The Role of Customer Generated Content for an eCommerce Business

h well hello and welcome to the curious to
podcast with me your host Matt Edmondson it is great to have you here with us on
the show yes it is I'm coming to you live from Liverpool England with another
ecommerce show just to give you a heads up if you're watching this on Facebook I
am going to this evening record my podcast interview with my very special guest Joanna Steele tonight and you are
kind of watching as we do the recording so we do the recording kind of you know
the standard way over Skype especially in the modern world in which we live but we broadcast that over Skype at the same
time so you can watch it I say we broadcasted over Facebook live at the same time and a few other places
YouTube's not working tonight so we're not doing it on YouTube that's fine but we broadcast it live when you get the
privilege I hope it's a privilege it will be because John is amazing of watching the show as we record it so if
you've got any questions feel free to throw them in the comment section and
I'm hoping they come up on my computer screen they don't always do that so if I don't get around to them please don't
feel like I'm ignoring you sometimes the technology works sometimes it doesn't I've not quite figured it out yet but
that's what we're doing tonight so we are talking about e-commerce we are specifically talking about user-generated content which is going to
be X - one of my favorite topics and we've got a really cool guest to talk about that tonight so that's what we're
going to talk about that's what we're going to get into so what I am gonna do that music you heard in the beginning
I'm going to play that again and I'm gonna intro the show because the audio
engineers will just cut out all of this babble at the start and they're gonna put together the podcast so if you're
not subscribe to the podcast subscribe to it and because then you get it on audio as well and then I will we'll do
the usual introduction and sort of a few notices at the start and then we'll go straight into the podcast the interview
with Jonah Steele in about two or three minutes time so let's let's intro the
show let's get going just so you know while we're here okay let's do this
well hello and welcome to another podcast curiosity podcast the e-commerce
show with me Matt Edmondson this episode is in fact episode number of season
number which makes it the final episode of season can you believe we
are at the end of season already oh goodness me it's been it's been mammoth it's been amazing and if you haven't
been sort of following us so far if you knew the show big well can we talk about all things to do with e-commerce I
myself for an e-commerce businesses I'm a big fan of e-commerce especially at
the moment in the midst of the covert crisis ecommerce is a brilliant thing to
be involved with there is no doubt about it and I just love it so we do a podcast
about it and rather than hear me ramble on we have a special guest on each show
and today's special guest is a brilliant young lady who's going to talk to us about user-generated content and we're
going to get into that in just a few minutes time I'm really looking forward to this interview because in the
pre-core which we do as I do with all I guess I have a conversation with them before we actually record the podcast
just to make sure I know what we're going to talk about on the show and try to make it a little bit more interesting
and then just sort of you know that initial sort of awkwardness you get for the first -minutes but in that pre
call I had with China we had a great conversation and I took lots of notes and so make sure you've got your
notebook ready because you're gonna need it coz Joanne is going to give you a whole load of wisdom so yeah welcome to
the show now as I said this is actually episode number of season number two
if what is in my notes is correct and I have notes to believe the efficiency of
setup and the team to make sure this is all correct which means the next episode
that we air will be the start of season three yes and there are some more changes coming now we made some big
changes between season and season the biggest change was they were two big changes actually
big change number one was I wanted to make sure we had a guest on every show
so we've had a special guest on every episode of season two and I love the
format I don't know what you guys think about it I absolutely love this format of having a guest on the show we are
definitely carrying that on one of the changes that we're going to do as well
as carrying on interviewing the experts is we're going to get a few more ecommerce business owners to talk about
their websites and get some insights from them so that's some of the changes coming up in season three we also the
second big change for season two was we decided whenever we would record the interview we would broadcast that
interview on Facebook live at the same time why would we do that to ourselves
is of a question I've still wanting to know the answer to if I'm honest because tecnique the technological challenge if
I can get those words out well it's quite high I'm not gonna lie it's quite involved simple but involved and so
we've managed to figure that out which is great and and so the one thing I've not managed to figure out yet is how to
simultaneously stream on LinkedIn Facebook and YouTube so that'll be coming up in season three we're going to
put it in three different places all at the same time because I really like doing it live broadcasting it live you
guys get to see that you get to interact with your questions and your comments and all that sort of stuff so if you
don't follow us on Facebook and you would like to just head on over to facebook.com forward slash met edmondson
CEO Matt Edmondson CEO madmen Sankoh in effect and you will find us all go to
the web site Matt Edmondson comm and you will find all the links that you need on
the website including notes to today's show all the blog posts all the transcripts all the links that Joanna's
going to give you we'll put them all in the show notes so head on over to Matt Edmondson comm and you will see all of that so the end of season the the
start of season is going to be very very soon so again we've got some like still got some big changes coming in again for
season but I'll tell you more about those at the start of season because you know got to keep you interested
so make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from if you're listening to the audio version of this
on the podcast it's great to have you we started out as a pure podcast I still love the podcast medium as one person
said to me I've got a great face for radio so podcasting works well for me right and I really really like doing the
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please do subscribe to the show we release a podcast we try release a podcast once a week if we can and like I
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going to try and do it on all of those three channels in the future so go for it now before we get into the
conversations with our amazing guest I just want to give a big shout out to our amazing show sponsors the first one
being of course curious digital who have sponsored every single episode of the podcast so far curious digital is an
e-commerce platform that actually I use for my own e-commerce businesses I've
been involved in the development of it not that I do coding anymore it's been a it's been years I think the last time I
actually wrote some decent code was probably about so you know we're going back at good ways years but I
definitely had a hand in developing this platform because you know I have some very strong requirements where
e-commerce is concerned I didn't just want any old nonsence developer to put together I wanted a platform that had
been thought through and designed for people that actually run e-commerce businesses that think about all of those
things that ecommerce entrepreneurs and e-commerce managers have to think about
right we have to work through some stuff and I think you only get to know that when you've actually been in the trenches for a little while and so it
was great to be involved in the development of that and it like I say it's such a great platform we use it on
all of our ecommerce sites we've got a few sites coming out soon some new sites coming out some new e-commerce sites
which I'm super psyched about will definitely be telling you more about those in season as they're released
