E44: Matt Thorpe

Richard Hill
Hi and welcome to another episode of eCom@One and today's guest is Matt Thorpe, who's a digital marketing consultant and eCom expert in the UK with over 20 years experience and heads up an agency in the UK called Grasshopper. How are you doing, Matt?

Matt Thorpe
Very well, thanks. How are you yourself, are you alright?

Richard Hill
I am very good. We are on the last day of the month, which is always good. I always like to get it done. So we are headed into February next week, which is great. So yeah. Looking forward to having a good catch up with you. How's things?

Matt Thorpe
Definitely, yeah. No it's all good actually in the eCom world, very busy, people starting up lots of exciting projects and then other clients investing, now Christmas is kind of out the way and they've realised they've got to put that foot on the gas a little bit so I can't complain.

Richard Hill
We're just saying weren't we I mean, we had a little we had a little chat before we came on. It's crazy times at the moment. I think January is quite typically a time where a lot of firms and people and everyone really, I think, are thinking about their future, in particular, the business owners and marketing managers. But we've seen some insane trends this this last few weeks in terms of eCom so it'll be good to, we'll dip into that as well. So I think we've got quite a lot to get through. So let's rock and roll. So so I can see obviously you've got a vast experience in eCom, worked for a lot of the big sort of high street brands and big brands that a lot of people will know. So from head of e-commerce at Jack Wills and Ann Summers, to running your own business, Grasshopper. You know, what evoked the change moving from sort of in-house to own business?

Matt Thorpe
Well, I guess I started up on my own about 11 years ago, and I kind of always had this kind of entrepreneurial streak in a way, I just get excited about new projects. And I'll be honest, I never really got excited working in big corporates. And I found that it was just, there was obviously the politics element and I just wanted to move a bit quicker and I wanted to meet new people as well and get involved in more projects. And at the same time, I was also launching a product myself, which I was taking to market. So I just decided, you know what, I've got a lot of contacts in industry on the e-commerce side, and I wanted to take this product to market. So it was time to sort of, you know, take the plunge and go for it. And I haven't looked back since.

Richard Hill
So how long ago was that?

Matt Thorpe
That was 11 years ago. So it's 11 years ago. So, yeah, I've been around a while.

Richard Hill
Yeah, 11 years. Like dog years, e-commerce years aren't they, just like, like the last year, what we've seen in the last year, you know, what we've seen and probably learned, or definitely learnt about eCom and the things you can do in eCom and the different parts of the industry that are massively growing, you know, 11 years. So there's obviously some vast experience there. So, obviously, a lot of projects, a lot of, a lot of years, a lot of eCom years. I don't know, we're going to have to somehow figure out what is an eCom year equivalent to in the normal, you know, eCom marketing year equivalent to in like a normal year...it's like a five year...

Matt Thorpe
Yeah, it is. It is the red eyes and the crow's feet. They kind of tell a different story.

Richard Hill
So eCom, eCom stores, obviously all, the majority of our listeners, as the name suggests, eCom@one will be on a different parts and paths of their journey, whether they're thinking about setting up an e-commerce store or they're, you know, several years in and just doing their first million per month. Now, what would you say are the three most important things that they should be thinking about implementing, those three things that you've seen over the years that are really key to success with eCom?

Matt Thorpe
Well, the thing is, I see a lot of horror stories and as you probably have over the years and there's a lot of excitement around e-commerce and it's a fantastic industry to get into that, you know, lots of lots of opportunity, but there's obviously lots of pitfalls. And there's lots of people get burned in so many different ways because they watch something on YouTube and they see someone in their bedroom making a load of money. And they don't really understand the fundamentals of actually how you run a business and how you actually acquire customers and treat those customers. So the three things that I always say to, I always come back to fundamentals and I say the first thing is, you know, I teach people how to sell. I teach people how consumers actually buy it. They don't just kind of click on an ad, rock up and suddenly impulse buy that product, especially if it's something that is of a high price point. And it's not an impulse buy, very rarely where people will visit on the first occasion. So I teach people that, you know, you need to put your funnels in place and you need to look longer term and actually understand your customers. The second one is build an email list. Believe it or not, that is still something that many brands don't do properly. They don't focus on actually encouraging people on that list and they don't focus on actually using that list wisely. Now, there's a lot of kind of buzz and shininess about the social media world, but you don't own that platform. It's all on rented grounds. It's a hard slog, actually making an impact. And obviously a lot of it is pay to play, whereas if you build your email list, you can build lots of revenue down the line and you are in that relationship. And then the third one is more of an exit strategy as well. So, you know, why do you want to spend loads of money moving forward on ads when you can actually have you know, if you put a bit of work in at the start, you know, you can focus on driving organic traffic to your site because you want free traffic at the end of the day, because traffic is expensive and spending loads of money on ads is not a long term strategy to grow your business. You want to you have to have a bit of a mix so it's teaching people how to sell, build an email list and focus on SEO.

