What to Expect From a COVID Christmas

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well hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson this is a show all about
how to grow your own online business yeah we deep dive into the topic of e-commerce
and every week i get the amazing privilege of talking to people from literally the whole world of e-commerce
and i get to ask them all kinds of questions about what they know and how it's going to help us develop
our own online businesses now historically we have had one guest per show
so and we just deep dive right we just go into big old interviews with the guests but because it's christmas
we wanted to do something a little bit different and we also wanted to connect with guests that had been on the show before so we thought let's do some
mash-up episodes so we basically reached out to all of the guests we invited them back onto the
show to talk about christmas and new year's and their ideas and tips on how to do ecommerce better
so this is our second mashup episode if you haven't done so already make sure
you check out the first one uh the first mashup episode which is actually episode number of the show
you can you can see that at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash but that was last week's show oh yes
we had some great guests didn't we in last week's show and today is no exception uh in today's
show we've got some more guests lined up we've got ian moyes uh and paulie walsh who are
going to be talking us through what to expect for our covet christmas and how to be better prepared
for our own online businesses what the pandemic means at christmas time and how we can adapt and adjust
accordingly in our own e-commerce businesses all fantastic stuff coming up oh yes and of course all of the notes from
today's show will be available as a free download on our website just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash let me say that again and get it right this time ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
number and you can download those no problem now without further ado let's
get started with our very first guest today which is ian moyes now ian is the tech sales leader and
Ian Moyse
social influencer oh yes he is the man that is true and he was back on the podcast way back in episode
as we talked about the seven steps to build your personal brand it was a great show even if i do say so
myself and so i was super pleased to catch it with uh with ian and so here's an excerpt from my
conversation with ian moyes um so christmas is approaching what are some of the things that you
think um that business owners or e-commerce website owners need to change or need to
put in place as we head towards christmas what are some of your christmas tips well i i think they're very different
this year in in than they would have been in other years for obvious reasons
and one of the things that i'm anticipating is is if you if you don't have a strong
online presence depending what your product or service is it's going to impact you even more because think about the high street right now
bricks and mortar it's been struggling anyway typically and i'll probably get the stats slightly wrong but typically
i always hear in the october to december period they do depending on the store percent of
their years revenue yeah in that period and they've just had a lockdown imposed on them right so that's number
one they just had a big chunk of it taken out of it and the customer has had the opportunity to
buy via that route and that's all i would suggest that's the route where and this is the time of year often when
you do yeah you'll do online but people like to go out and the festivities and experience the
festivities take the kids do the lights do a bit of a lunch so so the shops get a lot of football
and you want to browse right it's browsing as opposed to purchasing a specific item
that you've already selected is very different in the real world and i think the challenge is even coming out of this
if if we all believe we will come out of it in december will we have any sort of normality how many people
are gonna queue up outside a bricks and mortar store yeah waiting for what is it gonna be is it
gonna be minutes or minutes to get in because they can't allow the crowds in
and how many stores are you going to cue at before you decide i've had enough of this yeah this isn't this because normally
it's a fun experience it's a family experience right you get out yeah if you go out with your partner you do take the kids and it it's the experience
piece the experience has been taken away regardless if we come out of lockdown it's gone yeah based on the distancing
will still be there for sure so i would suggest you've got to pivot
right now and i've seen this i've been in discussion with some businesses who are rapidly trying to figure out how to adjust their
business in panic mode because they hadn't who thought it was going to go on to this when we last spoke wow yeah you just didn't know did you everyone
thought it'd be over by easter yeah and then i think people what they did is put a tactical fix in place and
and then thought and looked at how do we mitigate how do we use furlough how do we use what there is to get through this period with a vision
of we'll come out of it yeah so a lot of people have not done the transformation they needed to do
