How Jason Zigelbaum Is Helping Brands Double Their Conversion Rate with Zigpoll

Understanding what your customers are actually thinking is one of the biggest competitive advantages an ecommerce brand can have. But collecting feedback is only half the battle, knowing how to turn that data into better marketing, higher conversions, and smarter business decisions is where the real opportunity begins.

In this episode of Shopify Happy Hour, Dan sits down with Jason Zigelbaum, founder and CEO of Zigpoll, one of Shopify's leading zero-party data platforms. After collecting more than 100 million survey responses across thousands of brands, Jason shares how ecommerce businesses can use customer feedback, AI, and survey technology to uncover insights that directly improve their websites, marketing, and customer experience.

You'll hear how Jason:

• Built Zigpoll by listening to how customers naturally used the product and evolving the platform around real demand.
• Helps brands collect actionable customer feedback through post-purchase, on-site, and email surveys.
• Recommends the three survey questions every ecommerce brand should be asking customers.
• Uses AI to analyze thousands of customer responses and uncover trends in minutes instead of days.
• Built and scaled multiple Shopify apps as a solo founder by focusing on distribution and customer feedback.
• Thinks about continuous product improvement by letting customers, not assumptions, guide business decisions.

We also get into the bigger picture:

• Why post-purchase surveys are one of the most valuable tools for improving marketing attribution and customer segmentation.
• How open-ended survey responses uncover customer insights brands never expected.
• Practical ways AI can connect survey data, product reviews, and customer behavior to improve website performance.
• How brands can use customer language to create more effective product pages and advertising.
• Why the best-performing ecommerce brands don't just collect customer feedback—they consistently act on it.
• The importance of choosing the right distribution channel when building a SaaS business from the ground up.
  📊 Whether you're an ecommerce founder, marketer, agency owner, or SaaS builder, Jason shares practical frameworks for turning customer feedback into better decisions, stronger marketing, and faster business growth.

Brands & Mentions:

• Zigpoll
• Shopify
• Klaviyo
• Revio
• Seguno
• Salesforce
• Baremetrics
• Atlassian
• Asics

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Jason Zigelbaum & Zigpoll
02:28 Coffee preferences & founder routines
04:23 The problem Zigpoll set out to solve
07:56 Building as a solo founder & landing early customers
10:55 The three survey questions every ecommerce brand should ask
15:30 Real-world examples of survey-driven marketing improvements
17:10 Using surveys to increase website conversion rates
21:05 How AI is transforming customer feedback analysis
25:17 Creative ways brands use surveys beyond post-purchase
29:06 What separates brands that succeed with customer data
33:30 Speed Round
36:30 Where to connect with Jason Zigelbaum

Transcript

Dan Cassidy (00:00)
Welcome to the Shopify Happy Hour. On this show, you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators, and growth experts sharing marketing strategies, lessons from the trenches, and real e-commerce insights,

Dan Cassidy (00:10)
all over a different drink or snack each episode.

Dan Cassidy (00:13)
Today's guest is Jason Ziegelbaum,

Dan Cassidy (00:15)
founder and CEO of Zigpol, one of Shopify's leading zero-party data platforms.

Dan Cassidy (00:20)
Zigpol helps brands collect customer feedback, post-purchase survey data, on-site insights.

Dan Cassidy (00:26)
And customer intelligence that drive smarter marketing decisions.

Dan Cassidy (00:30)
platform is trusted by brands ranging from fast-growing Shopify startups to companies like Sony HP, Kraft, Heinz, and Hallmark,

Dan Cassidy (00:37)
and has collected more than a hundred million survey responses.

Dan Cassidy (00:41)
Jason has a unique perspective on e-commerce because he gets to see what customers are actually thinking,

Dan Cassidy (00:45)
saying, and doing across thousands of brands. Jason,

Dan Cassidy (00:49)
welcome to the Shopify Happy Hour.

Jason Zigelbaum (00:51)
thanks man, I appreciate it. Thanks for the intro. That was great.

Dan Cassidy (00:53)
let's kick it off with

Dan Cassidy (00:54)
drinking, it's coffee day for both of us. What what do you got over there?

Jason Zigelbaum (00:57)
It's coffee day. You know, I feel a little lame for just drinking a black coffee, but it feels you know, it's it's Tuesday at noon. It feels appropriate. I'm going with just a nice black coffee that I got from a about an average machine downstairs. it it's serviceable, it does the trick. You know, not not too hot, not too cold. Quite nice.

Dan Cassidy (01:15)
You know, temperature does make a big difference, right? 'Cause if you get coffee, it's like super hot, especially

Jason Zigelbaum (01:17)
It does. It does.

Dan Cassidy (01:19)
in like a paper cup, and you're just sitting there and then the cup gets all weird. So you gotta have the right temp and there's nothing wrong with just coffee. I think so what is it, caffeine is like the number one drug in the r world, right? So we're

Jason Zigelbaum (01:29)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (01:30)
you know, we're we're getting our brains going, we're getting some focus happening. So I'm all about

Jason Zigelbaum (01:33)
Mm-hmm. I'm in deep. I'm in deep on the caffeine train.

Jason Zigelbaum (01:36)
I feel like I need to cool it a little bit. I feel like it's like a classic sort of like I like I'm a developer sort of guy.

Jason Zigelbaum (01:41)
you know, put in the headphones, you know, drink way too much coffee and just, you know, sit in the matrix.

Dan Cassidy (01:45)
so how how much coffee or slime during to

Jason Zigelbaum (01:47)
mean I used to do like three, four cups. I try to stop before two thirty. So three, four cups before two thirty.