Richard Hill
So I think there's quite a lot there isn't there, I think guys that are listening in, that email list straight away, I think it's been a recurring theme through quite a lot of episodes and I think you're absolutely right, I totally agree the amount of e-commerce stores that are just all about getting a new customer, getting a new customer again, it's like hang on a minute, you've got the customer or you've got the newsletter subscriber or you've got a subscriber to the download of the X, Y, Z, you know, nurturing those those customer relationships, you know, and really working on those, thinking about the lifetime value of a customer rather than that one time customer, you know it's transformational, I think just not to lose sight of that is absolutely key. And then that, you said, are you familiar with a chap called James Franco, does that ring...?

Matt Thorpe
Yes. Yeah, I've heard James...

Richard Hill
He's sort of like, one of his things is very much about owning the racecourse. And what he means by that, his sort of analogy is, you know, you've got your website here, but if you're completely reliant on one traffic source and that traffic source disappears, you know, then it's like, what have you got left? You need to own, you know? And I think it's a great analogy. You need to have various other areas, you know, if Google, if Google throws some update into the mix and you've maybe doing some some dubious SEO or whatever it may be, you know, and you lose your SEO rankings, or your paid ads, you know, the recent Facebook iOS challenges, you've got to have all these different areas. But, you know, but then it's then, you know, in those specific areas, you know, how far you go and what you do. And, you know, so I think having a good spread, like a spread bet is always a good thing. And the amount of people that come to us and say, well, we do, you know, 300 grand a month on Amazon, 300 grand a month on eBay and six thousand websites like, yeah, we've got a problem. Because as soon as one of the platforms put their fees up or, you know, a new player comes in or Amazon decide, they've now decided to do your product ranges on Amazon basic product, you've got a problem sort of thing, yeah, having those spread, having those spread out, spreads out there is a great idea. So going back to that sort of second point and a bit of the first point, you know selling to those customers, but what advice would you give to the guys about improving that customer loyalty? You know, you're in a very competitive niche, potentially, which is most niches nowadays really, you know, not always, but most of the time. It's easy for me to sit here and say, and you to say, you know, right, you know, let's get them to buy more, but how can we get them to buy more? What sort of things to make them more of a loyal customer base could you advise the listeners to look at?

Matt Thorpe
Well, the key thing is what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a relationship with people. And that's where email is very effective now. I've heard a lot of stories about, oh, no one opens emails anymore and even especially the younger generation. But it's actually true. They do open email still, but they they open the emails from the companies that they want to hear from. Email has been abused just like everything else over the years. But consumers are loyal to those companies that actually go to the effort of understanding them and trying to build a relationship with them. And that's not just about sending sales emails. Once they're on an email list, it's about educating them via a welcome series, for example, an onboarding series is educating them about the products. It's education, about the brands and the benefits to them, how products are made, how they're inspired. There's a lot of, you know, customers want to come behind the scenes of your business. And the way to do that is actually to onboard them in the right way and educate them. And if you educate them in the right way, they will learn to become loyal and they will learn to want to spend more time with you. It's a bit like people if people don't give you the time of day you don't wanna spend time with them, but if someone you're genuinely interested in, they will go out of their way to spend more time with you. And when you actually send an email or something like that, and try to communicate with them, they will switch on and they will be in tune with it. Whereas if you don't, you know, if you just send them sales emails and you just don't bother communicating them, it's like out of sight out of mind type of thing. Consumers, you know, there's a lot of choice out there. And they, you know, they switch off. If you abuse that relationship, they switch off. So, you know, I see a lot of businesses that are so focused on ads and they're trying to kind of, there's so much noise out there and they're trying to kind of get in front of people, you know, and it's invasive. It's just not a great you know, it works really well to catch your attention. But the real loyalty is in the backend kind of email side of things.

