Brick & mortar stores have taken a big hit since the pandemic, with a lot of the traffic moving online. One thing that hasn't, and likely won't, change is consumers wanting a good experience. Listen in as Startup Slang CEO Damiano Raveenthiran breaks down why experience matters.

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Michael Maher  00:01

Welcome, everybody to the longer game podcast. This is a longer game podcast because that's what the name is, if you want to know what we're about, we're talking about retail, retail in general, but we like to bring things into focus and talk about things a little bit more specifically. So I have with me, Damiano Raveenthiran, and he is the CEO of Startup Slang, I probably should have double-checked what the name of your agency was before I hit record, but we're in it. So start off saying, I do like that. I like that name. Because startup is, I mean, startup is a very popular word right now. And why don't you just tell us a little bit more about where that name came from? And what you do at Startup Slang.

Damiano Raveenthiran  00:55

I'd be happy to yeah, so I mean, Startup Slang like today is a full-stack eCommerce agency from Canada. So we have offices in Toronto and Montreal, as well as Kingston, Ontario. And we basically help eCommerce merchants with everything from design and development of a high converting website all the way to marketing and content production as well. And the way that the company really started is, so I'm, I'm an eCommerce specialist. I've been an eCommerce specialist for a while. Before I was an entrepreneur, I was just working as an eCommerce manager for a brand.

Michael Maher  01:28

And it's where you cut your chops at basically.

Damiano Raveenthiran  01:30

Yeah, pretty much. And, and I was literally the first person that they hired in that position, and I built a team of 1700. Me. And so one, when I built the eCommerce department for that brand, I figured, you know, I could do this again. And so Startup Slang like today is very much we market ourselves as the plug and play eCommerce department for brands. So I've kind of like taken that, that skill that I had learned on my full time job, and I just built an agency around it. And the name, I mean, every time it kind of started. Because every time we went into a business, a lot of these businesses, we started working in the construction industry. So we're working with a lot of power to retailers and distributors and things like that. And every time we will go,

Michael Maher  02:11

They're like contractors, but like people that are selling products, yeah,

Damiano Raveenthiran  02:13

People there. Exactly. Yeah. And every time we would go into one of these businesses, you know, it's very old industry, you know, people are still used to doing things on paper and stuff. And so we will kind of bring our own lingo which we started calling the Startup Slang. And we had, okay, yeah, we had to kind of just, you know, educate our customers on, on how to even talk about eCommerce. And that was, you know, back in 2015. And so, yeah, started off back then, and, you know, little by little the name kind of stock, and people loved it. And I bought the domain and ended up being pretty good. So we just kept it.

Michael Maher  02:47

That's a really cool story now that I named my agency because I liked how it sounded. But my business, I think your story's better is what is wearing getting. My legal business entity name is matters of the cart. And I started that when I started selling as a reseller back in 2010. And then transitioned into the agency side in 2016. whole long story there. But I felt like I need an update. And so I kept the cart because, you know, helping people on Amazon, it's about all about the shopping cart, but there's so many applications for cart. I mean, the cart starts with retail, it starts with a brick and mortar, you are working on eCommerce sites that have a shopping cart that people want to, you know, want to sell product through, and Shopify has made it what do you handle? Do you handle anything else other than Shopify in either platform?

Damiano Raveenthiran  03:46

Yeah, I mean, like, so today, we, we work on Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Magento. And we also do a bunch of like custom builds for clients that want to go down that route as well.

Michael Maher  03:57

And so before places like Shopify Magento, Bigcommerce, came along. All shopping carts were pretty much custom builds, right?

Damiano Raveenthiran  04:07

Yeah, pretty much. And some clients still decide to go down that road. Some clients prefer headless, right, where half of it is custom-built, and then the back end is still using one of those platforms. It's a Yeah, and, you know, some sort of solutions. Like we have a few clients in the market in the marketplace, space. And so they're, they're built, they're coming to us to build marketplaces. And I don't really think that it's appropriate to build a marketplace on one of these platforms. Usually, it's just a completely custom solution for that.

