Customer Experience Before, During and After the Sale

Welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson, a show that is all about helping you to deliver eCommerce wow. Now I'm super excited with today's guest, who is Adam Pearce from Blend Commerce about the customer experience before, during and after the sale. But before we get into that conversation with Adam, who is uh, legend. Uh, let me give a quick shout out to past guests and episodes here on the eCommerce Podcast.

And given that we are in fact talking about customer experience, I thought it would be great to mention a podcast which was called personalizing the customer journey to increase lifetime value. Check that out with Matt Barnett, such a great conversation, Matt - such a cool - I still remember that brilliant conversation. And also check out Kath Pays conversation where we talked about how to optimize engagement through a cycle customer life cycle marketing. Let me get that right.

So do check out Kath's episode, which was also fantastic. This episode is brought to you by the eCommerce Cohort, which helps you deliver eCommerce Wow to your customers. It is basically. A lightweight membership group with guided monthly sprints, that cycle through all the key areas of e-commerce. What does that mean? It means every month, uh, you come and work on your e-commerce business with like-minded people. So you can get a list of actionable jobs to be done.

You're going to know what to work on, when to work on it and get the support you need to get it done. So whether you are just starting out in e-commerce or if you're, I think I said on one episode, if you're a bit of a dinosaur, if you're, if you've been around a little while, like my good self, you're still going to be really, really grateful for it, let me tell you.

So I definitely encourage you to go check out ecommercecohorts.com as it is gearing up for its founder member launch, which is going to start in just a couple of weeks. It is almost there. Yes, it is. So if you're listening to this and you still have the time available, check out ecommercecohort.com and take advantage of the founding member launch offer, which is not easy to say, but do check it out.

And of course, if you've got any questions, just email me directly at Matt@ecommercepodcast.net with any questions, because it's something that we're super, super proud of, let me tell you. Now, are, you ready? Grab your coffee, grab your notebook, grab your pen. Here's my conversation with Adam. Well, welcome uh, I am here with my fantabulous guest, Adam, who is the co-founder and CEO of blend Commerce, which is an e-commerce customer experience agency.

Now Adam and his team have worked with over 200 Shopify retailers, uh, to help them provide memorable customer experiences that drive growth in revenue and profit. 200. Adam, that's a lot of Shopify sites to, uh, to work on. So it's good to have you here. It's good to be talking about all the stuff that you've learned. Thanks for joining me. No, thanks for having me, Matt. I appreciate it. And I liked being called fantabulous. I'm going to use that again, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a great word. I think we should use it more. Now I can tell by your accent. Good, sir. That you are, it seems like you hail from the Midlands in the UK slightly. Uh, it's always nice to have a fellow Brit on the podcast, not gonna lie. Uh, so where whereabouts in the world? Yeah, so we are about 10 minutes from Stratford-upon-Avon, so right in the, in the thick of Shakespeare country and a couple of hours from London.

So, uh, yeah, it's a nice part of the world to be in, but, um, yeah, you can probably tell by my, uh, my slightly, a Peaky Blinders accent that I'm from close to Birmingham. Peaky blinders it's been Do, you know, I discovered the other day, and this is not related to e-commerce at all. Although I did discover it online, I'm not going lie. uh, and I, I bought it for a friend was Peaky blinders gin. And apparently it's got some really great reviews.

I've not, I've not tried it myself, but I bought it as a gift. Cause there were a bit of a Peaky blinders fan, but who knew you could get peaky blinders gin. And I think that they've done pretty well off that franchise, haven't they? So yeah. Missed the boat on that one. Yeah, we'll do what we can do now. A peakyy blinders Shopify site, maybe. I dunno. Uh, so how did you get into Shopify? Um, completely 100% fell into it.

Um, if I'm honest with you, and I think that's why, why I kind of love e-commerce but the situation was is that I, I left university with kind of dollar signs at the back of my eyelids thinking, right, I'm going to go to London, I'm going to make my fortune. Um, I went to work for a, quite a big, management consultancy firm and kind of realized after about a year that I don't want to do this. It wasn't what I imagined and really kind of, from that point, I then retrained to be a teacher.

Was a teacher for three years, taught economics. And then after that, I then decided again, I just wanted say that's awesome. Being a teacher teacher. It was, it wasn't some respects, but, um, Yeah, a tough job and definitely the hardest job I've ever done. Um, by, by far compared to like running a company, you know, it, it makes running a company look like child's play. I think he really does.

But, um, basically my, my business partner who is also my brother-in-law, uh, he came to me probably about seven years ago and said, look, um, He was actually a quantity surveyor. And he said, look, I'm teaching myself to code. I've come across this new Canadian platform called Shopify. I think this will be the next big thing. And I'm like, yeah. Okay. Whatever. Um, yeah, they already very think it will be.

