Cozy Earth: Consolidating your tech stack and freeing up your team to move faster

[00:00:00] Alex Nelson: It's not like we have to take two weeks to run a full A/B test. It's definitely saved us a lot of time, helped us to be more nimble, and I will say it's also, like, bridged a gap between our web developers and our UX designers.

[00:00:12] Kailin Noivo: Hey, folks. Really excited for our podcast today with Alex Nelson. Cozy Earth initially started working with us a few years ago with our error monitoring product, but they've since added our additional capabilities and consolidating multiple tools into Noibu, so really exciting conversation today if you're under budget pressure to consolidate tools and you're interested to learn about how teams are driving efficiencies.

[00:00:35] Kailin Noivo: Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Toolbox Expert's Perspective. Joining us today, we have Alex Nelson from Cozy Earth. Welcome, Alex.

[00:00:45] Alex Nelson: Yeah. Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:47] Kailin Noivo: Awesome. Alex, well, let's just start off with a brief introduction to who you are, a bit about Cozy Earth, and how we initially got synced up, I think, in 2022.

[00:00:55] Alex Nelson: Yeah. For sure. So, I've been on the Cozy Earth side for five years. I'm the director of digital product here at Cozy Earth, so I oversee the website and all things in that realm, you know. At Cozy Earth, we are primarily D2C. We sell, like, soft goods in the home, so bedding, bath, you know, comforters, blankets. We also sell loungewear for men and women. So, it's a fun space to be in. But, yeah, I think we just, say 2022 is when we started. We've been with you guys for a while. Definitely been a journey for sure, but we've loved being partners.

[00:01:29] Kailin Noivo: Yeah. And, Alex, obviously, in preparation for the show, I took a look a bit at your history, and you've had different roles in the business from conversion specialist, marketing, to now digital product, and now leading the whole product organization for digital. So, maybe talk to us a bit about why you initially purchased Noibu, and maybe how your needs changed over time, and how you're able to collaborate with us to actually change our product to meet your needs?

[00:01:58] Alex Nelson: You guys reached out to us initially, and it was just about bug detection on our website. At that time, we had a third-party dev agency that we were using to kind of build our site and go that route. So, it was appealing to us because we didn't have as much visibility as to, like, bugs and things that were surfacing besides just if we, like, found them on the website. So, we wanted to kind of get into that space so that I, as, like, a less technical side, have visibility into, like, bugs and, like, honestly, the revenue loss that we were seeing across the board. So, that was what initially got us interested in Noibu. We jumped in. And we felt that, like, our team had a little bit of hesitancy to adopt the tool and work it into their workflow. But so we actually, like, went through that process, and it was kind of, like, pulling teeth for a little bit but once they started using the tool, they really liked it. I think at one point, we were even thinking about canceling the contract, but we stuck with it. And I'm really happy that we did because we worked that into our workflow, and we've seen, you know, the bug detection side has been awesome, but you guys have evolved significantly over the years. And so, you know, I think that that tool itself has gotten more robust, and I think that it's more user-friendly on the dev side, but also on my side as I'm, like, looking into issues and kind of seeing the general health of our website. But I've really liked the direction that you guys are going, especially with, like, the page analysis tool and kind of, like, being able to understand different elements of our site that isn't just like, is there a bug, and what can we do to fix it?

[00:03:32] Kailin Noivo: You know, I love that framing. I think, to your point, a lot of people initially sign on with us because they either do a migration, maybe they don't trust their third-party devs, or they're just like, site stability is top of mind for them at that moment. And to your point, especially when you're on, like, a more templated framework, you kind of do a big bug bash, maybe it's a few sprints, maybe it lasts a few months, then people typically move on to performance, so, like, site speed. And we kind of see those, like, the two, like, bases of the pyramid. People wanna stabilize to make sure there's no leakage. Next, they wanna make it fast. And then on the back of that, they typically will deprioritize continuous, obviously, if a bug pops up or if you release something that slows down your website, you'll deal with it, but it's not something that you're working on every day. And especially with lean teams like yours, it's kind of like what you're saying, where you solve most of the bugs. You then go into kind of maintenance and insurance mode, same with performance. And then on the back of that, you're like, well, most of our time is now gonna go into innovation. So, it's gonna go into A/B testing, looking at user flows, customer journeys, and heat maps. So, maybe talk to us a bit about. As your business has evolved, when did you guys kind of go from spending a lot of mind share on errors and performance and stability, into, okay, now that we've gotten that done, we have to look to the experimentation side?