Richard Hill
So the guys that are listening, you want to be thinking about, there's a lot of things there. And I think, you know you know, we see it with our clients, you know, absolutely. Spot on. You know, the guy, you know, I'm a big believer in that. The guys that are sharing those behind the scenes stories of the brand, you know, because everyone starts somewhere, you know, whether you're sitting there now and you've just shipped your first 10 parcels, tell everybody how excited you are about your first day where you did ten orders or two or whatever it is. You know, I think it's because obviously that's mega, it's mega mega, you know, if you're just starting out and if it's you know, if you just moved into a new 50,000 squ-, can't get my words out - 50,000 square feet warehouse, then great for you as well. You know, and the different team members, you know, we do a similar thing in our agencies. You know, we, our team, you know, we're a big supporter of them, them sharing what they're doing and what they're doing in the day to day. You know, we're doing at the moment a series of videos. Each week, a team member is doing a video about their day in the office. Well as an e-commerce store, you know what, what could you do there? You know, your day, a day with your warehouse manager picking and packing all day with the the purchasing team, the day with you know, 'we've got samples in' and 'oh what samples have we got?', 'oh, what do you think to these guys?' You know, should we list them? You know, engaging via email and your social media as well. Your email and your social media. Yeah.

Matt Thorpe
And I think there's there's other little ways that, you know, you can improve loyalty. It's all about the little touches. So it amazes me the amount of people on Etsy, for example, that go the extra mile on the packaging. You get some beautiful packaging. You know, I'm a big, big fan of the wow factor with packaging okay so you see the unboxing videos on YouTube of phones and tech and handbags. You know, these people are excited before they even got to the product. And if you put a bit of attention into the packaging side of things and you can wow the customer, impress them and you completely change their perception or create a perception of your brand. So when they see the packaging, you know, look at Amazon, it's just a box. It's not exciting. People rip it open. But if you've got a delicate well presented piece of packaging with a nice little welcome note and a sticker that says when, you know who its packed by, little things like that. You know, and then one other thing, just quickly, don't want to drag on, but there's an App called Bonjoro. I don't know if you've heard of that, which I absolutely love. But yeah it's called Bonjoro and it's basically when you have a sign up to a newsletter or when you have an order that comes through your online store, you get a little notification on your phone and you can record a video to welcome that person on board. And we've called it on your phone within like twenty seconds and click send. And that customer immediately gets sent that that welcome message. And it's just those little personal touches...

Richard Hill
Wow that's amazing, I've not heard that.

Matt Thorpe
Very, very powerful. And you got to think about what companies actually go to the effort, I mean, these things are very, very few, you know, once they've got your money, they don't care about you anymore until it's time, you know, like car dealerships, until it's time to service your car or buy a new one, they don't really care about you afterwards. So it's that after-sales service, which is massively important.