because it's painful and expensive i think what they thought is we'll hedge our bets we'll hedge our bets that we can get
through three or four months and we don't need to do this so let's just tactically do it and now what i've
witnessed is people having a different discussion which is the pain is too great i wish we'd done it before but now we
have to do it or we won't survive and it's not easy digital transformation is a great buzzword but it is hard
to do it's hard to pivot a business but that's that would be the advice is
focus now on absolutely taking on board you have to pivot you have to find a way
and not hedging your vets again because we don't know if we're going to lock down and we'll also have a third lockdown and it will go through to
january february you know we've heard the government talking around well we we we're hoping we should have some
normality by the spring yeah because we're actually having a bit did he say spring yeah
exactly you've got to assume now the worst i think and deal with it and not have
you know don't use hope as a strategy because it isn't a good one yeah i hope it's never a good business strategy is it
never a good business strategy so what do you think some of the um so building a digital presence building a your digital presence people
you know rapidly trying to pivot right now what do you think of some of the key um platforms maybe key areas that people
need to look at in this uh what was the buzzword digital transformation where where do you think people should go
first well i think the first thing is don't get oversold on trying to ball the ocean and become the
amazon type platform because it ain't easy and ain't cheap i think identify
what is minimal viable product what is minimal viable that you can pivot to to get business
and serve customers because yes the customer might argue you might think they want us but they're gonna
they want us to be perfection and have that amazon type store and all that well right now you're not
gonna get there so how do you pivot in a way that means the minimal work towards where you need
to be but what gets you up and running you know think of restaurants there you've had to pivot and go we need
to do deliveries move quick we can still cook but look at the basics what can you do in the nature
of your service or product that can continue driving revenue not the level it was at before
don't don't suddenly think oh my god we've got to achieve that what can you achieve and fight for it
would be my advice and don't get sold into any marketeers suddenly telling you
give us all this money and we'll do all this wondrous stuff because you haven't got it great long-term thing and have a look
at it but i think there's there's gonna be a lot of people around promising the world of we can build your wondrous
e-commerce website and but you need to give us all this gazillion dollars and
what can you get away with is it right now what can you get away with that your customers will put up with
to serve them because there's lots of high street ones i'm seeing like the cleaners etcetera figuring out right that you can't come
in the story counties but what we can do is we'll do we'll figure a way out we can drop off and deliver in a safe manner
yeah so so we can continue business what do we need to change that allows our customer to continue to engage with
us and what i've witnessed i don't know about you matt but i've seen a lot of people during this actually really embracing
local businesses it's been it's been fantastic it's one of the great things to come out of this i think is people are going let's buy
local yeah so people want to support you have you given the option to they're going to put up with stuff
and they're going to but if you just shut you're shut yeah no it's good and the other thing
that i've noticed and i don't know if you've seen it is i think in the minds of the customer
who is now buying online who would have gone into town for the lights and the coffee and the cake with the kids and
all that sort of stuff and one like you say there's a desire to buy local support local business because everyone's fed up with giving their cash
to amazon and the other thing is that i've noticed is there's a lot more grace from people
so you talk about the minimum viable product actually and that's okay right now because people
are willing to uh in the current circumstance they're like it doesn't need to be delivered tomorrow it's great
if it is but we understand that it might not be we understand that this might not work properly we understand that that
might not work properly and so there's a grace from the customer to to work with you more than i've i've
ever known uh because of covid yeah i think there's a pleasant surprise right i needed a locksmith
during the middle of code with one and my first thought was oh no i bet we can't get one i bet i bet
and they were responsive came out did a fantastic job and it was like we were over overly happy because we had a negative
expectation from the start we thought we're not going to solve this yeah and i think right now when you get
that happening and yes there to wear the mask and keep distanced and
a bit different but they came and they solved it where we expected we're not going to saw this we've had a number of
those experiences so i think make find a way that your customer can still engage with you
