Scaling E‑commerce: Beyond the Magic Wands and Quick Fixes | Ian Hammersley

Well, hello and welcome to the e commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show that's all about helping you to deliver e commerce well. And to help us do just that, I'm chatting with my very special guest today, Ian Hammersley. From the Hammersley Brothers, from Smart E Business, he's, they've literally written the book they have.

And we're going to be talking about how to scale e commerce beyond the magic wands. And quick fixes. Oh, yes. But before we get into that, dear listener, let me encourage you, if you haven't done so already, to sign up to the newsletter on the e commerce podcast website. Just head over to ecommercepodcast.

net. And sign up for it, and we'll send you all the show notes, links, and all that sort of stuff. All free all to magically. It's awesome. So make sure you do that. And also let me give a big shout out to today's show sponsor. You've guessed it e commerce cohort.[00:01:00] If you would like to know more about our monthly mastermind, our monthly membership do come and find out more e commerce cohort.

com. All the information is there. Everything you could possibly want. Everything you could possibly want to know is all there. So check it out. Come join us. We'd love to see you in there. And as part of being on the cohort, one of the new features is we live stream the recording of the podcast into cohort.

So you can come and listen to our live recordings like with amazing people like Ian, and you can get to ask your questions too, which is. thAt's just super, super important, isn't it, really, because you want to know, you want, you've got your questions, so if you're in Cohort, come and ask those, do join in on the live streams.

Now. Before we get into the conversation, I was just saying to Ian, actually, before we hit the record button, that it's great to actually finally get to meet. He is a fellow e commerce podcaster, uh, the Hammersley Brothers podcast the e commerce podcast with those guys is definitely worth checking out.

[00:02:00] But actually It's it's one of those things where the person that connected us is actually Oliver Spock from Sweet Analytics, which is fascinating. Oliver's been on the show he's been in cohort as well. Legend of a guy. Thanks for the connection, Oliver. And if you want to know more about Sweet Analytics, check out sweetanalytics.

com. It is a great little thing going on there. In fact, we're playing around with Sweet Analytics on one of our own e com businesses. As I read this. So there you go, check it out. Now let's talk about Ian. Ian is a standout entrepreneur, celebrated as a finalist for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in 2014.

And with a knack for e commerce, he enthralls global directors of mammoth online keynote speeches, while his best selling book, The Ultimate Guide to e commerce growth showcases his seasoned strategies. Beyond Print, Ian co hosts the Hammersley Brothers e commerce podcast, sharing e [00:03:00] commerce gold with thousands worldwide every week.

So if you're an e commerce, go check it out, go subscribe because it's a great show. I listen which is important. Ian, great to have you on the show, man. Finally we get to have this conversation, so I'm super excited. Great that you're here. How are you doing?

Ian Hammersley: hEy Matt, I'm really good. I'm really good.

I haven't met, you recorded all that. I thought you did that as an after take. That's all like a live recording, isn't it? All your intro, your music.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, everything. I'm impressed. I don't know if I would be here when you hear it back. But no, we tend to do it all in one take, which is good and it keeps it all a little bit fresh.

It is easy. Yeah,

Ian Hammersley: it is easy. You know what, it's great to be here, Matt. And like you, I listen to your podcast and we were just saying before. When I'm pretending to work out at the gym, I put your podcast on. Is that where you generally

Matt Edmundson: listen to podcasts?

Ian Hammersley: Sit there doing my little walk on the treadmill.

Yeah, listening to your your e commerce. No, it's [00:04:00] great. It is great to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to get, let's get going. A wonderful briefing as well for our podcast, e commerce gold. That's... It's two, two old blokes,

Matt Edmundson: two old brothers chatting, that's basically what it is. Two old blokes chatting about e commerce. But your, the thing I love about your show is you're in Manchester, right? Yeah. And your brother, Mark, he's in New Zealand. New Zealand, yeah. So this is this a case of the brothers just, we get on but we don't want to be anywhere near each other?

Ian Hammersley: hE married a Kiwi, that's what he did, let's face it, if he wasn't, if he wasn't working with my brother... Either said bye, when your business partner says, Oh, I'm going to go and I'm going to move across the other side of the world. He said, this is a problem. Yeah. But we managed to, interestingly, the podcast came about because we're 12 hours apart.

So he was driving into work. And I was driving home from work and we would start chatting in [00:05:00] the car about e commerce because of obviously what had happened during the day. And so it was very natural. That's what happened. We ended up just starting to record those conversations and that's where the podcast came from, which was.

As I say, when you go back to some of the early episodes, you're like, Oh, dear Lord. This is very low tech. This is not good.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. It's fair to say that I'm with you, brother. I, some of our earlier part, we were saying before we hit the record button, there are people that reach out to us and we do, I'm sure that you're the same way and you love to hear from the audience and people connect with me either on Instagram usually or LinkedIn and they say, Hey, listen, love the show.

But every now and again, somebody says to us, Oh I'm loving the show. I decided to start at episode one and work all my way through and we're like, I'm really sorry.

Those first few episodes I don't know how you guys did it. I've not heard your I should probably go back and listen to your early episodes, but for [00:06:00] me. Please don't. And what I did was I just literally grabbed a microphone and just started spouting about e commerce. Just anything that I knew just came out of my mouth.