And I basically left teaching and I was working for an education app company and I'd come up in learning marketing, getting more into it. I always kind of had a bit of an eye for business, but then was kind of then a director, uh, an e-commerce sorry, um, a education ap company. And they said, look, let's kind of do something together. So as many good businesses do, we had far too many beers one night. Made a verbal agreement that we were going to start.

And the next day, yeah, we started the business. So that was yes, you know, five years ago. Um, now sort of team of 19, um, working with Shopify and Shopify plus merchants on customer experience. So yeah, it's pretty exciting, but I think that, like I said before, Matt, you know, that's why I love e-commerce because you don't have that kind of old boys club that you get with a lot of other industries. It's still such a young industry.

I think I just want to keep, it keeps it fresh and as a nice place to work in. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I'll tell you, it's interesting that you, you kind of like a lot of people, you kind of fit felt your way into it. There was a, there was a very, you know, sort of, uh, topsy-turvy route, which you took to get there. Uh, and that's one of the things that fascinates me. Actually, that's quite a common thing amongst, uh, guests that we have on the show.

No, no one ever, no one ever started or left university. Uh, leave uni and think I'm going to set up a business and become the king of beauty. And I just stumbled into this beauty website absoluteness years ago. And it was, it was what kick-started everything anyway. Fascinating. So yeah, you are right. Five years later, uh, or about 20 staff in the agency in 19-20, staff in the agency.

You focus specifically on Shopify and before we get into this whole customer experience before and after, um, as per the podcast title, um, why Shopify, why did you pick that platform specifically? And why have you stayed loyal to it? I guess over the last five years? No, I mean, at the time, you know, when Peter, starting developed Shopify. It was still obviously there's infancy.

And I think that the solutions, right at the time of look, you would either go to Magento, which is obviously for those big sort of enterprise level companies and maybe sort of mid-market to an extent. And then you also have kind of, you know, these scrappier DTC brands coming up who become a using woo commerce, where they would come of a WordPress site with a plugin. And ultimately I think the problem was both of those solutions.

It didn't fit the model that these kind of new upcoming DTC brands wanted to fit into Magento was too clunky. It was too big. There was too much there, you know, the word, the woo commerce side of things.

It didn't really do the e-commerce thing as well as, as kind of people wanted to do so, Shopify, I think kind of came into a space that was, was really kind of bad for the taking and, you know, over the course of the past year, sort of five years, you know, other platforms, you know, have sort of come in to the market, but yeah, I mean, ultimately look, Shopify has grown so, so much there really isn't a necessity for us to kind of look anywhere else.

And I think that the beauty of it is, is that, you know, some of the brands that we work with sort of five years ago with this kind of, you know, sort of very much sort of, you know, an acorn of an idea of growing into these massive companies now, and it's not only can we help service them, but we've also got these other companies that have been coming up through the ranks and then you've got people move from Magento to Shopify plus.

So the market for Shopify is so big and equally, you know, from our point of view, as an agency, if we can specialize in that, that one thing, it just gives more, I think, trust and more confidence in the clients that we work with because they know you when we can turn around and say, look, we've worked with, you know, 199 other people just like you. It naturally is going.

I'm going to give people that confidence that we've kind of seen some things that they would have experienced before, so fresh, you know, it's, it's still massively important to, to what we do. That's really interesting. So, um, I, and you're right.

I mean, my, you know, from someone on the outside, looking in, I suppose, with Shopify watching it change over the last five years, um, and just see the, the just enormous amount of funding they've managed to secure, um, It's now a force to be reckoned with isn't it?

I don't actually know how many transactions online go through Shopify, but it seems like Amazon and Shopify, the two e-commerce giants, uh, you know, you, they are, they are prolific platform, but they've still managed to maintain I think really well, ease of use if you're a, if you're just starting out in e-commerce and you're thinking, well, I don't want to go and spend 30 grand on a website. I just, I just want to do what I want to do.

Well Shopify, for me I, I know Squarespace and a few other people have started to dabble a bit in e-commerce, but Shopify, just if you're doing straight e-commerce I don't know. I don't know about the platform, um, if I'm honest with you. No, I couldn't agree with, and I think that's, that's what that is. The great thing about it is that it doesn't really matter what level you're at is that you can jump into Shopify at any point.

You know, if you're a multi-national retailer that wants to use the more advanced end of it you've got Shopify, plus, you know, your mid-market great. You know, if you have an idea that you want to bring to fruition within a week, Shopify is also there for you, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens over the course of the next couple of years, because obviously, you know, the market that Shopify is serving is so much more diverse than Eastern.

And obviously, you know, when, when Shopify, they went to IPO, they don't have shareholders and there's all these kind of other kind of levels of things going on. Whereas when they were kind of themselves, a scrappy startup, it was much easier to focus on a smaller pot of people. So I don't, I don't know which way it will go, you know, whether they'll still be able to service that very broad range of different clients. Um, or do they kind of get lean more down the enterprise route?

