Editor’s Note: This transcript was created using AI transcription and formatting tools. While we’ve reviewed it for accuracy, some errors may remain. If anything seems unclear, we recommend referring back to the episode above.
Episode Trailer
Eden: Having a nice-looking product is not going to make someone buy your product. You need to be able to communicate why, and you can’t communicate why through a picture.
A lot of people think zero experimentation—they think ‘oh okay, I’ll be testing ads’—like well that’s one part of it, but that’s not the only thing. There’s so much more.
What do you think about the future of CRO?
I think the bigger question is: is CRO just going to stay as it is, or is it going to be absorbed by a different department?
About VWO
Welcome to another episode of the Women in CRO series by the VWO podcast. This series is an ode to the contribution of women in the CRO industry.
Before we speak to our special guest for this episode, here’s a quick summary of who we are and what we do: VWO is a leading experience optimization platform that helps fast-growing brands optimize their digital experiences. Using our latest product, VWO Insights, you can understand user journeys and identify conversion roadblocks on your website and mobile apps.
So without any further delay, let’s jump right into the conversation.
Introduction
Shilpa: Hello everyone, all the viewers and listeners who are listening to this podcast. On today’s episode we have Eden Bidani, Head of Strategy and Copy at Cape Agency.
Eden is a seasoned professional who specializes in helping SaaS, tech, IT, and IoT companies acquire more customers profitably through strategic messaging. With over a decade of experience, Eden has honed her skills in conversion copywriting, conversion optimization, and crafting compelling narratives that resonate with target audiences.
At Cape Agency, Eden and her team work tirelessly to reveal the full potential of a company’s technology by translating complex concepts into clear and impactful messaging. Whether it’s revamping website copy, optimizing ad campaigns, or refining email sequences, Eden’s expertise ensures that businesses effectively communicate their value proposition to their audience.
You can visit cape.agency to learn more about her amazing work. Hey, Eden, how are you?
Eden: Hi! Thank you, it’s good to speak with you today. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here with you today.
Shilpa: Thank you so much for accepting the invite and becoming a part of this podcast. I’m looking forward to this conversation, especially when we talk about women in any industry—that is something that I’m very passionate about.
How’s your day been so far? How’s 2024 been so far? Any resolutions or highlights you’d like to talk about?
Eden: 2024 is off to a bang—hitting the ground running. Conversion rate optimization, experimentation, and copywriting in general—it’s one of those things that when people need it, they really need it. It’s almost like plumbing or a handyman—businesses always need someone to come in and give them a hand to lift their conversion rates and help them drive better business results. There’s always something to do, always someone that needs help, whether they’re launching a new product or repositioning. There are always so many exciting things going on, so there’s plenty to do. Busy, busy!
Shilpa: When you were growing up, was this something that you had imagined you’d be doing after so many years, or was there a separate path that you wanted to take?
Eden: This is absolutely not where I expected or imagined I would end up. When I went to university, I studied anthropology and sociology, and I thought marketing—everything to do with marketing, advertising, growing business—I was so not in that headspace at all whatsoever.
While I was studying at university, I was working in a sales job to help pay for rent and bills. I actually managed to find a way to make peace with that conflict between the need to grow businesses and sell, and the need to be authentic and open and understanding and have great communication.
At the end of the day, when companies have good products—when they’re good solid companies and have something that is able to deliver incredible value to a group of people—what they struggle with most is that authentic communication. It’s how do you tell people about that in a way where you don’t have to shout, you don’t have to forcefully try to sell someone something, but how do you communicate that value of what you have to offer in a way that the audience is able to best receive that message? Basically, that’s everything to do with conversion rate optimization and copywriting especially.
I was able to make peace between those two kind of polar opposite fields—sales and anthropology—and actually bring them together to where I am working today.
Philosophy and Approach
Shilpa: Are there any philosophies or principles that you abide by and something that has shaped up your life in general?
Eden: The guiding principle for me has been what I learned in anthropology. One of the best ways someone put it to me once is: “Everyone has a right to an opinion, but that’s also an opinion”—so that statement is also an opinion.
When you think about things that way, whenever you approach a situation or you’re facing a certain situation, what other perspectives can you look at it from? You have an immediate gut reaction, but then let’s try and think why you had that reaction, and now let’s peel back the layers to see if there are other perspectives you can use to look at the same problem or situation.
Very often, just by shifting your perspective and trying to get past what your initial gut reaction was, it leads you to so many deep, incredible insights. Anthropology, at the end of the day, is trying to see the world from someone else’s perspective, which obviously for conversion optimization is huge because you’re really trying to put yourself in the user’s shoes as much as possible before actually putting them in experiments.
