E96: Dylan Fernandez

Richard Hill:
Hi there I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 96th episode. In this episode, I speak with Dylan Fernandez, head of business development at O'Brien media. Dylan met some of the eCom One team, a partner event hosted by a BigCommerce and as quickly become a trusted partner. In this episode, Dylan talks about some of the biggest challenges that stores have with the technical elements of their site, site navigation and the impact it can have on conversion rates, re-platforming a huge topic and one that is critical to get right. Dylan dives in and so much more. If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscriber follow button, wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now, let head over to this fantastic episode. This episode is brought to you by eComOne, eCommerce marketing agency. eComOne works purely with eCommerce stores, scaling their Google shopping, SEO, Google search, and Facebook ads through a proven performance driven approach. Go to ecomone.com/resources for a host of amazing resources to grow your paid and organic channels. How are you doing Dylan?

Dylan Fernandez:
I'm doing well. And how are yourself?

Richard Hill:
I am very good today, very good, very good. We're a few weeks into the year and I am firing on all cylinders to be fair. Got lots of crazy stuff going on. All good? Yeah.

Dylan Fernandez:
Not to be cliché but 2022 we're going to make it the year.

Richard Hill:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the way things have started with eCommerce this year, it's looking exceptional isn't it for a lot of eCom stores and agencies. Particularly I think the man for our sort of services, obviously we're in a similar niche, which we'll get to. Obviously has gone through the roof. I was actually looking at Google trends the other day, actually, while we're there and looking at the sort of search volumes for agency support and SEO agency and it's just, which is great for obviously [crosstalk 00:01:49]

Dylan Fernandez:
I'll definitely agree, the pandemic it's the year that we've learned the most but it's also advanced the eCommerce industry the most as well I believe. We've seen problems that we wouldn't have seen maybe without the pandemic.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely kept us on our toes, hasn't it? So obviously you met our team a few months ago, a lovely event in London. I think a bit of a hat tip to getting out there and networking and obviously getting out there I think even amongst all the madness and chaos of the pandemic and COVID restrictions and this, that, and the other. Obviously our team and your team managed to go to a very lovely Christmas bash a few months ago as it will be when we go live and obviously met up with you guys, and then obviously we've been doing quite a lot of business since so obviously great to get you on the podcast. Now I know when the guys met you, it's, "You've got to get Dylan on." So here we are. So I think let's get into it then. So how did you end up in the world of eCommerce?

Dylan Fernandez:
So I won't list off the CV for you, but so I'm quite a newbie with O'Brien Media. I'm not the newest no more, but yeah, I joined beginning of last year so mid pandemic. I've always been kind of interested in website development, SEO, and a kind of technological world, but never actually really done it as a full-time job. It's always been a side hustle with maybe a job that I've done in another sales capacity. So eCommerce is quite new to myself, but I'm an avid online shopper. I may be a businessman, but I'm also a consumer. So it was nice to kind of come into a role knowing what I know as a consumer and a little technical knowledge that I have to actually come and do that as actually a full-time job. We became Big Commerce partners back in January, I started in April. So I've kind of grown with O'Brien Media with the eCommerce side really going forward. So yeah, it's kind of something that's come into my plate and I'm definitely enjoying it and look looking forward to getting more involved.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean BigCommerce, but I think we shout out BigCommerce quite a lot on the different episodes, but obviously we've met you at a BigCommerce event. So I think obviously we've got there's obviously an amazing team there. So I think it's, they've got some amazing partners and I think without there, it's really sort of pushing in the UK as they are and obviously worldwide really. It's a shame their shares aren't doing as well as I'd hope, but fingers crossed we'll all be good in a few months time.

Dylan Fernandez:
Well, the main reason for us meeting so we'll [crosstalk 00:04:34]

Richard Hill:
See maybe when this episode goes live, the BigCommerce shares it's the start of the climb. I'm wondering if Jim will hear this. I'm sure he will. Okay. So okay, so obviously eCommerce, big chopper, but also now obviously on the front line for the last sort of circuit year, O'Brien Media. So maybe tell us a bit more about O'Brien Media. What do you do for on the eCommerce side of things?