Richard Hill
Yeah I think that's such a focus, and that's why I think you guys listening in have to think you know why are people buying from you in that first place and why they're going to stick around, they're buying from you in the first place. You know, it's not probably because it's the easiest option, because we know there's some big boys out there that can do a one click purchase and go and buy from those guys. Whereas coming to the independent eCom stores, that personal service, that story, that follow-up. I mean, I, during lockdown. We've been doing some work in the house and I thought, you know, bugger it, I'm going to, excuse my French, but I'm going to I'm going to treat myself to a nice, one of these fancy coffee machines. So, you know, doing the research, ended up with the coffee machine like three months ago. And so obviously for a coffee machine, I need the beans to go in the coffee machine? So, you know, looking at the different companies and some of the coffee brands have got it so right. Because you know what they what they're trying to do, the ones that I believe are doing very well, are now doing very well at the coffee brands that are, you know, trying to get you on subscription, you know, which is this retention piece. You know, you don't just drink coffee once like a pair of shoes you might wear once every now and then and you buy one pair or you don't buy one pair but you buy less frequently and every month potentially, you know, you want your coffee. So I was you know, I've signed up for two coffee brands, you know, now midmonth I get my subscription from one and then end of month I get my subscription from the other. But when the package arrives, it's like a, it's a major event. You know, it's like, you know, the box is obviously completely branded. It's not just the brown box. It's completely branded. It's like, oh, the coffee is here! You know, I open it up and then it's like all the extra, all the extra sort of, as you say, stickers and, you know, one of them I ordered two coffees. And I'm on this subscription where it's like I'm having a a certain tier of coffee, you know, it's like an extra pound for the premium option, if you like. So just, but it's like, and then and then each pack, they tell me, know what about the about the grower of the coffee and his family, you know, in an image of the area of Brazil or wherever in the world it is. It's just a real experience. And now I'm drinking that coffee and put that in the coffee machine. And now I'm like, I'm waiting for the next lots of coming because I'm excited about that experience. And I think if you can make, you know, think about your eCom store and create that experience so people are going to want to come back, you know, going to want to subscribe potentially, depending on what you sell you know I've done a few episodes on subscription and membership models. You know, there's nothing more powerful. But I think a question for you would be so OK, you know, you're an eCom store, you've started, you know, you've really got the email dialed in to try and retain, you know, you put in this, you know, some more personal touches in the boxes. But what else would you say a business can do? You know, if drop-off starts to pick up you know, or more and more of your your conversion rate, not your conversion rate, but your your re-buy and up-sell and cross-sell opportunities in the future from existing customers starts to drop off, what sort of other things you think people could do?

Matt Thorpe
OK, so, you know, if you just rely on email on its own, I think that at some point you will get drop off. You know, there are there are other ways you can encourage people to become more loyal and part that is just in your communication. So, you know, I'm a big fan of just picking the phone up and just saying thank you. You know, just picking, spending a few hours every week just picking picking the phone up and saying, thank you. Interviewing your VIP customers, actually, the people who spend most would be the people who who buy more often. Sometimes it's a low amount, but it's more often that your you know, your VIPs. It's that 80:20 rule yeah, so 80% of your revenue will come from your top 20 percent customers. And you want to just communicate and make them feel special and involve them in your business. Yeah, it's all about ideas, about product development or get them involved in meetings. I had one company, there was a luggage company, a business luggage company. I don't know if I'm allowed to say them on here am I?

Richard Hill
You can do whatever you like.

Matt Thorpe
GATE8 Luggage, great company, great, great business luggage. Obviously the pandemic has kind of have not helped them at the moment, but they will obviously pick up once the airlines kick off again. But we, you know, we were very close when I was working with GATE8 with Alastair there, we were very close to the customers and we actually asked them for feedback on products, features they'd like to see. We actually got them together in cafes in London for focus groups. They just loved being involved. They want to be asked, you know, where where you know, what products do we want to see in the future, what features? You know, they really want to get involved in the business. And I think that that makes people feel special because like I said earlier, the big companies, you know, they become disenfranchised with them. They don't really feel special. They just feel like it's a big corporate entity taking the money. So as a small business, there are so many, you know, really personal touches that you can put in place and you want to you know that you want to create super fans, a band of loyal super fans. And I would urge everybody on this podcast to listen to go and read A Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly, which is an article where, you know, he writes this article based on a group, a rock group. But he basically says, if you can create a loyal team, of loyal fans, not necessarily a thousand, because obviously if you just started off, that's a lot. But it just means if you can create a thousand true fans and keep them happy and they will buy everything you ever sell and they would do your marketing for you. And that is it, it's just focusing on not 'likes' necessarily and 'follows' and everything else, because that doesn't pay the bills. It's about really focusing down on those people, the VIPs and what they spend.

