Why Your Dispensary Website Isn’t Driving Sales (And What To Do About It)

Most dispensary websites look good.
 But they don’t actually work.

In this episode of The Canna Connect Show, we sat down with Dan Mondello and Alex Abrams of Rank Really High to unpack one of the biggest missed opportunities in cannabis right now: your website.

From invisible menus to broken data tracking, they explain why most operators are investing time and money into systems that Google can’t even see. And more importantly, what it looks like to fix it.

This conversation dives into native e-commerce, customer funnel visibility, and why your website should be your most powerful revenue driver, not just a digital brochure. 

We also get into real operator stories, early adoption lessons, and how AI is starting to reshape how cannabis businesses connect with customers.

If you’ve ever wondered why traffic isn’t converting, this episode will change how you think about your entire digital strategy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The thoughts, views, and opinions expressed on the CannaConnect show belong solely to the individuals and do not reflect those of Canaconnect and its affiliates, sponsors, or partners. Can I Connect does not promote or facilitate any activity that violates state or federal regulations. Everything you hear here is strictly for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not legal advice. It is not financial guidance, and it's definitely not medical direction. Seriously, don't take our word for it. Even if someone on the mic sounds like they know what they're talking about, and they're probably crazy smart too. Regardless of how legit our guests may be, you should always do your own homework, consult with your attorney, and understand the risk you're taking before you do anything when it comes to cannabis. Our intention is to keep it real. If you've got a problem with anything we've said, take us to court.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

This is our last interview of the day. I'm here with Dan and Alex of Rank Really High. We might not get really high, but we're gonna rank really high. Let's get into it. How do you rank really high? What all goes into the services you provide? Well, there's a lot actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

So we've got time. Most dispensaries don't spend a lot, they spend a lot of time getting products on their menu, but they don't spend a lot of time making their menu visible to consumers who are using the internet to find products, which is every consumer out there, basically. No doubt. So the first thing we do is we jailbreak the iframe and make the entire uh e-commerce experience native, meaning that all the strains, all the terps, all the cannabinoids, all the brands, all the products are immediately visible on your website sitemap, living on your website. The next thing we do is we develop content to localize the brand because most dispensary customers don't actually know the products are in stock. They're not Googling them, they're looking for a dispensary near me, dispensary near a town. Oh, yeah. You need to unlock all that content as well. So we marry all that into one experience.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

And why is it important to jailbreak the iPhone? Why is it important to jailbreak the iFrame? You want to take that one? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

But he was a former retailer before he joined us.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yes, yes. There's a little anecdote here, which is Dan and I first met when I was uh running the heirloom collective. Yes, best relationship I've yet built. Wow. Um I was running the heirloom collective. Tell that to Dan's wife. She already knows. She does already know. Um, but yeah, I was a co-founder of one of the first craft verticals in Massachusetts. Uh held the heirloom collective. And this was at a time back in 2019, 2020, weed maps, leafly, touchy i frames. That was pretty much all that was available. I was introduced to Dan, and I I had a simple request, which was just make my menu look like it's mine, just give it colors, make it look like it's part of my website because everything looks generic. That very quickly turned into me understanding what native e-commerce was. Wow. Dan very politely informed me, hey man, you're spending a lot of time on product descriptions, names, all this stuff. Yeah. Uh what would you be sad if I told you Google's not seeing any of that work? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

So all of it would be. Dan Dan knew the answer to that question. 100%. I pretended to know.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Proceeds to open up the site map of the website and show me how small, how little content was actually on my website.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

