Is Your eCommerce Site Ready for Christmas 2020

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well hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson this is
a show all about how to grow your online business every week i get to talk to amazing
people from the world of e-commerce i get to ask them all kinds of questions about what they know
and how it's going to help us develop online it's an amazing privilege now historically we've had one guest per
show but because this is christmas oh yes we wanted to do things a little
bit differently so what we did was we contacted all the guests from the last months and invited them back to talk to us about
christmas on the show so this is a bit of a mashup we're taking clips from different people
uh all about you know how to do e-commerce better their tips their ideas and so on and so forth so we have a
jam-packed show for you tonight's show is with elle mccann chloe thomas joanna steele
and simon driscoll but to name a few and of course all of the notes from today's show
will be available as a free download just head on over to our website uh all you need to do is go to
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash as this is episode number oh yes ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash number now before we jump into the show let's actually hear uh
very quickly from our very own chloe thomas hi i'm chloe thomas host of the brand
new keep optimizing marketing podcast three reasons to tune in and have a listen
number one each month we focus on a different marketing method a whole month one marketing method two each wednesday
we put live a new audio episode with an expert on that marketing method
number three at the end of each month we get all our experts together to do a live webinar where you can ask them your
questions well thank you very much chloe if you haven't checked out chloe's podcast yet make sure
you do it is a great show i am an avid listener and chloe also has great guests on the
show so you know you can never get too much information can you so do check that out now without further ado let's get
started on the mashup i'm i'm excited about this i hope you guys are as well because we've got lots jam-packed into
this show and we're going to kick off with our very first guest today l mccann
Elle McCann
uh now elle is a shopify expert and was on episode number of the show
where we talked about fixing the biggest problem with shopify i have traffic but no sales it was
a great show as i'm sure you will agree if you've listened to it i'll give us some great advice
uh on that show and i was super keen to hear what she had to say about christmas so
here's my conversation with elm what are some of the things that you think we should do to get our
sites christmas ready whether it be i don't know putting snow on a logo or whatever
jimmy what do you think is on your is on your checklist i would say the biggest thing
is to start thinking about your promotion as soon as possible i hear from so many people that will
send a message to me like a week before black friday and be like do you have any ideas and it's like you should really have started thinking
about this in like october beginning of november because that way you have enough time to plan
to create all your assets for social media run ads you know email marketing things like that so as soon as you can
plan what kind of promotion you're going to do and making it even a little bit more special than just you know a big
discount off because everybody just kind of races to the bottom with price cuts for the holiday season
and while yes you know off can seem exciting um for some people i think also having
something a little bit more specialized so that you're giving like a free gift or free personalization or specialty
gift wrapping and a lot of those take a little bit extra of infrastructure build out so the sooner you can think about all that
the better and then make sure that you're really highlighting it on the site i'm a big fan of like countdown
timers so you can have a specific collection on your page that says or a collection on your site
that says like okay count down to christmas and it has a countdown of when all of these sales are coming live
or products are coming live if it's a new product so that you're kind of building that hype and you're talking about it ahead of
time because i don't know about you but i feel like my inbox is just completely overwhelmed in the holiday season with
all of these different companies that are like buy from us buy from us and so as soon as you can kind of start
letting people know like hey save a little bit of money we have something cool coming the better and the more likely it is that you're going to
get more people to convert that's a really interesting idea so actually promoting
your promotions yeah and just uh and just letting people know when they're going to come i think is a
really interesting idea because that's not something you usually see usually like you say it's all by now by
now we're not going to tell you what we're doing next week but by buy this right now so i quite like that have you had some good successes with
that yeah so one of my favorites to run is um i always dub at the days of
christmas promotion um but it would be like december st through the th and you're doing a different product
like that you're featuring every day that has some kind of special promotion or sales attached to it so you're kind of giving
a highlight of what that product is going to be a few days before and telling them this is the day to get it here's your countdown for that so
it kind of again creates the hype and people are opening hopefully your emails every day to see what that product is for the next day
but even just letting people know like a couple days in advance for your overall promotion um i've found it's been really helpful
of kind of almost kind of going with the christmas spirit and having you know maybe you have a graphic that has like
wrapping paper look um on top of it and then it's a gif where it's kind of peeling back a little