There was a little bit of a structure, but nothing more than that. And I think I got to about episode 19 and I said to the team, I said, listen, I'm really bored of the sound of my own voice here. So that's when we made the permanent switch to doing the interview style podcast, which was great.

Ian Hammersley: Yeah.

It's got better. Yeah, no, it's funny. And when when you start doing your podcast and like when, the book we wrote, obviously, you put in all this effort and you think literally no one's listening at all, so you don't really know how it's going to develop, but obviously over time the ramblings of things start to take shape and you form this sort of structure as you go.

In some respects it's a philosophy of business really, is that, you don't let perfection get in the way of good. And people in e commerce, bringing it back to e commerce, who who try to get everything absolutely perfect, sit themselves in a, in a dark room somewhere for six months and then [00:07:00] emerge thinking they've got it cracked and obviously the market's moved on and how e commerce works, it's almost like everything's in beta, you're testing.

All the time and eventually, you get better and it's the same thing with everything. The podcast and any business really.

Matt Edmundson: That's such a good way of putting it. Always in beta. E commerce is always in beta and I like that. I might steal that, if I do, I'll try and remember to give you the credit.

But e commerce is always in beta and it, and you're right, we've all always got to Learning, always got to be improving, always got to be iterating, and that desire for everything to be just bang on perfect before you do something is quite a common desire, I think especially with people starting up, right?

If they're starting out or if they're re platforming their website, everything has to be just so before they do it and it, I think you're right, I think by the time you've launched that perfect website, it's

Ian Hammersley: out of date, right? Yeah. And and I think it's a danger [00:08:00] throughout every phase of e commerce, right from the, from starting, but also the ones that are doing, much bigger, 20, 20, 30 million plus, and it's like the danger of shiny distractions.

And I think that, that is the fundamental thing that. Probably I've spent the most, I've been working in e commerce now for over 20 years and the thing that, that I've focused on or seen is how you navigate through the shiny distractions of e commerce, because our industry is like...

It's not like an accountancy industry or, a lawyer, solicitors where, it's been practicing for hundreds and hundreds of years. E commerce is literally embryonic. And so this, and it's moving so fast, it's like doggy years, and so if, if you spend six months doing something on your e commerce site, you're, and you think it's going to move the needle.

And you get it wrong, it doesn't, you've like, all your competitors have just accelerated ahead. So I think it's knowing, because there's so much you can do [00:09:00] and there's so many things that you can plug in and so many things you can focus on, Average Order Value, Lifetime Customer Value, Widget Plugins, all sorts of new tech, and you're like, what and how do I do?

And it's knowing what to do and having a framework for taking That emotional, emotion out of it and coming up with the rationale to actually, have a clear, concise path. And, I think that's generally what most people will struggle with, is that scatter gun approach that's all over the place and it's I just, I know what I need to do, but I don't know what order I need to do it in, because if I get it wrong...

A could be loads of money, but also it's time is the biggest worry, isn't it? I think. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: You lose. Yeah, you're right. It's I like the analogy with the accountancy company because they, like you say, they've had years, centuries to perfect in effect what they're doing. They've got software to help them now, but in effect it's a ledger with two columns, right?

So it's what they, I did accountancy at university. The rules haven't changed. It's just, it is what it [00:10:00] is,

Ian Hammersley: we don't want to offend any accountancy firms, do we, but no, there's no sort of rule book for how you run your e commerce store really as opposed to, the ways that the accountancy firms are structured, isn't it?

And it's, yeah, and it's just, there's an overwhelming danger to, to do the wrong thing next. And, and, and I think the other thing that people find, I think, is to navigate your way through all of that. BS, really. Take the example I always give, take something like website speed.

peOple think, or often, people hear people say, website speed, you've got to make it faster you've got to make the website faster and then people will repeat, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to really improve your conversion rate. And it's will it? Let's think about it logically, like if you've got a site that's loading at I don't know, three seconds, on average, like a three second page load, which is, like pretty, pretty average.

And if you, if you make a website faster, is it going to magically pay? Make people buy. It's if you put a self service checkout, [00:11:00] like a fast service, like Tesco checkout in a high end jewelry store, on the high street would that magically make people buy? No, of course it wouldn't, but it's it's these are the sort of things that are spouted out in our industry and people go, Oh, it's gonna, there's this magic.

It's a thing that's going to make people buy and I think it's a lot of the work that I do with my brother is actually taking it right back down to the basic fundamentals of retail. If our business was a shop, on the high street, how would we lay it out? And why would we lay it out?

And how would we get people in and navigating around the store? It's much, much simpler. It is. Think about it from that perspective. Yeah, it is.

Matt Edmundson: No, I like that because actually, for me, commerce is still a lot about old school principles, right? Technology's changing, the way people buy are changing, and we've got to keep up with that.

But the principles of... How to deal with people, even online, are still pretty timeless, aren't they? And [00:12:00] you still want to treat people properly, with respect. You still, there's all these things that you can think about. But we think because it's e commerce, those rules don't apply. So you do focus in on, Oh, I just want to get my site speed.

I want to get that magic green number on the Google page speed test. And it's yeah, but if there's a fundamental problem with how you're connecting with people, how you're talking with people, the language you're using on the website, but I think I know which is the bigger problem to solve, yeah.

