CEO The Good – Optimization for top brands like Nike, Xerox, Adobe, The Economist & many more | Author & Speaker | 6'7" 🏀 | Jr Olympic 🥇🥋 | jonmacdonald.com | 📘 Latest Book 👉 thegood.com/oito

Every bad digital experience costs you money. My mission is simple: remove them all until conversion becomes inevitable.

I founded The Good 16+ years ago to turn user insights into revenue. We're the trusted Digital Experience Optimization advisory for household names like Adobe, Nike, Xerox, Intel, and The Economist.

Together, we've generated hundreds of millions in additional revenue by optimizing the full digital journey from first touch to retention.

I've written three best-selling books on conversion optimization and am a frequent keynote speaker at Google, Autodesk, and industry events worldwide.

Folks will tell you I love to compete: I'm a former college basketball player (and still playing on a club travel team) and won the USA Jr Olympic gold medal in Taekwondo when I was 10. But, business is the ultimate sport.

Book a 15-minute optimization strategy call → https://thegood.com/contact/

📨 DM me to start improving the digital journey of your website or app… or to debate LeBron vs Jordan as the GOAT.

By age 26, I'd had 33 different jobs.

My parents thought I was lost.

Every family gathering came with the question. "What are you doing now?" said with a mixture of hope and concern.

Paperboy. Busser. Radio DJ at 1am. Prep cook. Tae Kwon Do instructor. BBS host in the dial-up era. RedBull promo designer. House flipper. The list kept growing.

To some, it looked like failure. A kid who couldn't commit to anything.

But something strange was happening beneath the surface.

Each role forced me to learn fast.

The radio booth taught me to fill dead air without panic. The restaurant kitchen taught me systems under pressure. Coaching youth basketball taught me leadership through patience.

I was collecting adaptability.

When I founded The Good during the 2009 recession, those 33 "failures" became our competitive advantage. I could speak to designers, developers, marketers, and executives because I'd actually done their jobs.

The meta-skill behind all of it was learning how to learn.

Observing patterns, asking the right questions, and adapting quickly.

Once you master that skill, every unfamiliar situation becomes opportunity. Every new role becomes achievable. Every challenge becomes solvable.

I'm still collecting roles. Still learning. And... the parents have stopped worrying.

Jon MacDonald

Talks about #saas, #ecommerce, #leadership, #optimization, and #digitalexperience

Digital Experience Optimization + AI Browser Agent Optimization + Entrepreneurship Lessons | 3x Author | Speaker | Founder @ The Good – helping Adobe, Nike, The Economist & more increase revenue for 16+ years

An MBA professor explained marketing better in 6 bullet points than most textbooks do in 600 pages.

I saw this taped to a wall in a conference room years ago. Still remember every line.

That's the test of great communication. Not complexity, but memorability.

After 16+ years of explaining conversion optimization to enterprise clients, I've learned something counterintuitive: the simpler your explanation, the more likely people are to act on it.

Early in my career, I'd show up with 40-slide decks packed with data. Executives would nod politely. Nothing changed.

Now I look for the version that fits on a napkin. The metaphor that makes someone laugh and immediately understand.

For example: "Your checkout has friction because you're treating it like a checkout instead of a conversation."

That single reframe has gotten more buy-in than any 12 page sales deck I've written.

Your customers don't need more information. They need an explanation they can't forget.

The same goes for your team, your investors, and your board.

If you can't explain what you do in a way that makes someone smile and nod, you haven't simplified enough yet.

Find your version of the dating analogy for whatever you're trying to teach.

Your Black Friday sale is training customers to never pay full price.

Every discount teaches them to wait.

Bed Bath & Beyond sent those 20% off coupons for decades. Customers stopped shopping without them. The company filed for bankruptcy with $5.2 billion in debt.

Discounts don't build businesses. They destroy them.

When you compete on price, you enter a race only one company wins... and it's probably not you.

I learned this watching a client run flash sales every month. Sales spiked during promotions and flatlined between them. 

Customers weren't buying products anymore, they were buying discounts.

The math is brutal. Cut prices 20% and you need 25% more sales just to break even. Most companies need double the volume.

Meanwhile, your brand becomes synonymous with markdowns.

Apple almost never discounts. Neither does Rolex. They compete on value, not price.

Smart brands add value instead of cutting margins:
↳ Free shipping
↳ Extended warranties
↳ Exclusive access
↳ Gift with purchase
↳ Bundle savings
↳ Subscription savings

I could go on, but all of these build loyalty while straight $ or % discounts build dependency.