so you get people to click to your site to see what the promotion is anyway where you can kind of create that hype and that
interest and get them to your site because then you can once they're on your site you can use your pixels and retarget them
and run those ads to them later on so i think your biggest goal would be to of course be building out that email
list but get them to your site as much as possible so that you can get that ad cost a
little bit lower for the holidays with retargeting ads yeah that's great advice great advice was an
l fantastic thank you so much l for coming on to the show again if you want to know how to connect
with how we will put all of her contact details in the show notes so just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
and you can connect with l as much as you like i'm sure she would love to hear from you
now let's move on quickly because we've got a lot to get through let's bring on our next guest to the show which is
the indominable uh chloe thomas i mean she is just fantastic i love chloe she's
been on the show a number of times i've been on her podcast a number of times we're doing some really cool stuff together behind the scenes
and she's a great voice for the e-commerce industry has a lot of experience and actually as
you're gonna hear in this conversation a lot of really practical advice about how we can do
christmas better on our week on our own ecommerce websites here's my conversation with chloe what
Chloe Thomas Part
are some of the things that you think a website should do to prep itself for christmas oh that's a good question
what to do to prep yourself for christmas so the first thing i would make sure is that the systems
i've already got in place for making everything happen are working often we bumble our way through the rest
of the year with a download here and an upload and this and that and the other and something which just about works of
the time which can be great in the off season but when you get into peak season
that percent that doesn't need you know that goes wrong becomes an awful lot more orders which
means it's an awful lot more manual work the same with our marketing you know if we're exporting things and importing
things between different platforms there's really no excuse for it anymore it's very easy to integrate it all if you're on the right platforms now if
looking at all of that you realize that you're completely utterly not on the right platforms then don't try and fix that very close
to christmas think about that for next christmas um but but i do see that this the sites
that are making the biggest impact and having the greatest success at the moment are the ones with the systems in place which enable them to be flexible
um so i think systems in place first and then secondly be ready to be flexible
so have an idea of what you're going to do have an idea of how you're going to move things and this in a normal year is quite important but
in a year like this year is so much more important because
things are changing so rapidly plans are changing um you know plans are changing very very
quickly how much are we going to spend on those ads what are we going to do what are we going to sell i know one company at the moment who after
the first week of september are probably cancelling all their tv ad spend oh wow they
haven't done anything different to last year but the sales because of the way consumers are at the moment have gone so high that they're probably canceling all
tv ad spend and that is how unpredictable this year can be um it's uh yeah i think that's
that's what i do i think okay so get yourself get your systems in place and get
yourself ready to be flexible and what kind of systems um
what are some of the common things you see when you when you say get systems in place what are some of the common ideas in your head
i see let's kind of leave the tech because that's quite hard to change at the moment but i think the
the first and foremost one which it surprises me more people don't have in place is a straightforward week by week
promotional calendar um you know so you know in advance what are we talking about each week on
whatever channels you're covering it on now admittedly in my life that's quite easy because i have podcasts coming out each week and they
pretty much drive the content but for an e-commerce business you've got key promotions you can be running at
different times you've probably got best-selling products that you want to speak about a certain number of times a
year and obviously that should be spread out across the whole year and should definitely be talked about in both november and october and december
as we go into christmas so the only way you know when i find that people i don't know what to say
i don't know what we should talk about and then when you sit them down in front of a printout grid that goes week by week
and you get them before they even touch that to start brainstorming what they ought to be talking about and then they try and wedge it back into
that calendar for you know a weekly email or a weekly social media topic they suddenly discover oh
i don't know how we're going to fit it all in you know and over the space of an hour you can go from i have no idea what we're going to say
two oh no how do i fit all this in i've got too much to talk about and
that is a very nice problem to have because then you can start thinking about what the most powerful messages are what's worked in the past what works
with the customers and having that plan in place as you run into christmas
one means as we get you know i've i've worked christmases in gift retailers
i've been the direct communications manager doing email and affiliates and pay-per-click and all these things in multiple gift businesses over the
course of about four years i did it before i started my agency and
back then there was a lot less we could do because this was in the s but it was exhausting and as you and
that creative creativity even the most creative person in the world their creative battery is really small by the time we get to