It’s really powerful in helping you get to the root cause of what the problem is, and not just the surface problem. Not surface-level problems like “it’s the CTA button color” or “it’s this headline”—something’s wrong with it. Actually, maybe we’re taking the entire wrong approach with this page. Maybe we need to rethink about where this fits into the user’s experience as a whole. It’s not always so simple, and it’s very rarely a surface-level thing.
Success Stories and Case Studies
Shilpa: Are there any success stories that you’d like to talk about where you might have used anthropology as a concept for some client that worked out really well?
Eden: Absolutely. One of my favorite examples that I love to share—I have permission to share this—I was working with John Ostrowski, also known as Positive John, who’s a very big name in CRO and experimentation. We were brainstorming together for a company called Brainly.
They were looking to increase the number of signups. The way they had the current flow was that users would enter their information and be presented with one answer, but then a blurred paywall would come up—like when you go to the New York Times and can see the top third of an article and then it asks you to subscribe to see the rest.
They wanted to encourage people to download the app (the app was free), but the user experience was that they put in their information, got one answer, and then were prompted with this paywall-type screen to encourage them to download the app.
They were getting tons of negative feedback from it. People were really frustrated with it. They’d been trying a couple of different copy variations, and the copy wasn’t bad—it was clear, to the point, had three bullets talking about all the benefits of the app—but still it was really frustrating people.
We started brainstorming and I said, “I think when people see this paywall, it’s like a gut reaction—they have this negative gut reaction because they’ve seen it in other places and it’s really frustrating for them. They probably don’t even get a chance to read all of the copy. Instead, maybe we’re trying too hard to sell the app even though it’s free. Maybe we’re trying too hard to push the conversion to the app instead of making it seem like a logical next step.”
The hypothesis was: let’s change it and say instead of “get the app for free, has all these amazing benefits, sign up now,” let’s say “unlock more answers” or “download the app to reveal more answers—by the way, it’s free.” Really simple, two lines of copy, just prompting them that they can unlock more answers immediately and they’re not going to have to pay for anything—all they need to do is download the app.
That’s what they started running, and the results were immediate. They had zero negative feedback and conversions doubled instantly for app downloads. There was immediately a cut in the number of negative feedback they had from users, and then the conversion rate doubled as well.
It was only by looking at it from the user’s experience perspective. They were seeing a roadblock to what they wanted—they wanted to see more answers—so they were seeing a roadblock. We simply took away that illusion of a roadblock and said, “Look, you can get more answers if you do this one thing,” and it made downloading the app seem like the absolute logical choice for them to do.
Understanding Target Audiences
Shilpa: What’s the first step of understanding your target audience, and how do you tailor your web copy or any copy to resonate with them?
Eden: The first thing I always try to do—and again it depends on the client and the availability—but I try to speak with the client’s customers one-on-one. That is the most impactful way to get really deep qualitative information and a deeper understanding about them.
Nothing compares to being able to sit down for 30-40 minutes with someone who bought the product, loves it, and now they’re going to tell you why they love it and what’s the value in it. You can actually then use what they’re telling you to improve that experience on the other end, both in copy and in terms of UX layout—absolutely everything.
If you can’t speak with them in interviews, then try running a survey—not like an NPS survey “do you like our product yes/no”—but even asking a simple question: “What is the one most impactful thing that this product has done for you?” It’s an open-ended question, but they can really get into detail describing how it’s benefiting them and what value they see that it delivers.
That is the closest way or fastest way to get to the audience’s understanding of how they see the product or company and how it’s positioned in their mind, which is crucial to understanding how we can reach more customers, how we can reach a wider audience.
The Power of Copy in Conversions
Shilpa: How do you make clients understand how a simple copy change can be so beneficial and can impact conversion rate at a very high level?
Eden: It’s very tricky to work with a client that is not open to exploring new directions. The way that I tend to explain it to clients is that copy is one element of the user experience, but it has an impact on the entire user experience.
Yes, design is important. Yes, UX/UI, the channel it appears on—all those elements are important. But the copy is really a defining element of the user experience because it acts as an interface between—it helps the audience understand what they’re seeing on the page, what they need to do, where they need to go, what they need to click on, why, and why they should convert.
Having a beautiful layout on the website is not going to make someone buy your product. Having a nice-looking product is not going to make someone buy your product. You need to be able to communicate why, and you can’t communicate why through a picture.