but guess what of them are gonna be on the curious digital platform that's right all of
them without fail or going on that platform there's a reason why I use it so if you're starting out check it out
if you're you know you're on Shopify and you're looking for a new upgraded platform and you're thinking about say
Magento check it out because seriously curious digital is phenomenal and what it can do is definitely worth getting
involved with and the second show sponsor one of our newest show sponsors is in fact lightbulb agency which is an
end-to-end ecommerce services business they help you do all of those bits of
e-commerce which you either don't have the time to do or the skill to do all the expertise to do or even care to do
but you know they need to be done you know and that could be a whole range of
things whether it's fulfillment whether it's marketing whether it's product development or fy'y even finding the
right product how do you do that research talk to the guys at likeable they will happily help you if you've got a question give them a call check them
out at lightbulb agency and curious digital can be found at
www.digitalage.org stew them will be on
the website met Edmondson comm and you'll notice actually when you go to madman CENTCOM it is also built on the
curious digital platform just saying hashtag design and we're part at the
time of recording this episode we are halfway through the recording of a new
e-commerce course which is super cool and the courses are is designed for
those who are wanting set up their own e-commerce business and so we're taking guys for a six-week process on how to do
that on a live webinar it's going great watch out for it because when that course is released there's some great
stuff in there all I'm admin CENTCOM anyway I feel like I've talked enough about all of those kind of things
let me big up a guest right so we are going to talk to the fabulous and
wonderful Johanna Steele who has worked with Argos and she is now ventured out
on her own and we're going to find out why and we're going to learn all the secrets that she learned at Argos
and she's got over years experience digital marketing e-commerce user-generated content how to get
reviews on your website we are gonna cover it all let me tell you're in for a treat like I said I loved the pre-core
with Joanna I took a lots of notes so make sure you've got your pen and paper ready ready I am gonna bring Joanna into
the show right now Joanna you are on the air it's great to have you thanks for joining us I think I'm at home buddy not
here you are you a mute oh no try that again can hear me now hi Matt can I just
technical error I forgot to put the volume thing yep hi everyone hi Matt
he's great to have you thanks for joining us how you doing I'm doing really well thank you really well yeah
how're you coping in the midst of all things covert I'm getting there I think it's like everyone write ups and downs
it's the they call it the corona coaster so some days you kind of you feel you
know kind of on top of the world and then other days you feel a bit flat but yeah just riding through the through the
emotions of it really I'm sitting well my family are fitting well you know
what's cooking roads we're spending time together so you've got to be grateful
and at a time like this definitely you do you absolutely do and you're totally
right and so grateful for my health grateful for the fact that it's actually been sunny you know today in in the UK
because I think the weather makes a big difference so yeah like you I'm at home working
from are you working from home at the moment I am yes yeah you find how you how you finding that whole process it's
pretty good I've managed to get myself into a routine which involves you know
waking up going for a run most days or taking taking you know enough breaks and
but and also you know on days when you don't really have the energy not being too too harsh on myself as well so
trying to get balance trying to get that balance well done I think routines important isn't it it's one of those
things they say you know to have a good routine is important and so we've been making sure the kids stay in their
routine rather than sleeping until midday and all that sort of stuff anyway enough about Cove it I'm bored talking
about Co but I don't know about the rest of it so let's talk about you so whereabouts
in the UK are you right now so I'm in North London okay Aleksandra palace so born and bred in North London
yeah so that's where I am at the moment and how what sure what's your sort of your story you have you got from you
know sort of the career starting to where you are now I did you know I don't
need all your life story the high points the high points and when I started out I
studied law at the London Metropolitan University oh I hated it I did Lauren
accounting yeah but anyway carry on sorry yeah so kind of after year one
realized it wasn't for me and I've always always had an interest in business and but I'm a creative as well
so I transferred to a marketing and Spanish degree oh wow that's a big
change massive change and Spanish because I was always good at languages and my sort of
career aspirations were to work internationally and marketing because it is actually the creative side of
business okay so yeah so I studied that University sort of my first roles are
very much in traditional marketing and PR for a variety of different companies and news publications the arts music
industry and then I kind of could see how the industry was going and was
becoming more digital so I kind of jumped into a fully-fledged online role without having any sort of
expertise in online marketing and yeah kind of she's learned on the job I
suppose and that was for a corporate governance IT software company and then
from there did a variety of digital marketing rolls for a number of different
organizations and then I would say more recently sort of the last years is where I kind of cut my teeth in retail
so I worked for Mothercare you know unfortunately no longer with us
no go there I had shares in Mothercare oh did you yeah let's not let's not talk
about money clutches but I heard a variety of roles there I looked after I
headed up the social media team looks after editorial content and get the
business analyst role project management and then I kind of moved to Argos where
i kind of took up the helm of reviews and customer generated content so very specialist sort of rolling these tomato
juice and sorry before we carry on let's just clarify for those who have no idea what
Argos is just explain to the listeners about Argos so all of us are in fact one
of the UK's biggest retailer and they are the third biggest website in the UK
after Amazon and eBay which not of people know and essentially it started
out as a catalog company in it trend it did that transition well I thought our guys didn't it really did and in fact
you know you could argue that a lot of the processes and the model when the
business first started is actually held it in good stead for now so of some physical stores but never had stock on
the shop floor on display and so it was always almost like a fulfillment kind of hub really where you just ordered online
you check new reserved online and you could go into the store or you could order it in store and pick up your product so yeah general merchandise
retailer so you know pretty much like Amazon in terms of selling every and
anything ya know that's interesting I didn't realize it was a third biggest site and but it surprised me because like you say its business model was
designed for when the internet was born wasn't it Austria they totally benefited
from there so how did you make the move from Mothercare to Argos and that was in
so towards the end of my sort of role at Mothercare I was very much
focused on reviews and customer generated content and at the time we
were migrating from one review solution to another and that was a project that I owned and managed successfully and in
and in that saved business a substantial amount of money in that migration and then I almost became known as the the
reviews girl if you like it's not a bad way to be known as close yeah not a bad
thing and one of my old colleagues who I worked with at Mothercare grant gothic I
remember him and he sent me a link to a
role our boss which was the reviews and customer generated content manager and
to be honest it wasn't a role that I kind of knew really existed so at Mothercare I looked after reviews