And so that could actually be seen in ranked. That could actually be seen.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Exactly. So there are a lot of uh design agencies. Hey, they build a really pretty website. Last time I checked, a website was designed to grow sales, not just to look British. So wait. So when Dan developed uh native e-commerce with rank really high, I was an early adopter, I was the third client, and the numbers speak for themselves. Wow, that's that's really what it's all about. Is and this was pandemic era cannabis. Pandemic post-pandemic. Yep, we we opened our first medical dispensary during the pandemic, and I only could do curbside. So think of that environment. My website's all I have. I can't go anywhere, advertise, do anything. So I was leaning entirely on that to get visibility. All the other marketing I was doing was falling short. Yeah. And I didn't know what it was doing. So there's another component about rank, which is it allowed me to visualize my entire customer fall. So if you're using an iframe, you can see kind of where your traffic's coming from, but once they hit the menu, they disappear. You're you're losing the best data you have to understand the actual clientele coming through your doors, right? So using a fully native solution connected all with APIs, you can actually visualize the entire customer funnel down to product level data visibility in your Google Analytics. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Now, Alex, I want to stay there with as from an operator perspective. Like tell me a little bit more about all the other things that uh the all the other quiet parts as it relates to getting your brand seen and being able to rank really high.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Sure. So the first thing, and this is kind of at rank now, being on the sales side for two and a half years at rank, I I've gotten to see the other side of this, which is really when a brand is trying to make itself visible or a retailer opens up trying to drive business, a serious marketing calendar that respects the best tools that they have, which is deals, specials, initiative, loyalty. That's what's important to consumers. And unfortunately, people might click the about us, but most people don't care. They're there to buy a pre-roll, they want a gummy, they're on a lunch break, they don't have time. So for me, a great marketing calendar and understanding how you're positioning yourself is a fundamental of really getting to market and also having a big wholesale presence. If you're a brand getting in other retailers telling the world, but all of that falls short if you don't have the technological levers to actually be able to uh push and pull that on your website bit. So if you can't create a shoppable home page where you can have inventory and tell your customers what you want them to see, yeah, that marketing calendar is great, but it's very hard to communicate that.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Go look at any website in cannabis and then go look at uh Target, Best Buy, Whole Foods, Amazon. It's a much different experience, and we're not sure why that is. It should be a consistent shopping experience. That's what customers are looking for. Ease of use, product visibility. They want to know what's selling, what they should be trying, seasonalities. These are all things that cannabis dispensers completely miss today.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Okay, and marketing's a nine-letter word. But tell me what um Rank Really High offers. Like when it comes to marketing calendar, what's within the suite of services that Rank Really High provides and what's not?

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Because you can't do everything. No, and you really shouldn't do everything. I'm I'm glad I can see my uh booth for you. I can just read you what we do. No. Um we we build a website that's e-commerce first, e-commerce focus, e-commerce forward. We teach our dispensary partners how to work with the brands they're already selling to collaborate with them, let them advertise on the homepage throughout the website menu, work with them on content. Like the you cannabis has such a unique situation where a brand can't, for the most part, go directly to a consumer. They have to go through an intermediary called the dispensary. And a lot of these dispensaries are inept at actually marketing that brand effectively. So getting the dispensary to be able to allow these channels to the brand, there's revenue opportunities, they're passive income opportunities there, and there's opportunities to work closer to get better wholesale rates. Like we're really just doing the things that companies like Target and Best Buy taught us to do. Work with the brands you're already selling.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Ah, there's another element too, which is our digital strategy team. So for each one of our clients, we assign them a digital strategist from our team, and these are all people that have cannabis-specific marketing backups. So, as most people have found out, you know, they're starting a dispensary, you go to generic marketing agency.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

It's a good way to get burned. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

You you end up training them, so you end up being an unpaid employee of their company, training them how to get more clients. And there's a bill at the end of the book. 100 100. 500 bucks for a house. So so, you know, and that was actually, I won't name names, but the first agency we picked at Heirloom. Yeah, what they they had big corporate accounts. These guys were behemoths when it came to cannabis, all fells, totally clueless, didn't know anything, and didn't know how to actually you guys like you were a little like like you guys were a big like luxury brand. I'll put it this way we were an antique furniture store when I first launched my website. That was basically because we were called the Erland Collective, which is great because it's kind of its own thing. Yeah, but really we had to make that brand forward and it wasn't working. So, you know, for me, at least, uh digital strategy kind of pivoting back to that. The digital strategist component is the person that's consulting for you personally to say, hey, we have 200 plus clients, we have a wealth of global data, we know what works, we've A B tested, we're in a place to featured brand slider, we've done all this. So we have a personal touch that for each client in their given market, we're able to kind of advise them and consult them on exactly how to be the most successful. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Any asshole can build you a website and slap an iframe on it. For sure. We we teach you how to use that website to better your business and to forward your business and to generate more revenue and income, whether it'd be just selling more pot or actually attracting more people who want to sell pot through you. Those opportunities galore within those areas. Okay. Uh Dan, what's your relationship like with artificial intelligence? We have a very platonic relationship right now. We're working on it, we're in marriage count. No, it's been great. We've been using AI in a couple different ways. We use AI to really, we've really fed AI with our ideal customer profile. So we're now connecting with and reaching out to dispensaries that have a higher likelihood of seeing value in our services. That's one way we're using AI.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

You want to find the people that are more attracted to you in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Yeah, I don't want to waste anyone's time. I don't want my time wasted. I don't want to waste your time. So we're finding a better customer through AI and intelligence and analytics. Like we're doing all that. Yeah. We also have a gentic outreach where we're helping to put, you know, fill his calendar, my calendar of more appointments and demos by having AI reach out to these people and get a meeting scheduled. Yeah. But on the customer side, who we're doing with our clients, we're connecting agentic to their website so that it can actually analyze their entire inventory, see what's selling, and further promote it, but also see what's not selling, Steven, and promote that because that needs to go. If that expires, cannabis is weird. You can't just like throw expired product at the dumpster out back. You gotta like hazmat that shit. So it's unacceptable to like let product spoil on your shelves. You have to promote it.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

