In today’s podcast, MultiFunding President Lynn Ozer, aka SBA Queen, and I talk to Jon MacDonald, founder and president of The Good, an ecommerce conversion rate and customer experience optimization advisory that helps brands understand the clicks and movements of their website visitors, and use that data to convert more existing visitors into buyers. Jon also tells us how he spent his extra time during the pandemic writing a step-by-step book, “Opting in to Optimization.”
“I said, ‘If I come out of COVID, what is the one thing that I could really do for the business that is going to move the needle?’” he says. “The more I thought about it, the more I thought, I have time to write a book and share with the world our thought process on how we optimize over the past 15 years for ecommerce brands. I started by interviewing my teammates, my core team members at The Good, and said, ‘if you could tell the world anything, what would it be? And let's figure that out.’”
The book, available at bookstores, thegood.com, and Amazon, where it has been a bestseller the past four or five months, is aimed at ecommerce founders or managers who are at the second or third stage of growth, Jon says.
“The third level is really when they start to dial it up. You are spending money to drive traffic, it's working. Now you want to get a better return on that ad spend. Those are the folks who really will get the most out of that book,” he said.
While his company primarily works with large companies like Nike, Adobe and Xerox, he started a new wing called The Good Ventures which provides products for small businesses, such as the UserInput tool.
The Portland, Oregon company’s name, The Good, derived out if its “mission is to remove all of the bad online experiences until only the good remain,: Jon says.
While doing good by its customers, the company also does good by its employees and the community as it is a certified B Corporation.
“We put a lot of emphasis on culture, making sure that we have the right teammates, who embody and are attracted to that benefit corporation where we're putting people and planet before profits,” he explains.
Listen here to learn how Jon's larger-than-average shoe size prompted him to delve into ecommerce optimization, how Obama’s first presidential campaign changed digital optimization and how The Good was prepared for what was coming when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit China.
