Hello everybody! Welcome back to another episode of Your Website Engineer podcast. My name is Dustin and I am excited to be here with you today because I have an outstanding interview that I believe is going to just blow your mind, if you will. And we’ll talk all about that in just a few seconds.

At first I want to go through the announcements real, real quick. There’s not much that’s happening in the WordPress space this week. It’s maybe because I recorded this a week in advance because I am on a trip this week, or maybe it’s just because we’re in the lull of the summer and we’re just waiting for WordPress 4.3 to come out.

But nonetheless there’s not much going on in the WordPress space. I want to just give this opportunity to remind you maybe it’s time to install the broken link checker plugin and maybe go in and go through and maybe update any broken links that you may have on your website. I know with mine, every once in a while I get those pop-ups that say, “Hey, you’ve got some broken links,” and it takes some time to go ahead and some of those old posts, some of those websites aren’t around anymore so we’ve got to fix those and get rid of those on our site.

The other thing, since this whole episode is going to be talking about opt-ins and email subscribers and stuff like that, this would be a great time to go in and sign up for your own email list and look at that flow. What does it look like when you sign up for an opt-in? Do you get the email right away? How do people get to download your product? All of those different things. Work through that and just see what that looks like on your website.

That kind of goes in with the plugin of the week. I’m going to share with you today about MailChimp for WordPress. This is the official plugin I guess, or maybe it’s not the official one, I can’t even tell. But it is the plugin that you can use to connect your WordPress site with your MailChimp account. Basically you can get more email subscribers and you can add forms and checkboxes, all that kind of stuff, in your WordPress site.

If you haven’t noticed, there’s kind of this theme going on with subscribers and email lists and stuff like that. And that’s what I’m going to talk with, with Borja today. I’m really excited about this episode. He even gave me some strategies on how I could start doing some testing to get more email signups and up that conversion rate on YourWebsiteEngineer.com. So I’m looking forward to implementing some of those in the future. And so I recommend checking that out and just listening to the episode. Learn from Borja – it’s a neat interview and he really shares some of his insights on how you can make a customized website specific for that person. So with that, here we go:

Hello everybody! Today I am here with Borja via Skype and we are talking about some pretty amazing, mind blowing things. I met Borja over at New Media Expo last month, and I guess it was two months ago now, and we just sat next to each other in Chris Ducker’s presentation. He introduced himself, we talked a little bit and we realized that we were both in the WordPress space and then I was just blown – my mind was blown by some of the things he was telling me about; what he and his product can do.

And so we’re going to talk about that today. So Borja, welcome to the show.

Borja: Dustin, thank you so much for having me. And up front I have to say that you have a beautiful website. I was checking it out during the week and I really love your sense of design.

Mr. Hartzler: Thank you. It’s not that old of a site but it took me many, many months to get done. So can you tell me just a little bit about how you got wrapped up in this WordPress community? In the WordPress space?

Borja: So a couple of years ago when I was still working for corporate, I was asked to create a content marketing strategy but it really wasn’t called a content marketing strategy, they just wanted me to create stuff to be shared online.

So I had no idea, I mean, I barely knew about website design. This was six years ago, I don’t know. And doing some research I found out about WordPress which is an awesome content management tool. And I started to learn about WordPress, I started to get involved with everything related to online marketing and everything related to building websites. I started to educate myself. I gained a lot with WordPress innocently. So from then on it was a race to just, you know, WordPress.

Mr. Hartzler: That’s awesome. Yes, it seems like so many people just find WordPress somehow and just fall in love with it and just start using it more and more. Clearly you found a need, and so you created your own product. Can we talk a little bit about a high level overview, a little bit about SmartDuu.com and your product that’s there? It’s a plugin and/or a theme. So just give us a little background. Don’t share everything, just a little bit.

Borja: Sure. So SmartDuu basically is this tool for some WordPress themes and plugins that have web personalization features. And what web personalization is is that it’s a strategy of making your website dynamic and smart enough to recognize different types of visitors and display different versions of your website based on who is that person: where they’re coming from, what they actually like, what keywords they’re using to actually land on your website, what device they’re using, what time of the day they’re – everything about them to make the user experience so much better and to provide much more value.

