TAS 091 : PickFu Co-Founder John Li – Validation strategies for Amazon Sellers

So much has been going on since the last, well, slightly sombre episode… Sorry about that and sorry that I’ve missed a few weeks in terms of getting podcasts out. 

As a family we have recently moved house which has taken a long time to settle into with some renovations and lots of other DIY projects. It’s amazing what you can do when you watch a Youtube Video and own a hammer!

In the world of Amazon, it’s been booming for many sellers and has been a disaster for many others (myself included) so lessons learned there. I am making sure this won’t happen again by diversifying… and am in the process of working through that.

I hope your Amazon business is doing ok!

There is so much content being produced at the moment for Amazon Sellers, Meghla from India Sourcing Trip is running the Global Sources Smart Sourcing Virtual Summit Sessions on Facebook with some amazing guests.

Of course, Danny McMillan is running daily Seller Sessions updates with a galaxy of Amazon stars.

So today’s episode is an interview with one of the Co-founders of Pickfu.com, John Li who created Pickfu as a way to run public polling for feedback on designs for some software projects he was working on a few years ago. For Amazon sellers its almost an indispensable tool and a quick and cheap way to validate your product listings, design, packaging, you name it…

To Save 50% off your first Pickfu Test, use the promocode – AUSELLER

MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:

Chris Thomas 0:00
Today, I am totally thrilled to welcome John Li from Pickfu. John, how are you?!

John Li – Pickfu 0:04
I’m good, Chris. Thanks for having me on.

Chris Thomas 0:07
Great to chat with you again. Hey, would you want to give us a bit of an intro and a bit of your background? What got you to ecommerce and Pickfu? More specifically?

John Li – Pickfu 0:15
Yeah, sure thing. So my background is in software development, used to work for a big tech company. And actually, Pickfu was created as a side project, a tool that my co founder Justin and myself built for ourselves many years ago, when we are running a completely separate startup. One of the things one of the issues we had was that both being software developers we were in we were always at odds with each other in terms of trying to decide on design and making design decisions, product decisions and so on. And our friends and family what got really tired of, you know, us asking for their feedback. So at some point, you know what What do engineers do when they’re when they’re when they’re always trying to break a tie? They, you know, they build a feedback system for for, for getting unbiased feedback, right? Yeah, so we built that. We built a quick sort of MVP prototype many, many years ago for Pickfu, to help us get crowdsource feedback. And we left it alone for many years. Over the years, people kept using it, we still left it alone, people kept using it. And so at some point when our original business wasn’t doing as well, and we were looking to do something new, we realized, hey, people are still using foo and recommending it without us really pushing it. So we figured there was something here. Now in terms of e commerce, we ecommerce was not really a vertical that we targeted specifically, we were already we were focused on some other verticals at first and then there were a couple influencers I think in the e commerce and Particularly the Amazon FBA side of things who had discovered big foo and realized that it was really good for optimizing their Amazon listings and so on. And so that’s where that’s where Pickfu kind of grew really quickly for any commerce from that point onwards. And ever since then, which was maybe about two years ago, we’ve been pretty heavily focused on e commerce, helping sellers improve their listings and make better decisions. Awesome.

Chris Thomas 2:27
Yeah. Because I was actually first introduced, I think, to Pickfu by Kevin king in Hong Kong about two years ago. And he was basically, you know, running a poll of tests in front of us, like actual Pickfu tests and saying which one, you know, was the most popular choice in terms of a product image or whatever. So we had a lot of fun with him. And that particular day, MVP, for those that are not quite sure what that means. It actually means Minimum Viable Product, I think yes.

John Li – Pickfu 2:55
Yes. Sorry. So started Yes. Sorry. That’s lingo.

Chris Thomas 2:58
Yep. That’s a good book. The Lean Startup by Eric Riess. Yes, awesome, awesome book. He talks a lot about MVP and pivoting and persevering.

All right, the Coronavirus, obviously is hot on everybody’s lips and tongues at the moment. Can you give us a quick update for the United States? What’s what are you seeing on the ground there?

John Li – Pickfu 3:15
Sure thing. So I’m based in California near San Francisco. For us, you know, I think this situation is different in its different state by state in the United States, and I think even though we were one of the first states to get it in the United States, I think we’re fortunate that our government kind of shut things down pretty early. So everything shut down here. Everyone’s staying at home, got the kids running around and so on. But thankfully, you know, our caseload isn’t too bad. Knock on wood in California, and so we’re having right currently we are having their discussions about what what it’s going to take to open up now. I don’t know what That’s going to happen. But you know, people people are getting kind of antsy being at home. Yeah. But yeah, sure. Yeah, I don’t mind if they take their time. I think it’s a, it’s a pretty serious issue. So, you know, I’m fine. I’m fine sheltering in place. Yep.

