[Top Agency Series] Optimizing eCommerce Conversions Without Data Overload With Shaun Brandt

Shaun Brandt is Co-founder of Oddit, a CRO solution for direct-to-consumer brands wanting to increase their conversion and brand loyalty. He is an experienced entrepreneur and a Co-founder of Kulin, where he helps DTC e-commerce brands scale revenue through smart strategy, Google ads, paid social, email/SMS, and creative. Shaun is an Investor at Triple Whale and the Founder of Nowhere Else Inc. Previously, he was a Partner for Wilfred’s, Partner and Creative Director for MAST Hair, Co-founder and Creative Director for Versett, Co-founder of Federal Moto, and Principal for ONST Creative.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:21] Shaun Brandt introduces Oddit and its mission to optimize websites for conversion
• [12:18] The unconventional onboarding process that eliminates client calls
• [14:33] How Oddit’s free trial functions as a marketing tool and training resource
• [17:32] The benefits of upfront payment models for agencies and clients
• [21:47] How Oddit’s services have evolved
• [27:49] Shaun discusses the common UX mistakes brands make that hinder conversions
• [33:03] How small, simple UX changes can significantly boost sales
• [42:19] The impact of brand trust on website design choices
• [44:07] Real-life UX improvements from Oddit

In this episode…

Traditional web design agencies often follow complex processes filled with client calls, feedback loops, and data-heavy analysis. These methods focus on surface-level metrics rather than practical user experience improvements, leading to bloated costs and underwhelming results. How can businesses streamline website optimization while achieving higher sales and better user engagement?

Shaun Brandt, a design and branding expert, has developed a no-nonsense approach to website optimization that focuses on practical UX improvements without relying on data analytics. Instead of drawn-out processes, his brand offers one-way audits where brands submit their website pages and receive a red-marked version pinpointing UX flaws and a fully redesigned page. Shaun emphasizes the importance of clarity over cleverness in website messaging, ensuring users immediately understand a product’s value and how to purchase it. He also highlights simple, actionable changes — like improving button placement and reducing clutter — that can significantly boost conversions.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Shaun Brandt, Co-founder of Oddit, about his unconventional approach to website optimization. Shaun shares how Oddit has scaled to over 10,000 website audits, the common UX mistakes that hurt conversions, and how brands can improve sales with small but strategic changes. He also discusses the importance of clear messaging, the role of free trials in client acquisition, and why sometimes less data leads to better results.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Shaun Brandt on LinkedIn
• Oddit

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast

Related episode(s):

• “How to Set and Achieve Goals With Ian Garlic, Founder of Video Case Story” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “We don’t need data to improve conversions — common-sense design fixes often outperform data-heavy strategies.”
• “Agencies complicate simple tasks. We focus on clarity, efficiency, and results — no endless client calls required.”
• “The customer journey should be frictionless — every click, scroll, and button should guide users to the sale.”
• “Clients don’t want meetings — they want results. We deliver audits without the fluff or feedback loops.”
• “Most brands clutter their sites chasing trends; simplicity and clarity consistently drive higher conversions.”

Action Steps:

1. Simplify website navigation for users: A clear, intuitive flow increases user engagement and boosts conversion rates.
2. Use clear, benefit-driven messaging: Replace clever taglines with straightforward descriptions of what the product is and why it’s valuable. 
3. Prioritize mobile-friendly design: With most users browsing on mobile devices, seamless mobile UX is crucial for maintaining engagement and increasing sales.
4. Reduce visual clutter and distractions: A cleaner layout keeps users focused on key actions, like adding items to cart or completing purchases.
5. Use calls-to-action as communication tools: Informative CTAs guide users more effectively, increasing the likelihood of click-throughs and conversions.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, doctor Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Doctor Jeremy Weiss here founder of nspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Shaun Brandt of Oddit. You can check him out at oddit.co.

And Shaun, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series. A fan favorite or one of my favorites was Ian Garlic. He helps document case stories for companies, but there was a there was get the entrepreneurial juices flowing. He was talking about.