Your customers will pay full price for products they value. If they won't, you have a product problem, not a pricing problem.

Fix the real issue. Stop treating symptoms with discounts.

The fastest way to write 30,000 words? Stop writing.

Sounds strange. But it unlocks everything.

I discovered this after being stuck at 15,000 words for three weeks.

I set up my phone to record. Asked myself questions about my topic. Then just talked.

No script. Just conversation with myself about the outline I had written.

"Why does this concept matter?" "What example proves this point?" "What would skeptics say?" "What content have I already written about these topics?"

45 minutes of talking became almost 6,000 words of transcribed content.

The difference is how our brains work when we speak versus write. Writing activates our internal editor... every sentence gets scrutinized before it exists. We delete ideas before they fully form.

Speaking bypasses that filter completely.

Ideas flow naturally. Stories emerge that you forgot you knew. Connections appear between concepts you never saw before.

I discovered insights I didn't know I had. Connections appeared between concepts and examples surfaced from client work years ago.

Yes, the raw transcript was messy, full of tangents, and I repeated points.

But buried inside was exactly what I needed.

Now I start every writing project with recorded conversations. Usually with colleagues asking me questions to get the conversation started (think of it like a podcast interview!).

Your expertise already exists in your head. Speaking extracts it better than typing ever could.

Next time you're stuck writing, instead of typing, just start talking.

Turning user insights into revenue for top brands like Adobe, Nike, The Economist | Founder, The Good | Author & Speaker | thegood.com | jonmacdonald.com

A brutal Reddit comment changed how I think about business books forever.

"96% of business books sell fewer than 1,000 copies." The comment appeared on r/Entrepreneur. It stung because my first book sold about that many copies.

But that "failure" generated dozens qualified enterprise leads.

After publishing "Stop Marketing, Start Selling," I tracked every metric except book sales. Meeting sources, speaking invitations, and inbound quality.

The pattern was obvious: books weren't products, they were trust accelerators.

One Nike executive opened our first meeting by quoting the book. That conversation became a six-figure engagement. The book cost me $3 to print.

I stopped optimizing for Amazon rankings and started optimizing for strategic distribution.

My next two books followed a different playbook.

"Opting In to Optimization" went to exactly 500 people... hand-selected VPs at target accounts, conference speakers in my space, and EO members who could make introductions.

Zero marketing. Pure positioning.

Each book included a personalized note referencing their specific challenge. Not bulk mail. Individual packages each with a handwritten note.

The math was beautiful. 500 books at $20 each (printing plus shipping) cost $10,000. Those books generated speaking engagements plus consulting engagements worth mid-six figures.

Reddit was right. Books don't sell. But strategic authors aren't selling books.

They're buying authority at wholesale prices.

Your book becomes your most patient salesperson. It sits on shelves for years. Gets passed between decision makers. Validates expertise before you enter the room.

The framework is simple: Target 500 readers, not 50,000. Document your methodology, not generic advice. Distribute strategically, not broadly.

Business books aren't about royalties. They're about relationships.

What expertise could you package into 200 pages?

The first few years I felt guilty about it.

Since founding The Good 16+ years ago, we've shut down completely between Christmas and New Year. The entire company. No email. No client calls. No exceptions outside of true emergencies.

It started out of necessity. We were a small team, always "on," and discovered the only way to actually disconnect was to force everyone to disconnect together.

Harvard Business Review calls this "predictable time off." Their research shows it can reduce heart attack risk by 30% in men and up to 50% in women.

That's not a typo.

I used to think taking a week off meant we'd lose ground. Instead, our team comes back energized, more creative, and ready to solve problems they'd been stuck on for weeks.

Marie Forleo puts it simply: "Time off is medicine."

The data collection still runs. Tests keep collecting results. But people rest.

If you're a leader who thinks you can't afford to give your team predictable time off, consider the alternative. Chronic overwork links directly to depression and cardiovascular problems. Burned out employees don't optimize anything.

A healthy team builds a healthy company.

And we come back in January, recharged and ready to help our clients grow.

Your onboarding isn't failing because users don't understand your product.

It's failing because you're trying to teach them everything at once.

We analyzed dozens of SaaS onboarding flows with high drop-off rates. The pattern was consistent: companies front-loading features instead of front-loading value.

New users don't need to see every capability. They need one quick win. One moment where they think "okay, this actually solves my problem."

That's the aha moment. And most onboarding flows bury it under tutorials, tooltips, and feature tours nobody asked for.

Here's what we do differently when improving onboarding:

FIRST
We watch real users go through the experience. Data analysis shows where they drop off. Session recordings show why. Heat mapping reveals what they're ignoring.