The more on the kind of starting right. It's yeah, that, that is going to be an interesting one with Shopify in the next few years. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, you mentioned that people from say Magento platforms are moving to Shopify plus because for years it was always the other way around. You'd move from Shopify to magento, because really that was the only thing you could do unless you went and got your own bespoke site written.

Um, and so I know a lot of people that move from Shopify to Magento kind of regretted it. If I'm honest with you, I don't hear that many good things about Magento, but then that's just me. But it's interesting. You say that people are now moving back because of Shopify plus for those that don't know what is Shopify plus quickly? Yeah. So Shopify plus basically gives you additional functionality, um, to use on Shopify.

Um, but one of the major benefits is that as you, when you go to Shopify plus your transaction fees, then reduce. So as you get to that kind of certain threshold of sales, it also then makes more sense for you. Yes. Your fee that you're paying Shopify. But you're hosting your support increases, but overall the cost to company goes down because the fact is that the transaction fees per transaction is going down.

Um, and what sort of happened with plus, you know, over the past sort of 12 or 18 months, is that quite a few of those features that are there have either been, um, dripped down to other packages in Shopify, but equally there has been some additional things have come in for Shopify plus merchants that makes it more worthwhile for them to hang on. So I think the overall picture here is that Shopify were very aware that more of these kind of enterprise other clients are wanting to use it.

So, you know, the likes of Gym shark, you know, all these kind of big brands, Kylie Cosmetics, you know, and they kind of set it up the needs to be something additional there to pull over those people who are on Magento governate or just keep an enterprise level client happy. So it's just kind of made that more of a, a better distinction between, you know, sort of, you know, smaller to mid-market and then mid markets. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you for that.

I just always good to sort of pick people's brains about different platforms. Um, but I appreciate that's not the title of the podcast, but I think it's, it's just good to talk about these kinds of things, because things are changing so quick. Uh I'm I'm I'm always curious. You, um, wedge yourself as, uh, an e-commerce customer experience agency, right. Which I think is, is a really fantabulous title.

Uh, I think it's, I think it's it's to something which actually captures imagination a little bit, but, um, what do you mean by customer experience? Yeah. So I think this is the thing. Look, you can get lost with CX and customer experience is one of those like nice buzzwords.

Um, and I think the important thing for me to say here is from our point of view, what we do is that when we have a client that comes to work with us, we are saying you as a brand, you as a merchant, what is it like being your customer before you even click on the website to the point at which you actually make your very final sale?

Is there a good experience happening in terms of what you see on site, what information you're getting, how quick things happen, all of those different touch points effectively that you would have with a customer, all those things as good as they could possibly be. Because you know the danger is, you know, with agencies, is that look, a brand can look an agency and say, well, those are the guys. Those are the website guys. And the thing is like, to an extent, yes.

Okay. We deal with the website, but, we have got to make sure that that one single asset for that company is actually working with all the other elements of their company. So is that website working for the customer services team to allow customer service, to provide good customer service is in working with the warehousing team. That means that the warehousing team get those orders out as quickly as possible.

So it's all of the things that surround a business as you well know Matt that are yes, connected to the website, but the customer experience side of thing, is that how well do all those pieces fit together? So at the end of the day, customer X says, yeah, you know, Gym sharp, wall paint candy kittens, whichever company it might be is on Shopify, they're a great company to deal with. I'm going to continue being a loyal customer with them. Mm, no, that's great.

So customer experience then what is it like being your customer and specifically, what's it like being your customer at the various touch points along the path? What are some of the things that you are looking for? And you're asking that question of clients. What are some of the, I guess, what are some of the red flags that continually come up? I mean, when it, when we kind of talked to clients.

Yeah. I think that the number one thing is that, you know, we've been living in age where we are all obsessed with conversion rate on e-commerce websites. So if your conversion rate is 3%, every hundred people that visit your store, three people are going to buy, great. But the issue with that metric is that it is very short term and it is very easy to fudge.

And what I mean by that is, you know, that when you look at conversion rate in particular, you can say, well, my conversion rate was 3% in the past three months, but ultimately. How much have you spent on getting that customer to the site? And what is the chance that that customer you bought in is actually going to continue to buy from you the second, third or fourth time. So it gives a very narrow view of what is that.

So when we kind of talk to clients, what we're talking to them about is that in that particular situation, we're trying to find out from the right. What is that cost? What is your acquisition cost? And then typically how many times do people keep coming back to me? What is your lifetime? Or your Customer lifetime value. What is the value that each customer could potentially bring to your business over a longer term period.

But, but when it kind of comes to those red flags, I think, you know, the thing is in terms of looking actually their sites, it tends to be things like, for example, Get 10% off now for your first purchase. Now, a lot of people are going to saying, well, hang on a minute. That's just a common technique that's used in e-commerce. It is a common technique. But the question is, is that, you know, in that particular scenario, are you actually attracting that right type of customer?