Jason Zigelbaum (01:53)
that a lot? I don't know. Maybe I'm maybe I was just talking talking tough

Dan Cassidy (01:56)
know, I guess it depends on like size of the cups, but I'd say normal cups. I think I think that's solid. I've learned a big thing too years back. I was I would have lots of coffee all morning, then afternoon I'd pop some espresso, then maybe another coffee, and I'm like, I wonder why I can't sleep too well. And then it was like,

Jason Zigelbaum (02:07)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, what's going on

Dan Cassidy (02:10)
maybe if I cut it off at noon and stop, you know, drinking coffee

Jason Zigelbaum (02:13)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (02:14)
like it's my job, maybe I'll sleep better, and that works. So

Jason Zigelbaum (02:16)
Yeah, lo and behold, it's always the

Jason Zigelbaum (02:18)
stuff you least expect, you know. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (02:19)
That's it. Nice. So

Dan Cassidy (02:20)
I've got I've got some some Stump Town, the original Colbrew out of a bottle. So we'll

Jason Zigelbaum (02:23)
Hmm.

Dan Cassidy (02:26)
we'll see how this guy is. but speaking of coffee, we were talking a minute ago. How how do you typically, if you were not gonna get average coffee from downstairs in the lobby where you're at, what what would your what would your c typical coffee preference be?

Jason Zigelbaum (02:38)
I mean I've been a pour over guy for a while, which I know it's like a I get it, it's the ponytail, you know, the hipster nonsense. you know, so d I I I do the pour over. Honestly I just like it 'cause it's easy. Like I'm I appliances are kinda like the bane of my existence 'cause like I just hate seeing stuff on the counter.

Jason Zigelbaum (02:55)
So I you know, you can sort of like do all that with like a normal kettle and and it tastes good and it works and you don't have to worry too much. So that's where I've landed. That's what works for me. I'm okay with the coffee machine, like the you know, the classic sort of like, you know, Hamilton Brewmaster or whatever. but appliances I can't do it. You know, I ch I try to take I try to keep my my kitchen nice and pristine. So seeing that appliance always buzz me.

Dan Cassidy (03:17)
Living lean is the is the way to go and especially if you run a

Jason Zigelbaum (03:19)
Yeah, it's part of it.

Dan Cassidy (03:20)
like a t a tech business and survey data, you don't want all that stuff getting all bloated, so it aligns. So if

Jason Zigelbaum (03:23)
Right. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (03:25)
so when you're doing pour over, is there a specific type of like coffee or bean you like to use or

Jason Zigelbaum (03:29)
Yeah. I mean I

Jason Zigelbaum (03:30)
usually go with the lighter roasts. I know there's like the Ethiopian Yorgachev is the one that that's like the I feel like that's like the most expensive one. It's nice.

Jason Zigelbaum (03:39)
floral, fruity, whatever. But honestly, like when you pound that much coffee a day, like I can't be that sensitive about it. So like I'll I'll just sort of grab whatever, you daily roast at the nearby coffee shop.

Jason Zigelbaum (03:48)
grind it up and then do the little pour over sort of ritual.

Jason Zigelbaum (03:51)
And it works for me. Yeah. But also the coffee machine is also great when you don't have sort of the whole setup ready. can't find a coffee shop, can't get the right beans. You know, the whole nine. I'm just I'm moving back

Jason Zigelbaum (04:00)
to Miami. I've been trapping for a couple of weeks. So I still don't have my full setup, you know, ready yet. But I'm okay with the with the the serviceable black coffee downstairs. I feel like it's almost almost better 'cause you don't have to think about it as much, you know.

Dan Cassidy (04:14)
Nice. Well I'm glad we're both about to get caffeinated up or recaffeinated. So cheers, good sir. Thanks for coming on.

Jason Zigelbaum (04:19)
Yeah, cheers

Jason Zigelbaum (04:19)
for having me

Dan Cassidy (04:20)
Alright, let's talk about some

Dan Cassidy (04:22)
some marketing shit.

Jason Zigelbaum (04:22)
Mm-hmm. Let's do it.

Dan Cassidy (04:23)
Let's do it. So let's talk about Zigpole.

Dan Cassidy (04:26)
What problem did you see in e commerce and just business in general that led you to build what you've built?

Jason Zigelbaum (04:32)
I'm gonna give you the honest answer, which is perhaps know, it it doesn't make me look like a genius, but it so at first, you know, my idea was okay, I wanted to make websites more interactive, right? That's sort of like the the my key insight.

Jason Zigelbaum (04:46)
that sort of like driven me to to build the things that I built in the past. and so my thought was okay, we're just gonna have a little pop up up here. It's gonna be kinda like a Twitter survey where people can like ask their audience, do you wanna see any new product lines from us?

Jason Zigelbaum (04:57)
You know, do you want us to bring someone else for like a s a s a con like a content series or something? Like do you want to like focus in on this content or that content or whatever? And it would sort of get people to come back to your website because I feel like with e commerce, you go, you buy something, you disappear until you need that thing again. There's no real reason to like check up and and see what's going on on an e commerce site. So that that was the original intention.

Jason Zigelbaum (05:17)
I still think that's kind of like an okay thesis, but I I don't think that it's something that people like immediately need or necessarily want to pay for. and so what happened was people started using that product

Jason Zigelbaum (05:27)
for other purposes, right? So like instead of using it for the purpose that I thought they were gonna use it for, they started using it for post-purchase surveys.

Jason Zigelbaum (05:33)
And that was sort of the first light bulb moment where it's like, okay, this product that you built, you know, for like a contextual survey pop-up isn't being used for what you thought it was gonna be, but actually it's gonna be used for post-purchase surveys because that's what people want. that's what people are getting value out of. and so I just built in that direction. And that's the that loop, right, of listening to the market, you know, building sort of like a loose general sort of set of features that is sort of non

Jason Zigelbaum (05:58)
know, not like focused

Jason Zigelbaum (06:00)
opinionated in its in its use. and then letting the market sort of tell me how they want to use it and then iterate in that direction. So you know that led us to post purchase surveys, which has been great. And then because it's sort of like a flexible, non-opinionated software, you can also use it for converse rate optimization conversion rate optimization surveys, X N surveys, email surveys, there's a lot of different use cases which we can get into.

Jason Zigelbaum (06:20)
That are super useful for e commerce brands and and that niche.