december so if you've got this idea of what you're going to say then it just becomes so much easier because
what little creativity you've got left can be spent on copy and imagery rather than on what are we gonna say
because you've already done that work back in the summer or back whenever when you had it so i think a decent week by week
promotional calendar is a very simple system but it can be revolutionary in improving your
performance that's brilliant that's brilliant and i totally agree um i'm planning ahead of
time especially because you can tie your promotions in with your offers which means you've got to then talk to
your suppliers to make sure actually can we do this can we fulfill these orders that are going to come in and
um and just being aware of that ahead of time planning how you're going to deliver those do i mean how are you
going to get them out and so the whole thing ties together doesn't it so from promotion calendar all the
way through to giving it to the postman to deliver how's that gonna work exactly because quite often
you'll have great ideas for discounts and promotions on different categories and then you try and put them in the calendar and you suddenly
realize you've got more promotions than you've got weeks to talk about them and there's no point in running a
promotion you know a great discount offer or a buy one get one free or a samples off or whatever it may be
if you can't talk about it you know if you can't tell anyone you're doing it then what was the point in all that setup and all that organization to make
it happen so then if you've got too many you either get a point we go right well let's segment the database so we can do
them both in a week or actually which one do we think is going to be the best for us and the other one will delay and we'll
do next year or we won't do at all potentially you know if you suddenly realize it's on one of your
i know your bottom quartile selling products so one of your quarter worth selling
products what's the point and certainly you don't be giving christmas air time to those products you
want to be giving it to your top yeah totally yeah it's the rule isn't it just
let's go with what works over christmas and maximize what we can what we can deliver here um so slightly left tangent question
just popped into my head um which it may be a bit too much into the detail but let's try it let's see
what happens let's go for it um christmas wrapping offer that as a service or not on your e-commerce
website oh now two good reasons to do christmas wrapping if you can do it
uh one it's quite an easy way of increasing aovs and increasing margin
so good point average order value so that should be quite often an aim is
increasing to the spend of your customers so it's a good way to increase spend it's also a great way to
later on segment who's a gift buyer and who's not because you can be pretty confident that
someone who wants it gift wrapped is giving it to someone else which you know is a side benefit but
it's quite nice if you're trying to do some customer persona stuff trying to work out who's self-buying he's giving to others that can be quite good obviously you
won't catch everyone because not everyone wants to do the gift wrap thing however gift wrapping comes with
challenges first off if you're going to do gift wrapping make sure you've got a table
in the warehouse set aside for wrapping test your customer service team or your
warehouse team to find out who's actually good at wrapping because not everybody is good at wrapping
yep and you don't want to devalue your product because the wrapping looks shocking um try not to go too
branded with the wrapping paper because that might not fit with the customer may not want to i don't think they want to spend
five quid for your logo uh wrapped up paper not even on the sellotape people it's tempting as that
may be not even on the sellotape um you also not everybody knows this but
you can buy massive rolls of wrapping paper so we're not talking about going down to smith's
or your local stationery store and buying buying it up roll by roll we're talking about big rolls like this around
so get those it's an awful lot cheaper and so once you've got that kind of
logistical part of it sort of you know bear in mind it's going to change the pack picking and packing piece because you've
got to take these somewhere else get them wrapped and then get them in so you need quite a bit of space i should think to manage this effectively
and then make sure your technology can actually cope with it because trust me a customer who's
ordered gift wrapping who doesn't get gift wrap gifts which they may well be sending straight to the person who's receiving them
is a very unhappy customer yeah it's a really quick way to hack them off isn't it it is and often with gift wrapping
comes the idea of gift messages now those are also quite challenging
because um human beings can't spell don't have punctuation and kind of expect you to
fix all that in the meantime so uh you probably need someone to prove
i'm just sorry i'm like people who are listening to this can't see me laughing i'm laughing because you're describing our whole gift wrap
experience at jersey beauty company over the years it's hysterical we carry on sorry these are all the problems that can happen
there's a lot there's a lot that can go wrong with gift wrapping so yes messages messages can be very complicated
and then the final problem which can come is of course because you've gone we're doing a gift wrapping service with
messages maybe there is that heightened expectation that a pick pack
note with the prices on it is not going to be in the past or received by your loved ones
um and this year with social distancing i think there's going to be an awful lot more gifts being sent direct to the
recipient so prices of what people have spent on you in those parcels
is um definitely a challenge and yeah it's my brain is now going on to do
you offer a special return service for gift wrapped um gifts
which acknowledges the fact people i don't know very i'm going going on to a whole other level of complexity but yeah that's that's way too deep
