Here’s the uncomfortable math most Shopify founders quietly avoid: every quarter, you pay Meta, Google, and TikTok more to send people to your store, and roughly 97–98 out of every 100 still leave without buying.
The default reaction is to crank up acquisition. The smarter move—especially if you’re already running meaningful paid traffic—is to convert more of the visitors you’ve already paid for. This episode is about on-site personalization and AI-driven conversion rate optimization, and why “conversion before acquisition” is the cheapest growth lever most brands never pull.
My guest is Krisztian Kiraly, International Partnership Manager at OptiMonk. Before OptiMonk, he spent more than five years running his own full-stack digital marketing and CRO agency (fittingly called Conversions Master), where he once drove about a 70% revenue uplift for a large Hungarian ecommerce store without adding a single dollar to its ad budget. OptiMonk itself is a bootstrapped Hungarian company founded in 2014, now powering more than 30,000 websites in over 150 countries. What started as one of Shopify’s go-to pop-up tools has quietly evolved into an AI-powered personalization and A/B testing engine.
In this conversation, Krisztian breaks down the playbook for turning static product pages into personalized, relevance-matched experiences: how first-party data powers on-site targeting, what AI can now regenerate at scale across thousands of product pages, and where the real revenue leaks hide in a typical Shopify funnel. Whether you’re doing $50K months or $5M months, this is a practical look at earning more from the traffic you already have—before you spend another dollar on ads.
Let’s dive in. 👇
✅ Why “conversion before acquisition” is the cheaper growth play — and the mindset shift that separates brands that keep pouring budget into ads from those that quietly compound revenue without spending more.
✅ What a truly personalized product page looks like — beyond basic email pop-ups, and why showing every visitor the same static experience leaves money on the table whether they came from a discount ad, organic search, or a returning visit.
✅ How AI can now optimize thousands of product pages at once — the gap between hand-tuning a few hero pages and running CRO at a scale no human team could match.
✅ The real story behind “assisted revenue” and attribution — what actually counts as an OptiMonk-influenced sale, how the cookie window works, and why first-party data reshapes your source-of-truth conversation.
✅ Where the hidden revenue leaks live in your funnel — and the “leaky bucket” question Krisztian says every founder must answer before they increase their marketing budget.
✅ The traffic threshold where AI-powered CRO truly earns its keep — the merchant sweet spot, and what to focus on first if you are not there yet.
Inventory and operations software built for growing product brands.
Sell everywhere with full control of your operations. Katana gives you a real time, single source of truth for your orders and stock across every channel and location. Shopify, Amazon, wholesale, and retail all connected in one platform.Stay ahead of demand with accurate inventory data, no matter where or how you sell.
Integrate with your favorite tools and go live in as little as a week. The operational depth you need, without the ERP price tag or complexity.
Start the free plan to test it with your own data. No credit card required.
Most Shopify stores do not have a traffic problem; they have a relevance problem. That’s the core idea Krisztian Kiraly returns to again and again, and it reframes how you think about every dollar you pour into Meta, Google, and TikTok. With industry conversion rates hovering around 2–3%, the overwhelming majority of visitors you fought (and paid) to win land on a product page, feel nothing, and leave. His argument is simple: messaging, social proof, and offers on most stores fail to match a visitor’s intent at the exact moment of decision, because everyone sees the same static experience regardless of how they arrived.
OptiMonk’s answer starts with first-party data. Once it connects to your Shopify store (a two-click install), it immediately begins monitoring visitors and pulling from your product feed, so you can target by traffic source, new vs. returning, past purchase behavior, subscription status, and on-site actions. From there, Krisztian dives into the part of the platform that has changed the most: the built-in AI. It can turn bland white-background product photos into more compelling creative, compress long product descriptions into three benefit-driven bullets and a sharper headline, and serve embedded, native-looking content blocks that change dynamically across your catalog. He shares a public WhiskyNet case study (a large Hungarian retailer with roughly 110,000–120,000 monthly uniques) where AI-powered optimization lifted revenue by about 12% in just two to three months.
The conversation also gets uncomfortably honest about attribution, a topic Steve pushes hard on. You’ll hear a clear definition of what OptiMonk counts as “assisted revenue” (a session where a visitor engages with a campaign, redeems a coupon, or fills a form, then purchases), how a 90-day cookie window determines whether a return visit is tied back to that first interaction, and why OptiMonk’s own analytics can sometimes serve as a more reliable source of truth than the conflicting numbers founders see across Shopify, Google Analytics, and the ad platforms.
Krisztian then makes the scale argument that matters most for brands with deep catalogs. Anyone can hand-tune two or three hero product pages; the real leverage shows up when you have 10,000 SKUs and AI does the heavy lifting while you stay in control. That includes seasonal refreshes (Black Friday, holidays, Independence Day, etc.) that used to take days and now take hours. He also walks through OptiMonk’s free Public Wizard tool, the Conversion Academy education library, the in-house CRO service team for founders who want expert implementation, and the deep Klaviyo integration that lets you trigger on-site campaigns from Klaviyo segments. On the question everyone is thinking about (“Is this for me?”), he’s candid: the sweet spot for AI-powered CRO is roughly 10,000–15,000 unique visitors per month so the models have enough data, but smaller stores can still see wins from classic pop-ups and cart-abandonment campaigns.