Dylan Fernandez:
So with eCommerce, so originally before I started, we predominantly were very much focused on small businesses. So we kind of were using WeCommerce was kind of where we started, where the team kind of got their understanding of the eCommerce ability and where it came into web development, design, SEO, et cetera. As a whole, we market ourself as a digital services agency. So if it involves the internet, then we can do it essentially, whether that is you need your eCommerce email marketing, SMS marketing. Whether you need some SEO support or whether it's a redesign or replatform, then we're here to help. Now we predominantly build Woo and BigCommerce, but we support all others, Shopify et cetera.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant. That's great to know. And I think obviously most of our listeners are on probably one of those, maybe a couple of others, like Magenta, et cetera, but obviously BigCommerce, we've both got a lot of clients as we know on BigCommerce and the other sort of thing. So let's have a dive into that for a second then. So obviously eComm stores, we got various sizes of eCom stores listing in. We know that, and different challenges for different sort of where the different people are at the different stages of their growth, but what would you say are some of the biggest challenges eCommerce businesses face on the technical side with the website? Because I think quite often when you're starting out, which, I know a lot of our listeners aren't there, but they're starting out, and they maybe bought a template and they've installed X, Y, Z, and they've figured it out, that then fast forward five years later, there's a whole different host of technical challenges.

Richard Hill:
It's more probably understanding some basics right at the beginning now. You're already doing, let's say 10 million quid a year, 5 million, 10 million quid or $15 million, depending on the exchange rate. What are some of the technical elements that you see a lot of stores or stores facing now when they are looking at scaling?

Dylan Fernandez:
Oh, experience currently really is to do with the ecosystem technical the back end of it all really. So where obviously we've had this wonderful explosion of open SaaS as BC will say or SaaS, whereas a lot, it used to be on premise where you had to have hosting, it was very extensive. It was this server that server, and you only had maybe a small amount of other ecosystems, whether it was your PO system, your order management system that could link into it. Now with the world of SaaS, as hundreds out there for most kind of mainstream categories. And the issue that we are finding mostly is just making sure that these businesses are able to connect with whatever integrations they need to. A lot of businesses that are kind of coming from the in premise to now going to SaaS, that's the main reason why they're doing it because they're rolled integrations with for example, their back office side of things with the CMS or OMS.

Dylan Fernandez:
They can get it cheaper now with or a better service from somewhere else but that service won't work for in premise. They need something to go open SaaS. So it's really just making sure that whenever we're speaking to prospects or clients when we're working with their growth is making sure that we're on the same page and understanding what systems they want to use to make sure that whatever system that we give them, technological support on whether it's BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, that they're going to have those integrations already there, or there are other agencies out there that are amazing and create integrations. I think that's really probably the main problem that we're maybe seeing at this time and day where you've got that benefit now of open SaaS is so much more opportunity. It's now people that are were maybe set up 10, 15 years ago [crosstalk 00:09:16] they're needing to now go, right, I need to get into the times to make sure that we can provide to our consumer.

Richard Hill:
It's funny, isn't it? Because it's actually, we were having a little chat earlier before we came on. So just talking about our businesses in the sort of one year, three year, five year plans, that type of thing, and different models to plan out and it's a similar thing that you're talking about there as ultimately, obviously, things may be working quite well, but the reality is you are in the future, what is the one year, three year, five year, and think about that growth that maybe you've had this last year, which I would assume most of you listening in will be exceptional, there'll be some exceptions to that, but definitely we step back the next sort of last two years is going to be elements there with some huge growth, I think from 90% of the listeners.

Richard Hill:
So, okay, what does the next year, three year, five years look like? And will your tech stack, will your platform, will your integrations sit side by side with tripling your business? Well, actually, no, maybe not because the system you've got will integrate with X, or it's going to rely on Johnny who works at X, Y, Z, but what if Johnny doesn't work there anymore? Because it's a custom build or whatever it may be. So it's, I think what you, yeah, it's very much sort of, a lot of obviously the platforms now, a lot of these integrations are there, they exist. So the costs are obviously not to have to custom build something, is very, it can be very excessive, but also it's got a single point of failure potentially if it's an individual or a small team of one or two people, whereas if you're building off already existing, multimillion, if not multibillion pound systems like eCommerce or whatever it may be there, integrate with the various warehouse and the systems or you've got a lot more safety nets, I think.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, just stepping back and looking at that three year, five year, maybe getting some help with that from a business coach, from obviously the guys at O'Brien Media, thinking about that sort of three year, five year plan. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that. So I think while we're there, I think we've got a bit of a theme for this episode. So navigation, I think, navigation, we spend a lot of time looking at navigation from an SEO perspective, but what would you say? Does navigation really impact conversion rate? And how can a business improve it? So it's a two prong question this one.