Richard Hill
So maybe if you're listening to this podcast, you've got this far with this episode, you should hit pause right now, well, in a minute. Pick up the phone or go to your CRM, the back end of whatever it may be, Shopify, etc.. You know, other eCom platforms are available, get logged in. Look at that order that got delivered earlier today, yesterday. Pick up the phone and just say hi. Yeah, I'm X, Y, Z. I'm I'm the owner, founder of X, Y, Z. And I just wanted to see how how, you got the delivery, OK, and how the experience was and what's the product like and find out. Talk to your, talk to your customers five minutes every day and it'll get, quite, I think you'll get some great feedback, some honest feedback, you know, and you'll get a boost from it because it's your business at the end of the day. And really, I think, you know, at the end of the day, yeah, you've got this store, you're probably obsessed with traffic and conversion and making money. But ultimately, you know, if you can retain and find out more about those customers, you know, in the long run, you're going to have more loyal, more loyal fans. And look at that, those thousand followers, true followers, I mean yeah I'm completely you know, I'm completely with you on that one, you know, to get, you know. But try and get that first one, all those 10, then 100. And like anything, when you start in that process, it starts with that first step. So I think you know, pick up the damn phone, you know, hit pause now and we'll see you in a second....Well, welcome back.! So, yeah, great. So, you know, that's going to help retain, going to help you obviously get a lot more feedback. But when we go back to that conversion piece, obviously, so a lot of e-commerce stores, you know i know we can, you know, there's a lot of things we can look at and specifics, you know, when we get into the data in the GA or whatever you're looking at specifically, whether it's this platform, that platform on the on the ads. But what sort of things or advice would you give to companies listening to improve conversion rate on their eCom stores?

Matt Thorpe
OK, so a couple of kind of obvious ones, but most powerful is video. Video is the best converting media for any eCom store. And especially if you've got a kind of a product that needs a bit of an education, you can't underestimate the power of video. And I'm not saying they have to be Hollywood blockbuster style. They can be quite, you know, shot on your iPhone or whatever device you have because, all in HD sort of thing. But customers, they don't expect something really flashy. They just want to learn more about the product. And, you know, your job as a, as a you know, as a store owner to keep people on your site as long as you can and you need to educate people. So video is fantastic for that. Selling the benefits as opposed to the features, so writing product descriptions that actually appeal to that target customer, not just product descriptions that have come from a manufacturer or if you're reselling other products and not just being lazy about it. You know, quite often I see, you know, people want any content on a page because they've seen a high fashion brand like Gucci and Prada and things like that. And, you know, those brands have so much PR behind them and so many tens of millions of dollars spending probably a month. They don't need to go down the kind of whole route of describing their products. But when you're small, you need to go the extra mile as if you're talking to your customers. So sell those benefits. Features are important, don't get me wrong, but it is the key benefits and the proper description. And then mobile payments is is another one. So your checkout has to be mobile, mobile friendly, not just mobile responsive, mobile friendly. You have to test it. You have to gather to test it after that because checkouts are where people drop off all the time. And if you, you know, I still see check outs that only have PayPal, for example, and credit card. They don't have Google Pay, Apple Pay or Amazon. They you know, you want to make it as easy and as frictionless as possible for people to give you their money. Yeah. And that's you know, that's that's really where you need to focus.

Richard Hill
I think there's another stop point for the guys listening in, get on your websites and check the damn payments, because I think the amount of websites, I think it's like 1 in 3 I think, the amount of times you go to the store on a mobile phone or device and then you get the chat, pop, pop chat pops up when you're about to put your credit card in or less frequently but still, it's a huge problem. So you know really, it sounds so obvious, well of course it works, you sure it works on the new iPhone or whatever it may be? You know, you'll be able to get a feel for what devices go to the website by looking guy in them will find a report that fill out all the different devices that use it, which will be most devices still out there. But if ultimately something's obscuring that payment piece where you submit. We see it. We see it all the time, and then there's product descriptions, I think that's one that we talk about a lot. But I think from an SEO perspective, rewriting those benefits, definitely product descriptions with the with the with the benefits. But from an SEO point of view, obviously, you've then got a unique copy content as opposed to just if you're doing that sort of CSV style, know, pump and dump into your website and you've got the same as everybody else. You need content straight away, which is which has been written fresh on that. And would you sort of go with that sort of 80-20 principle again, that you mentioned that when you focus on the products that are the better products, better selling products to start with then?