His closing analogy is the one that sticks: before you pour more water into the bucket (your ad budget), find the leaks. That, he says, is what conversion rate optimization really is—and why he now thinks of OptiMonk as a painkiller, not a vitamin. This isn’t a feature tour; it’s a blueprint for plugging the leaks so you can finally earn more from the traffic you already have.
👉 Fix conversion before you buy more traffic. Pouring more ad spend into a store converting at 2–3% just adds water to a leaky bucket; plugging those leaks first lowers CAC and lifts ROAS without increasing your budget.
👉 Relevance is the bottleneck, not traffic. Showing every visitor the same static page—whether they came from a discount ad, organic search, or a returning session—ignores intent at the moment of decision, even though most shoppers now expect a personalized experience.
👉 Use AI for scale, not novelty. Hand-tuning a handful of hero product pages is easy; once you have hundreds or thousands of SKUs, AI doing the heavy lifting while you stay in control is the only realistic way to scale CRO across your catalog.
👉 Match the message to the source. Traffic from email, UTM parameters, and Klaviyo segments tells you who’s arriving and what they care about; serving returning and high-intent visitors different experiences than cold first-timers is a basic, high-leverage move most brands still skip.
👉 Audit your stack before you add to it. Tools only create value if they play nicely together and pay for their keep; regularly review every app for its impact on performance, cost, and speed instead of blindly stacking more software on top.
👉 Wait for enough data before flipping on AI CRO. AI is only as good as its inputs, so the sweet spot starts around 10,000–15,000 unique visitors per month; below that, focus on classic pop-up, list-building, and cart-abandonment campaigns until the volume catches up.
Krisztian Kiraly
International Partnership Manager, OptiMonk
Krisztian Kiraly came to OptiMonk the hard way: by doing the work himself. He started as a freelancer in digital marketing, then built and led his own full-stack agency, Conversions Master, for more than five years. A committed believer in holistic, data-driven growth, he loves citing Edwards Deming’s line that without data you are just another person with an opinion. One of his proudest agency wins was driving roughly a 70% revenue uplift for a large Hungarian ecommerce store without increasing its PPC budget—a real-world proof point for his “conversion before acquisition” philosophy.
Today he brings that hands-on credibility to the partnership side of OptiMonk, a bootstrapped Hungarian company founded in 2014 that now serves more than 30,000 websites across 150+ countries. He recently showcased a public WhiskyNet case study as an invited speaker at the Balkan E-commerce Summit in Sofia, Bulgaria, highlighting about a 12% revenue lift in just two to three months for a store doing well over 100,000 monthly visitors.
What makes Krisztian’s perspective so useful for founders is that he speaks both languages you need: the data and attribution mechanics under the hood, and the practical, stage-aware question of whether a given tool is worth it for your store right now. He’s quick to tell you where the sweet spot is—and just as quick to tell you when you’re not there yet—which is exactly why this conversation lands.
Featured in This Episode:
Over 9 seasons, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to chat with some of the brightest founders building amazing Shopify brands, as well as the partners shaping the app and marketing ecosystem. Every conversation has taught me something new, and I’m grateful for the chance to learn alongside you.
What matters most is that this podcast helps you solve real challenges and discover new ways to grow. Your support, feedback, and stories have made this journey truly special. Thanks for tuning in, sharing your wins and losses, and being part of the eCommerce Fastlane community.
Stay Connected: Leave an Honest Rating/Review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Follow & Subscribe on YouTube for new episodes.
Steve Hutt
Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane. I am your host, Steve Hutt. Today’s conversation is all about getting more out of the traffic that you’re already paying for. We know that acquisition costs just keep climbing. I know I don’t feel it directly because I don’t actually have a brand today, but many people I speak to—I get a lot of DMs on social media—say that costs just continue to climb.
Steve Hutt
It’s just supply and demand. It is what it is. Meta, Google, TikTok, and whatnot charge because people are willing to pay for it, and people are trying to figure out the best ROI from those paid acquisition channels. But I think what’s interesting is that all of this traffic you’re paying for, these people land on your store, and many, as we know, leave without buying. Most stores show every visitor the exact same page, no matter where they came from or what they might be looking for or what the query was. It’s interesting that that’s still the default.
Steve Hutt
My guest today, Krisztian, is from a company called OptiMonk. Before OptiMonk, he ran his own conversion optimization agency, so he’s done this work hands-on for real brands.