Ian Hammersley: It's I think, in some e commerce businesses speed. If you've got people are adding, 10 things to the basket, like a, like AB two B site, the speed just be to quite important. But like the average lifetime customer value, so the amount of times people shop online in a year in a typical e-commerce business is 1.2 times a year.

It's like they're not coming to the site that often, like they're only buying 1.2 times in a year. Yeah. For them, they're not buying because the website's fast. They're buying because. They believe that, we've convinced them that there's our abilities there, that we've removed their anxiety, we've positioned the [00:13:00] brand and actually believe that we're going to, we're actually going to get the product to us, that we want.

And, that's why they buy. And I always think, going back to the analogy of e commerce, it is all about people. And if you're looking at your Google Analytics and you're looking at your sessions, like that's people. Okay. Apart from a bot, let's not talk about bots, but let, the sessions, it's people, isn't it?

It's actually people coming in. And I always say. Imagine if your e commerce store was a physical shop on the high street and just close your eyes for a minute and just go imagine if someone, if I could see people coming into the shop and I might get people who, go over to a, a bunch of shelves and put something in the basket and then drop the basket on the floor and walk out.

You could see this happening and then maybe some people would would go over to the till and they're about to buy and then they just leave the basket on the floor and then run out of the shop, or there was some people that were just about to put the credit card on the contact list and they just abandoned and then you end up like with all [00:14:00] these empty baskets all over the shop and you'd have some people that had come in the shop and just walk out the door and it like, this is.

This is how we break down the conversion rate, because it's like how many people add to basket? On average, it's about 10 percent should add to basket. And then of those people that add to basket, about 50 percent of them should go to the checkout. Yeah. And then about 85 percent of them who go to the checkout should actually buy.

So if you think about, because if someone says to you, oh, get your conversion rate high, you just need to get your conversion rate high. It's it's completely pointless. It's like saying, be more successful, just sell more stuff. It's It's

really irritating. So you've got to break it down to those things. And I think, what we often find as well is that in fact, true story, there's a business in Manchester, a fashion econ brand. That we're doing, we're pretty big, doing about 20 million and they wanted to improve their, they thought [00:15:00] to improve their conversion rate, they'd improve the checkout.

Let's improve the checkout. And they were obsessed over it, it took them about six months and spent a lot of money and time trying to make their checkout really slick and, roll it out. After six months of absolute blood, sweat and tears, and nothing happened, like no, nothing happened.

There was no improvement to checkout whatsoever, no improvement to conversion rate, like the drop off was identical, there was no change at all. And when you look back and you go, obviously there wasn't going to be any change, because their checkout to order stats. Was already at 92% and the average is 84.

So you're like, you're already way higher than average. But guess what's low? That like their add to basket stack was less than 4%. So they've got less than 4% of people running to basket. And you're like what? That's why you should spend your time. Yeah. At which then they did subsequently did spend the time and, they, they put a little bit of effort in there and they got the ad [00:16:00] to basket up to about 6%, which was like revolutionary.

They massively increased the conversion rate and I think they added like a couple of million quid, just by, and if they'd started looking at the how many ad to basket, how many go from basket to checkout and they looked, they see where the opportunity is and it's.

Simple stuff like that, once you figure, once you understand that, you go, oh that makes sense, why are we faffing around, and the same thing about if it was a physical store, if you had a physical shop, you'd be like faffing around with the wallpaper behind the checkout.

Because, you think that's going to make people check out better. Actually, it'd be far better to look at the fact that you, no one can find your bloody products in the first place. You No,

Matt Edmundson: this is all good stuff. And I'm busy taking notes in cause I, all very helpful.

What sort of things then if we go through this, going back to the example of the company, their add to basket rate was 4%. Work on that. They increased it by 50%, 6%.[00:17:00] What sort of things would, did they do, or would you recommend people do to it? If they're struggling there, how do we increase our

Ian Hammersley: add to basket rate?

Yeah. So that particular business actually was very. tyPical of a lot of e-com businesses now that, if you break it down, so their add to basket was 4%. So that, so for them, we'd probably say, the average order value was about 80 pounds. Something like that.

Yeah. So we'd say, okay, let's try and get your ba add to basket up. Let's try and really focus on it. So somebody like that, maybe about 8% and basically. Once you, if your ad basket is low, you have to look at where they're landing. So now the average amount of people that land on the product page, about 60 percent of a normal e com business land on the product page.

So they don't go to the home, like 20 percent is home, 20 percent is category. And then 60 percent is product, so normally, and so the product page is the new landing page. And then you [00:18:00] look at the fact that, how much was mobile, how much was desktop, and this particular business is 75 percent was mobile, and so you're like, okay, so they're all landing on the product page, and they're all on mobile, And so you that's where we need to start.

And then you look at what are the most popular products? And there's no, the 80 20 rule, like there's always the best sellers. And you go these are the products they're landing on. So you then start to know exactly where they're landing. What device that they're on and obviously then you optimize that because you can't do everything You know that in this particular business had I think go thousand or two products a couple of thousand products So you're like actually the way where we should optimize is where we're spending the money like they know And the reason why the landing on the product page on mobiles because that's where they're at the ants Oh, that's where the customers were.

Cause it was, they're looking at their own Google shopping and on Facebook product ads and all meta products. You Facebook when we looked at it, but you get a good idea. And basically the next thing to look at [00:19:00] was that their bounce rate was really high. People are landing on the product page on the mobile and the bounce rate was like 80 about 85%.