Dylan Fernandez:
I'd certainly say it's definitely one of the key things a lot of retailers in eCommerce businesses are looking at the expansion of kind of heat map software systems that are out there now essentially is a big part of marketing. Where are your prospect customers going on your website? How are they navigating through that? I literally did a blog not long ago, actually, just kind of looking at the trends for this year with website design, et cetera. And one of the main ones that we're popping up and I think that I find myself as a consumer is the kind of modern minimalization, clear, precise. We're in this mobile first kind of world. We look at on the internet, on our mobile for a desktop. So if your mobile website is looking clear, precise, easy to use, they're more likely to go on to your desktop.

Dylan Fernandez:
Because I know some businesses now they won't have their full selection on a mobile version of their website, whereas they might do on a full or it's potentially another way of getting someone onto your desktop. So I definitely say it's aesthetically pleasing and that's what us as human beings like. We like to see things that look pretty, but clear and easy, especially when you're trying to reach a wide range of customers. If we're looking at the kind of older generation, they might be a bit sceptical getting online because it's all a bit mad and crazy for them. But if you can get out there and show that it's not that hard, we can make it easy for you by still putting your brand out there and creating an easy seamless process, then you're heading for a winner.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, so a clear navigation, clear look and feel. So if somebody sat here now, they're thinking, okay, thanks for that. Thanks for that Dylan. Now, okay, I want to go and have a look at my website, and look at that navigation specifically. They're selling, I don't know. Something I'm looking at at the moment is watches as an example or something to do with watches is actually where we're going to be setting up. In fact, this is an exclusive, our agency will be setting up an eComm store. It's what we used to do before we set the agency up, we did that for 10 years, but we're going to be setting up our own store and it's going to be watch related. And obviously there might be people listening in, there selling watches already and accessories and things like that. But yeah, I'm a big watch fan and I'm a bit of probably won't flash watches on the episode, but I'm a big watch fan, big time, too much, unfortunately.

Richard Hill:
But yeah. And the listeners are going to go to their sites now, and let's say where, maybe one of the listeners has got a watch store, what sort of things should they be looking at right now? If they're going to pause this episode, they're going to go and look at the navigation, what would be some tell tale signs maybe to think, do you what? That needs improving or you talked about mobile, maybe they should look at the navigation on mobile to see if it actually works properly, as opposed to truncating maybe, or not truncating, but going round the onto another line or what sort of things you think they should be checking or looking at right now?

Dylan Fernandez:
I think really back the term I'm about to use is something that I had from my school generation. And it's before we had show and tell, usually on a Friday. Now I think that's what somewhat us consumers want these days. We don't want [inaudible 00:15:11] we don't want for you to tell us about it. We want to see it. So the likes of video and proper nice stock imagery, actually showing the finer details of things such as, semi commercials, they don't have an install presence and there are some cubes consumers out there that want to actually see the product as much as they can without actually touching the project. And I think if we can have that kind of minimalist seamless view and design, but having that very detailed photography or videographery of an image, sorry of a product, I think those two will work really well together. And I think that's something that is going to kind of hit an eCommerce world quite heavily because we do do, we watch more videos than we read text these days because the attention span of us as consumers are lower. So we need to be eye capturing.

Richard Hill:
You know the timing on that is ridiculous because I've literally an hour ago spoke to somebody that's looking to work with our agency and they sell electric bikes and electric bike is not a 50 quid product. Their average order value is sort of Circuit 2000 from memory I think it was 1800, 2000, so it's a big product, so obviously getting conversion rates starting, is absolutely key. Once out for them is multiple hundreds of pounds profit, but their images, when you went to scale and zoom in their images were amazing. So they've got the amazing images, but the way they've set up the website, the actual product pages were showing very pixelated images. So as somebody that's looking to buy, I'm not looking to buy an electric bike but if I was, my kids would never, I'd never hear the end of it. I'd be like, loser. Obviously electric bikes are great, but I just think I've been lazy, which would be correct, I think. But yeah, you're looking at the quality just on a £2000 product and it's all pixelated, it's just such a shame. So obviously he's going to fix that, and we're going to do some other work with him on PPC and whatnot, but I think, yeah, that sort of show and tell I like that analogy, that's great. Yeah. Yeah, do we like the look feel?

