look five years back at a playbook and maybe use seventy or eighty percent of it right and rework the twenty thirty percent of it, but then I think, you know, over the past few years it's like only like half of that playbooks really useful now. And now if I look back to a playbook from like a year or two ago, I'm like, uh, not useful anymore, like because everything's changed in that. That one's a tough one to balance because then it's like, well, how much time do I spend on the playbook? And I'm kind of coming to grips with that myself. I don't know if you're seeing the same. Well, I mean, I think just because things evolved doesn't mean your playbook doesn't. So, like you mentioned machine learning, right, that might be my playbook. In two years from now we might find a tool that does that and then you know you don't necessarily need the other maybe testing playbooks were executing on today. So I think that just because you have a Bluebook, I don't think the need for priorization, the need to understand data, the need to apply context, that's going to stay pretty stagnant, I think, regardless of what tools are using or how you're going to market. I think that that framework kind of lives on. Yeah, and as soon immersed in Webon e calm. Where you seeing like all the hype and nonsenses right now? Is it? Is it metaverse, like people just taking their stores into the metaverse? Is it? Where do you look at and you're like that's nonsense, that's a good qul. You stump me there. I don't know, I haven't see. I haven't seen anything that I'm like... |
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..now. That's never going to work. I think, as you the pandemic kind of accelerated the need for for digital experiences and so I've seen quite a bit of change there and what I keep hearing is, you know, a humans always going to have to be involved. But I think if you create like the right digital experience that walks somebody through what you're asking them to do, it shouldn't be that hard. Otherwise it's not really the right experience. So I think there's always going to be a human element or human touch in some businesses, but that doesn't negate the need for like a really simple digital experience. So I think any tools or any I guess, strategy that's shifted from kind of manual to digital, there's going to be, you know, more of that, but I wouldn't say I've counted out any particular yeah, I mean just because it's hard today doesn't mean we can't create an experience for it and especially as we get better with machine learning and adaptable experiences, you know, you might not need to go of aboard trying to build the perfect experience to make it happen. It's more about just getting something out there and then learning and adapting, and that's a future I look for it to well care I always like to finish with something fun. I'm curious in your career and your life, what's the best advice you've ever received? Probably to not be so hard on myself, and I think you know, the more I take that advice, I think, the lighter I feel and, like you said, like the fluffiness comes back a little bit. But that also translates down through my team. Right, like it's okay to fail as long as you have a path forward. It's okay to pick the wrong direction and have to revert. You know, that's why we're in the SASS and the tech game, right let's it's you have to fail in order to grow and succeed. So I think that's probably, while it's basic advice, I think it's probably the most that that or the piece of advice that's been the most useful for me. So yeah, and it's one of those categories of advice that like, yeah, makes sense, but then like as you step into it over many years, then it makes a whole heck of a lot more sense. And Yeah, I mean I probably would have thought in my younger years things like mindfulness or just a bunch of woo woo nonsense, but you know, I've definitely gone deep into that space and you do realize like that, while it's all for you, like you cast a cloud around you, that that stuff impacts and it really helps your whole team and it's great. Well, Kara, it's always great seeing you, it's always great working with you, and thank you so much for being here. Same George. Thanks for having me appreciate it. Technology should serve vision, not set it at intivity. We design clear blue prints for organizational readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new past. Then we drive the plementation of those plans with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at wwwccom. You've been listening to see sweet blueprint. If you like what you've heard, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss a new episode. And while you're there, we'd love it if you could leave a rating. Just give us however many stars you think you deserve. Until next time. |
