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
Sometimes you can get a little frustrated like why don’t people know this by now – you’ve been doing this for 20 years. This person is just rocking up.
Of course they don’t know this yet, you can’t blame them for not knowing this yet.
While I do admit getting a little bit frustrated at times, you know of course I do, but I try to keep the mindset that they don’t ask because they’re unwilling – they ask because they don’t know.
About VWO
Welcome to another episode of the women in CRO series by 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.
Guest Introduction
Today we’re delighted to have Els, co-founder at AG Consult, joining us. With 20 years of experience in various roles including Chief Content Officer and Editor in Chief, Els is a true advocate for user research. At AG Consult, she’s dedicated to helping businesses with everything from user research and customer centricity to usability, UX and conversion optimization. Join us in extending a warm welcome to Els, an entrepreneur and an expert in CRO.
Interview Content
Personal Introduction & Background
Shilpa: Hi Els, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Els: Well after that amazing intro I’m feeling really really good about myself, Sheela. So thank you, that was lovely. When you’ve been in a business for 20 years, yes, sort of like names accumulate. It happens to everybody who’s been in the game long enough, so there you go.
Shilpa: That’s great to hear and I mean the introduction is just a very short intro of what all you’ve given to the industry, right? So let’s dive more into our conversation. I know that the day has just begun for you, almost like begun for you. Are there any exciting plans ahead for the day or for the week?
Els: Actually yes, I will be going to a wonderful concert tomorrow night. It’s a classical concert. One of my friends is playing the violin together with a wonderful pianist called Ssir Andra Shi, so that is what I’m looking most forward to for the rest of the week – not work but play, also very important.
Shilpa: Like so I believe music is something that you’re pretty interested in, right?
Els: Yeah sure, I think everybody – I mean I don’t know anybody who doesn’t enjoy music in some form or another, whether it be just to relax or to help you focus. I think music is a big part of a lot of people’s lives.
2024 Outlook & COVID Impact
Shilpa: And how’s 2024 going for you? Any resolutions or anything that you’d like to share and what’s something that you look forward to most about 2024?
Els: What am I looking forward to most in 2024? Actually I think we had a great year with AG Consult last year, so I’m looking forward to building on that. I’m looking forward to building on the team and to basically expand our strengths in every area that we specialize in – so user research, but also AB testing and helping companies with their processes and their experimentation culture.
Shilpa: Got it. And what is it that you miss most about the pre-COVID era?
Els: I’m not sure whether I really miss something about the pre-COVID era. I feel like we’ve gone sort of back to how it was a little bit more. If anything, I think it’s actually better because people are – especially where I live in Belgium – every meeting in the past had to be an in-person meeting. People were very adamant that you travel to their office even if it was just for like a meeting that was like 30 minutes or 45 minutes, which is just, you know, so inefficient and also so polluting for the environment if you have to drive.
So I’m actually really grateful that I get to do more online meetings because I don’t have to travel so much and it’s just better for everybody’s time and for the environment. So I think COVID has – while it was a terrible period – business-wise I think it has opened up some opportunities for companies as well.
Shilpa: For sure, and like you mentioned right, there’s so much that’s changed and maybe so much that hasn’t yet as well in the last five years or so. Any belief, any habits or behavior that’s changed your life – something that you’d like to share with us?
Els: Well business-wise, the biggest change that happened for AG Consult with COVID was that we basically went from a fully in-house, in the office company to a sort of hybrid form. And now we’re fully remote in the sense that people can work fully remote, but a lot of people also meet up during the course of the week in a co-working space or somewhere else to just work together on a project or just work side by side because you don’t want to be alone.
And I think before COVID we didn’t really have the company culture to do that. There was a lot of wariness about will everybody still be doing their job when they’re working remotely – of course everybody will still be doing their job when they’re working remotely. And a lot of people enjoy doing their job more that way. So that has been a massive shift for us. And I understand that working remotely is not for everyone, it doesn’t suit everybody. There’s a lot of people who also want to come into the office, but for us at this point in time, the fully remote really works. And that was a big change.