Steve Hutt
OptiMonk really started as one of the most popular pop-up tools for Shopify. They’re old school—I think they’ve been around since 2014 or something like that. They really were the go-to pop-up tool for Shopify. But it has grown from just pop-ups, exit intent, scroll intent, and all these different things into an AI personalization solution and an A/B testing engine, which we know is incredibly important, and I’m hoping to learn more about that newer part of the product. I know the core of OptiMonk because I use it on eCommerce Fastlane for my own pop-ups and exit intents for my newsletter and different partnerships.
Steve Hutt
My goal for today is to show that on-site personalization can earn its keep. Pop-ups are one thing—getting people to sign up for the newsletter in exchange for a small discount is table stakes in this day and age. I’m hoping we can really learn what difference personalization can actually make for your store. That’s why I wanted to have Krisztian on. So Krisztian, long preamble, but welcome to eCommerce Fastlane.
Krisztian Kiraly
Steve, thank you very much for the invitation. I’m happy to be here with you today. Thank you.
Steve Hutt
Yeah, my pleasure. So, you ran your own conversion optimization agency before OptiMonk. What was your work like when you were working with clients? You obviously did a lot of manual work, and today there are tools that can assist with some of that from the beginning. Share what your life was like and what you did in the early days of your agency.
Krisztian Kiraly
Okay, thank you, it’s a nice question. I started, like everybody else in digital marketing, as a freelancer. Then I built my own digital marketing agency, which I led for more than five years. From the beginning it was a full-stack digital marketing agency. Regarding e-commerce and digital marketing, I deeply believe in a holistic approach.
Krisztian Kiraly
I know there are agencies that focus only on SEO, or only on email marketing, or only on PPC. That’s fine and you can achieve results with those focused areas. But in my experience, the biggest results and impact for clients and e-commerce stores happen when you manage all of these areas together in synergy. Then you can reach really huge results. That was the reason it was a full-stack digital marketing agency, but from the beginning with a focus on e-commerce, data analytics, and conversion rate optimization.
Krisztian Kiraly
Why? First, because those were my personal preferences. I really love working with data, and I discovered very soon that one thing that definitely never matters in digital marketing and e-commerce is personal opinion. Edwards Deming said once that without data, you are just another person with an opinion, and personal opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is data. You have to make data-driven decisions to be successful in digital marketing and e-commerce. Therefore, it’s very important to measure.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Right.
Krisztian Kiraly
You have to measure everything and set up a measurement system because what you don’t measure, you can’t improve. You should make data-driven decisions all the time. At that time, conversion rate optimization was maybe a bit in the shadows, but as you mentioned at the beginning, I think nowadays it’s more important than ever before as the cost-per-click is rising like crazy.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Yeah.
Krisztian Kiraly
On Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, and so on.
Steve Hutt
Yeah, and just maximizing the existing traffic that you do get. Like I said, CPCs are incredibly expensive, and people are unfortunately doing more blended ROAS. They feel like it’s going in the right direction, but it is expensive. It’s incredibly important for that second sale, in a lot of cases, to break even. That’s why loyalty systems and retention strategies really come into play.
Steve Hutt
I think OptiMonk has a bit of a different play on this because you understand the visitor that’s coming into the shop. You know how you can personalize that or at least A/B test things, come up with a winner, and then continue showing that. I read something just before recording today—I kind of creeped on your LinkedIn profile—and you have this concept of “conversion before acquisition.” I want you to walk listeners through this. Why is converting existing traffic the cheaper play right now? Let’s talk about this “conversion before acquisition” concept.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, that’s a very good question. Definitely, conversion before acquisition. Just briefly back to my personal story: the name of my agency was Conversions Master because I discovered that conversion rate optimization is a great tool. With the same investments of energy, money, and time, you can achieve huge results. For example, one of my favorite success stories was that without increasing the PPC budget, we achieved almost a 70% uplift in revenue for a big e-commerce store in Hungary at that time.
Krisztian Kiraly
So I deeply believe that conversion rate optimization, and especially AI-driven CRO, is the future of e-commerce. Back to your question: Shopify merchants usually invest heavily in paid traffic—Meta ads, Google Shopping, influencer campaigns, whatever. Yet the vast majority of visitors land on product pages and leave without taking any action.
Steve Hutt
Yep.
Krisztian Kiraly
Conversion rates hover around 2–3% as an industry-wide benchmark. So the core pain point is not a lack of traffic, but a lack of relevance. Every visitor sees the same static product page, regardless of whether they arrived from a discount-focused ad, organic search, or a returning visit.
Krisztian Kiraly
That means the messaging, social proof, and offers fail to match their intent at the exact moment of decision. It’s very important to show the right message to the right people at the right time. Nowadays, visitors expect a personalized experience. I recently read a case study that said between 65 and 70% of online visitors now expect a personalized experience. Nobody wants to see general messages on-site anymore.
Steve Hutt
Yeah.
Steve Hutt
Yeah. I’ll add a side note to that. It happened to me recently with a very premium North American jeans brand. I won’t name who they are. They have retail locations, so you can probably start triangulating who they are. I’m really shocked because I’ve bought from them before, so I have the logged-in experience.