Matt Thorpe
Yeah, I think so, yeah. Just stuff in your best sellers obviously. But just make sure, you know, make sure your descriptions are actually telling people why they must own these products. They must own it. I know if your description is not going to excite them then they're not going to buy it. So you have to put in work. And I think that, you know, as e-commerce business owners, we do so much because we're fighting fires all over, all over the place. And we we've got a lot of jobs and not everybody is a copywriter. So if you can't write copy, outsource it, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. You can outsource it to some excellent copy writers who would do that for you and take that headache away. But it's all about your brand as well. Your brand is your visual language, not just the way it looks, but it's your language as well. So it's worth putting in the effort.

Richard Hill
Yeah, great stuff. So we've been on a similar vein in terms of things to improve the websites and the conversion rates, but obviously worked on a lot of big, big sites, you know, big and small all the way through big high street brands. But what are the common things you've seen that the, why most ecommerce stores fail would you say? What are some of the things people need to be looking out for?

Matt Thorpe
Well I think the first one you mentioned earlier is the fact that, you know, they're always chasing that next new sale, always chasing that next new sale, and obviously we've spoken about the loyalty side of things as well. So I think that's important is neglecting people who have already parted with and given you the money because you've done the hard part by getting that sale, because the biggest part, the biggest obstacle in e-commerce is gaining that trust. And what someone you know, you have someone's trust, then they they've opened up and they're ready to learn more about you. If you neglect them or if you just completely ignore them, then that's a lost opportunity. I think also a lot of stores don't even know who their target customer is. You know, they just go, oh, anybody who buys fashion, anyone who buys, you know, bike parts, anybody does this anywhere, you need to know who your target customer is and what makes them tick. And that's one of the very first things I teach businesses is to create a customer avatar. You know, I know it sounds a bit fluffy and a bit kind of from a marketing textbooks, but it's true because if you don't know who your customer is, what makes them tick and what their beliefs are and what's important to them, then how are you supposed to sell something to somebody? You can't, you can't just go after everybody. You have to have a target customer and there will be other people on the fringes. So that is really, really important. And I also think that business owners should stay off YouTube or not spend as much time on YouTube. You know, I'm not saying you can't learn a lot from there, but I think there's a lot of people on there that, you know, especially, you know, with the kind of the increasing dropship in style businesses and these young kids in their bedroom make it look very easy. And they said, I made a million pounds this weekend or something like that. But what they don't tell you is they probably spent nine ninety pounds on ads. So it's...

Richard Hill
That old chestnut.

Matt Thorpe
And they're usually trying to flog you a course, at the end of it.

Richard Hill
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so true isn't it, 'follow my blueprint where I made X, Y, Z'. I forgot about the fact that I live at home with my mum and I, and um yeah. Yeah. That's some great stuff there, lots of things to look at. I think that's the thing that I think is good to stop and really think about the areas in the business that that could be a problem. So I think you really have to think about this specifically. So moving on to PPC, which is very much a huge part of our sort of agencies and is yours as well. So where do you see the best results for eCom stores? I say PPC it's a very broad topic, got a lot of areas there, where are you seeing some really good traction at the moment?

Matt Thorpe
I think Google shopping is is good at the moment just because it's it's simple and it tends to work because people are in a buying mindset. You know, they know what they're after. They know what they're clicking on. And then once they get your site, it's down to your site, trustworthy, you know, are you delivering the products in the right way? And obviously, price does have an element to it, but price is not, if you've got a strong brand and you look professional when you've got that trust on the site and then price isn't the differentiator I don't think. It's great for kind of, I guess, fairly simple products. If it's a more complicated product, then I would you know, you probably need to look down the Facebook route and actually get people into work on a longer purchasing funnel that way, because, like I said, you know, very rarely do people, you know, buy on the first attempt. And obviously with Facebook campaigns, it's the, it's the retargeting, the remarketing side of things that actually generates the real revenue. So but, you know, the key, if you're, if you've got a product that requires education, then the key thing is to try and get people on an email list and can continue to educate them. So I think so Google shopping is the one that kind of does it for my clients at the moment, followed by Facebook and Google ads as well. AdWords works as well, but it's getting more expensive.