Michael Maher  04:37

Well, you know, that the way that AWS started, was that Amazon was trying to host all their data, and all the people that were helping them I couldn't help them because they were so large, so they said we're gonna build our own tool. They built their own tool that is still working on the Amazon Marketplace side and it's just called MWs, marketplace web services. And they turn that into AWS and now that's, you know, billions of dollars of business. So necessity, often is the mother of invention. I hear it is the mother of invention. I don't know for a fact. But when you know, things change in my business, I had to decide what am I going to do with my skill set? So when to the agency side of things, to get back to the eCommerce? Question or focus, so you work on different platforms? Some people are the people that you're going into talking to these retailers are these, I would say retail brands. They don't they know that eCommerce is a thing they know that eCommerce is, you know, the wave of the future. I'm sure they're getting it shoved in their faces in the news, or potentially by even people in their company. But they don't even know. I mean, they don't even know some of the you know, most basic terminology that I might say to you like an impression, or, you know, CTR conversion rate, all this stuff. It's those, those are pretty basic eCommerce metrics. And you likely have some different lingo even from the design perspective, because for me, Amazon handles, all of the, excuse me, from the development side, they handle all the developing, we don't need developers on our team, but that's a big part of your team as developers.

Damiano Raveenthiran  06:35

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I mean, we start we really started off as a development agency, first and foremost. And everything else kind of like grew out of that. And today, you know, like, it's, it's pretty nice to be able to go into a business that has never done any sort of online sales, you know, those are my favorites, just because anything we do will be better than what they're doing right now. So that absolute practically no way we can fail. And it's, uh, ya know, it's, it's, it's for some of the businesses, it's been life-changing, you know, we've worked with power to retailers that were, you know, making a million dollars a year for decades, get them online, and all of a sudden, they're $25 million companies. Right. So it's incredible. You know, it's it, that's kind of the power of online, right of online retail. Like, I think a lot of a lot of merchants kind of know now because of COVID and stuff. And, you know, a lot of people have been forced into that. But you know, it's not uncommon to see that. Now, most of your sales come from online purchases, and it's only going to keep going down that route. And I will cryptocurrencies and FTEs. And all that stuff. It's getting even more interesting with web 3.0 coming to the eCommerce scene.

Michael Maher  07:40

Where do you think cryptocurrency comes into play with retail? I mean, I've always I know blockchain, a lot of people talk about cryptocurrency. And it's based off, you know, blockchain technology I feel in cryptocurrency. I don't know where it's gonna go next. But I feel like that really is just the start of what blockchain technology can do. I feel like it's probably got so many more, you know, capabilities. It's like when we first started the internet, like, wow, our computers can talk to each other from across the room. And now we're doing commerce on that. But so I feel like this is even just the beginning. But what where does cryptocurrency factor into eCommerce? You think?

Damiano Raveenthiran  08:18

Yeah, I mean, I, I've started seeing a lot of interesting sort of use cases for it. Just when you think of just creating incentive layers on top of like, experiences online, right? So for example, we have, we have a merchant right now that we're working with, and they're coming out with a product, and it's a fitness product. And, you know, I don't want to like get into too much detail about it. But to give you an idea, imagine having,

Michael Maher  08:44

 It's the Shake Weight 2.0, right?

Damiano Raveenthiran 08:45

No

Michael Maher 08:46

I'm kidding.

Damiano Raveenthiran  08:48

But, but imagine having an A fitness product that basically rewards you with a certain coin every time you go to the gym, right? Ah, so you're adding an incentive layer on top of any sort of experience that you want to create any sort of app or eCommerce experience that you want to have your end-user like go through, you can create an incentive for that. Right. So you know, some of the reasons interesting use cases that I'm seeing right now is, you know, people that want to launch marketplaces, kind of like Amazon, right? But how is how are they going to compete? Well, they can integrate something like Kin. Kin is a reward system using a cryptocurrency called kin onto their marketplace so that when people choose to shop on their marketplace, they're actually making this cryptocurrency that they can then turn into Aetherium. They can turn into Bitcoin, they can turn into normal dollars as well. And so you're creating an extra incentive for them to go there. And it's way better than you know, Walgreen points or it's a loyalty program