So we've all done. It, we've all been level gamified it. So, you sign up to a brand, you get the 10% off, you get that first purchase. You never shop with them again. So alternative methods, here, in terms of that customer experience is, when they don't see that and what they might see alternatively, is that say, for example, a quiz, which will say, look, get your free personal care skin uh personal skincare regime from us.

You then enter some different information about your lifestyle, about your skin, about what you're looking to achieve with that, that is setting them a much better path. And then realizing that that company is going to give you a lot more than just that 10% discount.

So it's that, you know, in terms of that kind of before the sale, those are the kinds of things that we look at from a customer experience point of view that make the customer evaluate you as a brand, rather than kind of going down that standard okay, well, let's just go at a 10% off. Hmm. That's a really good point.

And I like how you talk about that, how the quiz actually, in the mind of the customer increases the value that you're giving them and it increases the value because you're being a lot more helpful. Um, Which I think is we're going to come back to that circle, that, um, idea about being a bit more helpful.

So I guess my, my primary concern here, uh, Adam, if I'm honest with you, is when I hear that I go, I resonate, but do you know how easy it is to put on the website 10% off your first order versus creating a quiz and all the content that goes alongside that? Right. So, um, how do we, how do you wrestle with that? Now? It's a really good point.

Um, I think, you know, look, there's two things I would say to that is that one, the ability to, to have those onsite quizzes now has been made a lot easier. And there's some great tools that like octane III, for example, they have a brilliant tool that allows you to do this with relative ease. But the other thing is it's actually the value from those two different activities. So let me give you an example. If we say, for example have that site with a 10% pop-up.

Ordinarily, what will happen is you will put in your name, you'll put in your email address and that's the data that essentially that that brand is collecting. Now in an era, you know, when look, you know, we've got third party cookies going away, zero party data become more important. Acquisition cost is super high. If you've managed to get some information from a customer, does that warrant the cost that you've, you've paid to get that person to site.

On the other hand, if you have a quiz that allows you to find out, okay, well, if, again, if it's a beauty brand, if it's a skincare brand, what type of skin this person has. What they do for a living, what the lifestyle choices are. Do they have children? There's all of these different data points that you can collect from that quiz and then tie in with your email marketing platform, like Klayvio for example.

Now what that means is that those two activities that you've done, you're going to get an email address and a name versus all of these different data points that you can use as what I would say, chances to market to that person. So if you come to my site and you've done that quiz, I can personalize our welcome flow to you with and if you tell me that you've got oily skin, my message to you will feel like it's directed at you because I'm talking about products for oily skin.

The next opportunity, if you don't, but I might be that I'm talking about, you know, um, busy entrepreneurs, um, who have kids, for example, that's going to be the next piece of content. So again, it gets to resonate with you. So yes, there is a bit more work involved with. But the uplift in the value that you can get from the data that's, there is so much bigger than just having that individual address, because you're not able to glean anything with it.

You know, you, you can't, you know, a lot of the time when it comes to that collection email address, you spend quite a few weeks and even months trying to eek that information out of people that purchase behavior with their onsite behavior. You're, leap-frogging all of that by getting more information at the start to then personalize that marketing message out to them. Yeah, I like it. I like it. It's in, isn't this interesting. Isn't it?

That, um, it used to be, I mean, I, you know, you may have seen this, I've definitely seen this, you know, been around a little while. It used to be that you could just put a website and people would buy from it and then that was fine. And then that stopped working. And so then we started using Google ad words and then that started to work. And then, uh, we started to do things like, uh, well maybe I need to do something else now to get people to buy it.

And it's always these little tricks that we've been trying on the way, the one that, which wound me up the most, I don't know if you've come across. It was the spin the wheel. Hey, that's on your website and listening to the podcast, please take it off. Um, and, uh, so all these gimmicks, all these things, and I see the 10% thing being used. We've used it ourselves um, over the years.

And I'd say its efficacy has falling and so everyone's now looking for the next big thing, but all the, what you're doing, I suppose, in effect, if I listen to what you're saying is you're, you're, you're trying the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, but actually just something simple as a survey gives you so much data and enables you to actually talk to your customer in a language which will resonate with them that maybe we should just, it's almost like old school. Isn't it?

Old school marketing techniques. What do they, like, let's talk about that. You know what I mean, with your, with your customer? So, um, as a, as an aside, by the way, why do you hate the spinny wheel thing? Well, I think two things. One is the ability to actually extract data is low. So that's the first thing. And I think the second thing is it also, it often devalues a brand. Now what I would say is look for some brands that I would say are.

You know, low cost items, singular purchase, it's all about basically trying to get that impulse buy. So if you kind of had a single product, you know, under sort of 20 pound, under $20, Great, fine.

But ultimately then you're, again, you're setting that expectation, not only about the standards that your company has as a brand, but secondly, what it also does is that it, then it's only going to lead to the next time around that customer expecting to get a discount or a freebie that they go to the first place.