yeah should we do it yes or no yeah let's not even go there gift wrapping can be a really cool thing
to do can be very financially advantageous but cost it right because as you can see there's an awful lot of complexity
there's more manpower in there get the cost as low as you can without doing in the brand
and be aware that these are probably the most precious parcels or the most dangerous passes in terms of customer
service problems so um yeah the expectations are much higher with these aren't they and you do
i think you do it on the on the knowledge that actually you've got to get these right you can't you can't you can't afford to
screw that up so no some top tips there on gift wrap i mean like i said
everything you've talked about we've experienced and for me the big one is you have to have somebody who can
actually gift wrap really well yeah because they're so used to when people buy gift
wrap products online they're so used to them coming well jeremy you buy ready gift wrap
chocolates from thornton's or whatever i think it's a machine that does those because it's perfect right
and so people have really high expectations i think and so you have to make sure
for the money you're charging you can nail it and what do you think a good rate charges what do you what would you be prepared
as a consumer to pay for gift wrap oh man i have absolutely no idea oh i'm thinking
a couple of quid but i haven't looked into it recently um oh and then of course you've got the
problem is it per item or is it per order that you're going to charge huh whole other other world and that all
depends on what you sell right so the way we've done it historically is we just gift wrap the order right so um the products come they get
boxed up and we'll put them in a nice box and we'll gift wrap that box and in fact i think it deals with
with wobbly bits doesn't it if that makes sense you make it nice and square which makes
the whole thing a lot quicker yeah oh yes it does totally especially because everything we've got is round uh yeah and so we always give wrap the
box it made it easier and actually what we did was we we said right we're going to offer clients two choices you can have a gift
box which basically is a box with a bow on it which takes no time to do right we just
get them uh we just buy them in um or you can actually have it put in a gift box and
then gift wrapped um and so yeah experimenting with prices over the years has been quite
interesting with that because the boxes will maybe cost you p so you could probably charge about two pounds
maybe for that two pound fifty for the gift box um i think amazon charged about three
pounds fifty to gift wrap and i think this seems to be a bit of a benchmark um maybe four pounds pounds if you've
got a handwritten note with it should i mean that kind of yeah if you've gone that extra mile and i
think yeah which actually makes me think when you're saying about the two different versions a photograph of what your gift wrapping
looks like can really push people over the edge on on spending it it's not just
add gift wrap the little tick box it's here's a picture of us it's our you know
high end and here's a picture of our box this is what it's actually going to look like when it gets to the recipient because i think that can
really put people off thinking well are they just gonna wrap it in brown paper and stick a bow on the top
well that's it this is one of the reasons why i would struggle with gift wrap services one is i'm a bit tight right so i'm gonna go there's no way i'm
gonna pay five or six quid for someone to gift-wrap something for me when my thirteen-year-old daughter will do it for free
um i'll just have to buy the wrapping paper and give a chocolate that's a lot cheaper um but the
the key thing for me like you say is i have to know what it is i'm buying and too often it is just a text line
there is no imagery with it and you're totally right how do i know what i'm buying yeah other than gift wrap and gift wrap
means so many things to so many different people and like you say i really like that because your expectations on this parcel
are so high as a customer i'm going to have very high expectations of you if you're charging me five quid
for gift wrap that thing is going to come in gold leaf yeah and so i think that's true it's
kind of a mental barrier when you get to five quid sounds like a deal sounds like a
pretty good deal so long as i know it's going to look good edging up above over a fiver it's not happening
no i'm going to email the person and say you've got a box coming from xyz don't open it until christmas day that's
exactly it that's exactly it so i wonder actually if there's some kind of formula that i've not come across
which is take the price of your average order value divide it by and that's the maximum you should spend on
gift wrap i don't know because i don't know i i doubt it because i think i'm not
i'm not sure if i was buying a couple of books for somebody or if i was buying them i know a really
nice handbag i would expect to pay any more for giffra you know whether it's whether it's a
couple of paperbacks from waterstones or it's you know really high-end nice
almost bespoke leather bag from some obscure manufacturer i still expect to spend less than a fiver on the rat
okay but maybe forget the formula then yeah maybe this is one of those things where chloe the human is speaking out
more than chloe the person who understands e-commerce it's important yeah no it's important
right what would we do how would we do it and i think i don't know about you one
of the questions i think that we never ask ourselves that often
and actually is probably one of the most powerful questions to ask is if this was me buying this what would i
want or if this was me calling customer services what would i want to hear in this
scenario jeremy and this is i talk about this with our customer service guys all the time it's like how
do we how do we know what to say to people on the phone all you've got to do is flip it if you were calling them with that