Steve Hutt
When I go to their website, since I’m on their newsletter, whenever I click through from the newsletter, number one, the newsletters are showing women’s clothing, and I haven’t bought anything from the women’s side. So that’s an email and SMS fail. Number two, when I go to the website from a newsletter or a promotional offer, it lands on women’s stuff. It makes no sense to me.
Krisztian Kiraly
Big failure. Absolutely.
Krisztian Kiraly
I think nowadays segmentation and personalization, or even hyper-personalization with the help of AI, are very important. That’s where you have to focus. If you have the possibility, for example, from email or via UTM parameters, you can know a lot about returning visitors. I’d say it’s basic that
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Yeah.
Krisztian Kiraly
Based on the traffic source, you have to show them different landing pages and different on-site messages.
Steve Hutt
Right. One hundred percent. I’m with you on that for sure. So I want to talk about the static page situation. I know it’s definitely leaving money on the table—no doubt about it. I’m a case in point.
Steve Hutt
The last few emails I’ve been getting from this jeans brand, I still haven’t purchased. I may or may not, because I’m not getting the type of personalized experience I believe I deserve, especially because I’m a logged-in customer. It’s really weird that they’re not able to dynamically understand me as a site visitor. I’m not an anonymous site visitor with some pixel tracking; I’m logged in. They’re still not showing me relevant stuff. I find that really strange.
Steve Hutt
I’m definitely low-hanging fruit. “Hey Steve, based on your previous orders, we believe this new collection might be great for you here, here, and here.” It’s odd that this isn’t happening. But you say static pages are leaving money on the table. So what does a personalized version look like now for a visitor? You mentioned UTMs and other ways. There’s obviously technology built into the OptiMonk solution that allows a marketer or founder with a Shopify connection to create that personalized experience.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yes, absolutely. As we know, higher relevance equals higher conversion rates. That’s the basic idea. OptiMonk works with first-party data, which means that once it’s connected to your website or your e-commerce store—especially Shopify, since we’re in the App Store— with just two clicks you can install it and everything works very easily and smoothly. From that moment, OptiMonk starts
Krisztian Kiraly
Monitoring your visitors and gathering data from them. Based on that data, you can target your on-site messages based on traffic source, whether it’s a new or returning visitor, whether they’ve ever purchased something from you or not yet, whether they’ve subscribed to your newsletter or not yet, and a lot of other possibilities. It’s now possible to target based on visitors’ behavior.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Krisztian Kiraly
So there are plenty of possibilities for how you can set up and adjust your campaigns.
Steve Hutt
I see. There are quite a few options here. One I want to talk about: I know the original part of OptiMonk was more static pop-ups—by keyword, by page, by campaign or project. But I find it interesting that there’s been quite a shift. You now have multi-step pop-ups and a full AI engine where you can create, in real time, the right pop-up, images, and offers based on where you believe the customer is in
Krisztian Kiraly
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Their journey to checkout. It’s quite interesting. Can you share a bit about that dynamic part of the AI engine?
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, sure. AI has opened new opportunities and new doors for us. With our built-in AI, once OptiMonk is connected to your store, it also connects to your product feed, which means all the data from your product feed is pulled in. Based on that data, our AI can regenerate, for example, your product images.
Krisztian Kiraly
Let’s be honest: it’s often a challenge for many e-commerce stores that they have very boring product pictures with a white background or a transparent PNG—nothing special. With our AI, we can regenerate these product images to make them more alive, more attractive, and more compelling. You can use these creatives in all your on-site messages, not just
Steve Hutt
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Krisztian Kiraly
In pop-ups, but also in sticky bars and side messages. We also have embedded content that looks totally native, like part of your product page. Visitors don’t even recognize that they’re looking at an OptiMonk campaign. They think it’s just part of the product page. But this embedded content can be changed automatically and dynamically with the help of our AI.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Got it.
Krisztian Kiraly
And not just the product pictures. Data can also be pulled from the product description, and the AI can summarize it, create compelling headlines, or make a short benefit list in three bullet points. Let’s be honest, if you have a long product description, most people won’t read it. The majority of your visitors definitely don’t have time for that. But if you can summarize it into three
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
Bullet points with the most important benefits, plus a compelling headline and a nice product image, our experience shows it can dramatically increase the add-to-cart rate and the conversion rate—so the revenue at the end of the day. We have a lot of data-backed case studies about this. It’s not just an assumption that it looks nicer; it definitely
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
Works. We know that ninety-nine percent of purchase decisions are made on an emotional level. If you’re able to influence visitors’ emotions when they’re browsing your product page, you can get better results.
Steve Hutt
I see. What’s interesting too is I noticed your AI wizard option, where you can build almost a “perfect pop-up” in a couple of minutes by dropping in a URL. I go back to the 80/20 rule—usually 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your products. Knowing that, how do I optimize for the 80% where my revenue is coming from?