Some clients say, “But Apple does it—they have ads with two words and everyone buys their stuff,” or “Nike does it—they don’t even need to have words in their ads, they just have a picture of someone all sweaty and everyone buys their stuff.” But Apple and Nike have been spending billions of dollars on marketing. Everyone knows who they are. They don’t need to explain why anymore.
For companies that have not yet spent billions of dollars and have 40+ years that they’ve been ruling the market, you do need to explain why people should buy from you or what is that value. Copy is the fastest way to explain that.
Customer Research Example
Shilpa: Can you share an example of what kind of feedback you received from customers and how you used that feedback in your copy?
Eden: A perfect example: there was a luxury women’s bag from Belgium that I was working with. They wanted to create a really strong landing page for their product that talked about all the benefits.
I said we really need to speak with your customers, so I was able to interview five of their customers. The amount of feedback was just mind-blowing. They gave me so many new words and descriptions for what their life was like before and what their life was like after with these beautiful bags.
It’s a luxury work bag—practical and looks nice. One of the customers, she’s a teacher, said: “I used to every day have three bags in the trunk of my car. I had a gym bag, I had a lunch bag, and I had my work bag. I would switch my bags in and out of the trunk all day long and I was lugging three bags with me around school and things like that.
“I can fit like 80% of the things—almost everything—into this one beautiful bag. And the best part: it does not look like a mom bag.”
I will never forget that she said it doesn’t look like a mom bag. I was like, “What do you mean a mom bag?” She said, “It’s just any old kind of bag that you stuff everything in because you’ve got a bunch of kids and got so much to do with your day, and you just take it with you because nothing fits in something else.”
It was such a powerful description. Those descriptions made it straight through to the landing page to describe the customer’s experience: you don’t want to have a bag that looks like a mom bag, you don’t want to look like you’re late for a flight all the time because you’re carrying a trolley behind you.
Those descriptions made it to the page, and that page is now—it’s almost coming up to three years since we launched it—and it’s still their highest converting page. Every time they run it, it still works as far as I know.
Building Personal Brand and LinkedIn Strategy
Shilpa: Any tips for somebody who’s starting as a freelancer and wants to build their own brand? Any tips on what they should do on their LinkedIn platform to get more traction?
Eden: For every post that you put out, make sure you’re commenting or engaging with other people’s posts at least twice as much. The best way to do that—you want to take, but you have to give as well.
I’ll be totally transparent: some weeks I don’t even have time to post, but I’ll spend time trying to comment on other people’s posts, and that still gets action back to your profile and to your content. It still gives it a lift on the platform.
It’s really important to engage with others because they’re not just looking at what you post—they want to know how you think as well. A lot of people, copywriters especially, but people in general, are often hired because of how they think and not necessarily because of what they do.
People think, “I like the way they think” or “That’s smart” or “That’s really clever” or “That’s a deep insight that I didn’t know before. That sounds really interesting. I want to know more about that person or I want to potentially work with them.”
Even a very thoughtful comment on a post—something that even challenges, like “I know you’ve said this, but have you considered this perspective?”—anything where you feel free to share your professional opinion on things in the comments and not just in posts. That engagement is really helpful.
Shilpa: What’s your advice to those who want to start writing on LinkedIn but have some sort of hesitation?
Eden: I’m going to give some advice that I heard somewhere and I actually gave to my eldest daughter the other day: people don’t think about you as much as you think they do.
When we leave the house in the morning, if we feel that our hair’s not exactly right or there’s a small coffee stain or whatever, all these kinds of details can really annoy us and we think that the whole world is looking at that one stain on the shirt or that one hair that’s out of place. But rarely do people actually notice that because they’re also thinking about themselves from that same perspective.
Everyone is really preoccupied with themselves and they do not see what you see of yourself. Having that understanding—don’t be afraid to start posting. I know it can be really nerve-wracking, but people will see it and they will forget it.
Even if you put posts and have sometimes spelling mistakes in your posts that you notice only later on (and I’m a copywriter), people say “What’s the problem?” I am human, so it happens. I haven’t had a client come to me and say “I’m not gonna work with you because you had a spelling mistake in your LinkedIn post.” They’re not judging you by that and not looking as deeply at that as you are.
Just don’t be so afraid of getting out there and just doing it. The more you practice, the easier it becomes.
The Future of CRO
Shilpa: What do you think about the future of CRO? Where is it headed?
Eden: I think the bigger question is: is CRO just going to stay as it is, or is it going to be absorbed by a different department?