Because why would you want to display generic content to everyone? The same type of information to everyone when you as a webmaster have the power of identifying who is behind the screen and deliver exactly what they want.

Mr. Hartzler: It sounds a little bit on the stalker-ish side, but it also sounds a little bit on the awesome side.

So how did you come up with this idea to build this? Let’s start there.

Borja: Okay, so I have my own personal blog which is now a podcast which is called MoneyDiver.com. It’s an online marketing blog and podcast. And I have been running it for about three or four years.

And about one or two years ago, I was a bit frustrated by looking – I’m super analytical. Okay? I’m super, super analytical. I’m very geeky about conversion rates and everything that comes with it.

So while looking at my analytics and running some tests I noticed that by doing some AB testing that people with certain characteristics would sign up to certain content that I would display. Certain sign up forms. And other people would sign up to other types of sign up forms. But do I want it to display both of them? And there wasn’t a tool that enabled me to do that.

I also wanted to display different cyborgs, as simple as displaying different cyborgs to my subscribers, to people who were already subscribed to my blog, email subscribers. I didn’t want to display the same sign up forms that they already used.

So I started to write down all of my ideas and I hired a programmer because I didn’t have time to do it all myself, and I’m not even that skilled of a developer. I wouldn’t dare call myself a developer even. So I wrote down everything that I needed, and it wasn’t really a product for sale. I wasn’t visualizing it yet as a product for sale because I thought it was just some crazy stuff that I wanted to do and no one would really be that – so strategic about it.

So I created it, and as time went on it turned into a product. It’s called Cerebro. It’s a WordPress framework. It has [inaudible] [00:08:23] and it’s also a plugin.

Mr. Hartzler: It’s awesome. The key part that I took away from that is, and I think that I’ve been there before thinking about it. Yes, it’s nice to put a signup form in my side bar, but what about those people who have already signed up? It’s the same thing with the popup menu. You know, when somebody comes to your website and they get a popup menu but they’ve already signed up, that’s a horrible experience. It makes zero sense to show them that form again when they’re already signed up. Or even if you wanted to have another form, you know, maybe they want different information. That would be super helpful to get that out there as well.

Borja: Precisely. And the way I explain it to people is imagine walking into a store; into a clothing store. You know, it has an amazing wooden door. You can see they pay a lot of attention to detail. And somehow magically this door greets you. It sees you height, it sees your age by your expressions or whatever, it sees the type of clothing you’re wearing, you know, the brand. Based on that it can determine your social class or your personality or whatever. And somehow magically this door transforms itself to suit your needs and displays products based on your personality. How much more do you think you would buy at such a store?

Now unfortunately this technology doesn’t exist, and I’m pretty sure somehow it would be possible. But online with code, we have no limits as to what we can do. And that is possible and that is what I created.

Mr. Hartzler: That is awesome.

Can we talk about some examples? I know there was one on your website that I read that it was a person who is a food blogger. And they come up with the examples that – I think the example read that she saw most of the traffic was coming from Los Angeles and from New York. So how can this particular blogger take that information and display targeted things on her website?

Borja: So I basically have a process for knowing what do display and who to display because you can’t just make it up. You have to know what you’re doing, you have to know who is going to be seeing your content and what type of content they should be seeing. The best way to start is looking at your analytics and look at what are your most popular posts and what are the top keywords that you’re [inaudible] [00:11:02] in the search engines. And what are your most traffic – the posts with more traffic or pages? What do those posts talk about? Then start looking at who are coming to that page. Where are they coming from, and what devices they’re using? All that information is available in your analytics account or any other analytical tool that you’re using to track visitors. And you should be doing that.

Then you want to be clear about what are the goals that you want people to perform on your website, to sign up. Is it to buy a product right off their first visit? Is it to share? I usually underline, and I recommend a process, a sort of flow of goals.

Like the first goal that you should have in mind is get subscribers. And once that person has subscribed to your list, you should promote a product ideally, if your purpose is to make money from your site or whatever other goal that you might have. Then you might want to share this as another type of goal. So you have to get these straight, for what you want people to accomplish.