Career Journey & Entry into CRO
Shilpa: Yeah. When you were talking about your company culture and how things have changed, one thing that comes to my mind – and I’m sure that’s the case with a lot of young people or even people who are looking to switch their jobs, right – what is it that inspired you to enter into this world of CRO that’s still something that’s not known to a lot of the organizations, right? It’s something that’s a niche. What was your journey like?
Els: Well, as you mentioned in the intro, I used to be an editor, really. I studied language and linguistics, and my first job for a website was being a content editor of a movie website. And basically this was a movie website that still had to be built, so I also got a say in how should the interface look like, what do we need to have backend-wise, what should the connections between various content types be, basically.
So I immediately basically got thrown into the deep end basically of also, you know, building a website – not that I’m a developer, far from it, but interface-wise, yes. And then basically usability – making sure that people, it was easy for people to find their way – just came naturally.
So this was before there was even Google Analytics. So yes, this is that long ago. And my business partner Carl Heiss and I basically wrote a really big report – I think it was 2002 – and we called it “The State of the Belgian Web.” Where we examined a hundred websites to see, you know, what are they doing right, what are they doing wrong. And we thought, you know, it’ll be fine – we’ll find some mistakes but by and large they should do okay. And we were just appalled. The state of the Belgian web in 2002 was appalling.
And that’s basically how we rolled into usability. It’s how we found out about the existence of a wonderful man called Jakob Nielsen at Nielsen Norman Group, who I still follow today, who still is very relevant in teaching everybody in the field today about UX and usability. And I think a deep knowledge of UX, of usability, is vital if you want to do any meaningful work in conversion rate optimization, because if you don’t know what good looks like, if you don’t know what basically classic or established behaviors or interface patterns are, then it will be very hard for you to come up with a variation to fix a problem that you have found through research.
So I think a solid foundation in UX and usability is just really important, and I would say that because that’s where I come from.
Getting Started in User Research
Shilpa: Yes, and I see the passion towards user research and user testing, the usability side of things, right? For anybody like I mentioned, for anybody who’s new to this entire world, would you have any sort of advice how to get started? Like what would be the initial steps that one could take in order to understand how user behavior is or what all do they need to research first?
Els: I would say start really by reading the classics. And I don’t mean Shakespeare – I mean Steve Krug, “Don’t Make Me Think.” I know it’s an old book, it is a great book because it really gives you an insight into patterns of thinking and patterns in an interface. I would also still say read everything that Nielsen Norman Group has written about user research because they have loads of videos, they have tons of articles.
We do as well on our blog, but it’s mainly in Dutch, so if you’re Dutch, come on over. If you speak Dutch. If not, we have some content in English, but it’s not as extensive as our Dutch content. But I would say start first by reading up on the fundamentals – basically build your foundation first before you try to run, before you try to do like the cool stuff. Get to learn the fundamentals first.
Project Excitement & Client Diversity
Shilpa: Got it. And I see the passion. It brings me to another point – is there any projects in specific that you’d like to talk about that you were really excited about and maybe, you know, it also showed up in your client’s work or anything that you’d like to share?
Els: Well, maybe I’m atypical this way, but I get very excited by a lot of our projects because basically whenever we do research and we find out new stuff, I find that exciting. So whenever we run a survey or do interviews or user testing, the thing is you always learn something new and that excites me. You get insights that you didn’t have before that opens up possibilities for experimentation, for improvement, no matter who the client is – whether they sell handbags (I do have to say I love it when they sell handbags), but they can also sell software, they can sell fiber cable. I get excited by new insights. That’s me.
Shilpa: And I think irrespective of what the product is, what the business is, you always have to start with the basics, right? Like the consumer is different for different brands and different businesses, they will behave differently. So I feel like it’s very important that if you’ve learned something, try also testing that out in another product or another business because it might turn out to be completely different, right, for that set of business or consumers.