communicate with them that where how it's going to be different so they know what to expect and you're going to find people who are
still there people still need stuff right i i couldn't wait to lock smith for how many months i couldn't open the door and we'd have to go in the back
so there's still need for products and services the world hasn't stopped it's
just different yeah no it's very good advice very good advice so a big thanks to ian and if you would
like to connect with him uh or for free get a copy of the notes from my conversation with ian please
head on over to ecommerce podcast forward slash now before we bring in the next guest
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now my next guest is porig walsh he is a behavioral psychologist can you believe
Padraig Walsh
that uh and he has the most amazing hair if you're watching this on video you will know what i mean now pory was on the show in episode
number and we looked at how to use behavioral design to improve our own e-commerce
websites so get ready grab your notebooks as porg is gonna share some more amazing insights into
people's behavioral psychology at christmas time here's my conversation with paul rigg
how's things going my friend are you well things are all right things are all right we're back into a lockdown of sorts in
in dublin uh it hasn't really affected me that much um in terms of staying able to move
about and like for work and that um because yeah there's no crack there's no
crack at all there's no fun nah it's not fun no oh the pub shirt and stuff
all the pubs are shut all the restaurants and cafes are shut uh shops are closed non-essential retail
is closed which is a big one oh wow yeah so shopping centers are pretty pretty hit you know and uh
yeah that's just crazy isn't it i just i don't get it i don't some of the decisions have been
made i have to i don't get political but i just don't get it yeah yeah yeah it's a bit of a
sledgehammer to hammer in a nail kind of scenario um you know anyway say love you
i feel like breaking out into song now but you'd trust me you don't want that
because that would just be bad on on everyone's point of view yeah good yeah busy um
i'm not yeah crazy busy would we have um i won't bore you with all the details but in effect i have multiple companies
that i i run um mainly because i just can't help myself and so we're merging two of them
two the two of the key companies together at the moment uh which will hopefully simplify my life
a lot which is you know it's a beautiful thing um and so
uh life is very busy trying to sort of do that well um at the moment and
um it's it's a great challenge to have and i'm i'm super excited by it uh and so we're
like we're just having a conversation then actually um what do we call this new merged organization
and we're like because at the moment we're just calling it the and so
so yeah so we're like what do we call this thing i just don't know so we're we're having to think that through a little bit which is
what companies do so the one company is an e-commerce uh or
as a web agency that we have so we do a lot of um web design work and then the other company is more of an e-commerce
solution services company and so we do like fulfillment and all that sort of stuff for other
companies you know do their customer service and all kinds of weird wonderful things and so this when we started out these
two things had very clear separate identities and but as things have sort of evolved
they've kind of done this a lot um but at the same time as doing this
we've created some theminus kind of thinking um which doesn't help me because i kind of sits
piggy in the middle sometimes yeah and so i'm i i've managed to get all the stakeholders who
are involved in both companies to agree to a deal where we merge it all together where we pull together much more
and we're much clearer going forward so it means that our competitive edge if you like going
forward is much more okay if it's much clearer um and so yeah and also by merging you
reduce costs don't you there's there's all kinds of added benefits here as well yeah yeah i'm kind of on
the opposite end of it um since we were talking last sawd i had i have the academy the actualized
academy which which is tipping along grant uh and then i set myself
up so i'm really interested in behavioral economics and the stuff that we talked about
yeah um so i set up a company just because i had to anyway with the house and family and i've been working as a
sole trader so i created changeable behavior solutions so changeable which isn't which is nice and and i keep
that ticking around ticking over and i do a lot of my clinical work i'll do all my clinical work through
that but what has started to emerge is work that is
so if i give you a few examples so a lot of companies are working from home and they're saying we want some supports
that we can give to our staff um i have so i was like okay so working
from home habit-based behavioral change simple simple simple but at least there's a bit of meat to it it's not a
it's not a light a few reiki candles and away you go um so that was brad then there's a few
others like there was a a kind of a global onboarding banking uh company called fenergo that are that are
looking they were looking at similar stuff to what we were talking about for their sales staff how do they