and customer generated content yeah but it was kind of part of a bigger role but
actually to have a specialist role where there was a couple of members in an existing team kind of piqued my interest
and then yeah I went for the interview and the rest as they say is history okay and so you've sort of been there
ever since really yeah they're ever since working within the e-commerce team they're well well and so um so four
years total a Lagos is that right four years total yep okay and your specific
role at Argus then was reviews and customer generated content yeah CGC as
it is now abbreviated a lot on the web I've seen yes because you know lazy we can't be bothered right consumers
generated content CGC it is a bit of a mouthful but yeah you know people call
it UGC user-generated content same thing so was this when you moved to Argos was
this quite a new thing that you were involved with and was it quite new for Argos this whole consumer generated
content idea or they've been rocking and rolling with that for a while they've been rocking rolling and with that for
quite while but I think they were in a position where they really quite early
on understood the value yeah and and how how the proposition could grow and so
there were two people who were sort of managing with use and customer generated
content and then they wanted to formulate a bit more structure and so they wanted to bring someone in who was
going to look at sort of the program from a strategic perspective because at that time it was very tactical we
collect reviews they display on the side and that was it but it's actually they wanted someone to come in and say okay how can we make make more of this and
sort of develop a CGC strategy and actually it was an integral part of the e-commerce strategy from the day I
arrived right up until I left so so yeah we and you know it was a global leading
program in terms of review volume coverage you know we were collecting
over a million reviews each year so yeah it was a really big focus for the
business and I I find this quite fascinating because if you're the third biggest e-commerce website in the
country and you're making a big deal out of consumer generated content and let's face it Amazon do this as well yeah I
mean when we get into this some more you'll go okay now I see what Amazon is doing on some of the stuff right the
biggest websites in the country are making a really really big deal out of consumer generated content so just
briefly if this is the first time people have sort of come across this phrase consumer generated content what what is
it what does it mean what is it well it's about connecting your customers to
authentic content that they can trust right customers trusts other customers
it's that social proofing element you know a brand can talk about their amazing and their products are fantastic but actually customers trust other
customers so it's it's it's a key part of the sort of customer journey so from
discovery of a product's you know exploration of a product all the way through to ownership and you can see
different types of custom a custom different types of cgc and throughout
the customer journey another reason we abbreviate it's a lot easier to say and so you can feed
different types of content and throughout the customer journey so we say CGC we talk about ratings and
reviews and we talked about Q&A so that's questions and answers we talked about customer images and we also talked
about customer videos and so it sort of looks at all those different types of content and at each given part of the
customer journey each of those different types sort of bear different levels of
importance yep okay so just as I've got this clear in
my own head then consumer generated content or customer generated content CGC is that content which they give you
it's thought sent it's authentic content direct from the customer which you display on your website and the customers are talking about your company
they're talking about your products or they're showing them or they're doing a video of them but in effect your
customer in a fit is telling everybody else what they think about you and your products and hopefully if you've done a
good job of servicing them they're doing that in a positive way right totally and it could be your product it could be
your service propositions and it's it's probably interesting to kind of clarify
I suppose that it's about content that's been created and published by unpaid
contributors yes it's not like you know similar to influence the marketing but it's not because your contributors are
your customers and they're not being paid and believed that fees might be more authentic I mean not that I've got
an issue with influencer marketing but actually if someone's willing to shout out about your products and they've not
been paid for it just because you know they want to shout out about it then that's a that's a beautiful thing isn't
it definitely definitely should be encouraged right whether the feedback positive or negative yeah and we go
that's an interesting point we'll get into that whether the feedback is positive or negative cuz a if you think so about that but let's sum so we
understand what user-generated content is but why is it important why did our
guys make such a big deal of it why do they make such a big deal of it why does Amazon make such a big deal of it
and why should the people listening make such a big deal out of it well I mean it
helps customers make more informed purchasing decisions if we consider sort
of reviews specifically quite often customers talk about a particular
feature they will highlight a particular flaw within a product and it helps
customers understand what the product is like in real life what it looks like in real life you know in City and and also
customers are able to understand something new about the product and learn more about the product so in
essence it quite often provides additional information to the product information that a company might put and
might write up that in the product description so it's all about really sort of adding more information about
that product and and being realistic you know what is this product like to you to
use we can talk about the benefits but you know what are the features like and how do they help me you know live a
better life how does this product really help me yeah yeah it's interesting actually one of the things I've were
actually one of my ecommerce websites and Jersey Beach company is getting upgraded at the moment the platform the
curious digital platform we're on is getting upgraded which is a beautiful thing and one of the things that I've noticed
for example were their competitors and I you know or maybe less competitors wrong
word let's take an example of lush you know the the beauty company lush right yeah and they're everywhere the biggest
shop they seem to have opened in Liverpool was just unbelievable that thing stinks to high heaven but you know
what but one of the things I've noticed that they've done on their website which
I thought was remarkably clever was they've taken one of their reviews which
I assume has come from a customer and probably answers the the biggest question I'm guessing that customers
have when they come straight to that product page you know everyone sort of got these default questions in their head and they they they have the product
title and then they have a review from the customer which they've just copied and pasted into their main
content and every of you answers like a key question which a consumer would have
in mind and so Russia have used this in a way to answer the questions let you
say so it's putting that content on there but they've done it really early on it's not just at the bottom now
they've put it straight up to give that social proof which you talked about before I thought did all guys ever do
anything like that is that well we looked at a number of things we were
quite keen one of the things that we did do was including sort of review
commentary on marketing material so some of our sort of offline marketing so also
you know almost have the catalog yeah print a catalogue that they're not not
letting go of anytime soon and we used to print reviews and put reviews and
seed those through the printed catalogue okay so we moved away from just sort of displaying just on the website but also
unordered all the touch points whether it was interesting whether the in-store kiosks whether it was a catalog whether