Dan Cassidy (06:22)
So what were the early what were the early days like? Because you're a solo founder even to this day, correct? Like you're you're running lean and mean. That's fantastic.

Jason Zigelbaum (06:28)
Yeah, yeah, still solar. Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (06:30)
So what were the early days like? Were you just slamming coffee in in the Matrix all day? Or were you talking to customers? Like what what did that look like?

Jason Zigelbaum (06:37)
Yeah. I mean so so I think everyone's workflow is differ is, you know, gonna be different. for me, you know, my history as a product guy, you know, I used to run I w I worked at a digital agency for I don't know, five years. you know, r running, you know, the product side of things, like the the tech side of things, right? Like building e commerce websites and all that sort of stuff. So that was what I knew. and so that was what I did. So I just I built it, you know, I probably built like a way too fully featured prototype and went to market probably, you know

Jason Zigelbaum (07:03)
way later than I should. but but that was my strategy and and it worked. So like, you know, throw something out there, make it pretty good, good enough where you can get someone to use it, and then listen to their feedback and iterate from there and and really just do that product led growth sort of cycle. so so yeah, so a lot of being in my home office, you know, my bedroom, you know, s slamming coffee and and building features and answering emails and repeating that process for years.

Jason Zigelbaum (07:26)
is what got me here now. now the things have changed dramatically, right? Like now I'm doing podcasts, you know, I'm talking to customers. but the you know the the core is kind of the same. It's just more volume, which of course makes everything a bit faster and and better. so yeah, so you know, just sit and type in code, that'll get you where you need to go. I think there's definitely other ways to do it though if that's not your strong suit, right? Like, you know, I think it would have been smart for me to talk to customers earlier on, understand their pain points first and then build those. but

Jason Zigelbaum (07:51)
I can't complain. I got here. I feel like this you know, th it worked, so I'd give it a shot if you can.

Dan Cassidy (07:56)
Nice. And ha so speaking of customers, how did you land your first customers?

Jason Zigelbaum (08:00)
Yeah, that's a good question. honestly thinking way, way back, right? So so for context, I built a Shopify app before Zigpool. It's called MetaFields Manager. I did it so I worked at that e commerce agency, I quit and I was like, I need money. So I built an app on the Shopify App Store called MetaFields Manager, this is in like two thousand sixteen. So this is early innings with the with the Shopify App Store and then sort of before like the you know complete ascendance of Shopify or everything else.

Jason Zigelbaum (08:24)
So I I had some tailwinds there. a and and the app did well. You know, it peaked at like thirty K MR or something. anyways, so so so that that kept the light the lights on and and you know, I had a base of customers who I could reach out to when I started Zigpool. but in the beginning, I mean it's slow, you know, like it

Jason Zigelbaum (08:39)
you really just have to sort of sit and scream into the void for weeks and maybe you'll get one customer and then when you get that customer you you better talk to because you know, they're very important. it's just a sl slow drip. You know, it it just you gotta put the reps in, build something and then just sort of keep throwing it out there. And unfortunately with the internet, you know, it's a there's a lot of people on it, there's a lot of people out there. Someone will sort of find you and and be an early adopter. But it it takes time.

Dan Cassidy (09:03)
Nice. So we're so was early traction accommodation of being on the Shopify app store along with outreach from the pr from customers of the previous app that you built?

Jason Zigelbaum (09:11)
Yeah, that's actually

Jason Zigelbaum (09:12)
that so that that's a good point that so you need like a a distribution channel, or at least I would recommend a distribution channel, right? So in this case it was the Shopify App Store. So you know, the customer had to find us and they found us on the Shopify App Store, but that's still a much smaller surface area than the internet as a whole, right? Like, you know

Jason Zigelbaum (09:28)
to this day, very few people find us organically like on the web, right? It's paid ads, it's the app store, it's some other app store, something like that. so if you are doing this solo, you should a hundred percent pick some sort of app store, whether it's, you know, the Apple App Store or maybe something even more niche, like like a s the Salesforce App Store or, you know, the Atlassian or something like that.

Jason Zigelbaum (09:45)
But yeah, so so App Store as sort of like the key distribution channel at the beginning, and then sort of just like a flywheel from there as you get more customers and ideally you're adding more value than you know y your your expense, then it should work. It just takes time.

Dan Cassidy (09:57)
Nice. Fish where the fish are, right? That's what's nice about a sort of app store. Like

Jason Zigelbaum (09:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Cassidy (10:01)
if you can if you can if you can build on a platform where there's already customers potentially looking to solve

Jason Zigelbaum (10:06)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (10:07)
the problems that your tech solves, then that's helpful. Otherwise, yeah, you gotta do all the all the other marketing stuff to get the word out.

Jason Zigelbaum (10:14)
A hundred percent.

Jason Zigelbaum (10:14)
And like that stuff is it's hard to do as one person, right? Especially if it's not your core competency, which it wasn't mine. and then also the Shopify App Store I feel like was kind of uniquely suited to me because it is it's a technical

Jason Zigelbaum (10:25)
It's th they're they're very technical. They have a lot of rules. They have a lot of you know, they change their API every four months. Like you kinda have to know what you're doing to sort of stay on the ball and and be a decent app on the app store. So I think that suited my skill set. And if you were to do this on your own, you should probably pick an app store that suits your skill set, whether it's that or something else. but just be be wary of it. You know, I think I I I I got lucky, right? Like I I can't say I did any of this, you know, thought in advance. but I think that's why it worked out.

Dan Cassidy (10:50)
Awesome, awesome. Good advice. So let's dig into some survey stuff. So

Jason Zigelbaum (10:54)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (10:55)
you've you've you know basically led surveys and your tech has powered over 100 million survey responses. So you have seen a ton of data and a ton of insights across all different product categories and brands, large and small.

Dan Cassidy (11:10)
From an e-commerce standpoint, what are the most valuable questions e-commerce brands should be asking customers today through SurveyTech?