Michael Maher  09:44

Just reimagine,

Damiano Raveenthiran  09:46

Yeah, reimagine because it can be used in multiple ecosystems instead of just on one store and one ecosystem, right. So that's really, really interesting. There's a lot of merchants who are looking to launch some of their physical products with NFTs. We're seeing a lot of that Luxury whitespace we're seeing that in the jewelry space as well, to kind of creating like unique collectibles out of like these pieces that people can buy and resell later on. So there's a lot of use cases for cryptocurrency. And I think we're only going to see more, sort of as the years progress. And Peter started flying, we're actually very open to that we have an entire training program for developers to go through and learn to code in solidity and be like, really, on top of their knowledge when it comes to crypto and blockchain development. And so we're investing

Michael Maher  10:32

A lot different than just typical, like our Python, whatever languages that you're using.

Damiano Raveenthiran  10:37

No, no, no, it's not. 

Michael Maher  10:39

It's another language. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  10:40

Yeah, it's just another language. The only, I guess the only obstacle is that the schools don't really teach it yet. So because it hasn't reached that sort of level of training. And it's really hard to find developers. So agencies like us, we have to basically create a training program ourselves and teach them right.

Michael Maher  10:58

Because we're still just starting to teach people what I think about digital marketing. Yeah, yeah, I've actually started getting connected with some local universities, and just being a part of career fairs. Because the need for people that know and understand Amazon, and basically can be account managers or strategist and help, you know, have that relationship with a client, at least for us. It's hard to come by. And so we're either having to train or having to find someone from, you know, potentially from another agency or someone that's a freelancer. And so there's, there's more of those. But finding someone that knows what they're doing, like that's not being taught in schools. And what's even more frustrating, I think, for me is knowing that these schools are not even letting these kids know, like, there's more opportunities than you think you hear a lot about. People are coming out of school. And they're not, you know, getting jobs and not I don't even need to go into that. But there's a whole field of new jobs being created right now. But it seems like the universities aren't even really connected to that. So they're not telling kids, hey, you could become a developer for eCommerce, you could become a developer for using Blockchain technology. You could be an Amazon account manager, they don't know that. They're just thinking, Okay, well, I have to go get a job at a big company, or you know, whatever the case might be.

Damiano Raveenthiran  12:20

Yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%. You know, I think what's cool is I've been failing us several generations for generations now. And, you know, I think the important thing, and I'm about to have a kid, so I'm actually thinking about this, like pretty often nowadays,

Michael Maher  12:33

Okay. Congratulations, by the way. First kid. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  12:35

Thank you. Yeah. First kid. Yeah. We'll see. We're gonna be surprised.

Michael Maher  12:41

Oh, yeah, that's awesome. I remember, my wife and I were surprised when my daughter is now eight. And the day was so fun. Because I mean, it was fun. For me. I wasn't the one that wasn't labored. But my wife and I were both excited, because we were thinking we get to meet whoever this person is. We don't really know anything about them just that they are. I mean, hopefully a human. So it was so cool. Finding out like, it's a girl. Like, just that whole process was cool. So I'm excited for a man. Right, right.

Damiano Raveenthiran  13:09

Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks. It should happen literally any day. But

Michael Maher  13:12

What you're thinking about education. You're thinking about school? Okay.

Damiano Raveenthiran  13:17

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like, I think the biggest I was asking myself, like, where did school fail me, because I was, I was like a DNF student like 100%. School was not kind to me, I didn't like the experience at all. But it didn't, it didn't mean, I didn't have the skills like necessary. I've been coding since I was 12. Right. And like I've been, I've been kind of like developing my own skills on the side. And I think where school fails a lot of people is, it doesn't teach you about that relationship between your skills and the market. And it doesn't really like allow you to understand that the skills that you develop in school or outside of school are things that you then use to actually do whatever it is that you want to do from an entrepreneurial perspective or make money,

Michael Maher  13:57

or whatever, right? Yeah, like, Hey, here's how the economy works. But where do I plug into the economy?

Damiano Raveenthiran  14:04

Exactly? How can I actually understand where the market is going? And how can I actually plug my skills in there? And I think there's, there's different ways of doing that. And the other thing is the whole the whole grade system is really, really annoying. So now, Elon Musk actually made this entire, like school curriculum for his kids like public online. School, and the website is called 

Michael Maher  14:24

Does he homeschools kids? 