So that’s something that I have seen across a lot of – at least for the clients that I work with, I make sure that even for B2B or B2C. When we talk about B2B and B2C, earlier there was a lot of divide as to “this is something that you should do in B2B and this is something that you should do in B2C,” but at the end of the day these are all humans, right? If this is something that’s worked out in B2C, might also try it out in B2B and it may just work out and vice versa as well, right? Any thoughts around that?
Els: Yeah, I think you say it really well when you say that every business is different and you can’t generalize. You can’t just heap everything so-called B2C on one heap and assume everything will work there. Same for B2B. There are things that will work in an interface – these are the fundamentals you need to know. But if you want to really speak to a customer, you have to know: one, who is this customer, and much more importantly, what do they care about? What are their problems? What makes them happy? Why are they here on your website?
And that can be very different for different brands that sell the same thing because they just appeal to a different audience, because the way their solution works has little tweaks, little differences, and those are the things that are important to customers. And that is why we see when you do optimization based on research, it is much more successful because you’re not just, you know, opening up your box of psychological tricks and best practices, but you really find out what is going on with your customers and you can really adjust your testing and your experimentation to that.
Speaking & Industry Recognition
Shilpa: And you share so many insights even on LinkedIn, right, and you’re also acknowledged as one of the highest rated speakers. How do these accolades impact you and how do you continue to improve and strive in this entire world?
Els: I do enjoy speaking at conferences, I do enjoy teaching workshops. I enjoy that much more than personally than writing LinkedIn posts. And I have to say it’s the interactions, the people you meet at the conferences and the shared learning, really, because you might be up there on a stage saying something, but that doesn’t mean that you know everything and it also doesn’t mean that the audience necessarily has nothing to contribute.
So what I like best about giving the talks and doing the workshops is really also not just the knowledge that I share, but the knowledge that everybody in the audience and then the knowledge that everybody in the workshop shares with me. So I like to think that at the end of the day we all walk away smarter. So that’s always my goal.
Ongoing Industry Education Challenges
Shilpa: Yes, that’s a great insight. And while we were talking about user testing, right, it’s been so many years – do you still encounter people asking you why it’s so relevant still and why is it so important?
Els: Yes, because I mean I have to answer the same questions a lot of the time, and that is because there are always people who are new in the field. So I understand when you’ve been in a field for a long time – and 20 years is a long time – sometimes you can get a little frustrated like “why don’t people know this by now?” You’ve been doing this for 20 years, this person is just rocking up – of course they don’t know this yet. You can’t blame them for not knowing this yet.
The same with questions that come from management – they’re not user research experts, of course they’re going to question things. It’s their job to question things. So I try to have a conversation and I try to basically educate people because, yeah, while I do admit getting a little bit frustrated at times, you know of course I do, but I try to keep the mindset that they don’t ask because they’re unwilling – they ask because they don’t know. So it’s my job to make sure to explain that really, for this problem that we’re trying to solve, for this research question, yes, user testing is the best solution and these are the reasons for it.
Building Professional Presence
Shilpa: Yeah. If you were to talk about people who are still starting, right, somebody maybe who’s aspiring to be a founder like you, having their services as well – how important is it to have those LinkedIn posts every day or every week and how do you maintain the consistency? Maybe you could just talk about your previous experience when you were very active?
Els: Yeah, well what we started out – LinkedIn wasn’t the social media platform it is now. When we started out, what was very important was blogging. And we blogged a lot, which is why we have a lot of content and it still serves us to this day. A while back, Twitter (now X) was a very important social media platform, so this again is something – times change. LinkedIn now for sure very important and it has a lot of valuable content as well if you know who to listen to, which is always the same.
When you Google something, don’t just trust the first result that you see. Have a bit of a think about who is the source of this information. Is this a credible source, yes or no? Same for LinkedIn. But I think it’s a great place, one, to build your knowledge if you listen to the right people, and it’s absolutely a great place to dip your toe in the water and to get known.