Richard Hill
So I think we are completely on the same page. And any regular listeners that are listening in right now will know we are obsessed with all of that but specifically Google Shopping is our lead service within our agency. So just going into Shopping a little bit, then, because we've done about 5 episodes on Shopping specifically on the podcast. And what would be maybe one little gem you could give the listeners on Google Shopping specifically? Things you can see a lot of people, you know, okay use Google Shopping, but what's the one thing or two? I'll leave it with you - you think people should be thinking about or probably haven't implemented or could implement in their Google Shopping campaign?

Matt Thorpe
I think it comes down to the actual pages themselves, in my opinion. I mean, getting it getting the clicks from any campaign is fairly straightforward. It's just a case of making your pages convert, because if you're just expecting the campaign to run on its own, you'll never really, you know, yes, you can increase results and yes, you can do okay. But the real you know, the devil is in the detail, as I say. So if you can focus on and say, right, okay, where am I getting the most clicks and where am I getting poor conversion? You know, it's the same with Analytics. You know, if you're looking at your site, it's all very well looking at visitors going up and everything, you know, that's all kind of, you know, is all very glitzy and everything. But really, if you can look at where people are exiting your site, that's where the opportunities where you're going to make some real traction, because if you can convert, you know, start, improve conversion on your pages or on your on your checkout, then your campaign is going to be far more efficient and have a better return on investment.

Richard Hill
Yeah. So obviously I'm Shopping campaigns go direct to, go direct to the product page and making sure those product pages are thoroughly thought out, laid out the conversion path is there, clear calls to action. I talked about those, you know, those descriptions are very thorough and very benefit-led and obviously very clear. I mean, I think what I've seen a lot even more recently actually just the colourways on the websites where you see, you know let's say the brand's grey, that's a bad choice but, not in all cases - that's a bit of a bold statement isn't it. And then the checkout button's grey, the checkout's grey. Everything's grey. Well if you think about that path, then that path will flows for the money. You know our testing has shown that you have that path a different colour. So if you look at someone like Amazon who will have spent tens of millions testing this process. You know their, I want to call it yellow but they won't call it yellow, it'll be some fancy named yellow I'm sure.

Matt Thorpe
Colour psychologists.

Richard Hill
Yeah exactly, they've probably got five full time colourists if that's even a job. At least, that path of the yellow, the Amazon yellow flows through. So when you look at your site, you know how clear is it that the buy button, when you hit that buy button and add to cart, is the add to cart. Yeah. That's a very simple summary from my end. But you know look at those product pages. Yeah. Great, great. OK, so bit of an old school question now. So you've got PPC and we've got SEO, what's your take on that sort of battle between them both? Should you do one, should you do the other? We know you should be doing them both. Well that's what I would assume you'd say. But what's your opinion on that sort of piece of both of them?

Matt Thorpe
Well, if you're starting off then PPC is a great strategic tool. I think actually even moving forward, PPC should be used strategically. You shouldn't ever become reliant on it. I had a client a few years ago and he was reliant on PPC and I was saying to him, you know, you need to focus on the SEO side. It's vitally important in the medium-long term because, yeah, it might not reap dividends right now, but, you know, you just can't rely on PPC. And he kind of ignored me a little bit. And then he was doing phenomenal numbers, through PPC. But then one month he had a product issue and he had a lot of product returns and he lost a load of money. And his his sales actually fell off a cliff because he became so reliant on that and then he didn't have any organic traffic. So I always say to brands, I always say look, PPC is great strategically and it's great to get you off the ground, but you should focus on SEO as much as you can, because I believe that the long term, there's so many opportunities and niches to explore and have customers coming in from all sorts of directions and be very, very creative. And it's, you know, it's a fantastic way to convert customers further down the line, you know, without worrying how much you have to spend, because, yes, it takes time and it takes effort. And again, you know, you can invest in a writer to continue. You know writers are a very affordable and there are some fantastic writers out there who can deliver some serious benefits. So I would always say it's kind of a, you know, sort of a 30 percent PPC maybe, 70%...