Chris Thomas 4:20
All right, then thank you for that. Let’s Well, let’s actually talk about Pickfu because we haven’t really told anybody exactly what it actually is. So can you maybe give us a elevator pitch or go in as much detail as you like, what what is Pickfu? How does it work?

John Li – Pickfu 4:34
Sure thing. So Pickfu is a it’s a digital focus group where sellers get feedback on their products and listings. We have a panel pick through as a panel of over 10,000 US based consumers who, who basically answer polls from sellers who are let’s say split testing their made images trying to figure out what products to sell working on their packaging and so on. So sellers will come on to Pickfu ask a question, or provide a couple options, and the big food panelists will answer the question, choose the preferred option and also give a written explanation why. Over the years, we’ve also developed the ability to do targeting based on demographics and various audience attributes. So if you’re selling, let’s say you’re targeting Amazon Prime members who are females who meet who like to exercise, like that’s your target market for your product, you can come on to Pickfu and target that specific segment, that audience segment so that the feedback you get is going to be from your target market, which is perfect,

Chris Thomas 5:49
isn’t it? And then, I mean, the price goes up a little bit as you start to segment down into the various groups, right, but it’s well worth it. I think, because you really sort of shortcut you just get a lot more certainty around there. To the test, don’t you? Yeah,

John Li – Pickfu 6:02
yeah. And generally, most of our polls, you’re right, Pricing starts at $1 for general audience, and then it’ll go up based on complexity of your poll or complexity of your targeting. But generally, most sellers do do some kind of targeting. And the feedback we get from sellers is that they really like the written feedback, and then also the speed at which polls, you know, polls and responses come back.

Chris Thomas 6:28
It’s pretty crazy. I mean, I get polls back in, say, 20 minutes, sometimes even less. But the whole thing’s done in the 50 respondents have got back with all of their comments, and there’s usually quite a clear winner. Yeah, it’s very quick in terms of MVP, you can quickly get a result without having to sort of wait days and days like you normally would with a typical split test you know, if you’re using say split Lee or, or I guess, you know, any other split testing software, this just seems a lot faster, because you’re not waiting anywhere near as long. For people to visit and actually, you know, convert or do whatever the desired outcome is. So yeah, it’s a great, really, really useful tool. Just us based at the moment, though, any plans to expand overseas?

John Li – Pickfu 7:11
no immediate plans, but we definitely get that request. So it’s potentially future down in the horizon, but nothing immediate. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Chris Thomas 7:22
I’ve often had a few issues actually crafting a really good question for Pickford. Let’s imagine that. I’ve got a main image that I might want to test. Yeah, dude, I mean, it just really just have to be as simple as you know, which main image which image Do you prefer if you’re browsing on Amazon? Or how do you create non leading questions for Pickfu pals?

John Li – Pickfu 7:43
Yeah, you know, over the years, and as we’ve seen a lot of users use big food. We’ve realized that part of the key to getting success from running a poll on pig foo is asking the right question and sort of coming up with a question is an art form in another itself, like you mentioned, you don’t want to, you don’t want your question to be too biased and pushed your audience towards one, one up one option or another. And at the same time, you want to provide a little bit of context so that the audience is in the right mindset. When they are looking at, let’s say, your potential mean images or your packaging, your product packaging or something else. What I generally generally recommend for sellers is using something just to set the stage say, if you’re shopping on Amazon, which mean image which you are, which product would you buy, let’s say, or which ad which main image would draw your attention. What we’re trying to do on our side is that we’re working towards trying to provide better templates and sort of better guides towards these kinds of specific use cases. So we’re gonna we’re at some point we’re going to start suggesting questions or suggested having suggested Questions for specific templates, like, let’s say your split testing a main image will, will have a question or two that you can choose from. Just go to pre populate, or let’s say you’re trying to do some kind of competitive test. You know, we’ll have some questions, suggestions as well for you.