So yeah, it’s a big part if you want to grow in the industry and if you want to build your name, then yes, making those connections is important. Not just posting, not just the broadcasting, but really using LinkedIn as the social channel that it’s for. What I do on LinkedIn more than post is engage with people and talk to people about stuff that they’ve posted or in a DM if I disagree, and then that brings out sometimes a really great conversation. So I think using it not just to blow your own trumpet, but to make real connections – I think that in the end, in the long run, will stand you in much better stead.
Shilpa: True, true, very true. And I think a big learning for me as well – not just aim to post but also keep interacting. I do interact with a lot of people but of course I’m not very active like a lot of other people, as my peers maybe are on LinkedIn. I think my resolution for 2024 was to at least start posting something or at least be more active on LinkedIn, but I feel like there was always a hesitation of posting because you’re putting your opinions out there, right, and you’re very scared how people will interact with that. But then you could also just interact with other people posting and network through their post as well. So that’s a great learning for me as well. Thank you so much.
Gender Inclusivity in Business
Shilpa: Again, when we talk about women, right, how in your experience can businesses foster inclusivity for women in this field, specifically in this field, or maybe if you want to talk about other fields as well?
Els: Well, I think there are still a lot of misconceptions that men are better at data, men are better or more logical. No. Now I myself am more of an expert in the user research, in the qualitative side of things, but I know a lot of women who are extremely good at the more analytical side of things. So keeping an open mind that everybody has their strengths – and I also know a lot of men who are really great in the qualitative side of things – so just not looking at it from a gender perspective, I think, is important. Not thinking that men are naturally more apt or women are naturally better at – don’t do that.
Just accept that everybody has their strengths and it’s on a personal level, not on a gender level. And when you’re building your team, when you’re building a lineup for a conference, be mindful of diversity. And this goes especially for conferences where you see sometimes there’s a lineup and there’s 10 white men – makes me very, very angry. And it’s simply because very often they’re men and they know a lot of men.
So having a think and expanding your circle – expanding your circle in every way, not just in a sense of gender, but also if you’re European, you tend to know a lot of European folks and not as many African folks or Indian folks or South American folks. And again, social connections are great in expanding your range and expanding your view. And if you do that, you also become, I think, one, a better optimizer, and a better human, because expanding your horizon, opening your mind, is just a good thing all around.
Shilpa: This conversation is very close again to my heart, but I feel we’re moving towards a world wherein there are a lot of industries where we find so many women entrepreneurs, right, and that’s just so encouraging every day that I see these stories. It gives me some sort of courage to keep moving ahead and keep fighting those battles but keep moving ahead, right. So thank you so much.
AI and Future of CRO
Shilpa: Again, when we talk about the CRO industry, right, any predictions for the future of this industry? And there’s a buzz word – AI – that’s come in in the last six months or so that’s very like everybody wants AI, AI, AI. What are your thoughts on that?
Els: Well, yeah, I think AI is a great thing if you use it to help you do things that would otherwise require a lot of time and don’t really require a lot of deep thought. So if you can use it to automate things for you, great.
I’m not a big fan of – I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but it’s something like synthetic users – so doing user research not with real people but with AI pretending to be a real person. Yeah, that sort of stuff makes me really tired because I don’t think we’re at the point yet where AI can reliably be called upon to mimic a real person.
And I do see the appeal for this for companies because what companies want is fast and cheap. That’s what most of the companies are completely obsessed with. When I talk about user testing, like “how long is that going to take, how much money is it going to cost,” not “how much value is that going to bring.” It’s going to bring a shit ton of value, people, and yeah, it’s going to take a little bit longer than if you would just run something through your synthetic user panel, etc.
The point is sometimes you need to take a little bit of time and sometimes you need a human voice and a human thought to really get to the true insights and to not be fooled by what AI says.
It’s like we used to have what I call fake eye tracking – it was software that wasn’t based on any real data, but by looking at the page and the makeup of the page, it gave you a sort of AI-created simulation of an eye tracking heat map. And I’m like, why are you doing this? Either you should have knowledge to know which elements stick out, yes or no, or you get real data, not just not a simulation.