So I think it just, it just sets that relationship up wrong from the outset because there is just the expectation you're going to get this kind of gimmicky 10% off,five pounds, $5 off free tote bag, whatever it might be, every time you shop. And that, that doesn't then again, kind of lead to that longer term relationship. So I think if it is all about that, seeing of the purchase, you know, stack up your, your ad budget on Facebook, acquire them get them to buy, get them to go, fine.

But if you've got a suite of products or a family of products that you want them to then go through to get a high lifetime value, then no, steer away. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. Avoid the gimmicks is, is usually the best long-term strategy or even medium term strategy to be fair. It's just avoid the gimmicks. Uh, they, they usually don't work.

So, so we're thinking about the customer who's coming to the website and we're going well, let's increase the value adds, like let's create more touch points and effect or more data points, um, where we can understand the customer better and then we can help them understand our products better and we can find out where there's a bigger, bigger crossover. Um, so one point of that is there's the 10% is a survey.

What other ideas do you, do you have that it may be, can help me, uh, add add a better experience? Yeah. So I think when, when you land on this, um, you, you've got a couple of different things there. Now the one, obviously of getting people into your email funnel, you know, with Connie isn't, that quiz idea is one.

But I think the other thing is, is that when, because there are so many personalization tools available now, essentially using all those personalization tools to amend the homepage, to make it feel more targeted for that user is also really helpful. So there's a couple of things you can do here. One is obviously for existing customers.

So if you're using one of these kind of AI personalization tools, if let's say for example, you know, I have recent that on the H&M website, um, I've purchased, you know, three pairs of chinos all in different colors. Yeah, it's very simple now to basically amend that H&M homepage when I go next to show three tops or three shirts that go with those pair of trousers that I've just purchased. Super simple to do that.

But equally, you know, when it comes to actually, you know, that initial customer who's maybe not been on your site before is making sure that your navigation is based, not on things, just like, for example, color, but also things like occasion. Now, what we've seen a lot, you know particularly with kind of apparel, um, clothe, apparel, and kind of clothing companies possibly is, is that, you know, when people are coming to the site, what a lot of the time they're doing.

So they've either got something in their mind they want to go to, and they want the full outfit. Or the other thing is, you know, what's been happening a lot is that people are now, for example, using things like Instagram and using Pinterest to say, for example, go and find an outfit that they're looking for. Yeah. So one of the things that you can do is there's a couple of tools on there.

One of them is site, uh, which allows you to actually upload an image to the search on the site, which will then go and search visually that image you've put up and then find products that match them. So that, again, in that situation, you're giving that customer you're bypassing that need to go and use all the different search filters. Another one I would say, Matt is that massively overlooked is having a damn good search feature on your site.

Yeah, there are, you know, the amount of times, you know, you, you have seen this over the years, again, you go to an e-commerce site and for example, you type in, you know, blue shirt, you don't start getting, you know, blue bed linen because the word blue is in there.

You know, it's those kinds of things that if you've got a dynamic search option, which, you know, will number one pick out and make sure that you've obviously got that, having the ability then saying, look, it looks like you're looking for blue shirts, what size are you. And then be able to select medium, and then it's going to return just the items back to you that our blue shirts in medium, that you can then go and buy. Super simple to do, but just not being done.

And, you know, you've got all these big, heavy navigations that people are building with all these different options on. If you can get that customer to that product quicker by giving them, you know, by giving them navigation terms that they understand in some of the things they want to achieve with the product, you've got much more chance of then converting them. And I think, no, for me, that as an experience sort of thing, you know, that I think that's super important.

I mean, I hate to kind of call people out, but, you know, look way flier for me. Sorry, Wayfair. Even my apologies. So big, big product selection. Their navigation for me is just unusable. There are so many different types of categories to go down sub categories to get to what you want on that site is basically telling you your ability to say the problem or the thing that you are shopping for, or I'm shopping for my living room.

And my favorite colors are black, white, and I like wood affect yeah. Great. It wouldn't be hard to do that, but it's just breaking that process down to make it easy for the customer is something that I think in e-commerce we can find very difficult to do. I totally agree. And I think one of the, one of the interesting things that is happening is there are experts now who are thinking about this versus just a web developer throwing up a navigation, which is easy for them to build, right?

Or, or in a way that, whether I think because the web developer thinks about the site in terms of how they're building it, uh, that was just not how customers think about your website. They just don't think linearly do they at all. Um, and so I liked that. I, let me circle back a little bit. So you've talked about three things there. Uh, well, I've, I've jotted down three key headings, shall we say?

Uh, which we'll get into one is personalizing your homepage two, um, you mentioned, uh, the navigation and three, you mentioned the search feature. So, uh, let's deal with those in reverse order. So the search feature, um, you mentioned Wayfair, you see, I contrast what you said there with Amazon. Amazon, I never ever use their categories ever. I always use the search.

And, um, we found on our websites that if a customer types something into the search versus using the navigation or the filters or whatever, if they could type it in and find the product, the conversion rate was much higher. Um, for, because for whatever reason, they just couldn't be bothered to take the time. So the search feature was a really fascinating thing for me and I get what you're saying there.