Chris Thomas 9:14
Hmm, yeah, I’m looking forward to to that actually. The other thing I guess you can do too, is you can go to Pickfu calm forward slash, believers gallery. And you can gather that That’s right. Yeah, I think you mentioned this to me a couple weeks ago and just last spoke, but and then you can kind of go through all of the previous polls that have happened recently, to get a sense of how other Amazon sellers if you’re in the e commerce category, asking their questions to their audiences, and so you can get some inspiration there.

John Li – Pickfu 9:44
I found that really Ray Yeah, so the Pickfu comm slash gallery. That’s the gallery of all the public polls. So by default, by default, every poll that when you run a poll and Pickfu, it is private. The only people with The link or the URL can see it. But you do we do offer a discount if you are willing to list your poll on the public gallery. And so that is what those are the polls that you see on that gallery page.

Chris Thomas 10:12
Yeah, so obviously, not all the polls are being run because some people write quite private about polls that they want to run and that I’ve already getting access to those. But that makes sense. So well apart from ecommerce in Yeah, product photography and images and titles and copy testing what other industries actually use pic for you mentioned software development previously or earlier.

John Li – Pickfu 10:32
Yeah, yeah. So there’s actually a lot of other industries that use Pickfu. That’s it. So two of the big ones that that were using it even before we started getting into e commerce. One is authors like particularly self publishing authors. They’ve been using Pickfu for years to test their book titles and book covers because, you know, they say they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the truth is everyone judges a book by its cover, right in title. And so. So that’s a pretty obvious case where it was pretty popular for authors testing. There’s authors and publishers testing the books. The other big category we’ve we’ve had a lot of success in is mobile, mobile apps, and particularly mobile games. So not just testing the app icon before launch, get into the app store, but actually testing, app concept art, characters, graphics, screenshots, all kinds of stuff related to mobile apps and mobile games. We’ve had some of the top grossing games in the App Store using Pickfu, and some of the biggest publishers as well using Pickfu, in their game development process. So that’s been really exciting to see on that other side of things.

Chris Thomas 11:53
That’s cool. So they’re testing the user interface, the UI.

John Li – Pickfu 11:56
Oh, yeah. They’re testing the interface, user interface and then we are We haven’t targeted software or software product companies as much. But we do have a lot of, we do have a good handful of software companies who will use us to test the interface. DuckDuckGo is one of our biggest users their privacy focused search engine, like Google, but more private, then early an avid user. And we have other really large companies we can’t really mention who use us to test both app interfaces, web interfaces, email marketing, like they they’ll test their email templates on Pickfu and figure out, you know, let’s say which email template will convince you to take the desired action, right like, so they’ll, their designers will come up with a couple different options, and they’ll throw that up on Pickfu and have they have analyzed the results from there.

Chris Thomas 12:52
Anthony ko Francesco last year when I was speaking with him, he was a previous co founder I think, virtuous graphics and He was actually running pick through tests before he even got his team to start taking product photography of customer products, which is a really interesting approach. So he was sort of taking many images from Amazon and running polls against competitor images to see which one resonated the best, and then would actually style his photoshoot or this, the team would style the shoot around them, you know, sort of what works to make it. So it’s a really interesting, why is it it gets used? I think,

John Li – Pickfu 13:28
yeah, more. More recently, I think as we’ve seen, more and more sellers have become aware of sort of the flexibility of Pickfu and what you can use it for and realize that and sellers realize that it’s more than just split testing main images that are in more than just split testing images for products that already live. We’re seeing some really interesting like clever use cases kind of like the things that and like that, that you mentioned that Anthony was doing. Generally what we’re seeing with the savvier sellers is testing earlier. Testing more competitively are those are the things that are making big differences. So like what you said with what Anthony did, doing competitive tests to see which what kinds of images from your category leaders are winning, or if you have a product, putting your product listing image, putting your product listing up against the competitors to see what buyers would choose and why. And then even earlier in the process, pre launch when you’re vetting a product, you know, choosing among variations, choosing suppliers even which product to sell, doing test based on packaging, like those are some really interesting ones that we’ve seen some really good success with.