Richard Hill
That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, you know, I think we always put it akin to I think like paying your ads is like you're renting the car, whereas if you've got SEO, you own the car and you're sort of you know, you've got a lot more control ownership. You know, it's a lot harder for that car to be taken off you really, you know, as long as you're not doing something really, really dodgy old school SEO I think. Yeah, but I think yeah, I think that's great advice there. I'm more of a I'm more of a both kind of guy because at the end of the day it's the return on spend isn't it for me, you know, or return on investment, whether that's in SEO hours or team or time or on your ad spend and time and team. So return on both but yeah thank you for that.

Matt Thorpe
So just one more thing on the PPC side of things. I mean I think it's also important as well to have that longer term view on PPC because it can cost quite a bit of money to acquire customers, but it's then your job as a store owner to then drive more revenue from those people who you know, who you've acquired in a more expensive way. So, you know, PPC can be very, very cheap. It's just a case of it's up to you to put the back work into to drive that revenue.

Richard Hill
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. So coming to, drawing to an end, it seems to have flown by. So obviously most industries are getting more and more competitive. I think most people that listen to the podcast, there's very few industries out there where there's not quite a few people doing what they're doing. And that's a good thing. I think that's a very good thing. We got into the industry where there's a lot of competition. I embrace that type of environment. But obviously you've got to go in that prepared and say bring it on sort of thing. So what would you say to companies that are in a very competitive space, how they can stand out from their competitors and how they can thrive in a very competitive market space?

Matt Thorpe
I think, you know, the key thing to me is about building relationships and building interactions with customers. Customers will interact with brands that are interesting, that are interesting things to say. So if you are if you're just an e-commerce store, if that's what you are as products on a page and you've got nothing else going on on your site, you're a one trick pony. People are going to see you and they're going to go, well, I can get it somewhere cheaper if you actually focus on the content side of thing on your site and say let people in and kind of encourage them to be part of your business, price is almost irrelevant provided, what, twice the price of anybody else. But you know don't sit there and think, OK, I have to be the cheapest that competitor's more expensive, that it's not about price, it's about how you present the product in a meaningful way that makes customers really understand that you understand them. So it's about, as I say, creating those interactions and involving them in the growth and looking at that real personal element on the loyalty side as well. Because that's what to make you stand out, because there are so many business out that these big businesses and small businesses that don't focus on those little personal personal areas. And that's where your opportunity is.

Richard Hill
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being a guest on eCom@One. It's been a pleasure. We always like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. So it doesn't matter if it's whatever it may be, as far out as you like. What would you recommend to our listeners to have a read or listen to?

Matt Thorpe
Well, this is a book that's actually really helped me in my business and it's The eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Now it's about creating systems and processes to get you out of your own way within your business. And it's about being able to kind of, you know, if you can get processes and systems and help get people helping you in your business and get the thing moving in a in a kind of a, you know, an automated way, then you can take a step out of your business and really focus and be clever and smart and strategic about growth. All the time, I've been there as a you know, as a startup entrepreneur. You want to do everything just because you can do everything. It doesn't mean to say you should do everything because all you're going to do is, is burn yourself out and you will end up working evenings and weekends. So read The eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber and it will change your life.

Richard Hill
Yeah. Exciting read. I would recommend everybody reads that. If you're trying to scale you know fantastic. Well thank you so much for being on eCom@One. Now if the guys listening want to find out more about yourself Matt, what's the best place to do that and find out more about yourself?

Matt Thorpe
If they want to know more about my consultancy, it's grasshopperuk.com, and if they want to learn more about e-commerce in general. I have a blog which is webshopmechanic.com.

Richard Hill
Fantastic. Well, thanks for being a guest on eCom@One Matt. It's been a pleasure.

Matt Thorpe
Thanks very much for having me. It's great Richard.

Richard Hill
See you.