map on the sales um strategies that they would use uh
in large negotiations how would they map that on to selling and they yeah so lots of stuff
like that like drink aware is the kind of drinks company our drinks uh public health
uh charity in ireland and they got in touch um to see what kind of behavior supports
could be there so that's changeable and then i have another psychiatrist that wants to
merge our clinical work together and we've set up another company for that so each of these are at the seedlings
stage um and i'm going i'd love if this is all under one umbrella but
i don't think it's at that point just yet so there's a lot of admin associated with that at the moment yeah
that's taking money yeah there is and sometimes you um i i've always found i don't know if this
is a right analogy pory but i've always found that actually if you plant a lot of seeds a few of those things will grow and um
and actually when they grow like the the web agency and the solutions company well they've
both grown plus i have my other e-commerce businesses over here right so they've both grown out of it and you
kind of think well that's cool now it's time to merge them together i think if i'd have tried to do that from the start
i don't think we'd be where we are yeah yeah i'm very much uh uh there will be some natural
attrition along the way you know some things will work some things won't work i'm not a fan of putting all my eggs
into to one basket and then if that fails everything is is uh is [ __ ] you know
i think it's a technical i think that's a technical term yeah [Laughter]
but there's yes it's like you read my mind yeah so that's that's where i'm at uh
hopefully in a few years trying getting to the point where they merge or things consolidate um
anyway yeah yeah it sounds exciting it sounds like you're on the verge of you know some good stuff it's just
like you say whenever you start something new you've always got that excitement but you've always got that nightmare of
administration and um and this is where um for whatever it's worth
it gets somebody who is good at that involved um we we've done that you know we have a
lady called michelle who um she's one of the key people one of the key sort of directors in the new merge
company there's going to be three directors me and michelle is one of them absolute legend of that kind of stuff um
and i i learned very early on actually i just don't enjoy it and if i don't enjoy it i'm not i'm not
gonna do it well uh and i'm gonna kind of bundle my way through it so um good bookkeeper good accountant good
lawyer you know all that sort of stuff is wow
for me it's super important i'm so very grateful for those guys you know
and um yeah no i wouldn't want to do it all i wouldn't want to i would we've just
recently done this thing where we've applied a client came to me because we do these mastermind groups right on e-commerce
where you you come in and mastermind groups i think are really interesting really intrigued me um and you basically charge people to be
in this group you've got to have skin in the game they come along we'll have conversations around
e-commerce and there's accountability and it works quite well and one client in liverpool said i want to
join the mastermind group but i've not got all the cash that you know you're charging for it um but i can get funding from liverpool
city council through european money where they will pay two-thirds
i think it's two-thirds it's quite a bit of the fee right so they pay up to two-thirds of it so it's a significant
chunk and so um she said do you mind if we do it that way and i'm like well okay
this could be an interesting thing i'll talk to liverpool city council because it gives me access to more people in liverpool to maybe do something with oh
awesome okay and um so we went through that application process
and the lady at the end of the council she she sent me an email saying we're in we're good and i was like oh
thank you jesus so i i sent an email to the client saying finally we have got approval to do the
funding thing i'll be in touch soon to talk about it i'm now going to go and plant some sand
because i feel like i can do the impossible and that will be easier than what we've just done
oh man yeah just just the bureaucracy and the administration of it all just sucks the life out of me
it's like i one of those days yesterday i was [ __ ] my accountant
setting up payroll setting up like oh just you know the usual kind of
stuff just very much very a very draining day and at the end of it i had no actual paid work done you know what i mean
anyway that all comes in good time well it does come i'm not it's not a concern but it's always nice
to have something ticked off at the end of the day you know and so what's on your mind what have you
got so yeah other than just catch up um what we're doing is uh
thanks for being on again by the way much applied um what i wanted to do with a podcast
over christmas and new year rather than just do one show with one guest i thought i would
absolutely complicate the lives of the guys that edit the video and the audio by saying let's have every guest on
in the past ask them a similar sort of question where they can bring their unique flavor to that question
and you can just edit it together and so and so these guys bless them they've got