Jason Zigelbaum (11:18)
For

Jason Zigelbaum (11:18)
sure. so first off, it depends on the business, depends on the context. I'm gonna try and give like some sort of like general stuff that works for most people. so with post po post purchase first, right? So you've just completed a purchase, you you're on the thank you page, survey pops up on the page itself. What should you ask? Right? the general sort of consensus is that one attribution question, so how'd you hear about us? So what does that do? It helps you shore up

Jason Zigelbaum (11:41)
how your marketing spend is actually working for you in terms of driving conversions. so incredibly useful attribution, had you hear about us. and then the second one is some sort of like customer segmentation question. So that's gonna be a business specific, but it applies to all businesses, right? So it's basically trying to learn who your customer is. and then later down the line you want to use that information to target them more effectively with you know seasonal campaigns or whatever. So for example you might ask

Jason Zigelbaum (12:04)
like how are you intending to use the product. so if you sell something that maybe has multiple uses, you could say like are you planning to use it for, you know, your garden, your kitchen, whatever. And that now immediately segments, you know, this customer into, you know, how they intend to use your product and you can target them with different materials, you know, a as time goes on. or you could ask, you know, who are you purchasing for? That's another very common one. 'cause if someone's purchasing something as a gift and you know maybe, you know, you're a toy company or you're something that's commonly, you know, sold as a gift,

Jason Zigelbaum (12:31)
you can then segment you know the that customer base because the person server gonna use your product, so they're gonna give it away. So you should target them totally differently than someone who actually is gonna use your product. so segmentation, super useful. and then the third one is open-ended. So that's gonna be anything else you want to share. and and that last one I think surprises people sometimes, but

Jason Zigelbaum (12:47)
you will always be surprised with what people are willing to share. people actually want to give feedback. You know, I I think that's sort of a bit of a surprise for some people. They're like what you know, when I see these things I just close them or whatever. no, a lot of people really do want to get w wanna give feedback. You know, it's like a you know they just had sort of like their

Jason Zigelbaum (13:05)
most important interaction with your brand. They purchased something, they gave you cash. They want to talk to you. They want to tell you things. So an open-ended question at the end also will capture what you don't know that you don't know. And also it might give you information about how people perceive your brand. Because typically that can be different than how you think people see your brand. Right. So it's like people may see me as as in one way, but you know the way you know I see myself is is totally different. And so you want to surface that that information and and listen to sort of what the market thinks about you and and takes

Jason Zigelbaum (13:31)
some

Jason Zigelbaum (13:31)
sort of you know action based on that. Whether you want to lean into it or lean away from it, you know, totally up to you. That's a business decision. but those three are are are typically you know the big players, the most important. I think if you're doing those three on post purchase, then you know, you're doing the right thing and and you're getting a lot of actionable data that will help sort of

Jason Zigelbaum (13:48)
could grow your business and continue to grow your business as time goes on because the you know the the format of the questions and the response data will change as as time goes on as well. so it's kinda can be your like guiding your guiding light or your north star or whatever or one of your north stars to help your iterative process of building your business. so yeah so th that that's post-purchase, you know, I think that's sort of like a good starting point. but then there's there's other as well which

Jason Zigelbaum (14:11)
I get it to a sec, but I how'd that sound? Pretty good?

Dan Cassidy (14:14)
Yeah, that's that's that's fantastic. So full disclosure, we've been using Zigpol at our agency and love it. The tech is super clean, the insights we gather are super powerful, very customizable. so yeah, that's how initially Jason I connected. And so from a post-purchase standpoint, I'll share a couple different use cases. One is

Dan Cassidy (14:35)
to the just to reiterate the power of open ended text. One interesting scenario is we work with a kind of a custom photo brand client that does like restickable peel and stick photos, like really unique stuff, really good for people if they're in college or a retirement home and you don't wanna use nails to pop holes in your walls and you want something that can kinda move around.

Dan Cassidy (14:55)
With you. So really cool product set. and the brand owner started this, I think it's been at least 10 years ago. We installed Zigpole and had a post-purchase survey where it's basically like, where are you where are you planning to use it? And we saw all of a sudden, it wasn't every response, but lots of responses. People were saying they wanted they were gonna use it in an RV, like a camper.

Dan Cassidy (15:15)
And we present we presented this to the brand owner and she was like, What is going on? I've never heard of this. And she's been pretty close to her customer. So completely new use case. We took that, and you know, for for me, the way we advise clients on this stuff is one, you gotta make sure you collect the insights, right? You need the data, you need the information. That's step one. But that's only like 50%. The other 50% is like, what are you gonna do with it? Because you can collect insights all day, but unless you actually do something with it, it's interesting, but it's not improving your business. So

Jason Zigelbaum (15:41)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (15:41)
that's where, you know, we then spun off Facebook.

Dan Cassidy (15:43)
ads for that audience and we then build out copy and all this other stuff you know specifically going after that market but then the other thing that brands can do is take the copy that people are actually saying take the words that people are saying that your customers are saying how they're describing your product set and like you mentioned if it's very different than then your how you're describing yourself update your copy update your website update your advertising because you want to kind of insert your brand into the conversation that people are already having in their own mind

Dan Cassidy (16:10)
And we've just seen that time and time again, where if we use the actual exact copy that customers are saying, it can improve ad performance, it can improve landing page performance. So yeah, those are those are just two super kind of interesting things we we can do with survey tech is one, like find new find new use cases for products, and then two, take the actual language and apply it into marketing.

Jason Zigelbaum (16:31)
Yeah, so a hundred percent, right? Like like I I lo I love what you're saying, 'cause like it it r it keeps I keep coming back to the same sort of idea of like it's meta, but like you you ask the market what they want, they tell you, and then you you iterate based on based on that and then

Jason Zigelbaum (16:47)
That's it. You know, then you you've just now of a sudden improved your brand, you know, you you've improved the value of your brand, and and you've just improved your business. so so the the other spots where you can do sort of the same kind of strategy, right, where you have this heuristic, is you know, CRO, so conversion and optimization surveys. and just for context, so like Zigpool, yes, you can run on a post purchase, but you know, we're agnostic. You can put it on any page, you can put it as a share it as a link.