Steve Hutt
You drop in a URL and get AI suggestions—things like gamified email capture, product promotions, discount offers, and whatever creative is generated based on the URL in your engine. Then you can adjust it, activate it, and even A/B test it. You run it for a couple of weeks, get a winner, then find another test and keep running nonstop. That’s a very interesting and compelling offer—that it does all that by putting in a URL and following a workflow.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah. You mean our Public Wizard? It’s a quite new tool. It’s completely free of charge, and you can use and test it. It’s an AI-powered Public Wizard. You just put the URL of your store there, and in a couple of minutes it pulls out all the frontend data from your store—colors, style,
Steve Hutt
Yes. Yeah, the AI, exactly.
Krisztian Kiraly
Fonts, everything. Based on that, our tool generates very nice and compelling on-site messages for you. But that’s just scratching the surface. On the next level, as I mentioned, when OptiMonk is connected directly to your Shopify store and product feed, the opportunities are even better.
Krisztian Kiraly
Regarding A/B testing, it’s also important to mention that we have a big advantage because we work with first-party data. That makes it possible to offer a very detailed analytics dashboard where you can see the most important KPIs. To be honest, we sometimes get feedback from clients worldwide that our analytics is even more reliable than the numbers they see in Google Analytics 4.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm. Part of that is first-party data. That’s the problem: the question of “Where is the source of truth?” Shopify shows one thing, Google Analytics shows something else, the ad platforms show something different. There’s a lot of disparity and everyone is eating their own dog food, giving themselves attribution for things they maybe shouldn’t.
Steve Hutt
It’s nice to know that OptiMonk is sitting there with its own first-party data. If that’s the source of truth for conversion because it’s the one dynamically creating things and A/B testing, that’s a very compelling offer.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, definitely. It’s very easy to set up A/B testing. You’ll see all the most important results on your OptiMonk analytics dashboard—click-through rates, impressions, and of course assisted revenue. It’s also very important that you can see exactly how much extra revenue was generated from visitors who engaged with your OptiMonk campaigns.
Steve Hutt
So assisted revenue basically implies that someone came to the website, interacted somehow—either visually or physically—with different widgets, dynamically created or A/B tested campaigns. They leave, then maybe come back organically or directly, and may or may not interact with more widgets. They just go directly and check out. Would that be an assisted conversion, even though it didn’t happen within the same session?
Krisztian Kiraly
Once again, please. I must be honest, I didn’t understand it.
Steve Hutt
Yeah, sure. So when someone comes to the site and interacts with some of the OptiMonk features—maybe it’s an A/B test, maybe it’s a pop-up, some kind of campaign—they interact with it but don’t convert. The OptiMonk pixel is running, so we have some history of this customer on the website, we understand their journey, and then they leave.
Krisztian Kiraly
Okay, one of the campaigns, okay.
Krisztian Kiraly
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Then they come back later directly or through another campaign. The assisted revenue you’re referring to—is that because they previously saw or clicked on OptiMonk-generated content, then came back and made a direct purchase? Is that the assisted revenue you mean? I’m wondering if it’s last-touch attribution or something else. Is OptiMonk directly related to the fact that this conversion happened? I just want your mindset on what assisted conversions actually are.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, very good question. In our definition, assisted revenue is when somebody engages with one of the OptiMonk campaigns—like filling in a form or redeeming a coupon code shown in an OptiMonk campaign, for example a cart bundler—and that session ends with a purchase. That’s assisted revenue helped by OptiMonk, by one of the OptiMonk campaigns. You can even compare the performance of each OptiMonk campaign because this assisted revenue is shown per campaign.
Steve Hutt
I see. And if somebody interacts with a campaign from OptiMonk, leaves, and then comes back and just goes directly—uses the search bar, goes to a product, and checks out—is there any attribution given to the previous interaction, assuming it’s not in the same session, but now they’ve converted?
Steve Hutt
Is there still some kind of assisted conversion saying, “They came back because they had a great first experience with us using OptiMonk’s AI. They didn’t buy on the spot but bought later.” Should OptiMonk, through the dashboard, get some attributed revenue in that case?
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, definitely. It depends on the timeframe because it’s stored in cookies. That’s how we differentiate if this is a new or returning visitor, whether they’ve purchased so far or not yet. If it’s within 90 days, we can count it to the same visitor. If it’s after 90 days, then it’s too long and it starts like a new one.
Steve Hutt
I see. Okay, very cool. What about case studies? I looked at the website—there’s so many. I’m sure there are even private case studies under NDA because things are working so well. Is there anything anecdotally, or any case studies top of mind, where you can say: here’s what this DTC brand was like, here’s life without OptiMonk, then they installed your solution and implemented it, and here’s what great looks like for them today? Anything you can call out publicly?