Damiano Raveenthiran  14:25

No, I think he has, he has an actual school that he's built. Okay, values, and it's a super interesting stuff. It's like, like, there's no grades or anything. You look at the interviews of some of these kids are like 11 years old, are talking like 30 year old engineers, it's insane. 

Michael Maher  14:39

You're like being robbed of some of their childhood or they're just more informed. I, those two things are mutually, you know, exclusive of each other. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  14:48

Well, here's the thing. I remember when I was a kid, and I had like a, I had a really big sort of bend towards entrepreneurship, but because I had never been exposed to that until I was like 23 or 24, it was never like an option for me, I never thought that I could actually be an entrepreneur, right. And I think that, you know, kids probably go through like no a program like that they're just exposed to more and exposed to more problems and more problem-solving. And then over time you end up, I don't think they're getting robbed of anything, I think over time, sure, just ended up learning how to solve problems at a much higher rate than

Michael Maher  15:23

That's actually how I, I'm realizing like, as time goes on, wow, I actually lent more towards this entrepreneurial side. I got when I was probably I'd say, 14, I wanted to buy a skateboard. I sucked at skateboarding. I'd gotten a used one from a friend. But I'm like, I want to buy my own. So I started mowing lawns, and just going out to people, my neighborhood, creating flyers doing all that typical stuff. I didn't have to be doing that at 14. I mean, it wasn't getting an allowance. Yeah, so the use of the money had to come from somewhere. I remember being in middle school. And there would be like these, like merchant weeks, and I remember creating those really big spiky fingers that were made out of paper, by cassettes of those and selling them and really loving that. And I had 

Damiano Raveenthiran  16:11

Little hustler. 

Michael Maher  16:13

That was a little I was a little, you know, a little hustler. But you know, I wasn't raised in an entrepreneurial family. My dad was a biochemist, who then became a physician. My mom was an educator. So you know, more traditional, I'd say career paths, and they were super supportive of whatever I wanted to do. But I didn't know, really, until I saw a friend of mine, who was building an online business and saying, Oh, wow, like you're doing that. And I just hated the job that I was at. So I was like, oh, I want to do that. That sounds better. And so I learned and so I became an entrepreneur to get out of a job that I hated. But I've stayed an entrepreneur for a lot, many, lot, many, for many more reasons than then what I became one and, you know, one of them is I'm able to create this path of what direction do I want to go? And I get to choose, do I want to have a negative impact? Do I want to have a positive impact? Some people aren't consciously choosing that they're just, you know, focusing on goals, and whatever happens, happens. But yeah, I mean, it's, there are now entrepreneurship classes that are being taught at universities here in the States. But I think the best thing, I think it's cool that it's being taught, but one of the best things you can do is just like go shadow an entrepreneur for like a summer and see, what is it that they're doing. What is that because especially as you're building a company, it's not just Alright, I am the ops director. And I handle operations. It's like, oh, I'm also part of the sales and marketing and administrative, and I'm helping create processes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Damiano Raveenthiran  17:53

Yeah, dude, that's, it's crazy. It's crazy that they're teaching entrepreneurship classes now in university. And like, I found it pretty ironic at some point, because I got a, like, a lot of people might not know this, but like, I was so bad in school, I went to college, and I crawled to the finish line. And then when I got to the finish line, I finished all my courses. And I was like, Can I have my degree? And you know what they said? They said that my grades were too low. So I literally failed college like four, even though I did all my courses, right? 

Michael Maher  18:24

Oh, my gosh, yeah. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  18:25

It's crazy. It was like a slap in the face. And I hated the whole experience.

Michael Maher  18:28

I imagine you would. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  18:30

And the crazy part is now like, literally last month, I got an email from the person that teaches the entrepreneurship course, at my local university where I failed. And they want me to go in and give a lecture now.