Um, that actually having a really powerful search feature is super helpful, but in my here's the thing, right. Searches. When I go to Amazon, I know what I'm looking for, or I have kind of theories of category or do you know what I mean? And I might like the other day I was looking for something to monitor power usage. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So I was like power usage meters. And I know that when you sell something on Amazon, you can put in these keywords.

So when people type in not your name, not your brand, not the exact name of what you're selling, you can come up on the search results. And I think there's a lot we can learn from that. Uh, any commerce that people don't do, search exact phrases, they search these sort of roundabout phrases don't they. It's, it's kind of problem, you know, it it's that problem solving. And I think with Amazon that, you know, we don't probably do enough. On more, you know, sort of stunned at e-commerce sites.

And I think this is kind of a thing you know about, you know, I think look beat in skincare are prime for this, you know, what, what is the problem that we're trying to resolve there? What is the difference we're trying to make? Um, so that's gotta search feature thing really kind of comes into play.

It's the same with clothing, you know, to an extent, because again, you're usually looking for that clothing for an occasion, for an event for a particular you know, work type that you're, that you work in. So there's all these sort of things that we don't really kind of do enough of we're too concerned about making look pretty opposed to getting that customer to that right product, which obviously is exactly what Amazon is the king at. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree.

And I, I liked that because, um, we, I remember with Jersey, one of the things that we noticed was that was their various types of people that come to your website and I'm going to talk in very, very headline, uh, stereotypes now. So do forgive me. Uh, but we had one group of customers who would come to the site who knew exactly what they wanted. They bought the product before they knew they, that was that moisturizer. That was their cleanser. That was whatever it was. I'm buying that.

And I want to get to that as quickly as possible, um, which you mentioned, and then there was the other type of customer who came along to the website visitor to the way. I didn't really know what they wanted to be fair. Um, they, and sometimes they could define their problem. So we started seeing uptake in sales when we started to do what you mentioned. So not just brand moisturizer, it was, um, shop by skin concern, the oily skin. So they could go, I've got oily skin.

I click that and see what products come up. And then I can look at the reviews and see what's going on there. And then we, um, we realized that actually there's people that come to the site who go, my skin's just not right. How do I, how do I help those right. That are, that are very, uh, top level kind of, you know, I've, I've got a problem, but I can't even define it, right. Uh, have you got any thoughts on, on how we can help?

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a couple of things I would say that I've seen being done with that situation is, um, particularly I suppose, in the beauty space having, um, the, the kind of test the kits is really useful. So if you've, you know, for example, like face creams, I think the, the one brand i saw do it, you could order, um, a, a kind of testing kit, which I think had 5mls of each of the different blends in.

But what it basically did, what was quite smart with is that it, when you then got that product, there was then an email flow that went with it, that gave them a regime for a period of over three weeks. So what you're basically doing is you, you asking them to try this, the different products at different points, you were then kind of holding their hand through each one.

And almost get into the record, the results of what was happening based on the fact that you would message them at certain points. Now off the back of that, then depending on what the interaction came back at, when they were using each of those products, the followup messaging would then be for a discount off the product, which seemed then to be the best fit.

So yes, you know, there is a cost associated with that, but ultimately if you can make that, you know, a low value purchase of say under $10 under 10 pounds, You've got that situation where people go, okay, well, yeah, well, I'm going to give this a try. You know, if you call products, you know, if you talk about moisturizer, you know, say 30 to 50 pounds or 30, $50 per pop, and then you can offer something that is, you know, maybe at the $10 or 10 pounds, mark.

You've then got, you know, that willingness of ok where it's 25% of the cost of the full product. I'd rather be that than actually then go full pouts. I think that's the one side of things. The other side of things is that, you know, I think that the queer side of things does help a lot with this because you, you, you don't, in that particular situation, you don't even a need to really even go down that route of look, what is their skin type.

If you can ask them things about their diet and things about how they're feeling generally about their skin, all, you know, are you feeling positive? Are you feeling confident? Are you not feeling confident you can kind of deduce from that which product might be best and then to kind of get a shot so you can do it in that sense.

Um, but I think the other thing too, is that when you, you know, when you've kind of got those, I guess, sort of inquisitive people coming inside her and not really sure what they're doing, having even things like, for example, that automated chat bot in the corner can be also be quite helpful. Now chat bots, I think are a little bit divisive, but there are some fantastic tools now that are very much AI driven.

So that when, you know, you have kind of people talking in colloquial terms or saying, I'm not really sure what I need here, almost kind of having those questions in built into that chat box to then give them recommendations can be very helpful. I mean, I know of one brand who are a supplements company, and what they actually do is that when you have a customer coming on to that chat bot, they will actually send you a link to book in a consultation with one of their advisors.