Krisztian Kiraly
Absolutely. A couple of weeks ago, I was one of the invited speakers at the Balkan E-commerce Summit. As the name says, this is a big e-commerce event in Eastern Europe. It was in Sofia, Bulgaria. For my presentation, I brought a real case study from Hungary with one of the biggest e-commerce stores called WhiskyNet. It’s absolutely public, so I can
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Okay, okay.
Krisztian Kiraly
Talk about it. I showed the numbers and all the campaigns. They have approximately 110,000–120,000 unique visitors per month, so they’re quite big, at least in Hungary. With the help of our AI-powered optimization campaigns, in just a couple of months—two or three months—we were able to increase their revenue by 12%, which at this size is a nice amount of money. I can’t say the exact amount, but you can imagine that a 12% uplift in revenue is a big growth.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
Absolutely.
Steve Hutt
It is. I’m looking at it and I’ll make sure I put this case study in the show notes. It’s pretty impressive what one particular product page looked like and then what the dynamically generated AI product photography additions added—plus social proof and all that. A 12% conversion lift is pretty amazing. The badges and all the different things, it’s
Krisztian Kiraly
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, they look really nice, absolutely. The three most important benefits I mentioned before, you don’t write them, you show them as badges directly on the product pictures. It looks really nice.
Steve Hutt
Yeah. This is pretty impressive. It’s pretty cool. I’ll make sure I list a bunch of these case studies, or at least link to them—I’ll link to this one for sure, but I’ll also link to the other case studies. No matter what industry you’re in, I think there’s a benefit to using OptiMonk. I’m not even in e-commerce and I use OptiMonk, which is interesting.
Steve Hutt
I know the product is great, but it really shows its teeth when you look at what AI can do for conversion lift. It comes back to the original question from the beginning: let’s maximize the existing traffic we have. You have campaigns driving organic traffic through SEO and geo, and all the acronyms for AI-assisted traffic. Then you have paid acquisition through Meta, Google, TikTok, and so on. That money is being spent, people are coming to the site, and you’re getting a 2%–3% conversion rate. What are you doing for the 97 out of 100 people who leave? Well, if you can convert more of them, you don’t have to spend extra money on paid ads because you’re converting at a higher rate thanks to this dynamic ability through OptiMonk.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, and just briefly back to product pages. I think the real power of AI is the scalable system. Optimizing one, two, or three product pages—everybody can do that. But what do you do if you have 10,000 products? Who will optimize your 10,000 product pages? That’s the smart part: with our AI, you are in control, but AI does the heavy lifting.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Right.
Krisztian Kiraly
So you can do it in a scalable way.
Steve Hutt
What about seasonality? There are a lot of different seasonal moments—not just Black Friday, but in North America there’s the Fourth of July, and there are different seasons like Father’s Day, Halloween, and so on. How does OptiMonk think about seasonality of product and what it can offer for that customer experience?
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, independently of season.
Krisztian Kiraly
In that case, it’s again a big advantage that we have this built-in AI tool. You can iterate like you do in your everyday work in ChatGPT or whatever you use. We can regenerate these product images or on-site messages in seasonal styles, like you mentioned—Black Friday, Christmas, Easter, Independence Day, whatever. You can change it
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hutt
Yeah.
Krisztian Kiraly
In a way that usually takes several days, but now you can do it in a couple of hours with the help of our AI. It’s just a kind of iteration, and you can do it directly in your OptiMonk account.
Steve Hutt
That’s very cool. Another feature I want to dig into—once again, I’m an OptiMonk user but not a power user because I’m not running an e-commerce store, which is why I wanted to have you on. I believe there are so many parts that have iterated recently that are really impactful for Shopify businesses. One of the things I noticed is this Smart Analytics feature that talks about revenue leaks and tries to figure things out. It’s obviously using AI, first-party data from Shopify, plus visitor data picked up by OptiMonk. Talk about what this part of the platform is—Smart Analytics—and what it can reveal.
Steve Hutt
Once you attach the Shopify app, it starts ingesting everything, tracking everything, and understanding the customer journey. Then is it proactively giving ideas about what should be improved, where the leaks are, what kind of recommendations or hand-holding you get about how to improve the site based on the data that’s available?
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah, we’re working on that. Based on your campaign performance, you will soon be able to ask your OptiBot—we call it OptiBot—to make proactive recommendations. For example: “This campaign is not performing as well as the others. What could be the reason? Try to optimize this one.” We’re actually dreaming about a future where you
Steve Hutt
Nice.
Krisztian Kiraly
Just give some instructions to your AI in OptiMonk. This kind of “no-code” setup we’ve already developed, which means in some cases you don’t need to adjust and set up campaigns manually. You can still use the drag-and-drop system if you like, but now it’s also possible to talk to our built-in AI and let it do the work.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm. So essentially, it could spot—or will soon spot—these growth opportunities. It could identify conversion gaps, or mobile optimization problems with your theme and checkout flow. Something could be broken, and you’d see “Why is mobile conversion lower than desktop conversion? What’s happening there?” It could flag things and then come up with ideas, like A/B testing variants based on the things that aren’t working or could be improved.