Dylan Fernandez:
I think that the pixelization as well, when you're paying that amount of money for that kind of product, now with a lot of the advance of technology, there's been a lot more advancements in spam, et cetera. So if you are selling a really high end product, but your marketing isn't to that standard, your consumer's going to think well, do I buy this? Am I getting... And I think people need to actually start thinking outside of the box and putting out there as well, okay, the product's great, but you need to make sure you're promoting a product in the light that it needs to be promoted in.

Richard Hill:
Okay. So any other strategies tips you would give on improving conversion rates?

Dylan Fernandez:
Oh, where do I start? So definitely it's going to be the quick webpage loading. Goes back to our span, our intention span. Sorry, can't get my words out my mouth. There's been some quite a few kind of tests done. I was reading one on CloudFlare the other day, seem like 47% of web users click off a web page if it doesn't load in two seconds. And that's the first step of someone getting onto your website, it's the page loading. So if your page is taking six seconds to load, you're going to be losing. I think it's something like your conversion rate was going down to 0.6 but pages that were loading between 1.8, 2.5, you were getting a 1.9 average. So I'd say that's probably one of the most key. So making sure you got a very fast CDN, your hosting service is at the best it can be. At the moment as well with us being more of a lazy generation, making a seamless, quick, easy checkout process, not this page, that page, even to the point of, oh, I put the wrong details or I accidentally press the right hand side of my mouth and I've gone back. Making sure that it you're saving that information so when they go back, they haven't got to fill it all out. Oh, I can't bother that [crosstalk 00:19:43]

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's gone. It's not cached in or it's not held it, yeah, yeah.

Dylan Fernandez:
Exactly. Social proof, the world with omnichannel at the moment now, and the eBay, Instagram, et cetera, is making sure that you're getting that real life product reviews. If you are using influencers, get a link on that product page with the story that that influencer put up about it. Get some links there to show that our product is real, it's out there, people are enjoying it, they're liking it.

Richard Hill:
It's encouraging that, isn't it? Because obviously people are buying your product, listeners they're buying your product, but what are you doing after that purchase to encourage them to do you a video review? And I guess most of you're going, "Ah, crap, probably not a great deal." So, if you're doing those thousands of orders a week month, whatever it may be, that social proof, as Dylan said, it is huge in all aspects, obviously to help conversions, to help SEO if it's content based, unique content getting created, whether that's unique videos, unique text, which is SEO juice, high octane juice sort of thing, fresh content.

Richard Hill:
But a lot of the or some of the review platforms will automatically do that. You obviously, a lot of you guys that are using say reviews.io, it'll go out there and it'll ask them to do a video review and then you can also, there's different phone functionality there where you can sort of search the people that have bought from you in the past and see almost an influencer score to see, oh, blind me, I didn't realize we had, I'm trying to think of somebody famous that bought off the video [inaudible 00:21:23] Conor McGregor bought off the website. Imagine if he said, "Hey, I just bought this X, Y, Z, reach out to him." And a lot of these platforms do that. Obviously different platforms do different things, but I think, yeah, that's great. Sorry, I interrupted you there three cracking month.

Dylan Fernandez:
No, that's actually fine. I've got two little other ones that I think that are maybe from a eCommerce business owner who aren't maybe the most technical knowledgeable, it's the first is popups. You there's a lot of advancements and popups, from cookies et cetera. We all see that now at the bottom of a webpage cookies, et cetera. Yes, they can be annoying, but it can also help you in the future. As a consumer, you've looked at this product, you go to another retailer's website, they known that you seen this product. They're going to show you now with a popup that their equivalent to that product, which may be exactly what you're looking for.

Dylan Fernandez:
The last one finally, little bit more out there, maybe a little bit more quirky. I like quirky, DHK, AliExpress these two big wholesale sites, eCommerce sites that are out there at the moment. I think they're probably one of the first to really do it. Now, it's we can all provide coupons in an email marketing, et cetera, not everyone opens their emails. Now, they've done is this gaming kind of aspect. I don't know if you've familiar with it.