So the bottom of the barrel has to be sold. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

No, I was gonna say one thing on the AI concept, which has been something that fascinates me. Yeah, there are a lot of companies that are like, oh, we're doing the AI, this and that. Yeah, I think. But really, it's about intentional and thoughtful applications of AI because there are steps of the process where you can totally turn off a customer using that. Where I agree, you don't have it set up properly, or you're using it too much to replace the human element that really should be there. I know. So I think we're trying to be very tactful in the way that we're applying it and ensuring that the the fundamental efficacy of the experience is not is not interfered with.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

And we're not using AI to replace people at our company, we're we're using AI to enable them and enhance their capabilities. Like we don't we don't think that AI is in a place right now where it can just replace jobs across the board. We think it needs a good operator to like work with it and train it and adjust it to be successful. If you just unleash AI, it's gonna be a disaster. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Now, Dan, you're the CEO of the company.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

What were you doing prior to rank really high? I uh I had started two other uh SaaS companies, one in the automotive space, actually operating here in Minnesota, pardon me. Yeah, Eden Prairie, Minnesota for Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Uh dealer teamwork. We were the first company to basically, when someone was Googling Grand Cherokee lease, actually be able to fire an ad into Google Advertising that would say, We have grand Cherokees, you can lease one for$129 a month or$330, zero down. Before that, when you Googled Grand Cherokee Lease, all the ads said, We're a dealership, we have grand Cherokees. Once they clicked that ad, we went to a page on the dealership's website that promoted how to get that offer, how to qualify. We were the first ones doing that. We spun that off a few years later and did the exact same thing in the home services space. Okay. When people type in plumber today, they have no idea if they can trust the plumber or afford the plumber. We put pricing for it on those ads as well. It's also another uh Minnesota-based company called Camp Digital. I'm a co-founder of uh-huh. Yeah, we were just basically doing the same thing we're doing in cannabis, but in other verticals previously.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

All right, so make the connection a little bit more clear for me. Where did the light bulb go off? Uh, you know, you're you're in auto digital our digital marketing in the auto industry, in the home services industry. I understand you went back to Massachusetts at the at 2020 during the pandemic, but like uh give me that light bulb moment where it made sense to build rank really high.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Gosh, I'll tell you the exact day. It was November 20th, 2018. It was the day that rec sales went online in Massachusetts. I was living here in Minnesota. I was in I was in our offices on 7500 Flying Cloud Road. Yeah. And I was in a meeting, I was bored out of my mind. I have the ADHD thing going. I'm on Facebook and I'm seeing all my friends back home in mass. They're all buying weed, they're all waiting in lines. They look like iPhone launch like lines. Yeah, I'm like, this is insane. This is crazy. I can't wait to go home for Christmas break and buy some legal weed. Then I went and looked at some of the websites that were selling this weed, and I was like, we're using iframes, we're talking about our founders. Nobody goes to Walmart.com to learn about Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. They go to Wikipedia for that shit. So there was all this misplaced energy. That was that was on November uh 20th, 2018. I I registered the domain, ranked really high, and I didn't do anything with it. I kept on top of the industry, I studied it, but I didn't actually like do anything with it until about the early beginning of uh 2021. I was like, you know what? I'm jumping into this, I'm doing it. At the time my mother had was about to pass away, she was in hospice care, and when I left Minnesota to go back to Mass, some of my partners saw an opportunity to boot me out of my company. It's all good, you know, it's all good. Um, but I started ranked really high and I never looked back.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Before we go, I wanted to take some time to clear the room, to clear the air. Yeah. And I want you to I want you to be able to air some grievances as it relates to what you were seeing in 2021, 22, 23. Fast forward a couple years. There's pirates uh both in Somalia and in the cannabis industry. What are some of the things that grind your gears as it relates to uh e-commerce and cannabis?

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Well, there's a lot. Um a lot of the companies that really attracted us to work with them in the early days have now become very covetous. Instead of having open APIs or supporting open APIs, they're becoming more coveted and closed loop. They're making their retailers select them to do things that they're not qualified to do. Like just because you know how to do the cash register doesn't mean you know how to do digital marketing, doesn't know how you know how to do loyalty and retention and mobile apps. I wish that they would continue to leave their APIs open so that companies like mine and all of my competitors could be competitive. Who are some of your strongest competitors? You know, honestly, some of the companies that went closed loop made a lot of my competitors not as competitive.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

So kudos to you guys for for figuring out how to stay agile.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

Yeah. If I thought that some of these solutions would have made my my dispensary partners$1 more per day, I would have done it. Okay. I didn't see that as a possibility, so I had to say no, and I'm and I don't regret it.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

And so who plugs in who are some really good partners for rank really high as it relates to the connected ecosystem?