it was marketing material and there were instances where we did look at the sort
of online experience and to see whether or not positioning made a difference but
we never sort of included sort of clippings from the reviews in it in any
way sort of on page and but obviously the star rating was always sort of next to the product it's put up now just like
it is standard sourced a good thing now is they yeah we've done that we're gonna have the product types on the review you
know summary rating summary but I'm actually going to try it where we put
there some key reviews up in the main body copy and I want to see what the impact is on conversion it'll be really
interesting so you know I mean I don't know it but these things are always
measured in fractions of a percent aren't they and it's the little fractions of a percent that make a big difference so yeah I mean watch this
space maybe in six months summer maybe have some data I don't know we'll find out I just thought it was really clever from lush to do that and I thought well
I'll try that and see how that goes so we understand what CGC is we know it's
important because it answers questions and it gives social proof it gives credibility the fact that you've got
other customers talking about it does it matter let's deal with this whole
negative review thing straight face all right now early on let's just get get that out of the way because one of the
complaints or one of the things that people often think is when they see a review that they're doctored which I
mean you only display the good reviews you never display the bad reviews is it important to display reviews that are
like one star to star as well as the star star you know customers want to
see the good the bad and the ugly and realistically they're not going to believe necessarily there are products
that everybody that's brought this products reviewed it thinks it's fantastic and we used to do quite a bit
of studies with with customers to understand how they used reviews and we
found that you know quite often customers would filter by one star of years because they're interested in
finding out what the flaws are about the product that's interesting yep and it and if people are talking about a
feature that they don't really care about they're actually happy to bypass the negative reviews so we often used to
get you know taken to task by our buyers who were you know wanted us to remove
negative reviews and the push back we always push back and said look it's so important that we sort of maintain
credibility and that we are transparent with our customers and actually we
encouraged buyers to use the negative reviews so if there is a common theme what can we do that we perhaps need to
change the product so we kind of filtered that back into the sort of product development process and then
another test that we did was that a prod but with a negative review we'll still
convert higher than a product with no review so I have a think about that so a
product with what when you say negative you just mean a low review like a say
stars and below you still we're still convert higher than a product with no reviews that's really interesting what
do you know why that is and again it's just down to the fact that what are people moaning about in that with you if
it's a feature that I don't really I'm not really buying it for that so I'm not too worried about that and so I'm happy
to sort of say actually I'm happy to still buy this product so you know don't
shy away from negative reviews definitely use them to improve your
product or service and you know respond to those reviews if there is a common
theme or there's something that you can take away from that let the customer and I still thank them for their feedback
and that you're going to look so it all look to improve and whatever it is that they're that they're moaning about all
that they've had a bad experience with wow that's that's that's that's cool so don't worry about negative reviews in
some respects use them to develop your product further because in effect it's it's free sort of free information to
help you develop your product better if there's common themes products with negative reviews those stars and below
will convert higher than products with no reviews yes that's a bit of a
game-changer and because a lot of people would just go wah compo negative reviews on my sites but it's have no reviews and
negative reviews but you you flip that around flip that around and the thing is if you think about a customers they see
a product with no reviews to them it think they think that no one's bought it so actually there and then there are a
lot no this products not for me no one's bought it I don't really know what people are saying about it so I won't
take a chance on it whereas even if the product has a negative review you understand that the the product has been
bought it has been used and if the product you know the customers talking
about a feature like I said that you're not too worried about because that's not the feature that you're that interest
yeah then you'll still go ahead and buy it so that's we tested that on a number of products and and and we saw their
sakes with the same across all categories of products Argos - yes yeah okay so um and and in fact negative
reviews also so they hope you developed the products they're not necessarily going to turn people off in fact it's
going to help with conversion and but also it gives that I always felt like if
those negative reviews it I felt like the rest of the reviews were actually true I mean so if everything was
five-star reviews I'd be like that's a little bit doctored isn't it and whereas if you if you see a fused one or two
star reviews you go actually I can try I can now try if you see a good spread you kind of go well I can now trust the rest of them and it always sort of gave that
credibility and I did you find this at all I saw was this dis matte but weird buying behavior when I go into a website
I look at a five-star review and I look at a one-star review I just I go for I immediately filter for the low and I
felt for the high and I'll scan through a few of them just to see what both parties are saying and nine times out of
ten like you say I'll still buy even though they've got a few negative reviews yeah we definitely saw that and
customers really would filter by one-star reviews and that's how they would even start their kind of process
when looking at reviews and so yeah that definitely happened well okay so do you
think it's important to enable customers then to filter by reviews on the website % okay yeah and you know I think if
it's a low value purchase someone might look at the star rating and say okay
it's four stars I'm happy with that but actually if it's a product that has a higher value then you know customers
really want to see the detail so they'll filter by one-star reviews they will look and they will read and they will
sort of go through as many reviews as possible and to really better understand the product okay and did you find then
if a product has say an average of three stars versus a product that has an
average of four stars versus has an average of five stars does the conversion rate go work I mean it's kind
of an obvious question in some respects but you saw the conversion rate grower the higher the rating of the actual product she only really speak in yes
okay now is there then I don't know if you know the answer to this question is
but is there a magic number so let's say you've got an e-commerce website that's got no reviews on a product would you go
to the the person who owns that ecommerce website and say you need to get at least five ten three one what's
the the minimum really you need for a product so we used to aim for fifteen
okay but eight is where you begin to see some of the SEO benefits so anything
being eight and fifteen you're doing a good job so well that's just let me onto
another question when you say SEO benefits what so I've got eight reviews
on a product what what were you seeing from an SEO benefit point of view so it's just about how that product will
then appear naturally sort of in organic search because it's the natural language that people are using to talk about the
product and so we would see that products appearing more so in in natural
search when the product had at least eight reviews so that was something that
um the solution that we used it was a number that they kind of presented to us