to cut everybody in so i mean they've got to create some kind of story out of all this content amy my fiance is downstairs doing that right
now that's what she does for a living so she [ __ ] hates it nightmare what does she do
he's a podcast editor so she works in a podcast okay in in dublin um yes she
she does that she was actually talking with me i have to record a podcast over a video this evening so she was just talking to me about that
uh before i came up here and she was saying now this is the program you use don't [ __ ] talk when he's talking
and you're like yes dear of course of course [Laughter]
brilliant so anyway that's what we're doing um and so yeah it's not a long conversation
at all but i've just got a couple of questions that i thought would be good answer them off the cuff uh we didn't
send them before these just conversations um and then the guys will just edit the video and we'll let you know what's
going on if that's all right sure do you want to record now yeah yeah is that all right oh yeah yeah go for it um just uh
the spontaneity thing i think works quite well so we had one guy
i was interviewing one guy last week i've not spoke to him for like six months merrick de souza lovely chap genuinely
nice guy you know he's one of those just a very pleasant guy there's nothing about him which is offensive
and um we we did this one podcast about influence and we talked
about um robert caldini's book you know the psychology of influence or whatever it's called interesting book anyway and he had some
thoughts on that and we're talking about that where e-commerce was so we said merrick come back on the show and he's like cool okay so he comes back
on the show and he literally turns up like this on the call and i'm saying hey how you doing and it's kind of like he's very nonchalant he's very
s is scruffy he's not had a shave he's eating a sandwich while we're talking
and i'm sitting there thinking this is it's not what you call professional do
you know me and i mean and i like the guide there's nothing if i thought something a bit odd
so i'm like mary are you all right bud it's like yeah and so he says you know i said well this is the purpose of the
call and he's like cool and so i asked him the questions and at the end of it he said so when are we recording i know
i was like okay this is my bad episode merrick i have not explained to you obviously i just
i thought we were clear that that was it and he went oh my gosh i've not shaved i was eating a sandwich i'm dressed really
scruffy it was hysterical so um so no this is
this is the actual recording so uh yeah that's really funny
so here's my questions for you and so we're going to do a couple of podcasts around christmas couple of podcasts around the new year
okay so my question for you is uh pory how does people how i mean word
this way how does people's behavioral psychology change around christmas um so if we're running
e-commerce websites what are some of the changes in people's behavior that we need to know about
would be a good question interesting how does consumer behavior on e-commerce
sites change around christmas and i suppose one of the interesting
things about christmas is that it's a shared experience and the other thing that i find interesting about christmas is that
there is an absolute deadline there is no shifting in christmas day
it's not going to move yeah yeah yeah sometimes i wish it would move you know but
it is firmly fixed at the th of december so there is this element of group
behavior that starts to emerge coming towards this very fixed deadline
of christmas and this influence is this influences a whole host of different
factors i guess you take the psychology of cues of a queue outside a pub or a nightclub
or a cafe or a restaurant or we start to see exclu exclusivity emerge where people start to
say well if there's a cue for something if there are a lot of people trying to purchase this product
then there must be something good about it there are books written about the psychology of cues and
we associate christmas time with with those cues and group behavior can be
influenced by this that we are all trying to uh come towards uh
come towards this deadline with lots and lots of of either presents or things purchased and
the other interesting thing about christmas uh i suppose and i find is that there's so much built around tradition
so there is habit there is ritual associated with christmas you talk to me about christmas eve and
all i can think of is a caffeine fueled extravaganza in the most hateful
shopping center on the suburbs of dublin rushing around trying to find something that
looks big and and it's a horrible experience but these rituals emerge so we have group behavior
being an influence that we see other people doing things the conversations usually
from the end of november onwards is like are you ready for christmas matt and there becomes this inbuilt pressure
if you have the and there's a lot of nudges around that if you go into town you will see the
the environmental factors of christmas lights of christmas carols of you know um hot mulled wine
around you so your senses are being filled the sound of carols the sight of the the
lights the smell of mulled wine that all of this primes us to revert
back to those rituals that we would have associated with christmas before the conversations and interactions that