Michael Maher  18:43

Oh, that's what a great story it felt. It must have felt ironic time. But that's super ironic. But I mean, the way that I look at things, I believe that God has a purpose for every single thing in our lives. But it's very hard. And I know some people don't believe in that. Some people don't believe in like, Sam, we're talking about Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson in their podcast being very philosophical. And I know that Sam Harris doesn't believe in freedom, freewill, whatever. That's the whole other subject to get into. But, you know, I think we experience things at the time. And they hurt a lot. But we actually learn a lot from them. And when things when this came around now, I imagine that you've developed enough to not say no, screw you guys. I don't want to do anything with you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're probably like, Yeah, this is actually really cool. And what a cool story that I get to say, Hey, guys, entrepreneurship can be for lots of people. I was sitting in your seat, and I failed college.

Damiano Raveenthiran  19:46

Yeah, yeah. 100%. And, you know, and I think it's not the first time that I'm doing a lecture so it's it's just ironic that it's, it's the University where I didn't make it but yeah, and it's gonna be interesting. I mean, I think a lot of people have this misconception that you have to go to school to become wrong. Or a lot of people get MBAs. You know, I get people coming to my interviews for candidates and stuff. And they have MBAs and like, yes, like so much education. But in most cases, there's nothing like experience, right? There's nothing like Amen. Feeling the highs and the highest highs and the lowest lows of ooh,

Michael Maher  20:21

That's right, man, you got to experience it. And I often think people think because I'm more educated, I'm going to make more money. And a lot of times, that's the opposite. Yeah, it's the opposite will also be if you think about the investment that you're putting in, but you also have to ask for more money. And so as an entrepreneur, you have to create a more valuable service or some more products, whatever the case might be, if you're in a company, you have to ask for more money and say, here's why I'm worth it and explain it to people. But I think a lot of people, I'm making a big assumption here, but my guess is they're getting degrees so that they can hopefully, you know, grow and earn more and have higher roles, but it doesn't necessarily teach you that now, school, I think is great for some people. I, I did well, in high school, my first two years of college, I thought I could just like squeeze by, so I failed, I failed Greek mythology. And then I did a like, got a literal F, and then took a great replacement. And it was at the University of Cincinnati here where I live, and got a D. So I was like, alright, well, at least it's not enough. I got a D. And I'm like Hercules, and Hercules and all these guys names. Man, they sound so, so familiar. But anyway, it's cool to know that things have come full circle for you. One of the things I wanted to talk about when it comes to eCommerce, and we're talking about this disconnect between what people what's actually happening in the economy, and what people know. And so you've got these new young minds that are coming out of, you know, universities that don't actually know what the options of the possibilities are. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got these people who had been in industries for years, sometimes even 100 years. In a specific industry, I don't know how long, you know, construction tools have been around at least, you know, electric tools, maybe 40-50 years, honestly, I don't know, but they've been in business, somebody's business for a while, 

Damiano Raveenthiran  22:21

Yep. 60 years, 70.

Michael Maher  22:22

They don't even know what's possible in the economy, and they're out there. And so you're having to go in and talk to these brands and teach them this new lingo, this new Startup Slang, here, here's what this means. And not only do you have to teach them, what it means, you have to explain to them why that's important. Why they should even care?

Damiano Raveenthiran  22:43

Yeah, oh, yeah. 100%. And, and, you know, now I think with the marketing landscape, sort of changing a lot over the last few years, you know, like, I think a lot of like, ad platforms out there, like Facebook ads, and Google ads are kind of letting a lot of brands down, there's a real shift towards content. And so when I started flying, we, we invested pretty heavily in our content team. So we have entire teams of like videographers and photographers. And, you know, people like really good graphic designers to make content for our clients. And in a lot of cases, it really just starts there, right, you have a brand, you're maybe doing okay, with a brick and mortar store, you're maybe selling on Amazon here and there, but you want to take it to the next level, you don't know how it, we usually start with content, just creating a ton of really good content, and then creating a really good conversion experience where we can drive traffic and get you more sales, hopefully, 