Jason Zigelbaum (17:10)
You have it pop up on the website as a modal, it can pop up on the bottom left, bottom right, whatever. you can have it you know on on iOS and SDK or on iOS and Android apps, whatever. so so a CRO survey the setup is you have a survey that pops up on a product page, you know, typically 60, 90 seconds.

Jason Zigelbaum (17:27)
after someone's, you know, been hanging out on the page. then it pops up and it says something like, you know, does this p page contain everything you're looking for? Yes, no. and then a follow up saying, you know, is there anything else you can share? the yes no is basically just like a hook to get people to engage with the survey because

Jason Zigelbaum (17:41)
When you're on post-purchase, the engagement rate's very high because they just completed a purchase, you know, they're involved, you know, their wallets out, they're doing stuff. But when they're just browsing your site, it it's gonna be a little bit lower, so you kinda have to d do a little bit of gamesmanship to get them to engage. but anyway, so so the the data that you get from from that pop-up you can then use to iterate and improve your product pages and improve your conversion rate. so you know, they might say something like, I'm not sure if it would work, or maybe you know, I don't know if the ingredients

Jason Zigelbaum (18:07)
Are it gonna be effective for me? So then you upgrade your ingredients, or I don't know how big it is, then all of a sudden you put a scale, you know, next to your your product images so people know how big it is, and you just iterate over and over until you basically eliminate you know all of these sort of like complaints that customers are telling you about, you know, what's preventing them from making a purchase. and then that friction goes away and then the conversion rate goes up. and so you know, I I did chat with one of our customers who

Jason Zigelbaum (18:29)
said like I didn't ask he was like, hey, like I've been running this this survey and I've doubled my conversion rate just by listening to what people have said. And I was like, what that that that's amazing. Like good for you, man. so it it does work. to me it maybe it just makes no it makes a ton of sense, right? It's kinda like a no-brainer. Like of course, you know, you you you're not bothering anybody. you're only engaging with people sort of who have spent a certain amount of time on these product pages. And then you're just finding out

Jason Zigelbaum (18:53)
you know, what what they're nervous about and then you you fix it. and and the interesting thing about a lot of things is that they're they are fixable, you know, like it really is just a matter of updating copy or adjusting product images or I don't I don't know, just like sharing more information about the product or maybe product reviews, stuff like that. and it's all you know fixable and and relatively easy. so so I think that's a great strategy for for any brand is is to run a CRO survey as well.

Dan Cassidy (19:16)
Nice. Yeah, I l I typically like to relate e commerce to actual physical shopping because I think

Jason Zigelbaum (19:20)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (19:20)
a lot of times physical and retailers just will outperform e commerce stores in lots of different ways. So when we think about

Dan Cassidy (19:27)
what the actual shopping experience is in real life, then a lot of people are like, yeah, I should be doing that for my website too. So

Jason Zigelbaum (19:33)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (19:33)
every time you go into a store and you know someone's someone's asking like, hey, did you find everything you're looking for at point

Jason Zigelbaum (19:39)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (19:39)
of purchase or how you found us? How did you find us? Or you know, is there something else you'd be looking for that you didn't see? All those questions that retailers have been asking for like decades and decades and decades,

Jason Zigelbaum (19:50)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (19:50)
we should be asking online too, right? Because 'cause if a retailer is hearing, yeah, I've been I I was looking

Dan Cassidy (19:55)
Looking for you know, women's shoes and never found was like, well, we need to highlight that more effectively at the front of the store, or we need to have better signage, or we need have better flow through the store so people can find this stuff. It's the same thing online, right? It's just harder to collect feedback unless you are specifically asking for it, because in store you're naturally gonna see what's happening, you're gonna hear what people are saying, but online it's a little bit tougher unless

Jason Zigelbaum (20:17)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (20:17)
you have tech that's gonna help out with that. And that's one reason why I think survey tech is insanely powerful.

Dan Cassidy (20:23)
Because other reasons you mentioned, along with just like listening to customers, improving your marketing, not just your website, but your email, your paid acquisition, your your product iterations, you can get feedback on you know, product feedback as you're going through this through through this process. So yeah, it's kind of a it's not rocket science, but I see so many brands neglecting it.

Jason Zigelbaum (20:44)
Mm-hmm. It used to be hard,

Jason Zigelbaum (20:46)
you know, like th not that long ago it was it was pretty challenging, you know, to do these sorts of things. and so that's you know, I'm glad I can add value sort of in that direction. and then also I think what's also the the with AI, right, like the the the shift of like people would collect all this data and not know what to do with it or not know how to connect the dots and that's just kind of melting away.

Jason Zigelbaum (21:05)
now that you have these agents that can sort of like draw all these conclusions across, you know, hundreds of thousands of data points, quickly and easily. You know, you just type it up in plain English and they can get it get it out.

Jason Zigelbaum (21:14)
So I think like the value of the data has also gone up, right? So maybe before, you know, your hesitation was like, I like I'll get it but I don't know what to do with it, you know, that's kind of gone. and you know, we build all the features around that, right? Like I spend a lot of time building like AI analysis features that'll surface, you know, any trends that come up and you can also ask questions about your data and stuff like that. but I but I think that also is is a nice sort of tailwind for me, right? Where

Jason Zigelbaum (21:36)
the value of the data that you're collecting is is just higher because you can sort of suss out, you know, trends much quicker and and then keep that iterative process going.

Dan Cassidy (21:45)
Yeah, so so to to follow up on that, so this morning we were analyzing data for one of the newer brands we're working with, and we uploaded all of their product reviews from the past, let's say, year.

Jason Zigelbaum (21:58)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (21:58)
We uploaded Microsoft Clarity heat map data.

Jason Zigelbaum (22:01)
Nice.