Yeah Now the average bounce rate for a product page should be less than 60%. So this particular business, how do they bounce rate at 80? And so there's the other, benchmark is if the bounce rate for the homepage should be less than 25 bounce rate for a collection or category page should be less than 50 and the bounce rate for a product page should be less than 60.

So you go well normally when the ad basket is low, it's cause there's a bounce rate problem. So you go okay, if I get the bounce rate. Lower, we are naturally, we go, we should get an increase anti basket and if the ante basket's higher, we should get an increase of conversion rate. And if the conversion rate's higher, we should get an increase of roas.

Which means we could then pull the traffic lever again. So it's just, it's following the route up rather than having this [00:20:00] generic, let's do everything. 'cause essentially in Ecomms, I think if you do everything, you don't do anything. Yeah. Because it's just waste of time. Often, and it can be expensive.

So essentially with that particular business. It's, it was product page mobile and what you're really doing then is you're looking at okay, are we positioning the business correctly? Do they, do people know who we are? Do we pass the busy restaurant test, which is something that Mark and I came up with, which was the positioning.

And sometimes people put their positioning on the homepage, like where the UK is leading such and such with, 50, 000 amazing reviews and then they don't put that on the product page. Then no one ever sees it because they're landing on the product page. So there's and the Busy Restaurant Test.

I'll just tell you a story really quick. Go for it. If you, if I may, you don't want, don't wanna go down too many rabbit holes and you have to bring me back, Matt, and problems with you and me. We'll just end up chatting here for days. But the busy restaurant test is the idea that, let's say you are in a, someone like Paris or London [00:21:00] or something and you're with your partner and you're hungry, you are really hungry and you are walking down the high street and you need to find somewhere to eat quickly.

And two restaurants. And one, one restaurant is nicely full, nicely busy, and the other restaurant is completely empty. And you say which restaurant do you want to eat in? And you say I'll go to the busy one. Why? Because there's people in it. So there's evidence that it must be good.

And you're like, at this point, you don't even know if the food's any good. You can't even see the food. You can't even see the menu, but people in it and you go it must be good. And there's loads of.

There's a like nanosecond of time where people make the decision whether or not they should stay, should stick around, and am I going to find what I want in this e commerce store? Should I bother to invest my time here? Cause the overwhelming temptation is to go back into Google or Instagram or wherever the [00:22:00] hell you work and try and find it from somewhere else, cause you can, it's not like being in a...

A town on the high street where, you're the only, shop that sells hammers in this town. Yeah. And that's where like the e coms change and I think, you have to position it because you, you might be one of 300 shops in the town selling the same hammer or whatever you're selling, online is, it's like walking into the Trafford set.

We have a. The shopping, big shopping mall near me in Manchester called the Trafford Centre, there's about 300 shops in there. And I always say to people, it's imagine if you walked into the Trafford Centre and there's 300 shops in there, all selling the same stuff that you're selling. And you're like, as a customer, where, why would you buy from you?

How are you going to position people to get to come in and buy and that's a really difficult question for a lot of econ businesses because they often say things like, Oh we just got great customer service. We're a family business, we've got great customer service, we really look after your customers.

And [00:23:00] then you go to the website and you're like there's no evidence you are what you say you are. Like, there's nothing, you're not even saying that. And things like trust and credibility is a big one, and the only way to demonstrate trust and credibility is to prove it, to actually show it.

You can't say, we're great. You have to show. Evidence of trust from customers and credibility often from a third party. Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm rambling a lot now. No,

Matt Edmundson: it's good. It's good. I'm curious, as you're talking, who do you think is doing this well at the moment? Positioning their brand well, showing that sort of trusted credibility that you're talking about.

Ian Hammersley: Yeah, there's a couple of examples that I always throw out there. One of them, one of them is Spoke London, so there's a business called Spoke London, it's a UK business, Southern Men's Chinos and what we often find is that the positioning of an e com business. It should be based on two things, like what people want and what they don't want.

[00:24:00] And the way to find this, so that spoke London, if you're buying, they sell men's trousers online, right? If you've, if you ever bought trousers online, particularly trousers, and for particularly for men, but the thing that we... One is we want it to fit like we're anxious about for what happens doesn't fit me.

Yeah. Like that, that's what we're really bothered about. So their positioning is they're focused on the biggest pain or anxiety when you're buying something online, trousers which is fit, but will it fit me? And then that whole strap line is the best we know fit no one else, we've got over 400 custom fit.

And so that's their positioning. And then they back that up with a quote from the Telegraph saying, the, the ultimate go to best fitting Chino we've ever tried. So they've got that third party and then their reviews from their customers are all talking about fit. Oh [00:25:00] my God, I never thought I'd find a pair of Chinos that would fit me as well.

And and it just repeats it. So they've positioned it on fit. And then they're backing it up with third party credibility and evidence from customers. And to be honest, like 50 percent of e commerce is about, it's about getting that yeah. Particularly now. And they did it. And each industry in e com, there's always a different like anxiety.

Take something like gifting. The gifting isn't obviously about fit, but the gifting anxiety is, will it arrive on time for the event? Like for the birthday, is it going to arrive? So and then the second one is well, what happens if they don't like it? And so and then you go well Then we know that we know what they're bothered about because we can see it in the because that's what the negative reviews are You always we always look at we do something called the anxiety test.