Krisztian Kiraly
This is not published yet, but we’re definitely working on it, to make these kinds of CRO tips available. For example, in your A/B testing setup, it already gives smart recommendations—for example, how sure it is that version B is performing better than version A. So you definitely get some guidance.
Steve Hutt
Good.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
At the moment, it’s on a basic level, but for the future we’re working on making it more advanced.
Steve Hutt
Lovely. Let’s talk about the sweet spot of merchant, because we have a lot of people listening—probably upwards of 5,000 people listening to this episode over the next few weeks. Everyone’s at a different stage in their entrepreneurial journey. There are early-stage people, mid-market brands, and enterprise listeners. Where do you see the sweet spot where
Krisztian Kiraly
Mm.
Steve Hutt
You have product-market fit and enough data and revenue so that using OptiMonk can be truly impactful?
Krisztian Kiraly
Actually, I think conversion rate optimization makes sense if you have enough data—especially AI. We know AI works from data. If the input is not great, the AI output won’t be so magnificent. I’d say that ideally, an e-commerce store with at least 10,000 or 15,000 unique visitors per month
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
Is the minimum level where it makes sense to switch on AI-powered CRO tools. Of course, with fewer visitors it’s still possible to use classic pop-up tools, as you mentioned at the beginning. It’s definitely worth trying, at least to set up campaigns for gathering subscribers or
Krisztian Kiraly
Reducing cart abandonment. There are still lots of opportunities. But the biggest impact and results we can achieve are with stores that have a lot of visitors—or at least enough visitors—and lots of data and products. As you said, the sweet spot is at that level.
Krisztian Kiraly
One more advantage I didn’t mention earlier, regarding your question: we’ve discovered there’s real demand in the market for these CRO tips I mentioned—things we’re working on automating. At the moment, instead of that automation, we have an in-house service team of CRO experts. If you’re looking for that kind of solution, we’re happy to offer this service. Our CRO experts analyze your store
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Krisztian Kiraly
And based on their experience, they put together a custom-tailored solution plan with campaign recommendations in a Google Slides presentation or similar. That means you have an action plan in your hands. If you wish, we’re also happy to set up these campaigns for you. So we now have this offer on our platform.
Steve Hutt
Huh.
Steve Hutt
Very cool. I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes too, because that’s good. Some people want hand-holding, or they just love having an expert—a second set of eyes—to look at campaigns or help create campaigns. They want to do the work themselves and use the tool, but it’s nice to have another person—because you can’t see the forest for the trees sometimes. A second set of eyes says, “Okay, I never thought about that. I’m willing to test that.” Then through the platform, you can see the winners and recommendations, especially on PDPs and the dynamic AI side.
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah.
Steve Hutt
It’s interesting that all of that is available from an actual human inside OptiMonk. That’s really cool. One little side question: it’s important for people who want to install a new app and go down this journey of improving their store revenue that tools play nicely with other tech. People always say, “I’m scared to add something new. I don’t want to slow down my store.” If they’re using Attentive or Postscript for SMS, or Klaviyo or Omnisend for email, they want to make sure everything works nicely together.
Steve Hutt
What’s OptiMonk’s mindset around playing nicely with other pieces of technology a brand may already have installed?
Krisztian Kiraly
It’s very important. We strongly believe in that. That’s the reason we have more than 1,000 integrations with other tools. Starting with email marketing tools—actually almost all of them—and across all kinds of platforms. We know that nowadays you have to think about complex customer journeys involving many platforms and tools. MarTech is growing very rapidly.
Steve Hutt
Okay, okay.
Krisztian Kiraly
So we have lots of connections and integrations because we know that’s what delivers measurable results for e-commerce store owners.
Steve Hutt
Okay, perfect. That’s important because that’s a big blocker I hear. People say, “My gosh, I’m scared because…” I joke on the show: in my early days at Shopify, one of the first things I did when I took on a new brand was an app audit. I’d go top to bottom and ask, “Why are you using these?” We’d go through each app: “Why this one? Why this one?” Often the marketer or founder had no idea why they were paying $500 a month for some forecasting tool after the team member who installed it left a year ago. That happens a lot.
Steve Hutt
Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Hutt
Not to mention the load on the storefront—multiple JavaScripts and tools running that don’t need to run. One advantage of your solution is that you don’t have to worry as much about that. You can play nicely with existing tech. If you’re using the pop-up side of OptiMonk and want to use Attentive for SMS in a multi-step capture—email and SMS—it can work together.
Steve Hutt
Plus PDP pages and more. You have a lot of parts to the platform, which I think are really cool. I love that. What about education? Some people may not need the CRO team at OptiMonk. What do you have for education—live learning or recorded learning, lessons, things like that? What does OptiMonk offer?
Krisztian Kiraly
Both options. But just briefly back to your previous question, let me give one example regarding integrations: a lot of Shopify store owners use Klaviyo, and with Klaviyo we have such a deep integration that it’s possible to target your on-site campaigns with OptiMonk based on Klaviyo segments when those visitors come back as returning visitors. Back to your example—
Steve Hutt
Perfect.