but actually when we looked into the detail we saw that to be true so it's when you see the SEO benefits and we
always aim for about fifteen at least for each product Wow okay so well then
what's this so you talked about you juicy oh sorry
CGC let's get the the acronyms right you talked about coming into Argos and
heading up the strategy so I'm thinking right this is awesome stuff I'm gonna go
and get some consumer generate content I'm gonna go and get some reviews and then I cut I hit a brick wall right
because I go how in the world do I go and get eight people to review my product
when when I'm just starting out so what were some of the strategies and the tactics that you had to get people to
review your products yeah so you know the strategy the kind of foundation of
the strategy was always focused on review volume and coverage that was always a key driver for us human
coverage and coverage and so we used to
use emails to get customers to submit reviews and we never allowed on sites
submission because we were very keen that review should only be left on a verified purchase so we need to know
that you have bought that product so we would send an email if you bought that product in store because we would
collect your email for your ear asita or if you bought that product online and we would send an email incentivized with
a prize draw and it's usually sent two weeks after we know that you have received the product
and that lead time can vary and it did vary so for example for clothing we
would send the email about three days after you'd receive the products because
with clothing right when you've received the products you tend to sort of try on straight away and so you have a real
good sort of inclination about how you feel about that product so we want we
want to capture you sort of sort of pretty quickly after you've made that purchase and then something like
furniture where you would imagine that it could be it'll take you time to
potentially build the furniture or it could be part of perhaps you decorate in a room so we would leave sort of a
longer new time for us to send that review email to you and we would look at
saying that B instead of three days would that be like a few weeks yeah that would be two to three and we used to
send a reminder email so if we sent you an email you didn't review we would then send you
a reminder email week later that generated significant volume we sent the
email during lunch times which worked for us we tried it on a son day that worked okay and again I would
suggest just testing it right it sounds like you tested a whole bunch of
different things like four different product categories you sent them at different times but they're from say I
get that we need to test because we're all gonna be selling different products different people and I love the fact you tested everything there's a good place
to start but the the basic premise of what you're saying is if I can if I can hopefully summarize this with all you
know with due care and basically whenever someone buys something from
your website you need to email them and ask them to review your product and if they've not responded to that email you
need to email them again at some you know a follow-up test what is the best time to do that and one of the things
that you mentioned which I want to come back to is you you incentivized it by by
the prize draw mm-hmm so what what did that look like so we would do a
quarterly prize draw anyone that submitted a review irrespective of what
the rating was negative positive you just had to submit a review and we would
do a quarterly prize draw where ten customers would win a voucher and so we
incentivize that way and can ask how much was a voucher for a hundred pounds
well so there's a pretty reasonably pretty reasonable voucher and then how
did you I suppose did customers believe you were going to do that because quite often I get this you know do this and enter this
prize drawing I think yeah whatever there's there's just no way is there really that's ever going to happen it's
interesting you say that because quite often we would send the winner the
voucher they would not redeem it though
it would be a digital voucher and they wouldn't redeem it so we would look sort
of months later and they still haven't redeemed it maybe because it might have appeared in their inbox and they thought
it was spammed but yeah so actually yeah some people didn't believe it but
what we were moving towards was just having a dedicate dedicated page on the
websites has just announced who the winners were so people were aware that you know we were doing this and these are the people on that's a good idea so
you can put the winners and again actually I know if I want something like quid voucher off Argos I'm putting
that on Instagram yeah nicely is gonna give you more consumer generated content
right which they can then feed back in so you also mentioned if I can come back
to this point people can't just go to the website you know like I've got I've
got a war vault here on my desk right I can't just go to the Argos website find that water bottle and write a review on
it unless I bought that bottle from Argos is that right that's correct
however worth mentioning that we did used to do reviews syndication so if
you'd written a review of that bottle on the brand website we word if we were
using the same system we would syndicate and that review would display on the Argos site but we would label it and say
this review was left on X site so we did do a review syndication okay but you were clear where that came
from whether it was a purchase or whether it came from this brand is yetee so you would say it's a Yeti Yeti really
yeah okay so when a when you're putting new products on the website with would
the supplier often have this sort of Magic to reviews or would you would
you have to do some other work to try and get them because I get that you can ask somebody who's bought it to write a
review but what happens if if you're you're trying to hustle and get those reviews at the start yeah and that was a challenge right and
we at Argus had to catalogue cycles so twice a year we would have a sort of big
cat launch where we they'd be a vast of new products that would appear on sites and so the challenge was how do we get
reviews on products from day one so I developed a program called the Argos
testers which was a community of $
customers they were selected various avenues but they were customers who were
already writing loads of reviews it could be competition winners as well and
we were asked some information about themselves so they had to fill in sort
of a question and questionnaire which which charts about you know where they
lived the lifestyle you know if they had children etc get a real understanding of
who they were and suppliers were then invited to send their products to that
community they would write reviews and so those reviews would then display on
the products and as soon as that product went live on the website so what the suppliers they would send the product
out for free to the review program people they would but we charged the
suppliers to participate in the program say ok so so I'm a manufacturer just so
I'm clear sorry to be pedantic I was well make sure it was and so i'm manufacturing i Mannie famines picking
up stuff on my desk now Joe and I just finally fetch these glasses and I want to start putting them on the Argos website and I can ago right what I've
got to do is I've got to get them on the website but to get people to buy them I need reviews so I'm gonna come tuned so John I need to get some reviews you know
sure no problem we've got people tell me who your ideal customer will send out you need to give me what say
units no we used to say okay thing about you know to ok
and obviously understanding that you know it's a product the supplier dealt with the shipping so we said a minimum
of so the supply would send it direct to I would send para glasses to people and those people would write
review but I would also have to pay you to manage and deal with that program which is in fact what Amazon do with
Amazon vine you don't have to pay to get the reviews but they understand the power of social
proofing get in those those reviews in okay I am now understanding yeah so so
one of the things then I'm just trying to think I mean this is great for our guys right you've got five thousand customers you can go and and get these
guys to write the reviews how would that work if I am just literally setting up a