same problem what would you want to hear on that phone let's do that because that becomes a really
interesting guide what do i what would i do in this same scenario what would i want
and and actually it seems to be a really good guiding principle so if i'm not going to spend more than the fiber on
gift wrap why do i think my clients are going to spend more than the five on gift wrap yeah exactly
well chloe is fantastic isn't she and we are going to get straight back into our conversation with chloe but
before we do a quick word from today's sponsor
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christmas look feel and design on your website right so you take your website it looks
Chloe Thomas Part
a certain way how how christmasy do you think you should make your website
oh how much snow you make how much snow how much glitter how much how much you
know stars on your boxes on the way out i mean how much how do you how much do you christmas you fight
i think i suppose it depends on the business you know if you are a gift business out and out
then probably quite christmasy is where you should go you know snow hanging off the logos and um lovely
red and white gold graphics all over the place if however you're less gifty
um then probably not so much i'm thinking about a friend of mine who runs a business that sells car cleaning
products you know to the person we all know who spends every sunday morning and most of the afternoon detailing their own car
yeah that's not me me neither um i would probably for that for them i probably
wouldn't go at all christmassy you know i'd stick to kind of like the grays and the blues color palette
because that's what the customers are looking for and then maybe have a a very christmassy graphic on the
homepage for the wife who that's the only thing he likes and she's got no idea what to buy
so that's where you go um which on the flip side maybe for men on websites we should have the
you know on you know on websites such as jersey beauty you should have a you know a don't know what to buy come here come
here this is the safe zone um but yeah i think i think it depends on the brand
and i wouldn't get too hung up on that you know i think your graphics gonna
looking christmasy i wouldn't get too hung up on changing logos and changing navigation because you run the risk of confusing people when you make those
kind of changes so i'd focus more on getting the graphics that you're putting in place right and getting the emails
potentially potentially making the emails look more christmassy yeah and the social media look more christmassy so they're feeling that
christmasy vibe and then they come to the website and they get the normal experience they're used to because i think
we can go oh it's valentine's let's make all our buttons pink or something or bright red or something
and then all of a sudden we discover our customers don't understand the red red buttons because they're used to seeing orange ones or something so i
think there can be a danger to to doing cool funky design things which just lead
to lead to problems yeah no i agree i'm very much of you know when you look at i know you
don't really do pinterest you're more of a twitter girl i i i i do do pinterest i think we've
swapped and i i predominantly do pinterest with my year old daughter around christmas
right getting ideas of decorations and stuff that we can make because you know we like to do this
little tradition that we have and we do it around halloween we do it around christmas and so
i get all into the christmas spirit i love christmas favorite time of the year right i get all kinds of christmassy
i'm definitely not bar hamburg right as i i i know a bunch of people are and you know get over it because you need to get
christmassy but that's just me right now i when i look at the stuff on pinterest
i like the classic minimal but beautifully thought through designed
stuff the scandinavian kind of approach to christmas rather than the crazy over-the-top
chintzy tinsel everywhere right and so when we do christmas on jersey i think
that kind of filters through back to my you know what would i want i just
subtle classic that's one of the things isn't it do you go all out cartoony santa or do you go
full-on victorian christmas or do you go scandy minimalist christmas even different
customers think different things and within you know however good you are on your customer persona i promise you
you've got someone who is as much tinsel as can humanly be fit on a house and
all the flashing lights possible and someone who is minimalist perfection you know could be
on could be in the vogue christmas edition so so you do run the risk of hopefully
oh dear god and running if you go too much in the in the wrong direction so i think it's something
you've got to be be a little bit careful with yeah now my last question about christmas um
you said uh you talked to the classic example is right a guy comes to jersey beauty
company to buy a christmas gift for his wife and looks at the site and goes i i have
no idea right what do i do so christmas guides do you do them
should i do them on jersey beach company i think you should have something that makes it easy for that customer to spend
now whether that's a blog or some other form of content that helps explain what to buy for the
person you have no idea what they want or insert a gift type gift recipient type
here whether that's some kind of gift finder on more complex sites
or whether that's simply a we did this on a on a couple of you know full-on gifting
websites and we had a stocking filler section which was stocking fillers under a fiver
under a tenner under under i think we went five pound breaks all the way up to
and we made a lot of that because then often when people aren't sure what to buy they've kind of got a budget in mind
so for your business that might be categories that have priced items that they can scroll through or
it might be creating bundles so in the case of jersey beauty the route i'd probably go down