I think currently it sits kind of between marketing and product, but it seems to be moving much more toward product because there are elements of conversion rate optimization that happen naturally in marketing, but then there’s also a lot that’s going on with product at the moment with feature experimentation, which is also really important.
I think it’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. I have a feeling that CRO is going to start becoming part and parcel of product departments in the future, because product and especially product marketing is now starting to own vision, positioning, messaging, and some of the content creation elements as well as the actual product itself.
I think that will be because I don’t think enough feature experimentation or pricing experimentation happens. A lot of people think of experimentation and think “oh okay, I’ll be testing ads”—well, that’s one part of it, but that’s not the only thing. There’s so much more.
Experimentation is part and parcel of the business strategy. It helps people stay competitive, stay a step ahead, keep evolving in line with the needs of their audience and their consumers. It’s so powerful.
Sometimes when you start peeling back the layers of a conversion problem, you find out it’s something where their visual identity and their copy are so totally out of alignment—like they look corporate but they’re trying to sound fun and cool and young, or they look fun and cool and young and they sound corporate. That’s getting into brand and positioning problems, which is tied to the business strategy.
AI and Copywriting
Shilpa: What’s your take on AI when it comes to content? A lot of advice coming in is to use AI to generate copies. How are you incorporating AI within your work?
Eden: I have not yet cracked the code in terms of how to use AI with my own work, I’ll be honest. First of all, I often work with a lot of tech companies, so they often have sensitive IP and I can’t put that into any external system, so that strikes out ChatGPT and everything else anyway.
I’m not a designer—I look at Midjourney and AI and think “wow, that’s so cool,” but that’s because I don’t do design and don’t know how to do it myself. For me, it’s easier to sometimes just write the thing from scratch instead of trying to perfect the prompt, put something in, and then actually get something out that I can use.
I would still need to tweak it and edit it and change it up. By the time I get the output back, I don’t often find things that are usable. Yes, it could be that there was a great deal of prompt engineering that needs to happen, but for me as someone who has this existing skill, it’s often longer for me to spend that time prompting and editing than it would be to just write it in the first place.
There are definitely elements that it can help with. You can feed it, for example, a transcript and say “what are the key points that come out of this?” or “what are the key themes?” Feed it survey data—anonymized survey data—”what are the top pain points, what are the top benefits?” Things like that are great. Turning things that humans take a long time to do—fantastic. It can really help with a lot of those things and get that process moving faster.
But when it comes to content, it’s very difficult because what it essentially does—ChatGPT especially—is predict the next likely word. Often you will have it produce content that looks okay, but the second you actually start reading it, you sometimes see that there are sentences that loop back on themselves or one point is repeated consistently just using different words.
One thing I sometimes use ChatGPT for is telling me what I shouldn’t write. If I put something in because it’s trained on everything available on the internet, if it outputs me something, I know I need to write something very different because that’s the total sum of what everyone has written. So I know that I need to do something different because otherwise it’s not going to stand out—it’s gonna sound like more of the same.
Women Leaders and Advice
Shilpa: Any particular leaders that you look up to, any women specifically in the industry that you look up to?
Eden: One of my favorites is Talia Wolf from GetUplift. She was the first—I bought my very first online course from her on emotional conversion rate optimization and I absolutely loved it.
I really admire everything that she’s done because I see it today as well—a lot of people look to optimize things to death. They just keep spinning on these surface-level tactics. When Talia says, “Look, what is the whole user experience on the site? How does the copy and the UX and everything come together and what kind of emotional experience are they having as a result?”
If the copy is fun and playful but the site looks like it was done in 1995, that’s a huge disconnect. Or if the site looks playful and great but the copy sounds like they took whatever ChatGPT spit out and didn’t even proofread it—huge disconnect there as well.
What is that emotional experience you want people to have? It’s really powerful and really influenced the way I think about conversion optimization.
Shilpa: Any piece of advice for women across different industries who are dreaming big?
Eden: Don’t be afraid. This is for women in business in general—don’t be afraid. You do not have to have all the cards lined up, everything set in place, to have a good career or a good life for yourself and do what you love.
I’m going to be blunt and honest here: I have seven kids. I was a working mom and I love it, and I’m able to take care of my family and I’m able to do what I love. You can have it all. You can carve out the life that you want to live.
Don’t push off traveling overseas because you want to level up. Don’t push off starting a family because you think you need to level up. You can have it all. You don’t have to follow someone else’s game plan for success. You can roll with the punches, you can take things as they come, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you’re going to get there.
Things for me did not happen overnight—they absolutely didn’t. It’s taken eight years of hard work to get to this point. But here I am. If I hadn’t put one step in front of the other, one step after another, I wouldn’t be here today.