So I’m not the biggest fan of that part of the AI bit. I am a fan when it comes to, you know, can it summarize data for you quickly? Absolutely, that is a game changer. Can it do all the work for you? No, always keep thinking. And I think when we talk about user testing, just my personal opinion, I don’t think humans are going anywhere. It’s not going to replace humans at all because, again, human touch is very important. These are real people that you’re selling to – you will need the input from those real people, right?
Shilpa: Exactly. Great.
Advice for Women in Industry
Shilpa: Switching gears a little here, any advice that you’d like to give to the women in this industry or any other industry, people who are dreaming big, who are trying to achieve big, or maybe they have a little bit of a hesitation in kind of moving ahead, right? Any words from your end?
Els: Yeah, I think it’s very – I hear this a lot from women, young women especially, like you said earlier as well – sometimes I feel a little bit intimidated by all of these guys because guys traditionally have always been taught to be confident and it comes really easy to them. Guys are also not criticized as much when they’re a little bit loud. A guy who is loud is confident; a woman who’s loud – you know, shrill, harsh.
Don’t let that hold you back. There is space for women, and I would say claim your space. Stick your space there. And connecting to other people in our industry – other women like Women in Experimentation, the community run by Lucia and Daphne, is a great place to join. But other spaces as well – spaces where men and women talk about experimentation. I don’t think it’s good to lock ourselves in a bubble either, but really just to claim our space. We are – what we have to say is very valuable, so we can definitely be there. And if you want to get up on a stage as a woman, if you want to be prominent, do it. We need more representation on these stages, we need more representation in these panels so they become truly inclusive panels. I think we’ll soon reach that.
TED Talk Topic
Shilpa: And you were also talking about how you love conferences, right, specifically because of the kind of experience that you get. If you were given the chance of a TED talk, what is the message that you’d like to specifically mention in that talk? Like give us a snippet.
Els: Well, I’ll always speak about user research, and in my latest talk I compare user research to mushrooms. Because yeah, sometimes people get excited and they think magic mushrooms and I’m like no, not magic mushrooms – they get excited.
I compare it to mushrooms because research is actually – it looks deceptively easy, like a lot of mushrooms look deceptively safe to eat when really they are not. A good survey looks the same as a bad survey if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t tell the difference between a good survey and a bad survey because you don’t know that you can ask questions in a biased way. You don’t know that even when you ask a closed question, you should always have a way out – an open answering possibility.
And it’s the same with mushrooms. You might think, “Oh, this looks just like a regular mushroom that I can just fry up in my pan and have with my omelette.” Chances are this is a poisonous mushroom and you will die. You have to be a real expert. You have to really, really know what you’re looking for. You have to be able to turn this mushroom inside out to see is this really a good one.
And the same goes with research. People look at surveys and they go like, “Yeah, but we ran a survey, we got the data.” And I look at the survey and I go like, “Oh no, this is terrible. It’s a miracle you didn’t die.”
So yeah, I think I’d like to – if I had a TED Talk – I’d talk about research and mushrooms.
Shilpa: That’ll be so interesting and such an interesting conversation, Els, really like so many new insights for me and for a lot of our listeners and viewers as well.
Rapid Fire Round
Shilpa: Let’s switch gears a little. We have a short little rapid fire round where I’ll want you to be a little spontaneous, so just buckle up a little.
Quick Questions & Answers
Shilpa: All righty, let’s get started. So three apps that you can’t live without?
Els: Apps! Oh, yeah, well Instagram because I am – like everybody else on the internet – addicted to cat videos. Oh, what’s another app I can’t live without? WhatsApp because I use that to message my mom and a lot of my friends. And another app I can’t live without is – and this is really sad – but I’m a phone gamer: Word Feud. I love to play word games on my computer. I love Connections, I love Wordle, I love Word Feud.
Shilpa: Great! If a movie was made about your life, what would the title be?
Els: Oh God! It wouldn’t be “Oh God,” although hey, I’m open to that. What would the title of the movie be? “She Thought She Was Funny and Sometimes She Was.” I hope that’s – I mean that last bit, I hope. Yes, I don’t know.