is i'd have a a pound christmas gift set and a and then maybe a pound
christmas gift set so you've got something which which one you can if you're organized enough about it you
can make them up so they already look pretty earlier go back to kind of so you avoid the some of the gift wrapping issues and
some of the manpower issues but also so you you've mana you've managed the margin and you've made sure
that there's something in there that the person is almost certainly going to like and it you know it may be that you have
a couple of criteria for you know um there's a hair version and a face version and a body version or
something you can make them just that little bit better and if you're getting into bundles
properly then you're going to chuck in some things which cost you almost nothing but look high value so you can fully maximize the margin so
in the case of a beauty site i'm thinking you know some kind of beauty tool like
those scrunchy things people use in the shower which i'm sure you can buy for about five pence but
yeah everyone's perceived value of them is more like a fiver and that just lifts the whole thing and
of course bumps it out when you've got small products which are high value yeah that's totally right i
mean i i agree with you um i often think about the poor husband going to our website trying to figure out what to buy for his
wife and um i think how do we make that easy you're right with the blog post with the
content budgeting um gifts by doing gifts by budget i think is very very sensible and
everyone like actually i just want to spend quid on my mum this year or whatever jumping in okay well this is why i can buy quid and i've noticed
historically what we've what we've seen from supplies is these are the pre pre-done christmas
gift packs and you can buy a load of them and you can be left with a lot of stock at the end of the year because
they just didn't sell for whatever reason but if you take existing products and bundle them and buy them
you know buy some baskets or some boxes to put them in with the nice you know um packaging and
all that sort of yeah and i think you can make up gift sets yourself and not not lose out on a whole bunch of
stock which you should never have bought in the first place and so that's been one of the things that we've definitely learned yeah and i think i just just had a cool
idea um so with putting in obviously this wouldn't work with the bath scrunchie but if you're putting in say i don't know a
hair brush or a comb or something if you do get enough volume you can get your logo put on that
which then creates a wave if that person receives a gift they're like oh my god that's amazing
and they forget to ask the person who gave it to them where they got it from they've got your logo on something be it then you know the
nice bag things come in or be it on the hair brush or the nail file or whatever you're putting in there it just kind of lifts it that
little bit and also creates potentially some kind of repeat purchase element yeah it does tightly and i i think it's
um some of the stuff that we've put in boxes are you know the hair bands which hold your hair back when you're washing your face because that's a big problem
uh not for me obviously but you know for people with a hair like yourself yeah um we've done that one of the best
things we've ever done is candles and we candles are amazing we went to
the company that created the candles for a well-known high street brand which i probably shouldn't name and some of the well-known high street
fragrances and we were like let's just buy a few thousand candles um and so the cost of the candle was a few
pounds we sold them on the website for like quid each and they came in a box with some matches and it was nice and it was
lovely but when you put that in a christmas offer it's cost me a few pounds it's not cost to quid and so the perceived
value is is enormous do you see what i mean and it fits really nice with because let's face it people are buying
a beauty gift to give someone a bit of indulgence and candles also speak relaxing time and indulgence so it
fits and it's low margin it's not going to go off and you can sell it as a product all on its own it's kind of perfect
yeah it is it's it was a you know we've done a number of these things over the years so yeah really really helpful so gift
guides definitely do them if you've got people coming to your site that need help figuring it out right
i mean if you're a single product website you don't need a gift guide no you don't not and i like the fact the
fact you add that caveat because i i frequently get asked questions by
people who are thinking about doing things which are solutions to problems they don't have
um my and and build spending a lot of time and effort on a gift guide when you've only got a couple of
skus is exactly one of those things yeah um the other one which comes to mind is a company that had
i think they have five skus at the time which were just different number of items in pack color changes and they went to a
conference by sli systems who no longer exist but who were a full site merchandising help your
customers find the right product she was so excited about buying this software which you know was at least a grand a month i was like
it's made for people who don't have who have that problem because they have a hundred skus or
you've only got five you you really don't need this this is not important for you it really isn't and yeah i've just saved
you a grand give me of that yeah well i've sent you grand across the year
i remember once i just walked into a client's office i remember this really clearly it was such a very funny moment and i was doing some
coaching and consulting with a company over in new zealand and the md and i have actually become good friends right and so
i walk into his office on this first consulting project the first day i'm there and he says right matt have you got on and i i said to him i said well
if i give you a way to save at least a million bucks a year
can i have twenty percent of that saving every year cheeky well his his reply to me was
