Recently, PickFu’s Director of Marketing Kim Kohatsu joined Andrew Maffettone from Seller’s Choice to discuss how PickFu gives e-commerce sellers easy access to market research. Founded by a team of experienced e-commerce sellers, Seller’s Choice offers a wide range of service packages based on the solutions that online sellers seek.
What follows is a recap of the conversation.
What does PickFu do?
PickFu is a survey software. But unlike other services that just build the survey, PickFu brings its pool of motivated respondents to answer your survey. Not only will respondents vote on your options, but they also write a comment explaining their vote, so e-commerce sellers get both qualitative and quantitative feedback. You can test any kind of creative idea, from business names to packaging ideas.
In addition, you can target specific demographics by adding up to four traits: everything from gender to Amazon Prime membership. Most of our polls come back in 15 minutes or less, but if you choose four traits, it’s going to take longer and cost more. In terms of getting a bang for your buck, sellers love simply polling Amazon Prime members.
Quality control
PickFu spends a lot of time screening our pool of respondents to make sure each person will give you high-quality feedback. We also have quality controls after you submit your questions. If you believe that an answer was not appropriate or serious, you can flag it and we’ll take action. But if you look through our polls, you’ll see that the answers provided are thoughtful and serious.
A smart alternative to Amazon split testing
While software to split test your Amazon listings is available, live tests come with a lot of problems — problems that don’t exist with PickFu. Firstly, it takes a long time. To get enough clicks to build a critical mass of data, you usually have to pay for ads. On the other hand, PickFu polls take place outside of Amazon. You pay a flat, predictable fee. And most of our polls complete in about 15 minutes.
Secondly, with a live Amazon split test, you get limited data. With PickFu, you get those valuable written comments. Just recently, a seller ran a poll for a fitness band. Women and men reacted very differently to the two product images. Men liked the sexier picture. Women were turned off by it. When you discover an insight like that, it might help you determine how to market the product. Is it for women? Is it for men? You uncover a lot of insights outside of just which photo to use.
Thirdly, live split testing can jeopardize your sales and your existing search ranking. If your new version performs worse than your old version, then that’s lost revenue. With PickFu, you can run tests before you go live. Or, if your product is already live, you can test to see if the changes you’re thinking about making will improve sales before you take the plunge.
Want to hear more from Andrew Maffettone? Check out his guest post on product images on the PickFu blog.