shop as my side hustle I you know I I work nine to five I come home spend two
hours a night working on my website I've got a cool product but no one's really
bought it yet there's no real reviews on the website I've obviously got to get the reviews up what kind of things could
could I do have you got any thoughts on that well it's worth mentioning that the
community wasn't always five thousand people so it started quite small and with a few hundred and then we just sort
of grew it over time but in that instance that you just described it
could be an idea where influencer marketing could come in in a way to get
sort of that kind of feedback on your social media channels which you can potentially put on your on your website
so again like you say if you don't have the customers yet but it might be a way to get influencers to talk about the
products and sort of feedback in that way it'd be one angle okay cool so but
there are things that you can do you just have to think outside the box I think is you know you'd you've got to do
something there but and when you do start selling the product the one thing that has come and again I'm making even
more notes look in my my analog notebook pen so one of the things that you've got
to do is you've got to be intentional in getting reviews now when we first started so Joe speech company in
people would buy the product and they would happily leave a review didn't have to ask him didn't have to do anything they were just log on and they would
leave a review they were all up for it as fast forward yep
would I do that and so we found that unless you specifically asked them and
and asked them more than once they were really unlikely to to lead reviews now
is that is that something that you found is that yeah I mean we all the emails
that we sent used to send it was something like two and a half percent resulted in a review but you imagine
yeah and the industry benchmark they sort of stayed she'd be aiming for is
about four percent um but yeah I sort of sat around two and a half and so you
know we were sending out tens of thousands of emails each week I suppose because of the volumen import of
products that we sold so so I still thought you know I still find it people
are still interested in and leaving their feedback I think you just have to
think about the different ways in which you can you can do it so whether it's you know the frequency send your emails
the lead time the you know reminder send
the you know incentive all of these things kind of sort of mixed together
sort of add to the pot to sort of drive that that volume up okay so is there I'm
just just running through the price in my head so I go kind of go right I understand what and the consumer
generated content is I understand why it's important I've now got it in my head sort of some ideas of how I'm going
to go and get people to leave reviews on my website I guess the next question in
my head would be well what is there a specific platform that I should get them to leave reviews on should i to use
google review should I use Trustpilot should I use yeah I think it depends so
we used a solution called bizarre voice which is X they're a US company okay for
I put up with use and some of our service with use but we also use Trustpilot so you know
Trustpilot is sort of the place i suppose for a lot of brands and there's
a custom if you want to find out a bit more about you know what this brand is all about you go to Trustpilot it's also
a bit of a hotbed for people that want to have a bit of a moan as well so you'll find that yeah quite a few people
will put some negative reviews on Trustpilot and it's an interesting story for our boss around Trustpilot so so probably
about four years ago the art was Trustpilot score this is when they used to score out of ten I think they've
changed to scoring out of five but previously used to score out of and the Argos score was about one point two
out of ten it was diabolical and that's because like I said people
use Trustpilot to have a moan and that's where people sort of vent speaking negatively about about your your service and so we then
started proactively asking customers to leave reviews on Trustpilot
so this was all included in an armed with you email we taught you know we asked for them to review the product and
we would ask them to review the service all in one email and overnight when we
started proactively asking people to leave reviews on Trustpilot our score went to something like seven
point six overnight so when you're proactively asking you know people like
to be heard and people like to put their opinion forward so so that really helped to drive the score of our Trustpilot
page there's various different solutions when I was at Mothercare we used bizarre
voice we also use reivew I know there's FIFO exist as well so yeah there's a lot
of things on the market really and but I think it's probably worth mentioning that I think it's key that you use a
third-party supplier and the reason I say that is because Amazon for example
historically have come under fire for you know fake reviews etc and they have their own platform that they've built
but with using a third-party sort of the onus is on the third party so they
moderate the content and so it kind of it kind of removes removes you from the content so you know August we can't
really doctor it you know it's moderated externally and so that kind of helps in
terms of making sure that you know people trust the content that they see and sort of on the August site we
actually used to be very clear you know we use bizarre voice we used to put their logos that people understood you
know who they were and and sort of that we use them to collect our reviews that's interesting okay so listening to
your story about Trustpilot jerseys sort of journey was the same we didn't even
ever think about just pilot until someone counters and said listen you've got a really low score on trust pilot because we had three people from I think
the newest one was the past had gone missing or something oh my goodness
me we didn't even know this existed and so like you say we were then proactive
and started asking people about it the score changes overnight and he actually has a big impact on your business and it
is quite significant really so I guess the advice would be then if I can
paraphrase would be figure out what a good review platform is for you in your
industry what makes sense well if you're a I guess if you're a takeaway you're
going to want to use you're not going to use Trustpilot necessarily you're gonna use something like TripAdvisor on you to do the reviews oh cool
depend on where I guess whatever makes sense for your industry crack on and use that okay so I mean there's a lot there
right bottom line is crack on and do it so and the the benefits of doing all of
this coming back you said at the start and tie-in with better customer service
increased conversion rates is this stuff that you saw a Nargis happening yeah
massively so we saw you know massive uplifts in
conversion across desktop mobile and our apps as well so you know some of the
stats were a customer that interacted with review content would convert I
think on desktop it was about % uplifting conversion mobile it was about
and our actives about % say massive hope lift massive massive and we we used
to feed it back into there was we were doing some modeling around returns and
to sort of minimize customer returns and we used to feeding the rating of a
product into that model as well so we were using it in all areas of the business it wasn't just about driving
sales but it was about really understanding okay why are people returning the product and sort of
another example I uses again I just mentioned feeding it back to the buyers you know if we had there was a furniture
range which will have really low and low
rating and the same theme was coming I think it's a chest of drawers and the
drawers were not sort of fitting into the grooves properly and it kept coming through in the reviews and so we sort of
fed that back to the buyers and so the buyers held a build day so they kind of
got some sample products you know from the warehouse and we're trying to sort
of replicate the problem that the customer was having and then they were able to do so in realized yeah we need
to sort of fix this and then sort of fix fix the products and then so if he's improved when they sort of improved the
product so there are so many ways in which you can use the information you