no beep beep beep but you can tell me how i'm going to save a million books anyway
wasn't chloe absolutely fantastic super generous with all her tips and bits of information i'm sure if you're like me your notebook
is getting full of ideas but don't put it away just yet oh no because we've got more to come now if you want to get in touch
with chloe if you want to check out her podcast if you want to connect with her then just head on over to
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash which is today's episode and all the show notes will be
there including a link to all of the guests from today's mashup that's ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash okay i kind of feel like we're just getting warmed up there's so much good stuff going on here
Joanna Steele
so let me introduce our next guest joanna steele now joanna was on the show
a little while ago when we were talking about her role at argos the third biggest ecommerce website in the uk
as she was head of consumer generated content how did she do reviews how did we get all that sort of stuff
it was a brilliant show with some fantastic feedback and again joanna is back on the show to
share her expertise tips and ideas on how we can incorporate all of those kind of things
for christmas oh yes you are definitely going to want to pay attention to this here's my conversation
with joanna from i mean your specialty is obviously user-generated content but you can ask this question
from whatever vantage point you feel like answering it what do you think people should do for
to their websites in the run-up for christmas it's a big season how can they take advantage of it how do we prep our website
it's a good question um so i think the statistics show that people are actually going to be
shopping earlier this year um for a number of reasons they wanted to cheer themselves
up because of the year that we've had um also you know we've seen some issues with
stock um and so they're wanting to get the products um or gifts or presents um as soon as
possible so they're not having to wait for you know backlogs or any issues with stock um and also you know we're in another
lockdown um at the moment and so you know people more people are at home more time
to browse um and perhaps not wanting to go out into shops right even when they do open at
the beginning of december so actually there's a real opportunity for brands and e-commerce businesses to
really maximize on that increased traffic on site and where people are sort of
thinking about christmas thinking about chewing themselves up there are some stats that have been released actually around
um i think it's something around percent of consumers are actually looking to spend the same that they
spend usually on christmas so wow whilst there has been of course you know
an increase in unemployment people furloughed you know there's that kind of attitude or that understanding that you
know things might not be the same actually people are still willing to you know a large proportion
of consumers are still willing to sort of spend the christmas so that's a good sign so you know people are still willing to
spend they're still mac it's really important for brands to still maximize on that and even from a sort of marketing
campaign perspective it's about being you know authentic understanding where
customers are coming from at the moment wanting to cheer ourselves up and really sort of being authentic about
the current climate in your marketing communications i think that's really important you know yes it's good we want to cheer
cheer people up cheer consumers up but be really really honest about you know what the current environment is and sort of be um make
sure that you kind of keep that in mind when you're thinking about your messaging or your email marketing etc
um so yeah that's kind of the playing field i suppose at the moment for for businesses to kind of you know
really maximize on as i mentioned the increase of people
who are going to be online at this time and also because you know there isn't going to be that christmas rush
um or if there is it will be a bit later um there are new sort of audience that have sort of
jumped on online um so there's more people who are going to be online probably the older demographic as well
so if your brand does talk to the older demographic how can you reassure them um with um your fulfillment um
with the sort of quality of your products etc to make them feel comfortable with ordering from you online yeah no it's great
that's great so in terms of being authentic you mentioned about being authentic have you seen any brands do that well
have you yeah i think i saw the recent amazon advert
um i'm not sure if you've seen it um it's uh about a girl who she's a
ballerina and she's been sort of working really hard to rehearse for this show and then obviously
everything gets locked down and so it's all about sort of her dreams you know not coming not coming true
essentially and then what happens is that her local community kind of do a bit of marketing and put a leaflet
sort of together for her for her to do her performance in the sort of communal gardens um
of her estate um and you know one of her neighbors um buys a speaker
from amazon etc so it's just a showcase of how the community have come together
to enable this young ballerina to sort of live out her dreams and it's it is a real sort of heartstrings um
okay oh sure i shall look out for that one yeah have a look for that i know people are sort of quite anti-amazon but
they've they've really kind of um honed in on you know the community aspect
of how people have come together during this time thanks again joanna and of course like
i've said earlier if you've not caught it before in the show if you want to connect with joanna and all of the notes from today's mashup
episode will be available online including the links to joanna if you want to connect with her just head on over to
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash and they will all be there