The insights are brutal and clarifying. Users skip your product tour. They abandon during account setup. They never find the core feature that would make them stay.

SECOND 
Next we roadmap improvements focused on one goal: getting users to value faster.

Not teaching them more. Not showing them everything. Just removing every step between signup and their first win.

THIRD
Finally, we test everything before you build it.

First-click testing validates navigation. Tree testing confirms information architecture. A/B tests prove which changes actually reduce drop-off.

The result is users who stick around because they understood your value in minutes, not days.

Your product might be exactly what they need.

But if they never experience that in the first session, they'll never come back for a second one.

Onboarding isn't about education. It's about elimination. Cut everything between signup and value.

____ 

High onboarding drop-off rates? We'll analyze where users abandon and build you a roadmap that gets them to value faster. 

Book a strategy call: https://hubs.la/Q03VgQhV0

AI can run thousands of tests simultaneously. But it can't tell you why customers leave.

That's the delusion killing CRO right now.

The algorithms find identical patterns: high-contrast CTAs, urgency messaging, social proof above the fold.

Your website becomes a statistical average, and your competitors' websites converge on the same average.

AI sees that red buttons outperform blue by 2%. Every site switches to red.

AI finds that "Only 3 left" drives urgency. Every site adds stock counters.

AI discovers testimonials increase trust. Every site looks identical.

This convergence phenomenon isn't new, it's just being accelerated by AI. Brands have been losing differentiation through optimization by "best practices" for a while now.

Your competitor's AI will find the same "best practices" yours does. Unless you ask different questions.

Patterns without context make you average. Context without patterns keeps you unique.

So, before your next AI driven A/B test, ask yourself one thing:

Will this make us different or just slightly better at being the same?

I watched an AI browser agent fail to buy a t-shirt yesterday. The size dropdown defeated it completely.

Not a complex product. Not a sophisticated checkout. Just a basic blue t-shirt from a Fortune 500 retailer.

We've tested how AI browser agents handle basic shopping tasks. We ran Claude in Chrome, ChatGPT Atlas, and Perplexity Comet through standard e-commerce flows.

Seven out of ten sites failed basic agent navigation.

Dynamic size selectors confused them. JavaScript-heavy product pages timed out. Single-page applications created navigation loops. Multi-step checkouts became dead ends.

These aren't edge cases... sadly, they're industry standards.

And the pattern is consistent: sites optimized for human visual processing break agent DOM parsing, beautiful dropdown menus become invisible walls, and slick scrolling animations create processing delays.

Here's what we've noticed defeats agents every time:
↳ Product variant selection using custom dropdowns
↳ Add-to-cart functions with AJAX calls
↳ Checkout flows requiring account creation
↳ Payment forms with dynamic validation

As one of the longer standing folks in CRO, the irony cuts deep. We spent two decades perfecting human UX with interactive elements and visual hierarchies.

Those same "improvements" now block agent access.

Meanwhile, according to a Gallup report, 47% of Gen Z uses AI weekly for shopping decisions. Yet their agents can't take the next step to complete purchases on most enterprise sites.

Your conversion optimized site might be invisible to tomorrow's "buyers."

Good news is that you can optimize for both humans and agents, but first you need to know where *browser agents* fail.

Test your site with any AI browser agent today. Watch it try to complete a purchase.

The future of commerce is already trying to buy from you.

And failing.

Have you tested your site with an AI agent browser yet?

I couldn't walk but I hit a jumper over an NBA All Star.

The summer before my senior year, I blew out my ankle at Five-Star Basketball Camp. Grade II sprain. I spent the week on a golf cart instead of on the court.

Final day, Grant Hill showed up for a guest lecture.

He asked for four campers to demonstrate a drill. The camp director called my name.

We ran through drills. Then Grant announced he wanted to play each of us one on one to three points.

When my turn came, I knew the truth.

I couldn't drive past anyone on this ankle, let alone an NBA All Star.

So I gave a quick fake, took one dribble, and shot a jumper.

Swish.

I lost 3 to 1. But I hit a jumper over Grant Hill 😅

When you can't win playing their game, change the game.

I couldn't beat Grant Hill with speed or athleticism. So I didn't try.

I found the one shot I could take and I took it.

Your limitations force creativity. Use them.

I spend my days telling companies to stop following best practices. Then I realized I was doing the exact same thing as a leader.

My entire career is built on one principle: what works for one user won't work for all users.

Generic solutions create generic results and customization drives performance.