Michael Maher  23:32

It's crazy that you say that because, you know being on ads is the way that you get traffic to people, you know, to a website. And like, for me, when I talk about Amazon, I say, you know, the strategy is simple, it's get good real estate. So you know, beautify the real estate, which is your product listing, and then send traffic to it. That's the advertising piece. The way you used to do things on Amazon 567 years ago, there was no ad platform. So it literally was, you know, have the most SEO relevant product and try to have the best photos. And it was photos on a white background, really bad, maybe Photoshop stuff, even. Even if you go right now and look at big brands, they might have one image of their product. Yeah, totally relying on brand strength and the brand name, they're not necessarily gaining more market share. But you know, they're selling, they could even be selling a million dollars a year or something. And it's not really impacting their top line, because they're looking at things in billions. But that we started to invest this year, a lot more heavily in really good content. And the difference that it makes a lot of people don't a lot of people think, well, you know, if I can as long as I can see the product, it's not I don't need to see someone using it. I don't need to see, you know, I just need to know more about the product. And what people don't realize is that we're very visual people. I mean, I think people realize that we're very visual people, but we're so visual that when it comes to eCommerce, we need to still have somewhat of a tactile experience, like in the store. And one of the case studies, I guess you could say that I use for this is there is a company that was doing a lot of 360 photography on Amazon, doing it for Walmart, too, but allowing people to view a product, you know, all the way around, and they work with a bug spray company. why would you need to see bug spray? You see the can you know what's in it? You know, you know, what it? Does anyone know? Does it have these ingredients? Is it effective? They saw when they put a 360 degree photo up, they saw a 10% increase in conversion rate. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  25:46

Wow. 

Michael Maher  25:46

10%. That's ridiculous. And it's just, it's bug spray. But that tells me and I think it tells it should tell a lot of people that people want still want the experience, I don't think brick and mortar is ever going to go away. It's still going to be there. Ecommerce is growing as a part of total retail. But like you said, you're you're not just curating. Okay, we got the best path to purchase and all the stuff but you're creating an experience for people, when you build them, these sites, your, you know, UX or UI. And user interface is basically what I'm saying for people who maybe don't know, but it's what is the customer experience? Like? That's even kind of a newer field, right? What would you say, like past decade where people really say UX UI

Damiano Raveenthiran  26:34

100% yeah, I would say, yeah, you know, seven to 10 years, for sure. You know, one of the things that the I don't know how people are still, like, amazed by this, but when we build a store, you know, will usually follow best practices in terms of the UX and the UI. But the point of it is that we set up all of the tracking necessary for you to really see the user behavior, and really see how people are using the store. And then we kind of help our merchants on a regular basis, really look at like how their customers are using the store. And, you know, we can find friction points drop-off points. And we even go as far as doing like user interviews and all sorts of stuff to figure out the best way, 

Michael Maher  27:15

You'll reach out to customers.

Damiano Raveenthiran  27:16

Oh, yeah, 100%, we have an entire team doing that. We also offered this service called the, I think, I think we're one of the only agencies that are offered, but it's called the abandon checkout booster. And so whenever someone abandons their checkout, we actually grabbed their, their phone number, and we give them a call, and we try to figure out why. And in some cases, you know, they just got distracted. And you know, at that point, we have the opportunity to just upsell them or get them to complete the transaction. But in other cases, they couldn't figure out how to do it, right. Like it happens sometimes, right? Like,

Michael Maher  27:46

You don't know that because you're on the back and you're like, Oh, I'm figuring all this stuff out. This is so cool. But you're not getting the actual user experience.

Damiano Raveenthiran  27:55

Exactly. So by setting up all of that tracking and gathering all that data, that's how you make it better over time. And that's how you really increase your conversion over time. And, you know, I think there's there's a lot of value in Shopify and other platforms that allow people to, to have full control over their, their front end and what your website is going to look like, right?