[00:04:57] Alex Nelson: Yeah. It's definitely been an interesting journey and, honestly, similar to what you just outlined there. So, like I said, we historically had a third-party dev agency, but in the last year, we've transitioned so that we have a fully in-house dev agency. It's kind of followed a similar timeline because we went from not being not having full visibility into the site health and, like, we definitely went through and, like, identified the biggest impacting bugs and got those figured out. But then with more of, like, the I guess, we have a pretty lean team, but they're pretty nimble and able to move quickly. And so we started to add new features and things that we're really excited about. But I think the biggest caveat there is time, you know, like, it takes time to build these things, but it also takes time to test them. So, we've been, we love to do A/B testing on our side, but it takes time to get enough data to feel confident in results. So, you know, as we've adjusted, okay, we wanna ship more things and and continue to make the site and experience better for the customer, you know, tools like a page analysis or heat mapping, session replays, being able to, like, understand on a bigger level what the customer experience is has helped us just inform our decisions quickly. So. it's not like we have to take two weeks to run a full A/B test. It's like, I can go in a day after we ship something, see what the heat maps look like, see if, is the engagement of the customer like we expected, and then we can look at the funnel and see, okay, where are they clicking after this, follow that journey. It's definitely saved us a lot of time, helped us to be more nimble, and I will say it's also, like, bridged a gap between our web developers and our UX designers. You know, they're both looking at the same heat maps, understanding the same data, and it's kind of helped, like, merge those two worlds for us.

[00:06:43] Midroll: If you're listening to The Ecommerce Toolbox, you're entitled to a podcast exclusive website audit. Go to noibu.com/podcast-audit for a free scan that uncovers the hidden friction blocking your conversions and shows you where you're leaking revenue.

[00:06:57] Kailin Noivo: Was that a challenge before where, like, maybe in a previous life, you're marketing, you're working on a campaign, it's not performing, you're like, okay, is it performance? Is it errors? Is it just user behavior? Is the product not resonating? Like, and then having to collaborate with different teams and different tools. Was that a task of the past?

[00:07:17] Alex Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I think, like, one example, it's like with our PDP, right, it's one of the more complicated pieces of our website, but we build out,, like, last year, we did a little bit of refresh on the PDP. We A/B tested it to see which one performed better, and it's like, the new version didn't perform as well. And it's like, is that because the way it was built out is less performative? Is it because the user experience isn't, you know, exactly what we had hoped and maybe the users aren't adopting it as much? You know? So, I think that, you know, as we're we're going through a refresh right now and as we're looking at these new elements, we're going in and seeing, okay, heat maps are showing this is what, you know, we expect the user's behavior to look like. So now, you know, if this isn't performative, we can take a step back and see, okay, like, is it because of the way we built it out? Is it, you know, is the performance there? Is it the design? So, it's definitely, like, helped round that whole experience for us because it is a frustrating problem to tackle.

[00:08:20] Kailin Noivo: Makes sense. And now looking across the different teams, like, how many different teams are now collaborating in Noibu and your organization now? And, like, what did that look like 18 months ago?

[00:08:30] Alex Nelson: Yeah. I would say that right now, like, my team specifically, we have kind of, like, the UX side, the dev side, and then, kind of the website maintenance side. And all three of those teams are getting into Noibu and using it for various pieces, right? And I'm excited to get more of, like, our ad buying team and, like, our growth team to see, okay, like, these are the ads. So, if you're sending ads to these landing pages, like, this is the heat map of the landing page that you're sending to, and we can see the performance of that landing page. So, you know, getting some of these other teams informed in the tool is something that we're working on, but I think that they'll find a lot of benefit.

[00:09:10] Kailin Noivo: That's awesome. I think that makes sense. We typically land historically with, like, the engineering team, sometimes product, like, in your case. And then you expand, right? UI/UX with page analysis, and I think rightfully so, like you're flagging, getting marketing, singing from the same sheet, right, when it comes to user journeys and heat mapping and ad conversion and all those things. And eventually, depending on your type of business, too, sometimes the customer support team depends on how many tickets are being flagged to your team, but that's a very, those are kind of like the trifecta of use cases. Out of curiosity, I know you're very involved in our product road map. What has you most excited about our product road map?

[00:09:52] Alex Nelson: I think the, I hopped on the call with Sierra, our account rep, last week, and we talked through some of the new dashboards that you guys are coming out with. I don't know all the nuances of the tool, but it looks like there will be more of, like, a section that each of these use cases or each of these teams or departments can go for key insights on the website. It's not necessarily just like, oh, this is like a bug that we've noticed. It's like, here's your overall site health and a top-level view, like, is there anything going wrong? And then, you know, you can dig in, double click into areas where you wanna learn more. So, I think that that is, like, an intuitive way to organize it so that, like, each person knows that this is, like, curated for them. It's easy to use, and, like, they're gonna find insights that are actionable.

[00:10:37] Kailin Noivo: No. That's really cool. And we kind of went through this with you before, but I'll just reiterate this. Like, we kind of started off in the front-end error space, and then we went into the front-end monitoring space, which includes things like, performance monitor, right? So, like, page speed, things like that. And the latest the big, big push for us was page analysis last year, which put us in that, like, experience monitoring space, which is like heat maps, scroll maps, session replay, and then all the error and performance stuff. And now the big push for this year is more of what you just mentioned. How can Noibu be the dashboard of record for different teams? Right? Whether that's your just conversion analytics, your error analytics, or your marketing, we are really, really investing in analytics, as you would put it, because we really, we've yet to find someone who really loves Google Analytics. And from our research, it's one of those things, and I call it by name because I think it's an open secret, but, like, people find it very challenging in the commerce use case, is what we kind of heard. And we think that the consolidation of those three categories into a single super tool is what the market is asking us for. That's what I'm here to talk about.