Richard Hill:
Gamification, yeah, that makes sense, yeah.

Dylan Fernandez:
Yeah, and it's just it's nostalgic. For both of us, I gained, I'm sure you gained and it is just different to it. Am I a massive fan of some of the Ali Express DHK what they're doing? I like the idea, I'll go with that. And I'm waiting for some retailer to come out there and make the real name for that.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I like that, I like that.

Dylan Fernandez:
I think that's a way to go forward.

Richard Hill:
That's maybe a whole episode there in a few months time. Yeah. Yeah. So some cracking ones, obviously site speed, a huge one in eCommerce and obviously a lot of platforms now are really on this, they're really on this as their sort of USP. So it's becoming a lot better with a lot of the platforms, but a huge one for all different reasons. Obviously, their attention span, people can't be bothered, they just can't be bothered to wait. They want it now, they want things to load. They want to be able to check out quick. Check out, obviously goes without saying, if you can't check out very, very quickly, and there's not say multiple payment options in there, I know we're probably from a slightly different generation, I'm a little bit older than you I would say, but ultimately, different people definitely generational wise.

Richard Hill:
My son, he only pays with his phone. I didn't pay with my phone. I have never paid with my phone. He only pays with his phone. He has a bit of cash. He has a card, he has this, that, and the other, but he pretty much always pays with his phone when he is out and about, but online, obviously, you've got the PayPal, you've got the credit card, they're the sort of the two traditional I would say, almost old school, obviously that you need them, you've got to have them. Obviously, there's a lot of other options, isn't it? With Apple Pay, et cetera, SplitPay, Klarna-

Dylan Fernandez:
[crosstalk 00:24:39] Klarna, the LaterPay, I mean, I know one of the newer income kind of payment gateways out there and provide, Mollie, brilliant, providing many payment platforms to have [crosstalk 00:24:50]

Richard Hill:
I think if you scroll back and you're with us still about five, no, about nine episodes back, we had the head of the UK Mollie on so there's a crab episode there on conversion rate optimization specifically around checkout, but yes, brilliant. Okay. So obviously social proof, we touched on that as well. So we have some cracking ones there. What you might want to do is to pause the episode right now and just rewind maybe a five minutes there because there's some cracking things there that I think are quite implementable, and you think, do you know what? Ah, yeah, our site speed is still, this is probably the fifth time I've heard about it, but what have you done about it? Site speed is one of those things that we maybe run our website through GT metrics or Google speed test and go, it's still a C.

Richard Hill:
I told John in dev to sort it, but it's not happened. Reach out to the guys at O'Brien or your developers, et cetera, and get it sorted out. The difference is ridiculous in conversion rate for if you're doing big numbers, commercially spending what might be, obviously it depends $1,000 a £1,000 to sort out of your site speed, and then divide the next 12 months increase. Just forget it, get on with it, get it sorted out. Right, so next I think the next topic is it can put a lot of our listeners into a bit of a cold sweat, into a bit of a, they get a bit excited. They get a bit stressed. I think when we talk about the word replatform, it's a big topic, isn't it? And it's, oh God, no, re-platform, we get a call, "Can you help us with a re-platform?" "No, but we know somebody that can." Yeah, we know somebody that can, and we know, obviously we get involved with a lot of replat.

Richard Hill:
We've usually got sort of three or four on the go in terms of the SEO element, not the actual, we don't develop in house at all as you know. But what we do do is very much, the transition from one platform to another, with the SEO side of things, but what would you say? How can a company mitigate potential risk of replatform? Because I think that's the probably the hot topic, they've got a site doing whatever it may be 10 million, a million pounds a month, million dollars a month or 1.5 and they're going to move from one platform to another and naturally they're going to have some concerns, what would you say to them?

Dylan Fernandez:
So I think this is where the way when we take a client on or we're talking to a prospect is, we're not just an agency, we are your business partners. We're here to help you build for growth. So it's going back to maybe about 10 minutes ago in our conversation with saying, understanding the business growth, understanding their business plan so that when we come to recommending what platform they need to go onto, whether it's their first time and making it easy for them, for the rest of their career and their business lifespan that they stay on this one platform for as long as possible or whether it is the fact that a company now knows they need to re-platform because the times are changed, et cetera, kind of just eliminating, yeah, how many times they are going to have to replatform?