Yeah, you look at the reviews. That's brilliant all your competitors Like what people love about them and they hate about them. It's all online go on Trustpilot no one does this we like we love doing it. We [00:26:00] love doing it. I'm with you

Matt Edmundson: I spend a lot of time looking at reviews from other sites here

Ian Hammersley: It's so good, and then essentially you go back, like gifting, and you say are we addressing the biggest anxieties?

Which is, will it arrive on time, and what happens if they don't like it? And often the answer is no. You're not saying when it's going to arrive, guaranteed delivery, next day, or super fast dispatch, or, guaranteed next day delivery, in stock you don't even say if it's in stock sometimes.

And then the second one is, what happens if they don't like it? You just put, 60 day returns don't put a bloody 14 day, or even a third, it's not enough. You buy a gift for somebody, you want an extended return, nobody returns gifts anyway, so it's like free money. So you have to put this, and you have to put it in the place that people see it you wouldn't put it in the terms and conditions, you've got to put it next to the after baskets so people can actually see it.

And once you do that review mining. Your positioning becomes quite clear and, the job to be done for gifting is [00:27:00] the emotional reaction that your gift recipient is going to receive. So if I gave you a gift, I'm going to be like, oh my god, Matt's going to love this. I can't wait to see his face.

When I give it to them, that's the job to be done. That's what I'm buying. And the marketing then. On, on, on social should technically be little videos of people go, Oh my God, this is amazing. Thank you so much. Cause that's the job to be done. So it's on, it's just understanding I think psychologically where people are when they're starting that decision and what they want and we've done loads of bloody, work around if it's a problem, like if you're selling a, like a replacement fridge It's very different to selling a beautiful cashmere scarf of 500 pounds.

Isn't it different? The needs are different, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. So you have to, is it desirability, is it problem solving? Is it convincibility? But it's, to be honest, it's the same method. [00:28:00] It's just you have to understand psychologically what, what doubt they want, which the anxieties, how can we get rid of all those anxieties and what do they want, which is desirability or preventability, and then you back it up with.

With evidence that we've done it. Ah, great.

Matt Edmundson: And everyone will be checking out Spoke London now. I've actually been on their website and they send me, or they used to send me, I've not sent me, maybe because I've moved actually, I told them my new address, but they send those little well done, mini catalogue type things, the little paper things, which are quite lovely.

So I know the site that you mean, and yeah I fully appreciate, it's a great example. Were you involved with that, or did you just think it's a good example? No,

Ian Hammersley: no, we, no, I'd to say, I think we did have a chat with them once, but, they're, like most of our great ideas, we just.

We see somebody's doing a good job and we then we go, oh, that was clever. I like that.

Matt Edmundson: I like that. We'll that a lot. Yeah. We do that a lot. And like you, I do a lot of mining through reviews. Not only our [00:29:00] reviews, but the reviews of competitors, the reviews of similar products which might not even be a direct competitor and you're always looking for the common statements or the common questions that people have, or the common, this solved this problem, that sort of information, aren't you?

And it's, I'm always surprised at how many people don't do it, but it is just

Ian Hammersley: a gold mine And I think I actually call it like the gold nuggets of e commerce because, you always find... These really great reviews. So you know, we did it for a big cookware retailer in the UK, one of the biggest and we were looking at saucepans and like they're trying to, they're trying to sell, more saucepans and there was a non stick saucepan and you look at the, and it's like when I say this, it's so obvious, but like until you look at the reviews what they're good.

And we, we looked at I mean we're nerds, we looked at thousands, one of the reviews. The good reviews is, it says things [00:30:00] like, it's truly non stick. And it said, there was another one that said, It's so easy to clean, even my teenage son couldn't do it. You're like, there's

Matt Edmundson: my box in Strathlane.

Ian Hammersley: That's it! That's the job to be done, that's what you want. The opposite is is, basically, it's hard to clean and let it work. It was a pain. And so you know what people want, so you exactly, you know how to position it and then you know what to back it up. So yeah, it's like a gift.

Lots of people don't do it, which is a mistake in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Now like you, I can't begin to tell you how many headlines I've used because it's a comment written in someone's review. Yeah. And you just think, even ChatGPT couldn't have come up with that, it's just, it's a beautiful thing.

And so yeah, we, I like that, even my teenage son could clean it. How to sell out your saucepan range, just put that in the...

Ian Hammersley: It's just, and once you see those reviews, you just know, ah, that's it. And actually the... We often find that people will install the latest Trustpilot widget [00:31:00] or whatever widget, review widget, and they'll just plonk it on and go, Oh, there you go, I've put my reviews on.

And it's no, because what problem is when you just plonk on the a generic review engine that's pulling through the latest reviews. You end up getting reviews on there that have nothing to do with the job to be done or anxiety. And, for example, for the cookware brand, we would know, for that saucepan, that people really want to see evidence that it's truly non stick, and that's what they're bothered about.

So if the reviews come through and they go, oh, it arrived next day... People aren't buying the source because it arrives the next day. We often like to cherry pick the reviews and highlight them. And bring them out. And then, that's what you put in your Instagram, Facebook ads, you put in your welcome series, all your emails, that's what you put on the website, all over the place.