Steve Hutt
Perfect.
Steve Hutt
Yes.
Steve Hutt
Mm.
Steve Hutt
I know.
Krisztian Kiraly
If someone clicks through from an email, especially if you’re using Klaviyo, we know everything we need about that. As for education, both recorded and live options are available. First, we have pre-recorded tutorial videos—we call it Conversion Academy—from the basics up to power user level, with lots of advanced features. We have tons of videos about how to use the tool and also about understanding
Steve Hutt
Right.
Krisztian Kiraly
The background of conversion rate optimization. As I mentioned, we call it Conversion Academy—just look for it on the OptiMonk website. If you’d like more custom-tailored campaign recommendations, you can set up a call with one of our customer success colleagues. Then you can ask questions and get your custom solution plan, as I mentioned earlier.
Steve Hutt
Yeah, this is amazing. So what do you think the next steps are for listeners? If they’re in that sweet spot where they have enough traffic and revenue to justify this and they want to start using the tool—crawl, walk, run—and maybe they’re using a competing tool that only does pop-ups or native pop-ups from other providers, there might be benefits to moving to OptiMonk. Let’s say someone says, “Yes, I want to give it a whirl.”
Steve Hutt
What do you believe the next steps are to get people up and running quickly?
Krisztian Kiraly
I’d say the next step is to sign up for a free OptiMonk account. We can put the link here in the podcast. We can also offer a special gift to your listeners. Thanks to you, Steve, we can offer a special coupon code. If somebody uses this coupon code after upgrading from the free account to a paid plan, we can give them a discount. If they’re interested in the custom solution plan, I can also give a special URL
Steve Hutt
Okay.
Steve Hutt
Okay.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
For that purpose, and we can put it in the podcast notes so they don’t have to look for it on the OptiMonk website. So actually, two links and a coupon code. I think these are the most important next steps.
Steve Hutt
Okay.
Steve Hutt
Okay, perfect. I’ll make sure I add that. It’ll be in both the show notes and the episode notes. We’ll have a direct link to a special listener-only bonus or promotion, and we’ll give you a custom link you can apply. I think this has been good and pretty impactful. I’ve learned a lot. I joke on the show, but I’m literally on page two of notes. I’ve written down a lot.
Steve Hutt
It’s really cool. I’m really glad—like I said, I’m a fanboy. That’s the reason you’re on today, because I actually use the OptiMonk product
Krisztian Kiraly
Ha ha ha.
Steve Hutt
In my own world. I know you’re not just e-commerce, but you’ve really expanded into the e-commerce world with these additions to the platform. You have your roots, but you’ve also really planted your flag in the Shopify sand now. I could tell that was happening and I wanted to make sure we told your story correctly to a larger audience. Any parting words before we wrap up for today?
Krisztian Kiraly
Yeah. Maybe what I’d emphasize at the end is my favorite analogy: before you start increasing your marketing budget—before you pour more water into the bucket—think about where the leaks are.
Krisztian Kiraly
That’s exactly what conversion rate optimization is about. That’s exactly how OptiMonk works. That’s why I say OptiMonk is not a vitamin anymore; it’s a painkiller. It can dramatically decrease your customer acquisition cost and increase your ROAS. In the long term, it could
Steve Hutt
Yeah. Hmm.
Steve Hutt
Mm-hmm.
Krisztian Kiraly
Not just save or rescue your e-commerce store’s life, but actually make it very successful. That’s the real point you have to understand.
Steve Hutt
This is amazing. OptiMonk has been around a long time. I don’t know exactly how many customers you have, but I know it’s upwards of 30,000 or more merchants. You’re a very established player in the marketplace. It’s been, what, 10–11 years running this business, bootstrapped. It’s an amazing SaaS story.
Steve Hutt
The only way a bootstrapped business does as well as you’re doing now is because of the quality of the product and the ROI customers get from it. Eleven years and more, and now really becoming—I’d almost argue—an AI-first product company. You’re really using the power of AI to improve CRO, testing, and analytics. There’s a lot going on here and I think it’s great.
Steve Hutt
I still like the crawl–walk–run approach: install it, maybe in replacement of your current pop-ups and exit intent and scroll tools with Klaviyo or Attentive or Postscript or whatever. Then once the pixel is attached and you’ve got your own first-party tracking, the world is your oyster for improving product pages and then A/B testing things. I think it’s pretty cool. This has been very eye-opening. Thank you again—I know it’s late for you in Hungary. Thanks for jumping on this recording; I really appreciate it.
Krisztian Kiraly
Thank you very much, Steve. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Steve Hutt
All right, have yourself a great evening and I’ll have a great mid-morning. All right, take care. Bye-bye. All right, I’ll just click stop on here. We’ve got that.
Krisztian Kiraly
Ha ha. Thank you.