Dylan Fernandez:
IF you have to replatform, you only really want to do it once, probably agree with me there. So it's just really understanding and listening and the communication from our end to our clients to the retailers and the merchants and just understanding, right, let's understand your business. Let's understand where you want to go. This is one reason why we became a BigCommerce partner is that they are built for growth. Whether you are a five product merchant to tens of thousand products merchant is actually putting platforms out there that will meet that merchant's need for of the longevity. So that they're not coming back to us and going in five years, all right Dylan, we've just brought another business and we want to put all those products onto our eCommerce site, don't know if it's going to do it. Do we need to replatform? They're going to dread asking that. And obviously we don't want that. So we want to be able to make sure that they're having a platform that we are going to promote to them and suggest to them to use that is going to fulfil any of their somewhat in the box future goals.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, and I think that it goes back to that sort of three year, five year sort of thinking, doesn't it? Because you don't want to do it twice like you say, obviously it's potentially, depending on size of business could be a hundred grand job, or whatever it may be. So doing it once every three years, it's not an ideal.

Dylan Fernandez:
And it could be quite so destroying from experience I suppose and there's merchants out there that, oh, the launch dates happened and then the sites just, and that's very brand destroying. It's not just, oh, the website don't work, it's a lot more to that so that no one, people are quite dubious of when it comes to replatforming and that's what we want to do, yeah. I'm actually half deaf and it's quite ironic, but I like to really focus on listening when it comes to clients, really understanding their needs. So that as a partner to them, we can say, we believe this is going to be the next platform and hopefully the only platform.

Richard Hill:
I think that's a good note because I think also obviously listening to agencies, but I think also probably as the eCommerce store owner, getting yourself out of there in the environment with people that are doing what you want to aspire to be, and do. So if you're doing a 5 million, just as a number in the air, but you want to get to 20 million, so who are the 20 million guys? Surround yourself with those people, and obviously there's different quotes out there, but you sort of you become the average of the five people you spend the time with. But that's a slightly different angle, but ultimately if there are industry events that you can go to and have conversations with the guy that runs the marketing with the £20 million or the guy that owns the £20 million agency, or as we know, there's various in eCommerce, there's the IRX was on four months ago, which we were at, we spoke out, we've got various, the IRX are on again in Birmingham in the UK, we'll be there. We've got a couple of talks that I'm doing and the SEO team are doing on obviously PPC and SEO, but ultimately there will be thousands of merchants at those events.

Richard Hill:
And there's very specific tracks, very specific talks, and there's a coffee lounge, get your big boy shoes on and get out there and have a little chat with people that are doing what you want to do. And I think that's the same for agencies as well. That's how we've sort of met, we've gone to an agency event, and good things happen from getting out there. And I think somebody's doing already doing what you want to do. And maybe they went with BigCommerce three years ago, how did that go? Well, it went really well, but we didn't do this and we should have done that and we could have, oh, hello, so there you've already. Do you know we want to make sure that we can do international, this, that, and the other. And we, yeah. We need to think about that and then speak to the... Obviously different products sets will have different challenges, whether that's big issues with delivery maybe internationally or warehousing or integration with accounting systems, I think having that chat with people that are doing what you want to do, not just the agency side as well.

Dylan Fernandez:
I want to check in another cliché quote there, knowledge is power. And I think that's just going on to what you were saying. Yeah, get talking to, yes, we're all everyone's competitors, other merchants can be competitive, but if we all help each other we can all succeed together. So yeah, get out there, get to these expos, get that business handshake. I'm so glad that we've got back to that point and hopefully we don't not get back to that point.

Richard Hill:
Another scoop for this episode I think, you're getting out there and having good relationships with your competitors and people on your niche is so important and we are actually launching a second podcast, nobody out of the business knows this. So when this episode is aired and you listen to this for the first time we're launching in a few months time an agency specific podcast about agency growth. And clearly we are an agency, we have two agencies behind this podcast, and we make our money from services and we're looking after eCommerce stores and businesses, do I want to be discussing with our competitors? Yeah, I do because I tell you what great stuff, and some of my best friends own, literally my best friends own agencies. My best friends that I spend time with own agencies. Do we do some of the same stuff? A little bit, but there's crossovers this, that, and the other. Am I good pals with people that do PPC? Absolutely. Am I good pals of people that do SEO? Absolutely. So I think, if you're sitting there in whatever niche you in and trying to guard everything, it's not the way forward, I don't think, it's not.