He grew up, his dad was an entrepreneur. And Shaun, they his dad owned a restaurant and they live dolphins in it. Now, this is kind of odd in general, but that restaurant was in Wisconsin, which is even crazier. So there were just some cool stories in that. Check that one out.

Another really good one was Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity, so he helps sell agencies. He has a Second Bite Podcast because he found that sometimes that founder made more on the second bite than they did on the first ones. Private equity they sold to private equity. And private equity sells again.

And it was really good just from the agency space valuation, space, M&A space. That was also a great episode. Check that out inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast.

We do the strategy, accountability and the full execution. So, Shaun, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background, that make it look easy for the host. They can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, but most importantly, run their business. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world with, you know, what they’re working on.

So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. I am excited to introduce Shaun Brandt. He’s the co-founder of Oddit. They’ve helped 10,000 plus brands cost-effectively optimize their websites for conversion through user experience design.

And I had to kind of fact check is that right? 10,000 brands. That’s a lot of brands. It’s amazing what their company has done. They’ve worked with companies such as Crossnet, Wandering Bear Coffee, Corkcicle, Caraway and Huel and many more. He was a fan favorite of me personally. So Shaun, thanks for joining me.

Shaun Brandt 03:06

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I’m excited. I’m excited, excited to go through this.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 03:10

Just and there is a video version. So if you’re listening to the audio you can check it out. I’m going to pull up their website as we’re talking. But just talk a little bit about Oddit and what you do.

Shaun Brandt 03:21

Yeah, absolutely. So my past life was running a fairly large design development product design agency, really focused on what most digital agencies are focused on, how are we getting bigger contracts and tackling bigger tools and designing bigger things really got exhausted of that. The whole premise of it, the sales process, it really became, you know, when you start out in an agency, most of them are started by the founders there. They’re running every department, right? Sales, you know, everything from invoicing to the actual work and started that way, you know, four of us and kind of scaled it up to over 100 people.

We had offices in multiple countries, kind of and really hit our target of where we wanted the agency to grow to, and really just started to get out of the actual work and more just it was just babysitting. You’re babysitting CEOs and making sure that they agree with what you’re pitching. And it was just a lot of work that I didn’t intend to ever do and kind of got bored of it. So we sold that. And while we were in the process of kind of just getting out of that, we were asked to advise on a performance marketing agency.

And one of the things that we saw when we were advising there was all of these different brands in the e-com space that they were used, that they had as clients. They were pushing all this traffic to their websites hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And I had never been in that space. Like we were designing, you know, sites like Expedia. I was not dealing with paid marketing.

And so, you know, I knew what it was, but I had no real context of how it was being put into their budgets and how they were utilizing it, and where that was kind of fitting into everything. And I just when I was talking with our team that this company we were advising on, I was like, you know, okay, they’re spending $500k on these ads to drive to this page or this page. What are they spending on the page? And the answer was usually almost nothing. And as a product designer, that was just so odd to me.

It was kind of like Twilight Zone. I was like, I don’t understand how a company with this much success can spend that much money on. Click one of ten and then $0 or small way smaller amount on clicks nine through ten or sorry, two through ten, and that the math just didn’t make sense to me. And so we started doing what is now Oddit. We just sent them a loom video or a quick document saying, you know, here’s red marks, everything that’s wrong with the page that you’re sending traffic to.

Everything that’s wrong with your website that we could just fix with UX. I don’t need to see the data. These are just things that we’ve learned in 15 years of doing this across, you know, much larger sites and platforms. Here’s the barriers you’re setting up for the customer that’ll get you more sales if you just fix them. And we did that for free.

We were just doing that as part of their kind of retainer with the agency, and all of their numbers started pointing up. So their cost of acquisition, all their added numbers were going in the other direction. And so we were kind of like, okay, well, maybe there’s something here. Maybe, maybe we’ve got something. And so knowing that we were tired of that last agency and how that functioned, we kind of said, all right, we are not doing anything that a normal agency does.