okay it is now time for me to introduce to you our final guest in tonight's show and that is the
Simon Driscoll
amazing simon driscoll now if you're a regular to the show you know simon was on earlier this year
um it was a coaching call as we were talking about his skincare website and how he could get more sales
on his website some of the things that he could do to improve him we had a good conversation about
different ways to improve it so we're going to catch up with simon and hear what he has to say about christmas and understand
actually what he is going to be doing specifically on his own website this christmas time so uh
fantastic conversation coming up here it is my conversation with simon so
what are you going to be doing on your site this christmas
have you thought about it yet yeah i've just launched actually a christmas box which is a box of our
best sellers um so that's just gone live on the home page um i i've got the
box out with some influencers to try and um drum up some some awareness for that and
then i've had my facebook ads kind of i've reduced the budget over the election period the u.s
election period and um i'm going to be putting some more money behind the the
the christmas box um starting now um so that's what i'm doing for
christmas um i did quite well last christmas um in real life
uh so i'm hoping i'm hoping it's gonna be good this this year as well um yeah that's awesome so do you find
the gift box thing works well for you at christmas is that why you're doing it i didn't do a gift box last year but
what i did do was bundles of things so um last year i was i was trading in real
life i was doing christmas markets and stuff like that so i was doing nice little soaps bundled with soap
trays you know ribbons and stuff like that and i was every christmas market i went to i sold
out in in hours so um it was a question of not having enough stock last year um the the reason behind the gift box
this year is i'm trying to up my um my basket size so um this this this gift box is pounds
and that's the kind of the the kind of um average order value i'm kind of going for
and so that's the reason behind the gift box this year okay and so why did you decide to reduce your
ad spend during the election that's uh an interesting statement well i mean
facebook was going crazy um i was doing quite well with facebook in kind of march um to may and then and
then it was all over the shop i don't know what was going on um i listened to a few podcasts around um facebook marketing
and there did seem to be a lot of money coming in from um from you know people trying to trying to
swing um voters uh a lot of political money so i i didn't want to compete with that
um so i reduced it slightly put put a bit more into um into google and did quite a lot of
influencer giveaways so i put a bit more money into into gifting um but
i have a feeling that the the kind of facebook algorithm will have will be dying down
with all that extra spend that's getting from politics now so i can really go for it and create some awareness
yeah it's fascinating isn't it how something like the us election actually impacts your facebook marketing for your skin
care business i mean how are those two things connected but it does you're right it's interesting yeah it's an algorithm at the end of the
day if it's if it sees loads of money coming in from from from people then you know it's it's an
auction so you've got to pay more it's just the way it works so yeah yeah that's really intriguing
okay so how i mean since we've last chatted how how is business how's the website
gone i mean covid has been quite a fascinating you know turn of events hasn't it so how have you
found it it's been it's been good considering i lowered my my ad spend um i'm getting um a lot of
repeat purchases which is which is good um you've got a good product yeah
yeah um and so after after our chat last time um you
gave me some good advice about how to kind of position the website and change the home page to make make it a bit more
authentic so you know there's pictures of me and lives on the front page and there's you know all of our kind of reviews and
stuff so the conversion is has gone up um considering we've got slightly less
traffic but so yeah it's it's it's been good it's it's uh keep me busy yeah
wasn't simon fantastic fantastic uh really generous with his information so i just want to say hey you know what
Close
a big thanks to all of my guests tonight because they were fantastic to l chloe
joanna and simon thanks again for taking the time to come on the show uh just brilliant so generous with
information i hope you got a lot out of the show today because you know what my aim whenever i speak to people is to find uh
find some practical some real helpful nuggets that i can use on my own e-commerce website so hopefully you got
some today today yourself i just really enjoyed those conversations it was fantastic to catch up with everybody
so if you did get something out of this show i would appreciate it if you could rate this show on itunes or
share it out or wherever you get your podcast from just give us a rating connect with us we'd love to
hear from you always enjoy connecting uh with more folks from around the world as i said at the start
all of the notes and the links to all of the guests in today's mashup episode are available
for free online at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash you can head on over
to there now and grab all of that information ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash thanks for listening make sure you come back again next time
as we have some more of these mashup episodes to go through oh yes we have got some great guests in the
next show again talking about ecommerce talking about christmas and then we're going to do mashups talking about new year's so we've got a
lot coming on make sure you subscribe to the show stay connected with what's going on so you can learn how to grow
your own online business my name is matt edmondson thanks for listening it's been an
absolute pleasure to be with you
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