So these guys are basically people that have had relatively decent training, you know, in terms of the use of vitamins, use of supplements, getting them onto what usually apparently is kind of a seven to eight minute call. And in that time, that conversion rate they were saying is over 30%. So it's yes, okay, there's that cost associated with it.

But again, if you've got a product that you know, is let's say, you know, a hundred dollars a month, and you're typically going to keep that customer for say three to five years. Well, hey, it's worth it, but that's one same important to know what your LTV is or know what your customer lifetime value is to be able to make those calls on those will appear more costly, you know, kind of customer experience and customer success type of activities. Yeah. So we're at a good point.

I sort of interested in how, um, you mentioned that with the supplement company, they. The, all the things that you've talked about in effect, you are basically saying. And if I can summarize Adam, uh you're you're basically saying, listen, there are different types of people come to your website. Sometimes they know what they want. Sometimes they don't. Your job is to help them get to understand what they want as quickly as humanly possible. Right. So if they know what they want.

Be smart with the navigation, personalize your homepage, be smart with your emails and get them to that product as soon as possible and recommend products which go along with that in terms of cross sells and upsells it's, it's a no brainer. Um, if you, if they don't know what they want, you can use tools like quizzes. You can use tools like sample kits and all that sort of stuff to help them figure out what your products are gonna make sense.

Phone calls, I think is one of the, I don't I'm gonna touch on this a little bit, cause this is a bit of a sore point for me. Um, in the sense that I have noticed over the years, if I have asked anybody who is, um, well, let's just say a millennial, uh, uh, or younger. Um, if they come to me and they said, oh, I've got this, this and this. Um, I'll say, I'll just give him a ring, just give him a call and talk to them. Um, because I'm sure that can be resolved with inside like 10 seconds. Right.

Just give them a ring. Next day, I go to that person. Did you call them? No. No, no, no, that's not what I asked you to do. I asked you to call them. Yeah, I did. I emailed no, no, no email and texting is not a phone. There's something quite extraordinary about the power of talking to somebody on the phone. It's like going into the, I can see with the supplement guys, it's like going into the shop and just talking to somebody and them just asking you a bunch of questions.

And you liking that person and trusting what they've said, you're going to leave with a bag full of supplements, right. Uh, and I think it's one of the most underutilized tools out there. Completely agree. Completely agree. And I think no it's, it's things like, you know, we, we do quite a bit of work with jobs to be done surveys with our customers. So effectively what this means is that, you know, if you have a brand. We will then go and pick out 20 different customers of your brand.

And what we'll do then is we'll spend usually kind of 45 minutes to an hour with each customer. So there's quite a lot of time involved there, but as you can imagine, the amount of information that you can get from those calls, it takes a lot of time to process all, yes. But the value that you can get from that, because it's, it's that raw, this isn't it, you know, and it's, it's that ability of people to assay. So they think you're never going to get that same response on an email or a survey.

It, it just ain't ever gonna to happen. You're not going to hear that tone of voice. You're not going to hear those long pauses. You're not going to hear that joy in their voice when they talk about, you know, the fact that look you once sent them a free sample in a second order, and that's basically, what's kept them with you, you know, it's, it's all these little things that appear throwaway comments to that customer, but having that chat, it just makes all the difference.

I mean, I think that the qualitative side of a customer experience is really under utilized, you know, things like, for example, net promoter scores, you know, having that very short quiz at the end to say, how was your shopping experience with us today? You know, people don't believe it but usually you'll get sort of 25 to 30% hit rate on those.

And again, with that information, you can then fundamentally go in and change your checkout process, change what's happening on your homepage based on the fact that what people have actually said, and it's, we're so obsessed with data and e-commerce. But it's all quantitative data. We're never looking enough at qualitative. And that's what we've got to get our heads around, particularly in this really, really competitive market we find ourselves. Yeah, such a good point.

Just call your customers and have a conversation, uh, is okay. It's just one of the most powerful pieces of advice I think we can give you as e-commerce entrepreneurs, but it's, it's the opposite. Isn't it? It's analog. You mean I've got to talk to somebody. I can't just get them to check a check. No, no. You've got to talk to somebody or get a company to talk to them on your behalf, uh, who know how to ask questions and illicit information out of people, right? It's true.

It's just sensible to do that. And like you say, the data that comes out of it is unbelievable. I mean, unbelievable. And it changes, I think your business in major ways. All good. If I'm honest with you, just circling back to the, we didn't touch on the personalized homepage too much. Um, so some examples of how you think that could work well would be great. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the benefit, you know, you were saying there with some of your customers.

They are only interested in that particular moisturizer. They know what they buy. So what is the point in trying to then sell them a new moisturizer when they come to that site? Ultimately, you know, I guess what you want to be doing is that if that moisturizer sits within a family of products that fit in with the particular process is making sure that those products are essentially the hero products when they come to that site. So, I think that's important.