Dylan Fernandez:
I totally agree with you there and I'll definitely put a round of applause for that because I totally agree.

Richard Hill:
Brilliant. So we'll get you back on the podcast, eCommerce growth podcast. I'm not going to drop the name of it just yet, but it's coming.

Dylan Fernandez:
Yeah. Keep that secret. Keep them on their toes, can't always put all your secrets out there.

Richard Hill:
That's it. There's been a few ones today. Okay, so obviously, yeah, re platforming, most store owners, marketing teams go through that process as their businesses evolve so I just want to I think have some good discussions with agencies, like-minded businesses, so brilliant. So what would you say, obviously, you've worked on a lot of websites, obviously you've bought a lot of things, I think you would say from a lot of [inaudible 00:34:44] what would you say what are some of the worst websites in the world and why?

Dylan Fernandez:
So kind of a bit off eCommerce, but they are kind of eCommerce. The worst one for me and they're not massive UK website, it's Craigslist. They still have that 1996 look.

Richard Hill:
They do. They do.

Dylan Fernandez:
Hats off to them. They're still quite big in the US. If Gumtree were doing what Craigslist did, I'd think they would be out of business by now in the UK for sure. I just have a headache, if I had to go onto a site like that, I'd be straight off. It doesn't matter if their site was loading in one second. I'm gone. It comes back to that minimalist aesthetic nice looking pretty is what we need these days and obviously it does go back to the '90s when first eCommerce sites were coming out there, with eBay, et cetera, and that dial up tone, et cetera. That's what it reminds me of that nostalgia.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah [inaudible 00:35:46] or booking your holiday on Teletext maybe.

Dylan Fernandez:
Yeah, exactly. The fact that they're still out there, I haven't looked massively into it mainly because I think they're one of the worst websites out there.

Richard Hill:
They're not new, if I'm honest, not like Gumtree, Gumtree yes. I think if I can't find it on eBay, I usually go to Gumtree, but I don't think I've actually ever bought anything from Gumtree, but Craigslist. Okay, Craigslist then. Okay, now we're coming to nearly to the final filum of the podcast. It's been fantastic to have you on. But my little research tells me that you're into manifestation.

Dylan Fernandez:
Yeah, it's law of attraction.

Richard Hill:
I'm really intrigued to be fair, how this has really impacted your life and then sort of practically, how does that sort of, how's that helped you?

Dylan Fernandez:
Oh yeah. So massively, so from a personal aspect to professionally, yes. So going back when I was younger, I [inaudible 00:36:43] half death. So it was always, I had to jump over barriers. I had to think positive. Now, for me, the law of attraction, maybe when I was younger, I didn't realize it as much, but it's one of the most powerful kind of laws there. We all have this kind of vibration and energy about, good vibes, bad vibes and when you have good vibes, you attract good vibes. And it's as simple as that. I coin the term think good, feel good, do good, get good. And I think if you can be like that, I mean, there's always a positive to a negative. There's always a negative to a positive and guess what? Life isn't always up there, it is a rollercoaster.

Dylan Fernandez:
But it's having that mentality to keep pushing forward, forever dreaming, and just aspiring to do the best. If you had one day left of your life, just knowing that you tried your best is kind of the aspect to it. I'm scared of going out there, meeting people when it comes to networking, feel the fear, do it anyway. Feel a bit shy, go and speak to that person that you want to go to speak to because they might have that kind of idea that they might tell you that leads you onto your next best idea. So get out there, forever dream, and just be positive. It's got me to meet some amazing people throughout my whole career, whether it's been from a sales aspect or other kind of roles that I've done.

Dylan Fernandez:
And personally, I've met some great people and I've got quite a bit of stories to tell and I love [inaudible 00:38:08] so and I think everyone wants to. So I'm always here to help with anyone if they ever want to pop up on a LinkedIn message or something to say, Dylan, tell me a bit how you did it, how, how did you put yourself through that. Especially with what's gone on with the pandemic, always happy to help, whether it's on a personal level or business level, pop by and on my page on LinkedIn is still the motivator, just to offer that support.