Keep on keeping on and you will get to where you want to be eventually. But don’t think that just because things in life happen that you have to put everything on hold or that you have to be laser-focused on moving up. The richness of those life experiences also help you calibrate your journey along the way.
Don’t put off traveling, don’t put off getting married and having kids, don’t put off the big life things because you can build a great career and do work that you love and you can have a fulfilling life at the same time. You need to work on the balance, but you will get there.
Rapid Fire Round
Shilpa: Let’s switch gears a little. There’s a surprise little round which we call the rapid fire segment.
Q: Three apps that you can’t live without?
A: Monday.com for work management, Google Calendar for being organized, and Brain.fm—it gives you music based on neurologically tested patterns, great for deep work, getting into meditation, relaxing. I use it pretty much every single day.
Q: If a movie was made about your life, what would the title be?
A: “Expect the Unexpected.” Everything I imagined is so different to what I thought, but I couldn’t be happier.
Q: One thing that you’d like to change about the CRO industry?
A: I would like to change the way people talk about growth marketing and all these “try this hack, it guarantees you will see X result.” It’s not true. There are so many variables that go into the success of any experiment. When you try an experiment one time, it doesn’t mean that in a few months when you try it again it’s going to fail again or win again. We really don’t know—that’s the whole point.
Less emphasis on these “hacks that brought 3,000% lift in conversion rate” and more on breaking down why, with context. Give context as to how those results came about, because it’s not the result—it’s the process. Experimentation is this ongoing process that’s leading to incrementally better results every single time.
Q: What’s the most random fact you know by heart?
A: That you can’t lick your elbow. I know there’s going to be a lot of people trying this right now. You cannot actually lick your elbow—it’s fairly impossible for most people to do that.
Q: Guilty pleasure when it comes to TV show or movie?
A: I try not to watch as much as possible now that I have so many kids and don’t have time. But back in the day, I was a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I grew up on all the books, and when the movies came out it was fantastic. I still remember that very fondly—they were really well done.
Q: If you had a podcast, who’s the first person that you would invite on the show?
A: It would be Talia. I would totally geek out and talk with her. We’d probably record for two hours and then never publish it—it would just be mine.
Q: Three books that you would recommend to our listeners?
A:
1. “The Psychology of UX” by John Yablonski (I think he’s over at Mixpanel now). He tied psychological principles back to existing UX principles to prove how they influence and impact each other.
2. “Zag” – It’s a book about business strategy and about taking the opposite direction when everyone is going one direction. Sometimes people keep optimizing to death, iterating in one direction, but don’t take a step back and say “maybe what if we took the opposite direction?”
Q: What is the one superpower that you’d like to have?
A: To be able to have a cooked meal on the table with the snap of my fingers. Flying is nice, but to have food on the table for anyone—that would be life-changing.
Q: One thing that you’re tired of explaining to your boss or your client?
A: The need to trust the process. It’s a process—it’s not a one-and-done thing. It will likely get us to the desired result, but it’s a process and we need to go through the process. It’s not making surface-level changes. Let’s make sure we’re covering everything, we’re validating along the way that we are on the right path, and then we will be able to get to that desired result. Because anything else is just guessing, and businesses can’t afford to guess.
Q: One goal or dream that you would like to achieve in the next three years?
A: I would like to have a book published. I already know what it’s going to be about—I have pages of notes. It would be about how studying anthropology has a huge impact on marketing, business strategy, sales, everything throughout an organization. I don’t think people talk about it enough. They do psychology, they do economics, but anthropology is getting down to those basic human levels and instincts, layering in culture and society and all these other elements as to how to actually move things forward, how to speak to people authentically, how to grow, how to define a strategy.
Closing
Shilpa: Thank you so much for taking out your valuable time. It was lovely talking to you. So many points that you’ve touched are so close to my heart, so a lovely conversation that I’m going to hold for the rest of my life. Thank you so much for becoming a part of this podcast, Women in CRO. Any parting thoughts?
Eden: Nothing in particular. I think we covered all the ground. Just saying what I said before—don’t be afraid. In that pursuit of perfection, we often put off so many things in life because we’re trying to follow someone else’s game plan. Just don’t. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, but don’t stop living your life along the way.
You’ll calibrate along the way. You can’t push something off because you think in a few years’ time you’ll be able to appreciate it more. Maybe the right time is now, and you can still get to where you want to be. Don’t forget to live while you’re pursuing your dreams.
Shilpa: Thank you so much. Take care!
Eden: You too. Have a great day!