Dan Cassidy (22:02)
We uploaded survey responses from Zig poll that we just got live, like I don't know, a couple weeks ago or something. And fourth was, I'm missing the fourth one. So survey data, clarity, reviews. We might have scrubbed some Facebook ad comments, if I remember correctly.

Jason Zigelbaum (22:18)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (22:18)
Uploaded all that stuff into AI and it was like, what are the what's the what's the data telling us? And then

Jason Zigelbaum (22:22)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (22:23)
we don't need a you know a team of a dozen data analysts. It's like, hey Claude, what's going on here? And with this one brand.

Dan Cassidy (22:29)
This is an artist we're working with who sells like really beautiful art prints, and one of the key things was people were having trouble understanding the size for the for the prints. So it's like email goes out to client this morning, here's

Jason Zigelbaum (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (22:42)
here's exactly what all of the data we've been analyzing is telling us, and next change we're gonna make on your site. It's gonna be we're we're gonna be uploading a a photo guide that's gonna clearly show what the dimensions are for all the different sizes, what the white space around the print looks like.

Dan Cassidy (22:56)
how to frame it, like all this stuff that people were literally saying.

Dan Cassidy (22:59)
We're having a problem with this. And that's what's awesome now with AI is, you know, what used to take maybe a week if you're putting in a couple hours a day analyzing all this stuff.

Dan Cassidy (23:08)
yeah, you have to upload it and you have to make sure the data is clean and you of course have to go through it and make sure it makes sense because you know we'll still see lots of stuff where it's like, that's not right. But if you go through and confirm everything's accurate, you can get some really cool insights that, you know, a year ago, two years ago is a lot harder to get.

Jason Zigelbaum (23:24)
Yeah, no, it's it's insane. I mean I I and it's good to hear that that you do that. I I do the same thing, right? Where you connect sort of different data sources together.

Jason Zigelbaum (23:32)
so like in my case, right, like I'll I'll connect you know sort of like my barometrics data, so like MRR growth and stuff like that, along with sort of like you know, changes that we made to the product itself and also you know survey responses, because we have like a contact us form, you know, on on the Zigpal app itself. and it'll help sort of like draw conclusions of like, okay, you know, this change corresponds with you know this improvement in MRR or like this change corresponds with you know the decline of this trend of sort of like feature requests, you know.

Jason Zigelbaum (23:58)
contact display and stuff like that. And you really can, you know, people were talking about like data driven, you know, stuff before, but it was kind of out of the out of reach for like a solo printer or whatever, or just a small agency. And it just it like the like yeah sure Uber can do it or like Google can do it. But like you know you're literally talking about teams of people whose whose job is is just to run you know data analysis on metrics that you know may or may not even be true. But now you can just do it. You can spin it up you know in like the

Jason Zigelbaum (24:26)
10, 15 minutes, right? And draw these conclusions. and then you can also action the change, right? You could say like, okay, well, hey, now based on this you know trend, you know, what would you do? and you can use sort of like the MCP, I guess, to connect to Shopify, right? So keep it sort of like for e-commerce brands, right? You could you know say, all right, find some trends from the Zigpool survey, and then based on those on that information from the CRO survey,

Jason Zigelbaum (24:47)
make the change to the product page itself, you know, through the MCP. and then then all of a sudden it adds, you these these product descriptions or whatever. And so you can really you can actually close the loop. as long as you have sort of this input of feedback, you know, from your customers, you can really create like a self fulfilling loop where you're still sort of in the picture, but you can almost take yourself out of it.

Jason Zigelbaum (25:05)
So it's kinda crazy. Yeah, and it it's I I don't know. It's exciting for me at least to think about 'cause I feel like these loops are are really starting to close and speed up and and get a lot faster.

Dan Cassidy (25:13)
For

Dan Cassidy (25:13)
sure. And it should it should mean better business performance for everybody, right? Because

Jason Zigelbaum (25:16)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (25:17)
as we can better serve customers, if we're speaking specifically about e-commerce brands, if we can better connect with them

Dan Cassidy (25:23)
better find out where the friction points are and solve those. Customers

Jason Zigelbaum (25:26)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (25:26)
will save time in their shopping journey. They can find products easier. They can understand what your brand is about. They can answer their questions, get their questions answered more effectively. And brands can get better conversion rates, better performance. They can use that to drive their business faster, bigger, like it it just kind of a win-win across the board. so, so you mentioned post-purchase obviously is like number one place to start exit

Jason Zigelbaum (25:49)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (25:49)
surveys from a from a conversation

Dan Cassidy (25:51)
version or website revenue optimization standpoint. Have you seen brands, I guess what other, what other interesting ways have you seen brands use surveys in order to better understand their customers to improve their business across like any, any area of their business?

Jason Zigelbaum (26:06)
Yeah, that's a good question.

Jason Zigelbaum (26:07)
So so a couple of other sort of like different surfaces, right, are gonna be like email surveys, and then just like s outbound campaigns. So whether that's like an SMS campaign or an email campaign, you know, either one. And they're kinda like bespoke like one off sort of things. So like s so some companies, for example, before they even have

Jason Zigelbaum (26:25)
a website, I think it was a paint company I was talking to a while ago. like they would send an email survey to I think they had like a 10,000, you know, person customer list from a you know previous a previous brand. and so they sent it out asking sort of like a question to validate whether or not the product they were building made sense. so so that's one one use case, right? And that's kind of like a typical one I suppose. but basically you can sort of like validate your product before you go to market or maybe tweak it.