Based on those two factors, you create an audience segment. And an audience segment is created based on what you identify from your Google analytics. People that are interested in “Post One”, which is the most popular post, or people that are searching for certain keywords and landing on my website coming from New York City, as you saw in the example in the site. And you can change the wording and the content that you are providing to this person.

So let’s say that you’re offering a guide to people in exchange for people’s email. And people on the “Post A,” which lets say is about hamburgers, you provide a guide about how to create the ultimate hamburger. This person will be much more likely to sign up to your list to get this guide as opposed to getting something not related to whatever they’re interested in. I don't know, Chinese food or who knows. And then in the other posts you repeat the same action.

And you can be as specific as you want. You can do it just based on the topic. You can combine the topic with where they’re coming from. You can combine the topic with where they’re coming from with the device they’re using. So in this case it would be the top three mobile applications that will teach you how to create the ultimate hamburger in New York City. How specific is that?

Mr. Hartzler: Incredibly specific.

Borja: Incredibly specific, that’s right. And the more specific you get, the higher your conversion rates will be. And obviously the more specific you get, the higher the work will be. The more work will be because you have to actually create that content and do that research yourself. You can’t expect a computer to do that for you.

So you have to be very clear about what you’re doing. Who you’re talking to, who your avatar is and what you’re going to display to that person. You can start very simple and then scale up from there.

Mr. Hartzler: Sure. Now can you use this information in a blog post, for example? Say for example you have this narrative in your blog post. You just sat down, you’re looking at a website on your computer and then you could put “on your phone, on your tablet” depending on what they’re using. And you are in such and such state. You know, you can put this information. Is that available to put into blog posts?

Borja: Yes, definitely. Of course.

Mr. Hartzler: I mean, I don't know if it’s going to help with conversions in any way, shape, or form, but it would make those specific posts seem like they’re written directly towards that person.

Borja: You can customize absolutely anything that you want on your website from your logo, from your colors, from your navigation bar. Absolutely everything that you can put out there. Even within a post you can choose to display different words and different paragraphs to people with different characteristics. Different audience segments, right? Maybe you have a video on your website and you can choose to display different videos within that same post in the same location where the video is to different people.

Mr. Hartzler: That’s crazy. And mind blowing.

Borja: So maybe you’re displaying a how-to video and you’ve identified that the person that’s viewing that video actually speaks Chinese. So you can search for a how-to video on the same topic in Chinese to make it easier for that person. And perhaps you might also want to allow them to choose the language if you want.

Mr. Hartzler: Sure. That’s awesome. So my next question is we’ve got all this information that we can use on our website. Can this information be added to our email list? So say for example I have an email list that people sign up and they put their name and the email address. That’s all I ask of them. But it would be super informational, super nice for me inside of Mail Chimp, for example, to have the location tagged with their record so that if I ever wanted to send out a message to people only in Ohio, I could do that. Is that possible?

Borja: Yes, yes, it’s absolutely possible. And your email list and your email provider is your best friend. It’s your best friend for communicating with people. And of course you have all of your subscribers’ information right there and you can use Cerebro to display different information based on different content based on that information that you have from your subscribers. That is absolutely possible.

Mr. Hartzler: Gotcha, awesome. That is so cool. So you talked about early on that it’s a WordPress theme and a WordPress plugin.

Borja: Yes, it’s a WordPress framework for those who know what a framework is. And then it has different child themes.

Mr. Hartzler: Right. So say, for example, you’ve just recently commented how you really like my site. And so maybe I’m going to go in and get the Cerebro plugin. What type of features am I going to be missing by not using a child theme?

Borja: Obviously I limited the type of features that you get from the plugin because I want you to use my full software. But a few design-related things like your navigation bar or your logo which aren’t – it’s not critical.

Mr. Hartzler: So when you say all of the features, like when you were talking about earlier, when you can customize everything, a lot of that’s built into those child themes with the programming that you’ve done and your team has done.

Borja: Right.