Chris Thomas 14:40
Yeah, it’s definitely really useful to have those sort of test on early. Yeah, I know that. For example, one of my students who sells on Amazon sells in the shower curtain Nish. So she was running Pickfu tests against some of the competitors As well as some of the designs that she come up with herself in a particular sort of niche, I suppose, or in that space, really, really interesting. Hands down winner. So she was really lucky that she had a really good design that. So when she launched, of course, as soon as people saw her product in their search results on Amazon, they don’t click through instead of buying it like crazy, even though there was no reviews or anything like that. It’s just amazing what you can, what you can do when you absolutely if you have a design, or a pattern or a color, point, a variation, something new that you’re introducing into the world of Amazon, then yeah, it’s really good to get that validated and not fall in love with your product or your design. So they have a lot of time. So it’s really important just to try and stay data focused, even though it can hurt sometimes when you

John Li – Pickfu 15:46
you know, you get rejected. Well, that’s why we built it in the first place is that there was a lot of inherent bias in our own, you know, in our own decisions. So we figured we figured trying to get some unbiased feedback would help us a lot.

Chris Thomas 15:58
Yeah, super important. You got an awesome initiative at the moment for businesses that are struggling with the COVID-19 issue. Can you talk us through that? What’s that about?

John Li – Pickfu 16:09
Yeah. So, you know, we’re a small business too, and we’ve been affected and, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen a lot of our customers get affected from from just the hit from COVID and Coronavirus. So, what we’re doing at Pickfu is that we’re we’re giving away $20,000 in pulling credit. So the way we’re doing that is that we’re giving out $200 of pulling credit for 100 qualified ecommerce businesses who’ve been affected by the Coronavirus crisis. How that works is that you can anyone can go to Pickfu calm slash covid.com slash co v ID. And then there’s a short form to fill out as an application and then we’re it’s an ongoing process and we’re just going through applications and trying to find them Ones that, you know, seem like they could they could benefit from the help and, and choosing from that. So, yeah, any any e commerce business who’s been affected like we we we welcome it right like we would love to help.

Chris Thomas 17:14
Now it’s really very, very generous of you to do that. And whatever enough to submit mine company. Totally. Totally because it’s the toilet right there.

John Li – Pickfu 17:25
It’s, you know, it’s these are very, very unique times that we live in, you know, and so this is, this is, yeah, this one community is is one that we care a lot about. So if we can help and we’ll be glad to.

Chris Thomas 17:39
Very grateful to you for that. What are some of the other things that you’ve noticed other sellers doing right now to improve their business if things are quiet?

John Li – Pickfu 17:48
Yeah. So what we’ve seen is that for the businesses for the sellers, who aren’t completely busy with sort of the shifts that have been going On with Coronavirus, as the ones who are able to spend, spend some time focusing on their business, we’re actually seeing some pretty good testing from them. And based on our conversations with them, it’s their, their, their mindset is more, you know, I’m going to try to get through this get through this period in a stronger position than where I started. So what they’re doing is they’re really looking at their listings and trying to figure out for my existing listings, what can I improve about them? Like, can I take the time to sort of improve the listings and put them in a stronger position so that when things are shipping again, when things are selling again, when you know, some hint of normalcy comes around, you know, I want to be better positioned versus my competitors, versus all the other products out there. So that I can come out at as in a position of strength and do well. So we were we’re seeing a lot of, we’re seeing a lot of sort of listing optimization and competitive testing. Another thing that we’re seeing is there’s a lot sourcing going on like a lot of sourcing tests, I think sellers are taking their time to sort of perfect the packaging and and sort of the what they’re planning to launch with and choosing the right product more upfront before they’re committing the capital to say that Yeah, you know, I’m going to do a purchase order for this product or this product and so on. And plus, besides just on Pickfu, there’s other sellers we’ve talked to who are spending a ton of time just getting educated, right? Like everyone’s stuck at home and there’s I don’t know if you’re seeing this on Facebook, but from what I’m seeing there’s there seems to be facebook live sessions and sort of free webinars and stuff constantly going on. And so it’s, it’s crazy at the moment, isn’t

Chris Thomas 19:45
it? Yeah, yeah. I was on one ago and, and obviously, you know, there’s just a huge amount of content that’s coming out from Danny McMillan, for example.

John Li – Pickfu 19:55
Yeah,

Chris Thomas 19:56
you know, Tim, Tim Jordan hasn’t been shy though. And he’s actually been right Quite a lot of people who test I think he did a little video a couple of weeks ago, talking about how he was running through tests or what during the downtime to

Unknown Speaker 20:07
exactly the

Chris Thomas 20:08
point that you just made, which is to really, hopefully sort of bounce out of this crisis in a much stronger position in terms of his listing optimization, and photography and products and, you know, packaging and everything else. So yeah, it’s, it’s a really good time to be learning, that’s for sure. Then Yeah, to be learning everything about Amazon business from optimizing our PPC running a big food test, as we just mentioned, maybe even taking a course. Perhaps even listening to a podcast like this one. Yeah,