I preach this to every client. Test what works for your specific audience, ignore industry best practices, and build for your users... not for everyone.

Then I looked at how I was leading our team.

I was using the same communication approach with everyone. My natural direct style, one size fits all.

The irony! I was applying best practices to leadership while telling clients to abandon them.

Some team members needed my direct feedback immediately, while others needed time to process before we discussed. Some wanted detailed context and others just wanted the bottom line.

Same message. Different delivery methods. Better outcomes.

I built my business on customization but neglected to apply it to leadership.

Your team members are like your customers: they don't respond to best practices... they respond to what works for them individually.

Adapt your approach to each person. The message stays consistent while the delivery changes.

Everyone's focused on Black Friday discounts right now.

What if I told you they're wrong?

The brands that will win big this holiday season won't be the ones with the deepest discounts. They'll be the ones whose sites actually work when the traffic hits.

Adobe forecasts $253 billion in online spending this November and December. That's a 5.3% increase from last year.

But here's what most ecommerce teams miss: Your conversion rate drops 4.42% for every additional second of load time. 

If your cart page takes 10 seconds to load while your homepage loads in 2, you're burning money on ads that drive people to a broken experience.

I've worked with enterprise brands for over a decade, and the pattern is predictable. Teams spend weeks debating discount strategy and about 3 hours checking if their site can handle the surge.

In the weeks before BFCM, you should be focused on three things:

First: technical audit. Your server needs to handle 2-3x normal traffic. Your product pages need to load as fast as your homepage. Most brands forget to test the whole funnel under load.

Second: user experience audit. Run heatmaps and session recordings now, while you still have time to fix what you find. Watch where people actually click versus where you think they click.

Third: rethink your sales strategy beyond discounting. Free shipping thresholds, back-in-stock notifications, loyalty perks. These drive AOV without training customers to wait for your next sale.

With 69% of shoppers abandoning carts, the real competition isn't "who has the best deal." It's "whose site makes it easiest to complete a purchase."

The money's there. The traffic's coming. The question is whether your site is ready to convert it.

Full 3-step optimization process in the article below.

I flew to a Greek island for a business meeting. What happened there changed how I make every major decision.

My mastermind group isn't typical.

We pick our meeting locations before we leave each gathering. Could be Portland. Could be Milos, Greece.

Last year, we chose Greece.

Picture this: eight agency owners, jet lagged, taking over a small boutique hotel overlooking the Aegean.

I was stuck on a major strategic decision I had been analyzing for months.

One member cut through my paralysis:

"Jon, standing still is the worst possible option. Always be moving."

Then another shared how indecision almost killed his agency during 2008.

Not choosing path A. Not choosing path B. Just frozen.

That paralysis cost them key clients who needed decisive leadership during uncertainty.

The lesson hit hard.

Since that day in Milos, I've operated differently. When facing tough calls, I set a short decision deadline.

24 hours for operational changes. 3 days for strategic pivots. One week for major investments.

Because here's what 7+ years of this group's peer wisdom taught me: you can fix a bad decision, but you can't recover lost time.

This framework has helped me navigate several critical decisions, quickly. I make the call in hours instead of my usual days of analysis.

We might course correct twice, but movement beats meditation in business.

I got a marketing email last week with this subject line: "FRAUD ALERT: Immediate action may be required."

Inside? A Black Friday sale extension.

Between the fake fraud alerts, the fake "oops we ordered too much" apologies, and the fake scarcity countdown timers, I need brands to bring different energy in 2025.

Because this is... trash.

Consumer trust is already in the basement. Some brands are actively digging to see how much lower they can go.

After 16+ years optimizing digital experiences, I've watched this pattern repeat. Brands chase a short-term conversion bump. They torch their customer lifetime value in the process.

The math never works out.

Hidden checkout fees? Statista research shows 56% of shoppers abandon carts when hit with unexpected charges.

Confusing unsubscribe flows? You keep the email but lose the customer forever.

Misleading button labels? Every tricked click erodes years of brand equity.

Harry Brignull coined "dark patterns" in 2010. Fifteen years later, brands are still choosing manipulation over persuasion.

Real optimization removes friction. It helps people find what they want faster. It builds experiences worth returning to.

Dark patterns take something from people without consent. That's not optimization... it's theft dressed in conversion metrics.

Your customers know the difference even when your analytics don't show it yet.

The brands winning long-term? They're competing on experience, not deception.

I asked a SaaS marketing VP why he chose The Good to partner on product strategy and optimization.

_

Want a partner that drives revenue in as fast as 90 days?