Michael Maher  28:16

But you have, but you have to test that. That means you have to know what the consumer is going through. I will I'll say this, when it came to onboarding clients, I had someone come in and audit that process, because I didn't know what it looked like, I know, we had some inefficiencies on our side. And we found a ton of stuff that we got to fix and change. And it made onboarding so much more simple. And then I even saw when we would onboard people there, there was like this delay, while they were, you know, filling out some information. And so we had to flip some stuff so that there was engagement right away. And then we said, hey, we need you to do some work, we need you to give us this information while we go and do some other stuff. But it was understanding the user experience and I actually even had someone go and do interviews with prospects that we lost with current clients and say like, why did you choose Cartology? Why didn't you choose Cartology? What were you thinking, because I could be talking about sales all day, like, we're gonna grow you, we're gonna grow you. But if people are coming to us and saying, We really are focused on profitability, well, then I should really be focusing my message towards profitability, if someone's coming to the cart, and they're saying, I really want to know that, you know, you have my back when it comes to return, then maybe that's something that needs to be shown it once it's in the car, or you know, very prominently on the page, something like that. And that's what you're helping people with is helping them to better understand the user experience, so that they can actually not just be online, but so that they can be successful and convert or get sales.

Damiano Raveenthiran  29:51

No, oh, yeah. 100% and, you know, there's, there are certain websites that you know, we've worked with merchants that have known this for years. So, you know, We work with merchants that have been doing conversion rate optimization for the last seven years. And so we've actually seen, like, all of the trends, what has worked been working, what hasn't. And then one of the things that's the most, I guess, like, surprising, for me, at least is, you know, in the last couple of years, we've been helping a lot of merchants with international expansions. And so we have merchants in North America launching to Europe, we have some in Europe launching to maybe some, you know, some countries in the Gulf region or

Michael Maher  30:26

So only website for those regions.

Damiano Raveenthiran  30:29

And then and then you'll, you'll kind of notice that like people in those specific regions are using the website differently, right. And so the experience has to be different, a lot of the shipping stuff is like not the same in some places. So you kind of need to, like, take all that into account. And here are sort of like we're really specializing in that. So we're specializing in international expansion, helping merchants launch into new regions, and doing that successfully through partnerships and a lot of partners in different regions. Yeah, and it's just, it's just been like, super surprising to see that, that people in other parts of the world use different, different ways to use websites in different ways.

Michael Maher  31:07

One of the technologies when I was running my own site, that really blew my mind was KISSmetrics. And seeing heat maps, I don't even know if KISSmetrics is like relevant anymore. But seeing a heat map of how people are interacting with the site knowing Okay, they're not even scrolling down this far. I mean, that's all data I know that Amazon has, but that they're doing on their side that they're not necessarily sharing, but seeing on my own website was crazy. To me, it was like, Oh, wow, people like this, people don't like this. And so actually, being able to get into the customer perspective was totally worth whatever the cost was.

Damiano Raveenthiran  31:44

Yeah, yeah. 100%. And, and like I said, right now, you know, you have a, you have, like, companies like Facebook, right or meta that are going to completely revolutionize what the user experience on an eCommerce store. Or just like when people purchase online is going to look like right. And so I think over the next five years, we're gonna start seeing a lot of variations of like, new experiences that we can create for our merchants. And that's also why it's important for merchants to kind of take a lot of that into account. Right. Amazon right now is still not doing anything with cryptocurrency as far as I know. Yeah. Right. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's all on top,

Michael Maher  32:24

Probably take a while for them to, to jump on board. I mean, there's some things then they're pioneering and like logistics, but other things they you know, they kind of shy away from, like, CBD, you can't sell CBD on their site, which I get, because even if it's legal. Even if there's a gray area digital, it's a gray area, and it's still not taken off of the schedule one narcotics list. So like, technically, it's federally illegal. It's just all this. There's all this crazy stuff. And so I'm sure they're like, Yeah, we're not getting our hands in that at all.

Damiano Raveenthiran  33:02

Yeah, that's, that's crazy.

Michael Maher  33:05

For merchants out there who are, who know, eCommerce is I got we have to do something. What it but I don't know. And by the way, I agree with you, the people that don't even haven't even started anything, it's hard to go down. You know, like, you're basically only go only going up from there. There's a period of understanding. But one of the things about people who haven't even been there yet is there's not they're not putting on airs of Oh, yeah, we know this, we know this, we know this, there's nothing wrong with not knowing something and getting help I get help. I'm not a salesperson. That's not my forte. So I hired a sales coach to help me to be better at talking about what it is that I do and focusing the, you know, the client. So those people that know a little can actually be kind of a hindrance, because they don't allow you to come in and do your thing. And they want to, they want to control it when in reality, right? Look, we have your brand's best interests in mind. We want to help you anyway, I digress. If someone is wanting a retailer, excuse me a brand is saying I, you know, I know we need to get on eCommerce. I don't know where to start, what where would you direct them?