Mr. Hartzler: Gotcha. Okay, cool. Another question that I did have is, say for example, we were displaying different pop-ups based on users’ location, say for example. So we’ve got this person on the West Coast, we’ve got somebody on the East Coast. And depending on which sign up form they come to depending on where they’re located, then where are those specific opt-ins stored? The file is probably stored in the WordPress media library wherever that you want online. But the code; you have to customize the code for each of those pop-ups? Can you just walk us through a little bit about how – it’s almost like running an AB test but you’re running a location-based test?

Borja: Its basically just drag and drop. And everything is in regards to your visitors’ information; it’s all stored in your email software. Nothing gets stored in the framework or in your own server. Everything goes to your email software in regards to email name, just as it would with any other signup form, right?

Mr. Hartzler: Correct.

Borja: You don’t need to store that information in order to display different content and identify who they are. Also because you want to store as little information as you can in your website because you want to keep it lean, you want to keep it fast. Right? So that’s an important factor whenever you’re considering – whenever you’re building code.

So yes, it’s just like any other pop-up would work. You do the same thing with customizing your website with Cerebro.

Mr. Hartzler: Gotcha. Does Cerebro work with all email providers, I assume?

Borja: Yes, it works with all email providers.

Mr. Hartzler: I guess when you activate the plugin the plugin connects it to MailChimp or AWeber?

Borja: No, you don’t have to connect it. It’s not necessary. You don’t need to connect it at all.

Mr. Hartzler: Can you just describe how that works, just real quick? Maybe you just did.

Borja: Yes, you can use any sign up forms, absolutely any type of signup forms. It’s absolutely the same thing as – it’s just a way of expanding the way you create content with WordPress. You don’t need to connect with any third party applications or anything like that.

Because in order to display the content, all you need is Cerebro itself. I don’t know if that makes sense. You don’t need to store any information within Cerebro. I mean, Cerebro reads certain types of information, sort of location and the keywords that people are using and the device. It’s all that you need. And in order to identify whether they’re subscribers or not subscribers, you use this other type of parameters that are not related with integrating with third party applications. Otherwise it would provide a lot of limitations.

Mr. Hartzler: Okay, okay that makes sense. Oh that is awesome. I am just really in amazement of our conversation that we had at New Media Expo and then just browsing on your website.

It’s just really, really cool because there’s an example right on the homepage of SmartDuu.com and it says, “For example, you can read this specific paragraph because you are located in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, using a desktop computer, using Chrome, and because you are not a subscriber or customer.” Combining these things and other factors, you can choose to display different content to increase engagement. So I think that’s really powerful. I think there’s a lot of really cool things that you can do with Cerebro.

I’m still working out getting my email newsletter list up to snuff. Like, getting things organized and figuring out how – what type of funnels and all that kind of stuff. And then once I’ve got that all under control and really studied the analytics and figure out what the audience is really looking for, then that’s when I’m going to start implementing some of these things and then really skyrocket my results. That’s what I’m going to hope for.

Borja: Right. It’s just sort of like Amazon does. That’s an example that I love to give people. And Amazon.com and Google, of course, were the two websites that started implementing personalization to some extent.

For example, when you go to Amazon you get a customized version of Amazon, based on other purchases that you have done, or based on where you are located. Sometimes they use location, and that increase their sales. That’s one of the strategies they use that increases their sales the most. And Amazon is super, super fanatic about customer satisfaction and user experience.

And also Google, obviously based on the keywords that you’re using in Google you get different advertisements, you get different – I mean, what better example that how Google works, right? If you’re searching from a certain country, you’ll have a version of Google based on your language and your location. You will see advertisements related to your search, to the device you’re using, whether you’re signed up to Google or not.

It’s the same concept brought to your WordPress website, to your small blog. And you can be as complicated as you want or as simple as you want. What I recommend people do, and I have a training program in SmartDuu, and within that training program what I recommend people do is just start with one different version of your website. Like your default version of your website and then one different version of your website for your most relevant audience. Create two little segments of your audience, of your visitors, and start with two different versions. And see the results of that. Once you get that, you create a third version of your website and see what happens. Experiment with it.

So because nowadays people run AB tests one time for the entire website, make one decision, and that’s it. But what about the other people? What about the other types of visitors? And with Cerebro you can run multiple AB tests for multiple types of visitors, not just one people. And display permanent content forever, customized for those visitors. Make sense?