Let's chat: https://hubs.la/Q03ScbYb0

I've spent 16 years testing checkout flows for companies doing $50MM+ in digital revenue. Now I'm also running those same flows through AI browser agents.

Most are failing completely.

Industry research shows AI agents achieve only 14-61% success rates on websites. Sites converting humans at 60%+ are watching agents fail more than half the time.

These aren't experimental tools anymore.

OpenAI's Atlas. Anthropic's Claude for Chrome. Google's Gemini. Perplexity's Comet. 13 major browser agents are live and actively shopping.

47% of Gen Z uses AI weekly for shopping. 73% of all shoppers use AI somewhere in their journey.

Last week I watched Claude try to buy a shirt from a Fortune 500 retailer. It found the product, added it to cart, then spent 47 seconds fighting a size dropdown that required hover, pause, then click.

It gave up. So would anyone on mobile.

The sites winning agent commerce aren't redesigning for robots. They're simplifying for everyone.

Clean semantic HTML, proper form labels, and navigation that works without JavaScript gymnastics.

Every fix that helps agents also helps screen readers, slow connections, and impatient humans.

So if you're running $50MM+ in digital revenue and haven't tested your site with browser agents, you have a conversion leak you can't see.

The abandonment is already happening.

I lost my shot at D1 basketball in the first 10 minutes of the most important camp of my life.

The summer between my junior and senior year, I got invited to Five-Star Basketball Camp. Every NBA player I looked up to had trained there.

First game, I grabbed a rebound and landed on someone's foot. Grade II ankle sprain. Done for the week.

I was devastated. My opportunity was gone. College coaches were there to recruit and evaluate. Now I couldn't even walk.

Then Howard Garfinkel, the camp founder, pulled up in his golf cart and told me to get in.

I thought he was taking me to the training room or sending me home.

Instead, he said something that changed everything.

Coaches would still be watching how I handled myself all week. Instead of being down on myself, I needed to make the most of being at Five-Star.

So I spent the week riding in his golf cart. Watching him observe players. Learning how he evaluated talent. Meeting coaches and NBA players behind the scenes.

The famous players and coaches I had put on pedestals were just regular people having regular conversations. They were kind. They let me tag along. They treated me like I belonged.

I learned more that week than I would have playing.

Sometimes your biggest opportunities come disguised as setbacks.

The question is whether you'll recognize them.

(image is of a SLAM magazine spread featuring Garf and a *tiny* photo of me with Grant Hill in the top-right corner)

I asked a VP of Marketing at an ecom company why he invested $100k+ with The Good for optimization. Here's what he said.

___

Want your ecommerce optimization strategy reviewed & to drive revenue in as fast as 90 days?

Book a strategy call: https://hubs.la/Q03SX2Xd0

Most ecommerce brands are already planning their holiday discount strategy.

That's probably why they'll miss their revenue targets.

After working with enterprise brands for over a decade, I've noticed a pattern: The teams obsessing over the latest holiday shopping "trends" are the same ones scrambling to explain underperformance in January.

Meanwhile, the brands hitting their goals aren't chasing trends at all.

They're focusing on seven fundamental principles that convert traffic year-round—not just during the holiday surge.

Here's the reality: You can't compete with Amazon on price. But you can destroy them on experience.

• Make it effortless. Give shoppers control over their time with clear navigation and easy access to what they need.

• Limit choices strategically. More options sound good until cognitive overload kills the sale.

• Be authentic and available. Nothing tanks conversion faster than burying customer service behind endless FAQ pages.

• Build trust through transparency. Full disclosure on shipping and returns beats fine print every time.

• Win on experience, not discounts. The lowest price isn't always the best buy, and shoppers know it.

The brands still running the discount playbook are training customers to never pay full price. That's not a growth strategy—it's a race to the bottom that ends with explaining missed targets.

Holiday traffic is an opportunity to prove your value, not slash your margins.

Get all seven principles to leverage holiday traffic for long-term growth (without joining the pricing race) in the article below.

Teams that integrate user insights see 2.7x better outcomes. But most product leaders can't access research fast enough to actually use it.

This is the research paradox.

On-demand growth research could help you solve it.

You get a fractional research team that kicks off projects in under 1 business day.

No backlog. No delays. Just rapid insights when you actually need them.

On a quarterly engagement model, you have a dedicated research capacity without hiring or onboarding. Every deliverable includes a minimum of 3 specific action items. No vague findings or academic reports.

We've worked with teams at Adobe, The Economist, and Autodesk to deliver insights that drive measurable growth.

Want similar results?
↳ https://hubs.la/Q03SWZjY0

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