Damiano Raveenthiran  34:14

So usually, the way that I look at it is there's three main pillars of a successful eCommerce experience that you have to think about, there's product and the entire experience with the product, what does the fulfillment look like? How long does the shipping take? You know, packaging, things like that. It's pretty important. Then you have content, which is you know, how are people going to interact online with your product, photography, videography, graphic design, all that stuff. And then finally you have the conversion. So what we usually do with a merchant that's brand new to eCommerce is will usually try to go through those three steps and figure out sort of like where they are right now. They don't have anything online yet at all. We'll make sure that the product is just perfect. We'll work on the logistics, we'll work on the fulfillment, the packaging, like all of that stuff that they need. If they have like you know, specific requirements for shipping, you know, it happens in certain industries, we're gonna need to figure all that stuff out, then create the content and then go over to actually building a website that can convert, we found that merchants that kind of use this framework, when launching a product are way more successful than those who are trying to trying to do it all at once. So we kind of like will follow that with some of our merchants, and some merchants are going to be earlier than others, you know, we have some that just have an idea, hey, they want to launch a product, they have no clue how to how to even create the product. And so we'll put them in touch with our network of sourcing agents in places like China or turkey, you know, find some really good products and some really good samples and

Michael Maher  35:39

Product development person, it does not package design, something like that. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  35:43

Exactly. I had helped them develop the product, all the way to launch right. So we can start at the very beginning. That's why our name is Startup Slang, it's in the name. But that being said, we have worked with lots of fortune 500 companies as well. We work with companies like Dyson, and Panasonic Converse International. And this kind of goes on. 

Michael Maher  36:00

Everybody needs help with eCommerce, because yeah, like we said, the people that are just starting don't know, but the people that have been in business for a while, don't know, it's only some of the people that have been in the middle that have been, you know, kind of pioneering stuff that actually knows so. Yeah, exactly.

Damiano Raveenthiran  36:15

Exactly. All right. Yeah, I'm just gonna add one more thing. And then the other thing is, you know, for these bigger enterprise-level companies, you know, one of the things that I noticed is people change jobs all the time nowadays, right? So it's really hard to find the type of talent that you need that really knows eCommerce. And when you come to an agency like us, like we have the advantage of having worked with over 2000 brands in the last few years. And so, you know, we've seen what works and what doesn't work, like we've, we've spoken to a lot of them, we've seen them fail, we've seen them succeed. And so that expertise is not something that you can just find, like very easily out there. And so it's you do, in some cases, absolutely need an eCommerce agency to help you accelerate your growth.  You have such a cool vibe about you? I need to, I need to meet you in person. You're, you're like, Well, of course this is this and yeah, and like just very knowledgeable dude. So thanks for coming on the podcast if people want to find you. Where should they look? Would they look at Comic-Con? Would they look at your local university hiding behind a professor dog anyway to scare them? Like, where are you going to? Where should people go if they want to find you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our website is the number one place where they can find us and so startupslang.com. There's a very cool little chat bot there that can help direct you and yeah, you can also find me on Twitter @DamianoR usually they're talking about cryptocurrencies and NFT's and offers and so yeah, those will be the two main channels.

Michael Maher  37:45

Cool. Well, you heard it here people. Damiano is a pioneer in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. There's going to be some changes coming up at you know, next five years. So be on the lookout for that longer game is all about retail. And eCommerce is a big part of retail. It's growing and grew a lot during the pandemic and it's not slowing down. We're seeing numbers, at least stay the same as when you're looking at total retail sales. So if you're not on eCommerce, and you want to get involved in starting eCommerce, you want to build your on-site, go to startupslang.com and find out more and just talk to Damiano and his team. It sounds like a way to help you. That's it people the end of the show is here. Goodbye. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  38:29

Thanks for having me. 

Michael Maher  38:30

Oh, yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. 

Damiano Raveenthiran  38:32

Awesome.