2 Questions with Richard Eastes of Greensocks (River City Labs Accelerator BNE#1)

9 October 2015

1. What is one thing you have learned from the River City Labs Accelerator that you could share with the rest of the #startupQLD ecosystem?

I thought I was pretty good at website experimentation.
Turns out, I'm not. I didn't even see the full potential. During 30 minutes with Kuba and Noelle, I realised I was overconfident with my ability. As I munched on my delicious humble pie, I listened to their experiences about Las Vegas, 3R's, AB testing, and how to apply.

How to get fired from Las Vegas Casinos.
I learned that the critical 3 ways you can be fired Caesars in Las Vegas are theft, sexual harassment and running an experiment without a control group. Holy crap. That last one. I've never considered experiments in such a serious way. At this point, I realised that I need re-think. I need to experiment constantly, not just when it's fun.

The 3R's of personalised marketing.
Right message to the right person at the right time. Watch the keybote on the three R's of personalised marketing from Kuba Tymula. It's pretty obvious what it means, but it's applying it and believing it enough to take action that matters. Watch Kuba you will believe. As an example, GreenSocks will send a short message at exactly the moment that a customers grass will need mowing again. We'll experiment with what that message says for different individual customers at times that gets highest chance of conversion.

Will you take the Red pricing button or Orange lawn mowing button?
Noel Greenwood from ConversionGreen helped us figure out what experiments we should run on the new lawn mowing startup, GreenSocks.com.au. Here's some examples:

  • Red pricing button instead of Orange lawn mowing button. If you go to our home page, you'll have a 50% chance of seeing a red or an orange button. So far, the red button is a 47% improvement. Still still early.
  • Booking form on home page (instead of a button)
  • Less steps in lawn booking process
  • Using superhero images or lawn mowing woman or lawn mowing man with superheros.
  • Subscriptions or no subscriptions
  • Graphic heavy email or short conversational text email

Don't be afraid of the F word.
My world has been opened up to how much more I could be getting out of AB testing my website. I urge you to do more experimenting on your website. 70% of experiments should fail so don't be afraid of the F word. Just keep experimenting.

 

2. Why is it the right time to be building the "Uber for lawn mowing"?

I'll answer this with business explaining limericks for our mowing guys and our customers.

Dan was a lawn mowing man.
He was looking for jobs on demand.
Did he Franchise? NO. Funny!
He joined GreenSocks for money
and saved himself 20 grand.

Jane's lawn was growing and growing.
Her mowing guys weren't even showing.
With a fast online quote,
"GreenSocks is easy!", she wrote.
and now they manage her mowing.

Richard Eastes is co-founder of lawn mowing website, GreenSocks.com.au. He'll retweet your business explaining limerick if you tag him with @eastes