John Li – Pickfu 20:37
exactly. I mean, we’re doing we’re doing that at Pickfu as well. We were we had a really big conference schedule for this year. And you know, once, once COVID hit all the all those plans got cancelled. And so we’re basically doing the same thing. We’re hunkering down and trying to figure out what aspects of our business you know, this gives us the opportunity to sort of focus on and improve so we can come out of this with strength. Speaking of which, what else is in the past Then for peak food, you must have some some plans there that can you share it? Sure. Yeah. I mean, in the general case, we’re always looking, we’re always looking to better meet the needs of our users. I think one, one gap that we’ve identified is that generally, when sellers come to Pickfu, they know us for maybe one thing or like a very specific use case, that’s a split testing your main image, and so on. And so they’ll just do that. And they don’t realize, and we’re not good at educating them, that Pickfu can do a lot more for their business. So we’re doing we have a pretty heavy internal focus right now on education, sort of building out more resources to guide users through not only split testing through images, but also how to interpret you know, the best way to interpret the results. other use cases they can use for for their businesses. More than just split testing and so on. And then probably further down the pipeline. We’ll probably be coming out with other different test types. Come sort of to fill in fill in the gap between you know, right now, you can ask open ended questions and get a lot of good digital digital focus group style feedback, you can test different options and have people choose one or the other. So there’s probably a couple other different test types that we’ll be adding in as well to sort of help flesh out the value that we’re gonna that our panel can provide for for people’s businesses.

Chris Thomas 22:24
Cool. Yeah, cuz there’s also a lot of really good resources as well on the Pickfu blog. Yes. So it’s definitely worth because you guys run a lot of tests and think you have like a poll of the day or I can’t quite remember what it was now.

John Li – Pickfu 22:37
Yeah, we have a series called a which one one. So that’s what we do is Yes, yeah. Every week, once or twice a week, I think it’s almost twice a week. Now. We will pick polls from that public gallery, and we’ll analyze them and we’ll write a blog about them because we’ll go in and talk about the you know, the types of tests that are running and we’ll go in and start reading, reading the responses and try to Sort of analyze it from our point of view as to which one was the winner and why. And so it’s, it’s pretty interesting. We’ve got we’ve built up a pretty big stable of those which one one test. So anyone can go on to the blog and check those out. Yeah, you can filter by that. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.

Chris Thomas 23:15
Yeah. And just just break them all. Because I think better to do.

John Li – Pickfu 23:19
If you have time, go for it. It says really go.

Chris Thomas 23:25
JOHN, thank you very much for coming on the show. I’ve kind of run out of questions here is anything else you’d like to add any other tips that you might be able to provide?

John Li – Pickfu 23:34
The earlier you can get quality feedback for your decisions and your business, the more impactful that’ll be? That’s general that’s that’s kind of been our general tip for, for customers that we’ve been talking to recently. Sounds

Chris Thomas 23:46
like that’s what all the pros are doing too.

John Li – Pickfu 23:48
Yeah. So definitely,

Chris Thomas 23:49
yeah. If that’s what they’re doing, then it’s good enough for them. It’s good enough for us. mere mortals. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much again for coming on today. How can we get in touch with People want to reach out and get in touch. How would they Yeah, what’s the best way to do that?

John Li – Pickfu 24:05
That’s why it’s probably over over email. It’s john and pig Fujio, h, n. p IC K. FCU. Calm, happy to welcome welcoming emails and happy to chat with any customers out there as well.

Chris Thomas 24:15
Marvelous. One last question, how did you come up with the name Pickfu.

I should have asked this right at the beginning!

John Li – Pickfu 24:24
Yeah, you know, we use Pickfu, we use pick through the service to come up with Pickfu, the name. So we wanted a name that was short in terms of length and syllables, memorable and available as a domain name. So we had brainstorm 20 different names that kind of fit the bill. And we ran a few tests across all of them and kind of use that guidance to help whittle it down. And, you know, people, people will different They asked us what the name means. I think the intent was fool was kind of like kung fu mastery of something and then pick is helping you choose. So we kind of see the tool as a helpful tool to help you choose a ninja tool. A ninja turtle. Yes.

Chris Thomas 25:17
Awesome. All right, listen, thanks very much again for coming on and spending half an hour or so with me and the audience out there. And, yeah, let’s hope our paths cross again very, very soon.

John Li – Pickfu 25:28
Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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