The other thing too, is that, you know, when it comes to, um, yeah, pets is an interesting one as well. Uh, and you have an area that we've been quite a lot of work with over the past few years, whether that be, you know, accessories, whether that be pet food products, but I think, you know, what we've definitely seen there is that if you w we have one brand and what enables you to do enabled you to select your dogs breed via a pop-up when you first come on site.

Now we AB tested this, and what was absolutely insane was when you gave that selection to versus when you, didn't not only did you have a damn sight, more time on site, because what was happening is that if, for example like me, you're a French bulldog owner, your home page has got a French bulldog on it. You then got references to, you know, different little Frenchie things like Frenchies zoomies, where they kind of jump pulled around those, a reference of that on the home page.

So, yeah, it's a bit of work that's involvement, but effectively what you feel like is I've just found a website for French bulldog owners that produces food for French bulldogs. It wasn't the case because it was for all dogs, but you kind of get that impression. And that for me, you know, was, was such a, you know, relatively simplistic thing to do, but it again gives you the opportunity straight away to start off on that, that great foot of look, we're able to personalize for this person.

And it's equally things you know like people often, you know, a lot of the time you'll go to a site and say, which at which country are you visiting from? And ordinarily what that's to do is to send you to a site that has different currencies on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, now with that, you know, I think what the smarter brands I've seen do with that is that, number one go and personalize the language on that site and also the references and the imagery that happened.

So again, I know an apparel brand that did this and they had basically US, Canada, UK, Australia, and I think Portugal, um, were kind of the five different areas where the majority of those companies come from. All they effectively did with that. Is that when you selected that? Yes. Okay. Currency change is fine, but.

What was happening is that the imagery that was being used for just mainly the hero images on the collections page on the home page were all basically shoot shoots that were done in each of those countries. So straight away, you know, it's easy. Like, you know, you, you're going to go down the shoots anyway. You just put in those little references that allow people to fill out, okay. This brand is for me and my country for me, made the world of difference. That's really powerful.

That's really powerful. I liked that. I liked that a lot actually. And thinking, like you say about who's the customer finding information out and just tailoring the homepage to them. It makes all the sense in the world. Right. Makes all the sense in the world. And so, um, listen Adam, I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what is a phenomenal topic. And, uh, I'd love to pick your brains about it an awful lot more, but I'm aware of time.

How do people reach out to people, connect with you? Cause I'm sure people are gonna have a lot more questions, a lot more thoughts on this. And so, um, if they want to reach you, uh, how do they do that? Yeah. Fantastic. So if you have a look at blendcommerce.com, uh, and alternative as, well, I am quite active on LinkedIn, so you can find me Adam Pearce - PEARCE. Uh, I posted a lot of stuff on there about customer experience, about email marketing, about Shopify. So yeah, do get in touch!

Yeah, I do do that. And what are you working on at the moment? What's um, what's blend commerce working on at the moment. What exciting things are in the pipeline? Yeah, so we have, um, we actually have a very large company that has kind of cut its teeth in TV shopping, um, that are now actually, um, migrating towards more of an e-commerce model.

So we're basically helping them manage that customer experience from having people who call up to a TV shopping channels in the U S to trying to migrate them, to having an experience as an e-commerce shopper. So that's really interesting.

Um, and I think the other thing as well, um, that is, um, probably a little bit more unusual, but one that, um, I'm very proud of and is very interesting is we actually working with a company who sell coffins or caskets online, um, and they are disrupting the, at the U S uh, funeral market massively. It's a very emotive topic. It's a very unusual brand to be working with.

Um, but again, you know, for me the challenge there is that how do we get that customer experience, right for a very unusual, unique type of offering. So yeah, we work with lots of different types of brands. We don't kind of just go down one vertical. Um, so yeah, all very exciting stuff. So yeah, looking forward to the next few months. Sounds fascinating. And one of the things that's intriguing me about e-commerce at the moment and you've just triggered it in my head.

I mean, I go on podcasts right now, listen and people interview me and they, one of the questions is what do you think is coming up in e-commerce? And one of my answers to that question is this whole life selling thing, which I, I, so your TV guys, I'm really keen to see how they incorporate that in e-commerce because I think it's going to be such a massive deal. Um, but. That is a topic for another show. I have no doubt.

Now, just in closing Adam, you said to me, you actually have a podcast so why don't you just give a quick plug for that? Yeah, fantastic. So it's called Shopify across the pond. Uh, we have great guests on there who are merchants, who are brands who provide tech and apps. Uh, and we talk all different manner of sort of the challenges that are going on. Um, so yeah, do give us a checkout on a, on apple podcasts. Uh, Shopify across the pond. That's right. Yeah. awesome.

Listen, Adam, thank you so much for being on the show and delivering all those value bombs. That's such a trendy phrase. Isn't it? I just thanks for coming and sharing. No worries. And thanks for having me, Matt. Appreciate it. Nah appreciate it. Thanks bro. So there you have it there. You've got it. It's right there. Another fantastic conversation with the e-commerce podcast. Huge shout out to Adam for joining me today. What a legend he is.

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