Shilpa: That’s so nice! One thing that you’d like to change about the CRO industry?
Els: Oh gosh, only one? Actually no, I’m gonna – I actually think we’re in a really positive and uplifting community. I’ve had a little look in other areas and I have to say I didn’t like what I saw there very much. It felt very cut-throat and very super competitive, whereas I think in our industry there is a lot of support for everybody. I think there’s a lot of support for people who enter. I think there’s a lot of also respect among colleagues. Like a lot of my competitors – even though they are my competitors, I prefer calling them my colleagues because we share things, we share information, we share knowledge. So I’m going to big up the CRO industry instead of tear it down.
Shilpa: Nice! What’s the most random fact you know by heart?
Els: Jesus, the most random fact I know by heart? That maybe that 42 is the answer to the question about the universe and everything. 42.
Shilpa: So weird, I’ll have to Google this.
Els: Yeah, Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Old people and people who like fantasy and science fiction novels will know 42.
Shilpa: Your guilty pleasure when it comes to TV show or movies?
Els: Oh dear, lordy me. Some of my favorite movies are actually the Bill and Ted trilogy, which is again super ’90s. I was introduced to this by one of my really great friends who I went to school with, and a couple years ago he came over and we watched the last one. Was it good? No. Did we have a lot of fun? Yes. If I watch them again now, do I think they’re extremely dated and have not aged well? Uh-huh. Do I still love them? You bet. So yeah, I’m a Bill and Ted fan, and it does help that it’s Keanu Reeves who I’m also a big fan of.
Shilpa: Great! And if you had a podcast, who’s the first person that you would invite on the show?
Els: Oh damn, who’s the first person I would ask? Well, it depends on what the podcast would be about, I guess. If it were about music, I would ask Nick Cave because he’s my favorite musician. If it were to be about our topic, CRO and research, I think I would probably ask Erika Hall because she is one of my research heroes. She wrote “Just Enough Research,” which I think is an absolutely excellent book and another one if you want to get into research. So yeah, Erika Hall.
Shilpa: Three books that you would recommend to our listeners?
Els: Ah, there you go! Well, I’ve already named two, so “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug, “Just Enough Research” by Erika Hall. What’s another book I would recommend? I’m going to go with a fiction book: “Girl, Woman, Other” by – is it Bernard Dadie Evaristo? Damn it, I’ll have to send that to you so you can add that to the liner notes.
Shilpa: Yep, yep, yep. What is the one superpower that you’d like to have?
Els: Superpower? Man, seriously, I used to dream that I could fly, like really fly, and so yeah, I would go completely childish and go fly. I’d love to fly.
Shilpa: Great! What is – sorry – one thing that you are tired of explaining to your clients?
Els: Why open survey questions are so important. Why do we ask open survey questions, Els? That means that analyzing the survey takes up so much time. Why can’t we just use closed questions? Because then we will be putting words in people’s mouths, and sometimes that’s not the greatest idea. For some questions, you need to really open up yourself, open up that text field and get real users’ words in there.
Shilpa: Yeah. One goal or dream that you would like to achieve in the next three years?
Els: What would I like to – so many things that I can’t – I would actually – it would be great if I could convince everybody in CRO of the value of research. Then I would die a happy woman.
Shilpa: Okay, that’s a huge one.
Closing Remarks
Shilpa: All right, so Els, we have had a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for accepting the invite for this podcast. I especially learned a lot, and I hope that’s the same for our viewers and our listeners as well. Any parting thoughts to all of the listeners and the viewers – something like some concluding thoughts that you’d like to share?
Els: Well, since it’s near International Women’s Day, I always know that some people think like, “Is it still really necessary to have an International Women’s Day?” The answer is very much yes. Look around you and have a think to always include women, to open your mind, and to be a feminist. That would be my message to everyone.
Shilpa: I’m just so happy with this conversation, Els. Again, thank you so much for taking out your precious time and your valuable time.
Els: Thank you so much for inviting me and for the great to and fro. This was really fun.
Shilpa: Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day and a week ahead.