[00:11:50] Alex Nelson: Yeah. I just wanted to add one thing to that. So, specific on the page analysis too, I know that's a newer tool on your end, but, historically, we've looked at a few different key mapping tools. And that was, like, something that we were, you know, planning to just have a separate service for, and then we're gonna have the bug detection on the other side. But both are, you know, looking at sessions, and so it makes sense to kind of consolidate those tools. But to your guys, to compliment your team, like, you guys built out a tool that was very intuitive to use. I've tried, like, three or four different heat mapping tools and with a lot of frustrations, and so I think that I've really enjoyed seeing that your team is not only trying to enter the space and kind of, like, own that space of, like, okay, we're giving you your overall site health for all these different teams, but you're also worried about, like, the customer's experience and, like, how easy it is to intuitively use the tool, which yeah, definitely commend your team for that.

[00:12:40] Kailin Noivo: Appreciate it. And our kind of strategy along those lines is that we only build for commerce brands, and commerce brands are on a few platforms. They're on Shopify, they're on BigCommerce, on Salesforce, or on Commerce Tools. Some people are still on Magento, like, that covers, like, 95% of the use cases, right? And we know your roles. Product, engineering, UI/UX, marketing, like, there's not that many different permutations. And because we don't sell to SaaS companies, telecom, all these other things, we can be very intentional on how we build things. And everyone else in this space is horizontal, meaning they serve many bastards, so they have to build it in, like, a everything for everyone kind of way. And that puts a lot of the onus on teams of your size to actually instrument and figure out the tool, and there's larger adaptability gaps. So, we really think the market is honestly pretty fragmented in this space where you're paying a lot of the same vendors to collect session data, session replay data, event data, error data, heat map data, like, everyone, you're paying multiple vendors to collect the same thing, candidate.

[00:13:53] Alex Nelson: Right.

[00:13:54] Kailin Noivo: So, we think we can have the best tool purpose-built for people in your role and in your industry at the best cost because you don't have to pay three different vendors to collect a lot of the same data. So, that's our bet.

[00:14:06] Alex Nelson: Yeah. And I think it's definitely paying off because, even and just on, like, the site performance side, we have been in that realm where we're seeing we have three or four different vendors that are all, like, trying to load their scripts to track our sessions and stuff. And just getting it all done at once makes the site experience better, you know, it loads faster, it's less cumbersome. So, yeah, I think it's very smart what you guys are doing.

[00:14:29] Kailin Noivo: Oh, very, very cool. Well, it's been really cool because, like we're chatting about before, you guys have been on a journey that's somewhat parallel to our journey. As your needs evolved, our product kind of evolved to meet those needs, which was really cool. I mean, this wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't ask you a bit about AI, and, actually, I wanna give you our AI demo after. But I'm curious, like, as you're looking at digital products in this space, how do you think AI influences the space in the next couple of years?

[00:15:00] Alex Nelson: Yeah. I've thought a lot about this, you know, and, like, where will you effectively be able to implement AI and where it's going to, I think, obviously, there's on the, like, back-end side of, like, understanding the analytics and the sessions and things like that. That's definitely, like, a use case. But I think on the front end, like, how can you implement on a site? I think it's gonna be more of a one-to-one experience, you know. You're gonna be able to track these sessions and understand, like, these touch points that, you know, maybe they came from an email, maybe they came from an ad, and, like, what were they engaging with, and, like, what is, you know, the specific thing that they're curious about. And then you almost build an entire site experience for that customer. But, you know, that's also to say, like, our site's even gonna be relevant. Is it gonna be all just, you know, shopping through LLMs? Like, you know, I don't know if the future holds there, but I think that, yeah, there's plenty of opportunity on, like, the shopping side and then also, like, you know, the post shopping, like, digesting the analytics and all the metrics, and I think that AI is huge in that.

[00:16:03] Kailin Noivo: Do you guys have analytics centered around traffic coming from these LLMs and how they're performing?

[00:16:10] Alex Nelson: Yeah. Like, we're trying to, you know, I think we're amongst the masses trying to figure it out. But we're looking in GA4 understanding, like, where the main traffic from AI elements is coming from. And, you know, it's not like anything huge today. But then we also have, like, different tools that we're using to track, you know, share a voice. Like, how are we showing up compared to our competitors and for these different, like, our categories that we want, you know, bedding, bath, loungewear, like, how are the LLMs digesting our information, and what is the sentiment there? So, definitely, on that side, we're trying to figure out, like, okay, what is the best way to report? You know, is it revenue? Is it, you know, sentiment? You know, what makes the most sense to look at?

[00:16:53] Kailin Noivo: Very cool. Awesome. Well, Alex, I really appreciate you taking the time to hop on. Did you have any additional questions before we sign off today?

[00:17:01] Alex Nelson: No. I think that's it. Yeah. I really appreciate the time.

[00:17:05] Kailin Noivo: Yeah. Likewise. Thank you so much.

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