know really gets valuable insight for the quality assurance teams for product
development you know to improve your service proposition even improving
product information right you know we used to get people would say oh you know
depict in this picture it looks yellow but actually it's more of a cream and so that would make us realize that
actually the photo that we're displaying on the product is not accurate enough
and so we would reshoot that image so you can really use the data to sort of really improve sort of everything about
your product really well okay so so I'm
just trying to picture the guys in the warehouse building this to try and replicate the problem yes I find that
fascinating and so one of the stories you mentioned which was a great story
and I do want to bring it up but one of the stories you mentioned in our pre prod cast school talking about furniture
was the perception that furniture from Argos was pretty much bought by uni
students and that was it right because you need to insert no money in this for cheap furniture and so you needed to
address that and you used consumer generated content or customer generated
content sorry to do that is that right yeah that's correct so I suppose it was about looking at the
brand positioning of Argos furniture and like he said you know had a reputation of being cheap and and not aspirational
it wasn't you know if he wanted to buy a new dining-room table and chairs you wouldn't go to while boss and you know
if he wanted to get a new sofa he when it go to Argos and obviously yes we had Facebook or stores but we never displayed any
products and if you want someone to part with a large proportion of money for
furniture how do you do that when you're not displaying the product and so we
were keen to change the perception and so we began encouraging customers to
take photos of their dining dining table sofa beds you know wardrobes whatever it
was and sharing those on social media but also including those images as part
of their written review and what we did with that we created a landing page sort
of curated that content and had a sort of a gallery of images
which was a shockable gallery that people could then feel inspired I suppose from the Argos range and we saw
a significant uplift again people that interacted with that gallery there was an uplift of about percent in terms of
conversion ok and that's a bigger bigger lift a big uplift yeah so that worked really well to reposition and furniture
within the customers mind that yeah not just uni students but actually this
could be a lovely piece to sort of decorate your home and that's grating you did you incentivize people to upload
their images again with the prize draw type thing in the same way yes same way but upload the images put the images in
the reviews which I'm seeing more and more now actually so they're not just being text reviews a lot of people
adding images even doing video review did you guys do the video get customer video reviews on site so we did we
didn't we didn't use bizarre voice because their technology didn't support video content which was a huge bugbear
of ours for for a while and so we used to just contact the albers testers
directly and encourage them to do sort of more unboxing videos sort of in their
home and then we kind of moved to selecting testers we'd either film in
their house or we'd invite them to come and to the studio as well to kind of
test out the product so yeah so we did we did sort of delve into the the world
of video reviews and did that again have an uplift on conversion when you started throwing video into the mix good
question so we we only just started doing that sort of towards the end of my
my time there so I don't have any definitive definition numbers there but it was definitely something that
suppliers and brands were really interested in doing so and they were able to again use that video on their
own websites on their own social media channels and you know you can repurpose that content and across multiple digital
put such points yeah I mean it's a beautiful thing about all of the she customer crazy once you've got it on
your website you put it on your social media I mean it just goes everywhere doesn't it and it's it's it's great content if you can get customers to do
it so well I'm million questions in my
head but it's I'm aware of time and all super helpful and actually the the way
you've decide that in actually I think it's quite an interesting sort of tying you've obviously left Argos so you were
doing this for four years when did you leave in technically in February so only
a couple of months ago and just before cove it just before coated although I
kind of said last year October I asked for a sabbatical from work so I was in a
six-month sabbatical where I went traveling Southeast Asia South America West Africa
and then yeah kind of you know I mentioned earlier I studied Spanish because I was interested in working
abroad and and always thought that that would come with working for a multinational company and I think when
you go traveling you know gives you time to think and really reflect and I love
my job at Argos you know I built the team you know we were collecting million
movies a year we would market leading in this in that space generate an incremental revenue of upwards of half a
million with offers testers program so you know successful time and but I
wanted something different and during my travels I ended up in Ghana towards the
end in West Africa and there's just a lot going on there in the tech and digital space and it's a really exciting
time and so I kind of felt that mmm I want to have a piece of that I want to
explore that in in more detail so when I came back from my for my travels I sort
of said I'm gonna sort of jump into that and sort of explore the West African market so well see so that's what you
did you you you came back did you hand in your notice and right um I'm West Africa bound now yeah
Wow there wasn't it's funny because um you know there wasn't it was a huge
surprise from my peers they're a bit like yeah we kind of thought you wouldn't come back you know no you know
nobody sort of travels the world and climbs mountains and you know for six months and then comes back to the same
job they left so they think they kind of had an idea that mainly changed somehow on you yeah yeah
so you've you've made the the leap from Argos but into what
if you don't mind me asking what are you what are you doing now so I am on the
road to establishing the number one digital agency in Africa so that's my
kind of big vision I mean the continent
is seeing some huge changes definitely in terms of you know internet
penetration mobile adoption I mean the number of people connected to the
Internet is still quite low in the continent and if we take Ghana for example and that's in West Africa
they've got million population and about percent of those are connected
to the Internet but that's increasing year-on-year quite opposite of sort of
three to five percent year on year in terms of mobile adoption more and more
people mobile connected there's increased speeds you know percent I think a percent of mobile connections
are all sort of Surrey G and G so we're seeing a huge shift in how more
connected the African consumers is being and so I think historically people have
sort of shied away from the continent due to political instability but that's improving and from an e-commerce
perspective you know logistics are improving payment systems are now in
place so there's a lot of potential on the continent you might have heard of
m-pesa which is it's a sort of mobile
electronic payments for our mobile device okay so you can its a Kenyan company so
you can you know access credit savings make payments deposits payments you know
all from your your mobile phone and actually that's been a big driver in sort of financial inclusion in Kenya and
has lifted I think it's about % of households out of poverty so so there's
a lot going on in turn in in Ghana and in Congo as well with I'm doing some
work Congo DRC a large really large so
densely populated country I think there's about million people there only about % are connected to the
internet but again that is increasing year on year and the government last year just sort of launched this big
digital sort of national plan where they're going to be looking at the infrastructure sort of governance and
regulations and you know producing and hosting content application usage so you