Jason Zigelbaum (26:49)
based on sort of like your existing data set and your existing customer base. so that's one like email ones. others would be services like email campaigns that go out to a customer segment. So for example, maybe you want to find out like the I like the ideal customer profile for people who will have a high lifetime value you know with with your brand, right? So you'll grab your customer list, you look at the top 100, top 1000 spenders, and then ask some questions about themselves, right? And so you can build sort of like you know this rich profile

Jason Zigelbaum (27:16)
and what also by the way, what makes that, you know better to use Zigpool for is it'll send the data right back to the Shopify for you or to your CRM, you know, Clavia, whatever, and it'll build those profiles, you know, in there so you don't have to do any extra work. but then you can sort of build these big th these rich profiles of your top spenders. and so one, you'll know how to retarget them better. You

Jason Zigelbaum (27:35)
men from, you know, Mississippi or or or women from Southern California, whatever. and so you can target them better. and then you can also target them, you know, with with you know future ad campaigns. So that way you can sort of really, you know, dial in your spend towards someone who's actually gonna have a higher lifetime value than you

Jason Zigelbaum (27:50)
the rest. so tha that's another super useful one. and then the last one would be sort of just like and again this is a little bit more brand specific, but like if you have a product that is, you know, physical or maybe worried about how your three PL is performing, you can run like a product delivery survey or an order delivery survey. So that'll get sent out

Jason Zigelbaum (28:05)
you when the orders marked as delivered, you can you know set it an hour later or a day later, whatever. you know, asking like, hey, how's the packaging? Or perhaps it could be like, hey, did this product, you know, fill your needs, or if you're like a skincare brand or something and you know, maybe you bought it for a specific purpose, you can dial it in and find out like, this did solve my acne or this didn't. and then you can sort of iterate, you know, you know, based on that. And those are a bit more, you know, brand specific, but you can sort of see like the long tail of if there's

Jason Zigelbaum (28:30)
kind of hard to it's really kind of hard to find a a brand that couldn't benefit from this, right? Like you can always benefit from finding out how people are actually engaging with your products or what they may do when your product goes to market, or how they felt about your unboxing. You know, all these things are are worth knowing. and I think that n to sort of reiterate, now that we have such an incredible tool in AI to

Jason Zigelbaum (28:52)
take action on on these data and surface these trends, not only can you get the data, you can actually do something about it. which sounds obvious. It was I think the execution was always the the hurdle, right? But that now that that's sort of melting away, it's like, well, you know, you kinda need to do that to stay in the game.

Dan Cassidy (29:06)
So speaking of execution, what are you seeing? 'Cause it sounds like you're you get

Dan Cassidy (29:10)
Really good feedback from brands going back to the example of brands saying, Hey, I'm I use Survey Tech to I use Zigpol to gather survey data and then I may change on website, double conversion rate. That's fantastic. I imagine, you know, any business has has customers that are super happy and some clients where maybe it's not as good of an experience or for whatever reason they weren't like stellar case study. So what would you say separates the clients on Zigbull who have

Dan Cassidy (29:36)
Have had amazing performance and results versus

Jason Zigelbaum (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (29:40)
the ones where they're like, yeah, I'm using stuff, but I don't know if it's really working, I don't know if you know it's really helpful. Like, what are they doing differently? Because it's not about the it's not about the tech, it's about the the usage, right? So how are the best performing brands on Zigpol using the tech versus the ones that are sort of just haven't installed and aren't doing a whole lot with it?

Jason Zigelbaum (30:00)
Yeah, that's a question. so two things. One is knowing or understanding that one size fits all is not always accurate. You know, like you have to sort of understand your brand. Like if you're just starting off, you have no one on your website, maybe you know, don't run an extension survey and expect it to tell you what's wrong, right? Because you know, if you have three people coming a week

Jason Zigelbaum (30:18)
Maybe you'll get one response, you know, two responses a month, and that's not gonna be very helpful. you know, instead, maybe you wanna run a post-purchase survey, or maybe you wanna source leads from somewhere else, you know, and and send them an email first. or I I think given sort of the model, you'd probably just run a post-purchase survey in that scenario. but but that that's one, right? It's sort of like understanding your brand or seeing where you're at, and and using the tools you know in a way that will suit where you're at. You also may want to run

Jason Zigelbaum (30:41)
offer a discount code, right? An exchange. You know, you want to boost your conversion rate if you have less eyeballs on it. You know, stuff like that. Sort of you know, using these these tricks to to suit you where you're at. It it will help you get more pro more value out of the product. and then the other way is is or the other thing that sort of needs to happen is you need to have some sort of loop where you take action, you know

Jason Zigelbaum (30:59)
Iteratively, you know, as as it comes in with your product data or with your response data. So like if if you're running a post-purchase survey, you should also be adding tags to your customer base based on how they responded, right? And then you should be using those customer segments to send you know remarketing campaigns, you know, maybe send them into you know Google Google Ads to do some sort of advanced targeting, maybe send them an email, you know, all all this sort of stuff. because if you're not taking actions, then it's just like you have the data.

Jason Zigelbaum (31:25)
it's like, so what? so so I think those are the those are the two big ones, right? Like, know key keep the lens of of your brands, you know, be objective about it and and and know that this is the type of survey I wanna run and these are the type of tricks I wanna I wanna utilize in order to get the most value. And then two is to actually take action so you improve your website you know as the data comes in over time instead of having to do the housekeeping later on.

Dan Cassidy (31:45)
Yeah, and I you know, to your point about taking action combined with AI, I think one of the one of the really nice things about using AI now is it can

Dan Cassidy (31:53)
As long as as long as the prompt is appropriate, you can sort through your own bullshit, right? Because

Jason Zigelbaum (31:57)
Mm.

Dan Cassidy (31:58)
everybody we all have our own point of view on stuff. And

Jason Zigelbaum (32:00)
Yeah. True.

Dan Cassidy (32:01)
you know, as a business owner might be like, this thing's amazing. But if lots of clients are saying actually this one thing is not working as well as it should, and AI is telling you clearly, like, yeah, 80% of customers are saying that your small t-shirt is small when everybody's saying it runs too big, so it really should be a

Jason Zigelbaum (32:18)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (32:18)
medium, whatever, then you can find

Dan Cassidy (32:19)
And be like, okay, I actually have to address this, even though I think it fits great, like it it just kind of forces you to get out of your own way in some cases. And so I

Jason Zigelbaum (32:27)
Yeah. A hundred percent.