You're starting to bring that story and tell that story on throughout everything. And it's, I don't know that, [00:32:00] this is, I think it's 50 percent of it is. It's about finding the right positioning and then backing it up with trust and credibility.

Matt Edmundson: It is because I like, what you're in effect doing is you're talking.

A language that matters to the customer in a way that they understand on you and this again goes back to the earlier comment of e commerce is about old school principles using in effect modern technology as a form of delivery. It's still the same thing. What matters to your client? Talk in a way that matters to them and and you'll be amazed at just doing that simple thing.

It's it's quite an incredible thing. What's your just on a slight tangent here, Ian since we're talking about reviews, how let's say I'm a econ business just starting out. My reviews aren't great in terms of numbers. What sort of things can I do to go and get more reviews, do

Ian Hammersley: you think?

Yeah, I think the first thing to note is actually, [00:33:00] the biggest thing you have to demonstrate with e commerce is really evidence that you can, back up your claims. And sometimes the worst thing you can do is actually put, we've got ten reviews, or, and I always say anything, actually anything less than a thousand.

You know what, in some respects it can do more harm if you've got the widget on there, the Trustpilot widget that says, hey, yeah, we've got 200 reviews, rated, and it actually makes you look like you're, selling from your bedroom sometimes. You look, you don't, you look. So I actually say hide, you're better off hiding your, your kind of small review count.

And you're better off, coming up with better positioning around, how many products you've sold or how many customers you've had or how long you've been trading. Yeah. Because it just looks a lot more impressive and I really don't buy the. obViously it depends on who you are and what you're selling, but [00:34:00] generally, people are sceptical and, people don't know because when you're on, when you're in, when you're buying on the high street or in a supermarket, shopping arcade, you can see the shop, right?

You know that it's there, it's credible. When you're online, people are much more sceptical about who the hell are these guys? Are they a guy in his bedroom? Are they a big mash and mash? And people don't want to feel that they're going to be let down.

Yeah, generally, and obviously to try to get more reviews, really, you have to ask for it, we have, some industries tend to get, naturally, more reviews, we're working with a jigsaw company at the moment, and And they're selling jigsaws to probably slightly older demographics.

And I think when they email them and say, can you give us a review? I think they go this is part of the process. I'm like, I've got to do this. So they get a little like. Over I think one's got 40, 000 reviews on Trustpilot, and we're like, holy God, how did you get that? And so I just asked for it, whereas in other [00:35:00] industries, the same thing doesn't work quite as well.

They're not bothered. Yeah but it obviously does over time, it does it does grow. Yeah. One, one, one little trick actually, just in the perspective of us completely learning all the time, whenever we're working with an e com brand. It's always something you learn and one did it the other day and they said, Oh before we send the, the review on Trustpilot or wherever it, whatever review engine it was we email them personally and we say, Hey, welcome to our brand.

We're so proud. We're, we are, we're a family business, we really want you to have a great experience. So if there's anything that you're not. Entirely happy with, please let us know and we'll put it right. And they did a video of them and I think like one of them, like the, she's holding like the, she's at home.

Yeah. She's holding a baby. And there's and they get so many emails back saying I was going to give you a one star review because it the, the postman left it on the, with the doorstep, whatever. But actually, I'll reach out to you and then [00:36:00] that massively helped them get the the five star like rather than negative reviews because sometimes you can get the odd negative review and it's, it is as an owner, it's quite soul destroying, isn't it?

Yeah, you

Matt Edmundson: take it quite personally sometimes. No, you do. I remember with with Trustpilot when we were, we don't use Trustpilot anymore, but when we were, one of the problems that we found was again, it came down to sequencing with the emails, I think in some respects, but one of the problems we found was people treated Trustpilot like a customer service thing.

So it's my order's not arrived yet, so I'm going to give you a one star review rather than going to customer service. Where's my order? Do to figure, it's just I think those, how we position those reviews, how we, the sequence in which we ask them is actually quite important. Because I think people do start to think, say things on there, which is that's actually a customer service issue.

That's not a review issue. A [00:37:00] review issue is the product was crap, or the product was great or a review issue is not, oh I've not got my tracking number yet. It's just, it's an interesting one, isn't it?

Ian Hammersley: It is unfair. I think the only thing really you can do if you get negative reviews, I agree with you completely about the sequencing, is actually to drown the negative in positive.

And sometimes you'll find facebook, you'll have some negative reviews on Google or Facebook and, you want to just get them above four because, people will find a way to, to make a comment, a decision. And you really just have to try and drown them out and forget about them actually, and not take them too seriously.

The problem is sometimes, obviously we're told as marketers, yes, you have to listen to your customers, but actually, you don't want to listen to possibly Mrs. Miggings who's saying that, the website was hard to use and you end up putting like a big bloody, tick box on the, the, on the checkout that says, Do you accept that we may never, if you listen to your customer services to, in some businesses have [00:38:00] actually moved the e com directors away from the customer service team because they're getting really depressed listening to the customer, and all I'm saying is that obviously we have to listen to our customers, we need to make the website better and answer questions, but the negative customers have a disproportionately loud voice.