SPEAKER_03 15:27

For PLS, we love Cova, we love FlowHub, we love Alpine IQ, Meadow. I mean, a lot of the guys that were here, Cova.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Let's talk about Alpine IQ because I don't know much about them, but I know Jeremy Johnson. Yep. And it seems like they know what they're doing over there.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

I think that that Nick Peschkel and Wes Peschkel are very smart and talented operators. They do know what they're doing, they make smart acquisitions, they buy good companies, and then they continue to let those companies flourish because they don't get in the way of their progress and they continue to let them support their customers as they're used to. So I think AlP. Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Well, I'm sorry, LP IQ, what exactly is it compared to rank really high?

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Well, they actually have some competitive products to us as well. They acquired a company that was also Boston-based, okay, called Dispense. That's where Jeremy came into the picture. I see. And um, you know, the first call, I I want to say the first call they made if they bought Dispense was to rank really high and said, Hey, we want to integrate with you guys. We want to do this headlisting that you've been doing with other companies in the space. We said, you know, we'll do it, sure. Okay. Yeah. But and that's the approach you prefer. That is the approach that we prefer. You know, one of the things I we use HubSpot for our CRM. One of the things I love about HubSpot is if I wanted to, in addition to the CRM, I could buy loyalty, I could buy a mobile app, chatbot, I buy a lot of stuff from them, but they don't make me buy those things. They allow us the the ability and the optionality to do whatever the heck we want. And that's why I stay a HubSpot customer. It's not because of the bill. The bill is insane. The bill is insane, but the optionality is really good.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

I would say HubSpot is the Microsoft teams of uh email marketing software. Like that's not a bad way to look at it. When you book a meeting with HubSpot, you know it's a HubSpot meeting. Oh, yes, you do. And your customers do too. Your plot. Yeah, absolutely. Uh well, before we wrap up, guys, we're in mini, we're in Minneapolis. We just finished Lucky Leaf. We're wrapping up. Like, what are you hoping to see more from inside the Minnesota cannabis market?

SPEAKER_03 17:17

I would love to kick down the door with one of these operators and work with them. We I'm second home is Minnesota. Love to work with someone in Minnesota. Absolutely. I just, you know, uh two, two, three years ago when we first came out to Lucky Leaf, it was sparse. I mean, the licenses were not issued. Yep. Last year I didn't come, he came, the licenses were still not really issued.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

That's when we've met each other.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yes. But now you guys are open for business, you're growing. I I wish that they would speed up the accelerate more licenses being issued. I really hope they don't make the mistakes of New York City and Massachusetts and others and oversaturate the market so it's no longer competitive. I hear you.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

If I might add, too, I think last year there was a ton of excitement, there was a ton of energy. Nobody had anywhere to put it. There was a there's no place to attribute. This year, people are getting moving. I will say the operator IQ is is pretty hot. The conversations that I've had, people have clearly taken lessons from previous states, they're clearly reading up, they understand the legislative framework. And uh en masse from 2016 to 208 was almost similar to this, where it's like there are people are paying out the ass to get build outs done, all this different stuff. Yes, and they're trying to get going. Now, my suspicion here is first slowly and then all at once. So with things like advertising guidelines, all this, you know, no offense to soccer bombs, but soccer bomb type legislation, that's not actually really protecting it. Not effective. It's actually holding back the retailers, which is holding back their tax ribbon. So I think as soon as that becomes clear, the whole goal is don't go too crazy, but make sure that access is created because it's clear the demand is there. So if you're selling that out for any reason, they might as well not have a program as far as that.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

And something tells me that Minnesota's gonna want some new tax revenue pretty soon. Call it a hunch.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

We might guess. Help balance that budget out a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Too soon?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Too soon. Sorry, sorry, apologies. Alex, on the sales side, if somebody wants to book a demo, get in touch with you. What's the best way to get in touch with Rank Really High?

SPEAKER_01 19:12

So we have uh just on our website, rankrelyhigh.com. We have some great resources. So if you find yourself there, you can book a demo directly from that page. Uh, you can also shoot me an email directly. And my email is alex at rankreelyhigh.com. I love to have conversations, even if you're not uh potential client, I love to talk industry. I'm always learning from people and staying a prize. So amazing.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

So please do reach on after Dad, anything else you'd like to add to the people of it.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

I really enjoyed your event last night. You this was enjoyable as well. Like you guys are doing a great job and doing great things in the market. I hope you continue to do those things.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

I appreciate it. Love to chat more. I enjoy the openness and the candidness, and uh let's continue to pull back those layers of uh iframes and jailbreak and uh and continue to do your own thing, right? Yes, buddy. Really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. We'll be back on the Canon Connect Show.