Dan Cassidy (32:28)
think I think as long as you're not, you know, you don't have your AI set up where it's just telling you you're the best no matter what no matter what you say. But if it's if it's analyzing things appropriately and giving you, you know, constructive feedback based on survey data, it should help you just improve your business as long as you don't get in your own way and and think that you know better than all your customers.

Dan Cassidy (32:47)
that's what can be cool about using about using any of the LLMs combined with the survey data. So

Jason Zigelbaum (32:53)
Hundred percent.

Jason Zigelbaum (32:54)
Yeah, it does. It takes you out of the equation, right? 'Cause you just let the market tell you what it wants. And it's like, hey man, that's that's fine with me. That's why that's why I'm here, right? Like I'm here to help the market. I'm not here to I mean, like, I get it. Some people have like if you're maybe building like a direct to consumer SaaS or something, you know, like the next Facebook or the next Snapchat or whatever, like, you know, I get it. But you know, if you're selling stuff online, you know, and and i

Jason Zigelbaum (33:19)
I I think there's a a bit of, you know, sort of like humility that that should be should be had and and objectivity and I think just like a a smart strategy if you wanna have a sustainable business and work life balance and all that sort stuff.

Dan Cassidy (33:30)
Cool. Thanks so much for sharing that stuff. Let's move on to the speed round. So ooh, speed round.

Jason Zigelbaum (33:34)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (33:36)
each response, like I don't know, thirty seconds, minutes, something like that. So what is one book that you typically recommend?

Jason Zigelbaum (33:42)
jeeze. It bold of you to think that I read. No, I'm kidding. I I I I love the Great Gatsby. That's more of a probably not a a book that is recommended to a ton of people. if we're sticking the business, I the zero to one. I know Peter Thiel has a a bit of a rep now. I did I read it before, you know, he did all the all the stuff. stay out of politics. But it's a good book. It it's it's got a lot of good info there.

Dan Cassidy (34:03)
Awesome. And classic with the Gatsby there too, so well I definitely believe it based on that recommendation, so nice, good

Jason Zigelbaum (34:05)
was an English major, believe it not, back in the day. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (34:10)
stuff. You're blending art and science with what you're working on. So

Jason Zigelbaum (34:12)
Mm. Uh-huh.

Dan Cassidy (34:15)
besides Zigpol, what's a Shopify app that every brand should know about?

Jason Zigelbaum (34:19)
Ooh, that's a question. geez, I mean I'm not in the Shopify biz. Who do I like? I think there are a lot of well made apps out there. Clavio's good. think Revo's good. I like I like what they're doing over there. I think that's I think that's a good pick.

Dan Cassidy (34:31)
what's an under the radar brand that you love? Let's say a consumer brand.

Jason Zigelbaum (34:35)
Sumer brand. I have been buying stuff for the house lately. Let's see. so this is not it's this is not an under-the-table brand, but I think Asics. So I had a I used to buy I I run a bit. I used to buy like, you know, Nike Pegasus like once a year, and they would always fall apart. And then I bought a pair of Asics Superblast 2, and the quality difference in those shoes completely blew my mind.

Jason Zigelbaum (34:58)
So I'm gonna go with A six, even though I know it's not under rare, but you should buy their running shoes. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (35:02)
Cool, good stuff. I'm always

Dan Cassidy (35:04)
I'm always on the look for better for better running kicks. So nice.

Jason Zigelbaum (35:07)
Yeah, they'll last.

Dan Cassidy (35:08)
Good deal, good deal. what is if you were gonna have a super quick piece of advice for other solar f solo founders out there, what's one

Jason Zigelbaum (35:16)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Cassidy (35:16)
thing you've learned that you would share as kind of a key nugget of wisdom or piece of advice to somebody looking to start their own business as a solar founder?

Jason Zigelbaum (35:23)
think don't give up too early is the advice I would give. I think that was probably what changed my trajectory was before I would be, you know, like, ooh, shiny object, shiny object, shiny object. But like, no stick it stick with it for a bit longer than you think you should. you know, this stuff takes time, getting your first customers take time. And then once you sort of have them, it it's the only way forward is to sort of stick with it. So stick with it.

Dan Cassidy (35:46)
Who is somebody you would nominate for a future episode?

Jason Zigelbaum (35:49)
hm, another f I I like the guy from Seguno. I think he's really nice. Chris Chris Geis, I think. Weiss. I don't know. Nice guy though. I like him. actually yeah, he so my backstory with him is he so bef I as like

Jason Zigelbaum (36:03)
Speaking of having too many startups and shiny ball syndrome and stuff, back when I built Metafields Manager in two thousand sixteen, I also built this music startup called JKBX, where it's kinda just like a virtual living room sort of thing. And and he and all the people from Seguno they used it. And so he knew me as like the guy from Jukebox and had no idea that I was building Shopify apps and reached out to me, you know, with that lens. so funny. And now we're now we're both making Shopify apps. So funny. but nice guy, so get him on.

Dan Cassidy (36:30)
And where can people connect with you to learn more, either about yourself or about Sigpal?

Jason Zigelbaum (36:35)
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably social media of choice. So LinkedIn, Jason Siglebaum. but you can always shoot me an email, jasonzigpool.com, or sign up for the app and fill out the contact us form. I do and I do all the customer support. People don't believe me, it's true. so you can always email me, support sigpal.com or jason sigpal.com.

Dan Cassidy (36:52)
Fantastic. Jason, thanks for joining us today and for helping e-commerce brands better understand their customers. One of my favorite things about Zigpol is that it helps brands move beyond assumptions so they can start making decisions based on what customers are actually telling them. And it's helped our clients improve their business when we install the tech and use it through the whole website revenue optimization program we have. So thank you for building it. Thank you for helping businesses get better from true insights their customers are sharing with them. And thanks for sharing.

Dan Cassidy (37:22)
sharing your story and insights with us today on the Shopify Happy Hour.

Jason Zigelbaum (37:25)
I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me on.