Richard Hill:
Well, it's funny because I know when the guys met you, we met as I said at the beginning, some of the team we met, you guys met, I wasn't there and then the first instance, and they came back, "We met this guy called Dylan, oh my God. Talk about energy." And that was literally, I was, oh wow, and then obviously we've spoken quite a few times since then. It's a few months ago now. And I'm a massive believer that, energy, it's all about the energy. There's a few things, but energy, that energy that you put out is that energy that you attract. And I think, the difference you can make when you walk in a room or you are working with people or you're talking to people it's you energy, but of course that doesn't mean every day and every hour, your energy's bang on, we all have those days, 100%, me more than most I would imagine and all of us, but working on that craft of positivity. Yeah, I'm with you, I'm 100% there. Yeah, especially in the-

Dylan Fernandez:
I feel like I need that 100 emoji just to-

Richard Hill:
I'll have to get the guys to box something up on this. Sarah, if you're listening, Sarah does the edit. So Sarah, it's your turn, your time, go. Here, here, here, Sarah go. Right, okay. So O'Brien Media, what's the future look like for O'Brien Media?

Dylan Fernandez:
Definitely going to be doing more work with our partners such as you. I'm really focusing on going back to our conversation a minute ago of working with some of our competitors, such as yourself, we both do SEO. But utilizing each other to be the best that we can be and reach that ultimate goal of getting all the eCommerce sites out there, reaching their top potential and really a lot of expansion internally. We like to coin ourselves a little bit different to other agencies out there. We're very big, we're a disability competent leader, which is the highest kind of accreditation you can have when it comes to disability. So we're going to be launching a work experience program. We got our first one with us in the end of the month I believe who that's for autism. So a lot of development internally, but doing the best that we can do for the industry, not just directly but indirectly and making sure that we can keep this industry booming, keeping people skilled who may potentially don't have that confidence to do that because of a disability or they don't have that degree. So yeah, that's kind of our two main big focuses for this year is the partnerships, working on our partnerships, making sure that we can reach this ultimate goal. And secondly, the internal development of our team and our business then people.

Richard Hill:
That's amazing, that's amazing. Well, I look forward to finding out we'll have to get you back on in 12 months time. I'll be really interested. I'd really like to talk about the sort of development and team development and growth and team growth and personal development. So we'll maybe do a slightly different episode a bit further down the line, but well, thank you for being a guest on this show. It's been a absolute brilliant episode. I'd like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. So do you have a book that you would recommend Dylan?

Dylan Fernandez:
I have two. The first one will be DotCom Secret by Russell Brunson I believe, definitely a good little read. And I've done a little bit of research myself and I believe the other book recommendation, we might have the same book, it's the Lean Startup.

Richard Hill:
It's right on the shelf there. I actually grabbed it just before.

Dylan Fernandez:
Brilliant, definitely a good read.

Richard Hill:
And, and what you probably didn't realize was you said DotCom Secrets and there is Traffic Secrets.

Dylan Fernandez:
Love it, brilliant.

Richard Hill:
And there is the rest of them.

Dylan Fernandez:
I might have to borrow them from you at some point.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I've been out a few times to the US to the ClickFunnels event [crosstalk 00:42:50] yeah. Yeah, so, well, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. For the guys that are listening in, we want to find out more about you and be able to connect with you directly. What's the best way to do that?

Dylan Fernandez:
So it's, obrienmedia.co.uk, meet the team and you can contact me through that with all my socials and contact details or just give me a search on LinkedIn, it's Dylan Fernandez, which I'm sure you'll have the spelling of somewhere or do the [crosstalk 00:43:19] Pardon?

Richard Hill:
It'll be right on the episode [crosstalk 00:43:21]

Dylan Fernandez:
Brilliant. But yeah, no, I'm happy to speak to anyone. I've always got time and no, I've really enjoyed this experience. And I look forward to speaking to you more, hopefully with some podcasts in the future and more in a professional matter with some projects that will come on board shortly.

Richard Hill:
Lovely. Well, thank you so much for your time. I look forward to catching up with you again soon. Bye-bye.

Dylan Fernandez:
Take care.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eCom@One eCommerce podcast. If you enjoy today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our eCommerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eCom@One, the eCommerce marketing agency.