We’re not doing client calls, we’re not doing feedback loops, and we don’t want your opinion. So Oddit is completely one-directional. You hire us because you trust us. And if you don’t trust us, then don’t hire us. It’s really simple.

And that that one way communication of just send us your website, pick which pages you want us to Oddit, we’re going to send you back a red-marked version of the site, as well as completely redesigned version, taking all those things into account. And then as well a report describing everything. It really just hit a note with a lot of brands that were just like us, kind of tired of that traditional agency model where everything is bloated in a way where it starts to feel like you. It kind of starts to feel like your relationship with your lawyer or your accountant, or it’s just like, I feel like they want a call just to charge me. And generally with agencies, that’s exactly what’s happening, right?

There’s nothing confusing or complex about a lot of the work that’s being done in an agency. The calls are a reason to charge you for three people’s time. At least that was the reason with our agency, right? A lot of the time it was, oh, yeah, we probably have a call to clarify that. It was mostly just another reason to bill, get hourly up, get retainers up.

And honestly, it’s not like an ethics thing. I loved getting that stream of money in, but more just on a personal note, it they were just pointless conversations. It’s just wasting your time in the day. And I think Oddit was kind of a twofold one. I think it’s a better experience for the client.

Right. We’re doing things we would have charged $20,000, $30,000 for, for $3 to $5 grand. And on our side, we get to do the work we love without having to worry about, you know, the CEO coming in and saying, well, my nephew says yellow is not in anymore. And, you know, conversations like that made me want to just close the agency and fire everyone. Like those types of conversations are the main reason that we got out of it.

And that’s why we do the things that we do at Oddit. And the way we do it is we really have built a strong understanding of these things and that we, you know, we ask clients to trust us in that. And we don’t do feedback loops. We don’t. It’s very one-directional. Right. But it’s also, you know, we have the results to back that up. Right. It’s not like we’re just like, oh we don’t like talking to people. So don’t talk to us.

That’s the point in the relationships in a traditional agency where I see projects fail, right? When the client gets an opinion in a way that it’s affecting the actual output, right where there’s that kind of that feeling where they’re not fully trusting you and they’re giving too much opinion of. That’s personal. It’s not actually related to the user experience or the business or. And I think that’s why Oddit’s work, right?

I mean, 99.9% of our clients see increased conversion. And we’ve never looked at a data point. Right. If you talk to most traditional CRO agencies that would that baffles them. They don’t like it, right? They’re angry at us because we’re not looking at data, but it’s working. And so it’s really hard for them to argue with it. I think, you know, the fact that we’ve done that many Oddit is proof that it’s working. But I think on the other side, a lot of customers also just like that, they don’t have to have conversations, right? Like just like the agency, the client doesn’t want to pay for those conversations.

And they’re also very busy people, right? The more and more every year, founders are more hands-on. You know, that’ll probably take a go back down as AI starts to take things over. But they’re more hands-on and on. They’re doing more roles. The workday is longer, right? All the different tools and tech that’s involved in the day-to-day of an entrepreneur makes everything easier to do more jobs and more tasks and be more efficient. And so when you’re hitting them with a call every day or, hey, I need your thoughts on this. They don’t want to do that either. They want someone that knows their shit and is going to deliver it in a timely, effective way.

That works, right? They don’t want to have to tell you what to do or give you feedback. So I think it’s been twofold, right? It’s what we wanted and it seems to be what customers wanted.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:14

Shaun, it’s super interesting. And you know, obviously you do things differently. And we’ll talk about what the onboarding looks like. Right. Because most onboarding there’s a call involved. You go through that, then you go back and present it. And there’s this a couple calls. So I’d love to hear how the onboarding works for you. From my understanding right now, if someone’s like, yeah, show me want to work with you. And we’re looking here at oddit.co I love how you have WTF is Oddit.