Yes they do. And it stops you doing. Things that are going to encourage growth. Your recruitment offer, your retention offer, you just have to accept that they're going to be some people that that moan and, but it's, you might've had a thousand customers that are really happy and one that's then given you a, a negative review and then it's like whole businesses like change their entire strategy of one damn review and you're like, why are you doing why would

Matt Edmundson: you do that?

Yeah. Yeah. No it's I'm with you on that. I think it's one of those things where you, especially if you care about your business and I appreciate this is not true of everybody, but if you care [00:39:00] deeply about the business you do have a tendency to take those negative reviews to heart and you take them personally.

And I think very simply, you just look at the review and go, is there honestly anything that we can learn from this? Yes or no. Thank you. And how can we reach out to this person, offline, not in a in a commentary underneath, this sort of whole conversation plays out in the review, but how do we reach out to them and just talk to these people and just see what's actually going on before we make any crazy decisions,

Ian Hammersley: yeah, like putting check boxes on the basket page and things like that.

Matt Edmundson: Or just making your terms and conditions so convoluted. That was always something that bothered me a little bit, whenever you call a company up and they go, yeah, but our terms and conditions clearly state. The terms and conditions which I never read before.

It's not our fault, is it? And you yeah, I just wanted you to act like a normal human being, if I'm honest with you. But apparently you can't cause you've wangled your way out of that and your terms and conditions. And it's. Yeah, I [00:40:00] feel like I'm going to get on my soapbox in a minute, Ian, so I probably should avoid it.

We

Ian Hammersley: have our own e comm brands as well, and we always say, look, just, Just give them a, don't even worry about it, just give them a refund, obviously it depends on your costs and your margins, etc, but generally, just let it go. Just put it down to experience as part of the, the whole, all that ethos of growing an e com, like going back to the beta mode that's interesting, and, just generally try and stay to the course and keep going. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: No I'm with you. I'm totally with you. Listen, Ian, I'm aware of time and we're just, we are just losing it here. Tell me a little bit about the book. What I was fascinated with.

'cause Chloe's is also, if you're not aware, they're listening. Chloe does an e-Commerce podcast, Chloe Thomas. whIch is also worth checking out, but Chloe's also written a book and I remember sitting down with Chloe going, what on earth possessed you to write a [00:41:00] book? Why would you do that?

So I'm going to ask you the same question Ian why and what was that whole journey like?

Ian Hammersley: So the story behind the book, essentially my brother and I we've been in e commerce for, we're like, we're veterans now. We're like over 25 years.

And. I think going back, quite early on and our focus really has been on answering a couple of questions, like two basic questions of e commerce, which is why some e commerce businesses scale and some don't like that. That was the, that was, and that still is the question that we set ourselves every day as we continue to go.

And the book went into that really what are the. What are the successful things that e commerce businesses are doing that are growing and what are the ones that are stuck or just can't grow, is it, what were they doing, like what was consistent about both groups and that sort of, that was a bit of an obsession and it came down to some basic principles which we wrote about in the book and yeah, I [00:42:00] think really we wrote the book probably as A bit of fun really, didn't think it would be, anyone would read you think what you're talking about, internally is common sense, but it's only because you've been doing it every day.

You realize actually it's not, but the book was quite a cathartic exercise of it. And it really, it goes through the main KPIs that we look at when we're running our own e com brands and we, Mark and I, we're probably looking at four or five e com. We do analytics a day, and we have done for over 20 years, and through sheer, certainly no intelligence, but through sheer exposure, you get a very, like an unrivaled exposure to thousands, and you then get this sort of, this instinctive, and the book really talks about this, and I think the first one is really the maths, which is, which.

unFortunately we can't get away with it. I was, I spoke in London the other week and at an [00:43:00] event and I told a story that I was practicing for this speech and I turned to my, I've got three daughters and I turned to my daughters and I said, it's all about the mass.

And they're like, no it can't be about the mass, take it back. And I was like this is a big part of in econ business. It was about that, and when we looked at the ones that were scaling, and the ones that were getting stuck, a lot of them had the maths on their side, so when I say the maths, like we're really talking about margin, life to customer value And, they had it.

And you couldn't call it from the outside. I think as an e com professional, if you look at two e com brands, and you go that looks really slick, like really good, like beautiful, really well executed, great team, great marketing, great positioning, really nice. And the other one over here, perhaps a little bit rough and ready.

And, but you couldn't, you cannot on that basis see which one's going to scale, like you can't, you have to go inside and the numbers are the key. So [00:44:00] story we talk about in the book is there's two, the one on the left that looks super slick, that you think is going to scale, actually has low margin.

Like 30 percent margin, which is pretty tight an average order value of 30 and a lifetime customer value of one. It's not like it's a one gift, one product gift company. And you're like that's difficult because you've got so little room to play with when it comes to advertising, it's so hard to try to, cause you basically, we're at the mercy of.

The Gorillas, which are Google and Meta, like they're the ones that we've got to play. We can't say to Google we're only want to give you 50p for a convert. They are literally going to dictate how much, you, they will allow you to recruit a customer for. So we've got to work with them. And the other side, that other one is a supplement type.

Business of collagen type business and they've got margin of 60 percent Average order value of 50 and people buy 6 times a year, so over a year [00:45:00] That customers worth, what, that's 200 or 300, so you can see how much easier it is to scale that one because you can really aggressively pull that traffic leaver and go for a very low New Customer ROAS.