know key countries within the content I really seen sort of you know how African
could really leverage some technology yeah especially mobile technology and so
I I think it's an exciting time to be involved with that and evolve with that
and I'm you know Caribbean background I'm from the African diaspora and I feel
you know that is my duty really to kind of help the continent develop to such
great yeah so how what sure I mean that should be a ground vision which is great
and and I I get the massive opportunity that is in Africa from a digital point
of view you notice about everybody in England is already connected to the web whereas there are these nations which
are just the connectivity especially through mobile phones is unbelievable we're doing some work with a medical
practice and international medical practice I'm doing a bit of digital consulting work with those guys
brilliant what they're doing and one of the things that they said the fascinated me is you not everybody's got an email address
which is connected to their system and everyone's got a mobile phone number and so where you'll go to my website to log
in you need an email to go to where they're the kind of thing that they're wanting to do actually it's not email
that you need it's a phone number and actually we're not sending emails were sending text messages and it's it's in
East they said to me and they said you'll be surprised at the level of poverty that people have but they've
still got a smart phone yeah and so the the connectivity I can see the skyrocketing which is brilliant it's
amazing you know and it's sort of levels a little bit so that that I get I get the big dream the big goal the big
vision so what sure what I mean you're just you stick up I'm in London now right how are you what how are you doing
this I'm just curious what your what your plan is for the next months yeah so luckily before the lockdown I
was in Ghana in March and for some really thing the British winter no doubt
yes and I for some really good relationships there so there's a digital
agency there who I've formed a relationship with and we're sort of collaborating on projects and I think
I'm not sure what it's like for other parts of the world but on the continent if you want to do business there and the
easiest way is to partner with have a local partner yeah so so so yeah so I've
got a group of guys in Ghana by my partner wave and like I've also got a
group of guys in Congo DRC that I partner with as well so the guys in Congo kind of do more content creation
mainly animation the guys in Ghana focused more on growth marketing and one
of the gaps that we've identified is that no one really looks at digital strategy it's very much tactical at the
moment and no one is really planning sort of months months so that's
where we sort of identified where I can sort of lend my expertise within those
two markets and so that's where we're sort of we're sort of focusing on
you'll find that there's a there's a bit of a skills gap particularly within middle management with digital marketing
and so the aim is for my services to kind of plug that gap that Joanna sounds
absolutely fascinating I'm I would love it if you come back in a year's time and
tell us how you're getting on and what's going on in Africa because I just would love to hear the stories and I've been
involved with some NGOs doing stuff over there and my local church is doing a
hospital build in the Congo at the moment DRC some amazing stuff that's going on and I just the stories that
come out of it just they break your heart but they also uplift your spirits a lot so well done would be my I mean
that's a pretty brave move that's awesome I wish you every success how do you if people want to get a hold of you
how do they how do they get in touch what's the best way to reach out to you Oh brilliant so I'm on LinkedIn and just
search for my unique URL is miss steal
steal steal st wo e e still yes yes you
can follow me on instagram that's Joanna dot diana dots steel so Jo a and n a dot
dia and a dots ste ele it's a bit I know
all right you can also find me on Facebook again
Joanna Diana Steele or you can drop me an email info at dyemax the IMA x
digital calm so it's dyemax the new business yes people can get old either
way all of those links we will put into the show notes so if you're like driving
you're like oh my goodness I have so many questions but I can't just head on over to madman Singh Kham and we'll put
all the links there or what was your website again dyemax di ma x and dynamic
digital combed IMAX digital comm I have to say that with the American accent for its angle
I know some people say d-max it's like no it's dyemax but I get why people say
too much why die max if I can ask taking your digital to the max ah ah it's got a
bit of cheese tastic no since there that's what makes it memorable love it people will remember that way more than
die max take kill to the max with die max you do a podcast let me do the
voiceover intro hey Joanna listen thank
you so so much taking the time to speak to us I've got lots of notes I'm sure our listeners have as well some really
brilliant and valuable insight into all the things that you were sharing there
thank you so so much really appreciate it and can I wish you all the best
Africa sounds amazing thank you thanks for having me Iris thanks Joanna thanks
a lot okay wasn't that absolutely fantastic Jonas
she's amazing ai ai I love the fact that we could keep probing and she'll just keep answering the question it's no
problem it was awesome so I hope you like me I've got pages and pages of notes I'll pause put a comment here
thank you that's great thanks Paul yeah it's it was lovely wasn't it and Joanna did a great job and I'm actually pleased at
your comments come up and the technology is working she was absolutely fantastic so do you reach out to Joe and I'm sure
she'll happily answer any questions that you've got or if you'll you know doing
stuff over in Africa or not get in touch make that connection and see see what new connections can can be forged it
works well right so do get in touch connect with her on LinkedIn she would love to reach out and connect with you I
have no doubt so thank you for listening to the show like I said this is season
two's finale oh yes the final episode of season two but don't worry alas no we'll be back
very shortly with the start of season there won't be a massive gap I know that
because the podcast interviews are lined up in my calendar so we'll be doing those really shortly we've got some
changes coming up but the fundamentals remain the same make sure you subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your
podcast from whether it's iTunes stitcher Spotify all of those places we just like
to be there the only place we can't be for whatever reason is Google Play because they don't like podcasts that
aren't American go figure but do connect with us wherever you get
your podcast from and she can watch the video again you can just head on over to method miss and calm go to this episode
and you can see the video see Joanna and join in the conversation there we will also be continued to broadcast
on to Facebook as we have been doing with season but we will also be going
out to YouTube and LinkedIn I'm hoping we can get that technology to work so if you'd like to come and join us on the
live broadcast ask your questions direct to the speakers just connect with them or just you know listen to the
interviews like way before they're published on the podcast cuz you what you want that you know the latest Upstate information then make sure you
join us on all the stuff which is live and all the links will be on my website at Matt Edmondson comm I'm gonna do what
Joanna did I'm gonna spell it out ma TT e d M und som comm make sure you get
that you in there some people misspell it and they mistake me for the radio DJ who has the same
name at Edmondson but he spells his Edmondson with an O I spell it with a u you'll be amazed how many requests I get
on Twitter because I'm twittering moments and asking me to play a song on Radio and
you just kind of get sure just keep listening I'm not the radio DJ but it
is great to have you listening to the show do connect do check out the website and do connect with Joanna make sure you
subscribe and we'll be back again very very soon for season it has been an
absolute privilege and a pleasure to do season so stay connected and we'll be
back soon all right all the best god bless you have a great day wherever you are