Mr. Hartzler: That is amazing. And I have to ask, how many versions of your website are you running?

Borja: A lot. You know, funny enough, of SmartDuu I don’t have that many. Right? Because I don’t need that many.

But for my blog, for Money Diver which is much – you know, it has a lot of traffic, and a lot of different segments that I identified, a lot of different avatars. And for people who might not know what an avatar is, it’s my ideal visitor, my ideal customer.

I run over 50 versions of my website. And I create funnels based on each of those types of visitors that I get. Funnels based on topic, location, whether they are subscribers or not. And for my specific blog, the two most important triggers or factors are the topic that you’re really interested in and whether you’re not a subscriber. That’s the two most important things that I identify from people and I care about from my audience. Then I might care about what device you’re using to display certain tools, maybe applications related to your specific device. Not only whether it is mobile or desktop, but what actual software you’re running in your device. You know, iOS, or Android, and recommend different online marketing applications based on that.

I think the most specific version that I am running is for people coming from Twitter that are located in California and that want to download for online marketing applications for iPhone. That’s one of the most specific.

Mr. Hartzler: Very specific.

Borja: Then I run offers at night; so I display different versions of my blog at night with coupons and stuff.

Mr. Hartzler: And people are searching for that probably.

Borja: Right. Just to provide a sense of urgency and scarcity to again increase my conversion rates. I’m very geeky about how I use my own product. That’s what I’m doing with my whole training program inside SmartDuu. Since this is such different and innovative strategy for content marketers and content creators. Just making the product wouldn’t be enough. I need to educate people about content personalization and web personalization.

Mr. Hartzler: Makes total sense. I just headed over to MoneyDiver.com. I got a pop-up that said, “Would you like to make more money in Fairborn?” which is where my ISP is located, and “Yes or No: Yes I want to make money. No I don’t need any more online business.” Which is amazing it knows exactly where I am. It feels much more personalized that I’m going to get something that’s going to help me directly where I am.

So if you’re interested in checking out Cerebro, either the child themes, the framework, or the plugins, you can head on over to SmartDuu.com. Looks like you can start with as low as $69.95 per year, all the way up to $250; a onetime payment for the pro package.

And Borja, is there anything else that we didn’t cover today?

Borja: Not really, man. I think we covered all the basics of web personalization, all the basics of how people can benefit from being more thoughtful about their visitors. And there is no reason for people to not go out and implement this strategy because that is where the world of Internet is going for.

Mr. Hartzler: And one of the things that Borja mentioned early on is that we just need to take some time to look at the analytics. Even before you go out and you purchase Cerebro or even try out the plugin, we want to make sure we know exactly where people are coming from, what is interesting to them, and then we can take that information and we can learn from it and use it and we can start implementing some of these things based on location, based on devices and all of those different things. And really personalize that experience that your visitor is having once they come to your website.

So Borja, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure meeting you at New Media Expo. It was fun catching up with you and just sharing some of the power that your plugin and the brainpower that you make it seem like our sites have. And if listeners are interested in checking you out and figuring out where to find you online, can you just share that with us?

Borja: Yes. They can go SmartDuu.com and see the plugin right there, or they can go to MoneyDiver.com and listen to what I have to say about online and content marketing; how I relate online marketing to online personalization. Or they can head on over to Twitter at [inaudible] [00:30:43].

Mr. Hartzler: Awesome. I think even maybe just studying and looking at MoneyDiver.com, looking at the different ways you’ve implemented things would be a great start as well to see what that personalized experience looks like from a website. So again Borja thank you so much for your time, and we’ll talk again soon.

Borja: Thank you Dustin. I appreciate you inviting me on your show.

Mr. Hartzler: Alright, that is going to wrap up this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and hanging out with us today. Did you get any ideas from Borja? Isn’t it so cool what we can do with technology these days, and we can really customize that experience? We can make our website feel like it’s meant for that specific person and that’s going to help our conversion rates. It’s going to help us make more sales and convert people to email subscribers.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week. Take care and we’ll talk again soon!