Whereas the one on the left, that gifting company, you're like, oh my, it's so difficult. Yeah, super tough. Super tough. So the maths, we talk about the maths it's basically the KPIs that we go through when we're running our own business. Like the, it wouldn't, and we said unexpected KPIs, but they're not that unexpected.

The, the fairly logical ones, but it's a lot of it's telling stories of, of how we've. How we've, KPIs, like how you prove that, the antibasket rate and bounce rate and how it all comes together. But we know, at the day, we wrote the book because we enjoyed writing it, didn't really think it would be a bestseller, but it, shock, horror, people want to hear two, two, two boys from Stoke chatting about...

Econ. [00:46:00]

Matt Edmundson: I'm always amazed how many people listen to our this podcast. I'm a boy from Derby, so not just down the road. Ah, we're pretty close. And I'm not in Derby now, but you do think, yeah, people actually are really interested in this stuff, which is always quite humbling. It's but it's lovely.

So the book is called The Ultimate Guide to E Commerce Growth, Seven Unexpected KPIs to Scale an E Commerce Shop to 10, 000, 000 Plus. Do you I'm just looking at the picture on your website here. Do you change the cover for the U. S. market? So 10, 000, 000 plus? Or do you just leave the little pound symbol

Ian Hammersley: in?

a Sensible company would, yes.

I'd be lying if we were that attentive. Fair enough. That's brilliant. The answer is no. I'll tell you what's funny about the American market UK.

It might be doing [00:47:00] like a couple of million, something like that. In America, that little small niche, is like 10 million and beyond. And just the market is so much bigger, the potential, it's hard, it's a competitive market, it's harder to crack but boy, if you could actually get in and start going, getting some of that market in America, it's a, it's huge.

We have, we had a one, one. We were talking to the other day and he's selling like the ends of hose pipe, like hose pipe ends okay, hoses and little ends, and you think, oh, this is a tiny, in the UK, it would be like, I don't know, maybe 600, 000 pound turnover, maybe that, you 5 million and his nearest competitor, this is purely online, nearest competitor online is doing 60 million and the next one is doing 100 million online, selling these little ends of these.

These hosepipes, I'm going to whoa,

Matt Edmundson: where do I buy those from?

I'm going to sell those. [00:48:00] No, it's interesting what you say about the States. Our first, our beauty business, which we sold, we weren't allowed to sell to the states. We only had, we were only allowed to sell in Europe terms and conditions of the suppliers. We can talk about that another day.

But our current side at the moment our supplement brand, we distribute to the states and it is a massive market for us now. Grown at a huge rate and it's. It's interesting. Australia is also a really interesting market, very up and coming, as is New Zealand, where Brother Mark is.

There's only, the problem is in

Ian Hammersley: New Zealand, there's only... It's only four people, yeah,

Matt Edmundson: 300, 000 sheep, yeah,

Ian Hammersley: it's like we're laughing because in New Zealand, in order to have a big Econ brand in New Zealand, you literally have to get the entire New Zealand population to buy from you, yes you do, because there's not enough, there's not enough people, so it, but likewise actually competition is a lot less, like there isn't as many people there because of the [00:49:00] consumers, there's

Matt Edmundson: not many.

Very true. It is an interesting place for, we do a lot of business in New Zealand to be fair. Which is great. But no, interesting interesting. Listen Ian, I know we could, we're just getting warmed up. But if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect, find out more about you, what you guys are doing the podcast, the book, the, cause you guys do a membership type thing as well.

Where do people go find out more about that?

Ian Hammersley: Yeah, the route most people find us through is either the masses of Facebook advertising that we ram down people's throats, though essentially if you Google Hammersley Brothers you'll see us in various forms and we've got the, we've got the site.

The podcast is a, is a good gentle place to, to listen to us. But the Hammersley Brothers website is where we go. And essentially you can either, you can join one of the courses there and there's various different courses, trying to, some of them trying to get to different levels essentially get, get to 2 million, get to get [00:50:00] beyond that.

There's one that gets to 50k a month. Trying to focus on the right levels. But yeah, Hammersleybrothers. com is probably the best place

Matt Edmundson: to go. Fantastic. Fantastic. We will of course link to that in the show notes as well, which if you're subscribed to the newsletter, we'll be coming their way to your inbox.

Otherwise, sign up to the newsletter and we'll send it to you automatically. Mark, listen. Mark, Ian, I was thinking of your brother in New Zealand thank you so much for coming on the show, Matt, and genuinely loved the conversation, loved your insight, loved the down to earth Stoke manner that's quite nice, very refreshing, and yeah, I appreciate Matt, honestly, genuinely loved it, and we'll have to do it again.

Ian Hammersley: Yeah. Thanks, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: It's great. Yes. Great. Thank you for coming on. So what a great conversation. Huge thanks again to Ian for joining me today. Also a big shout out to today's show's sponsor, the e commerce cohort. Remember to check out the e commerce cohort at ecommercecohort. com and be sure to follow the e commerce [00:51:00] podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them.

Any of them. No. And of course, if no one has told you yet today, let me be the first person to tell you, you are awesome. Yes, you are. created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Ian's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. The e commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media.

You can find our entire archive of episodes. on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is the wonderful Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website, ecommercepodcast.

net. So that's it from me. That's it from Ian. Thank you so much for joining us. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.