That’s it kind of speaks to your personality and the team’s personality I’m sure. But it looks like okay, just send us the pages you want. We will mark them up and then we’ll send them back to you with the, you know, the designs that we believe are going to convert, right. What does that onboarding look like when they say, yes, Shaun, we want to work with you. They just, you know, how do they send you things. And it sounds like there’s no discussion. You know, there’s no like call or anything like that. What is the onboarding process look like?

Shaun Brandt 12:18

Yeah, I mean I, I, I position it and I explain it like it’s very brash. But you know, if a client reaches out and says, hey, like, I just don’t fully understand this, can we have a quick call? We’re always going to talk to you, like, don’t get me wrong. But, you know, in terms of, hey, we’re ready to go, what’s next? The you’re looking at it like if you click order now on the Order Pro.

So. You’re literally picking which the number of pages you want us to do. And then you input the URLs. So you can skip that and submit them later. Like a lot of clients what they do is they buy it. And then they have a team meeting internally where they’re like, okay, which pages we want to focus on. So they’re doing it later, but it’s you’re looking at it right. So once that sale comes in, it triggers 15 different zaps. You know they’re creating Santa cards. It’s creating files.

It’s a lot of it is automated from that standpoint. Of all the admin work triggering the invoice that goes out, the hey, here’s what’s happening, here’s where all of it’s automated. It’s telling them when they’re going to get their report back. Depending on how busy we are. January is crazy.

So timelines are a little longer. But that date will move that it says estimated turnaround. So that’s this is part of why people have started to think we’re an app or a tool, right? Because there it is. You know, if you think of this from an agency standpoint, which essentially we are, it feels much more like a tool, right? It feels. Because there’s no call. Like you said, there’s no call. There’s no, it’s somewhat hands-off. And we do get the odd customer that’s like, is this really it like you know what’s going on here.

But for the most part like I had we had a customer yesterday bought a five-page report. Like most of our customers, they try the free trial, they get the free trial. Then we show them how to purchase if they want something more or they book a sales call. Right. We have cold sales once in a while where the clients just come in and they do it cold, and that’s what gives me hope. That’s what we want to be at in the future, is just like it’s all cold salespeople coming on-site and buying. But yeah, I mean, you’re looking at.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:27

People qualify for a free trial or how does that work?

Shaun Brandt 14:33

Like we you could submit your personal Instagram. Oddit it you if you go to the if you go to the top and hit try Oddit free, you can submit any URL.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:44

All right I see that try.

Shaun Brandt 14:45

Out and we’ll send and we’ll send you back and it’s essentially a mini report. We redesign one piece of your site and we tell you why we did it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:52

You actually redesign it or will you just get feedback?

Shaun Brandt 14:56

No. We redesign okay.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:58

Yeah. It seems like a turnaround.

Shaun Brandt 15:00

It is. But it’s one of those things, if I look at it from a traditional agency standpoint. Right? We don’t do pitches, we don’t do decks, we don’t have strategy meetings, we don’t. All of that bloat is gone. And so in our free trials, we just have this kind of amazing marketing tool where, you know, like any company, we have peaks and valleys of when it’s busy, when it’s not. I’m not going to fire people when we have a two-week lull. So we always sometimes we, you know, we’re over capacity and we extend timelines. Sometimes we’re, you know, we have a bit of a surplus of designers. All the free trials is for us is it’s a big training tool.

So every time we hire a designer, they spend three months only doing free trials before they’re allowed to touch anything else. Right. That’s part of their training program. So we always have fresh things for new designers and junior designers to be trying. The other thing is that our senior designers are short on work. It’s a great place for them to work on ten sites in a day in like, small sprints. Right? And keep things fresh. And then the other part of it is it’s our entire marketing, right? We have tens of thousands of these.

They’re in email collaborations. We do. There are entire Twitter thread there. Everything we do is hey, check out this you know, section we did from this brand. So it is time-consuming. Yeah. But it’s just such a huge benefit to our team internally. And then also it’s like I said, it’s our entire marketing play. Like it’s the only content we use in marketing. And it’s you know, it’s worked well so far.

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