we have with our peers relate again back to are you ready for christmas how is santi coming all of these
questions start to emerge and influence human influence our behavior the deadline is
also really important because it affects our decisions now i i if i had more preparation i'd
have more more research for you on this but we know that with deadlines
it it it nudges our behavior again yeah it it moves us from pre-contemplation
and contemplation it moves us towards action and it it puts that that pressure on us
to move away from just thinking about doing something to acting on it whether it's right or wrong
you you heard at the start of the pandemic that the governments were saying
it doesn't matter whether what you're doing is right or wrong as long as it's timely make sure you act in time if it's right or wrong just do
something and sometimes that's what i feel like around gender i know you've seen matters good
present or a bad present just buy something for god's sake and and so many of us can be influenced
and feel that pressure because there is a defined deadline associated with it and
it influences our behavior as e-commerce websites on
e-cop or i suppose e-commerce developers realize that this has an impact on human behavior when you go
on to ticketmaster when you go on to to any flight website you will see a
countdown timer starting to come to say act on this within this amount of time so we know that the psychology of a
deadline we know the psychology of a countdown influences us from from thought and contemplation towards action and i think
that's what christmas is it's the biggest it's a huge global event um that
influences not just our our well-being and tradition and family
but also our consumer behavior as well yeah um and then the yeah so those those kinds
of things then the final thing was the ritual yeah those influences on our senses
we know that when we i told you the story of popcorn in the cinema the last time the the
story that where we are in the habit of going to the cinema and eating popcorn even when we are not hungry yeah the
person who regularly goes to the cinema and associates that sensory experience with eating popcorn
will eat more popcorn than somebody who doesn't go to the cinema even when they're less hungry yeah and
that's what starts to emerge is that that all of these sensory experiences prime us towards ex-consumer behavior and that's
that's what i think happens around christmas so do you think then um i mean just carrying that through the
popcorn analogy how does does that work at christmas do people do i and i i you understand i know the answer
to this because i'm smiling internally do i buy more and buy bigger because it feels christmassy jeremy because the lights
are in town because the carols are playing in the background do i feel slightly more generous because
now i'm thinking christmas is about giving so i'll spend a little bit more or i'll buy more or i'll buy bigger
well the data would indicate very very much so that people spend more around christmas that's where
businesses are hoping to make most of their their sales and and profit is around
christmas and i was saying to you all here that dublin and ireland has gone back into uh level five lockdown where
non-essential retail has been essentially closed for the next five weeks and that's wow and that's leading up to
christmas christmas so what they're hoping is that by the start of december these
these non-essential retailers will be able to open to have that christmas bonanza safe knowledge that we are all going to
be influenced by these environmental factors by the setting of the deadline
that feed into this group think and this ritual that influence our consumer behavior
take the research and that's just one of many different types of research but the popcorn
uh piece of research that happens it's just there to demonstrate that when we find ourselves
in the same scenario as before we are we can we we can be conditioned to engage in
particular behaviors that are habitual that are that are habitual that we will say okay
now i am feeling more relaxed now i'm feeling more generous now i'm feeling more [ __ ]
panicked i'm going to spend more yeah all of these emotional emotional variables prompted by
deadlines prompted by what's going on around us prompted by the habit and ritual that we have developed over time
start to influence our consumer behavior as well that's incredible so i'm just thinking like as you're talking
in my head what does that mean should i then do things like let's
design my website so it feels christmassy so i'm i'm i'm making i'm sort of
building on that cinema experience if you like when you're on the site you feel like it's christmasy am i tapping into that
should i put on their countdown timers like x amount of days till christmas or x amount of shopping days left or
even simple things we found like just putting on the site the date you know when last postages to various
different countries that really that really is intriguing um and the impact that that has and it's
all sort of tying in with some of the stuff that you're saying like practically how do i make this work and and it i
my mind is buzzing right now yeah with stuff that we can do think about the emotional state that you want your consumer to feel when they go
on to your website okay so if you're saying you know uh actually a slight tangent i come from a
small town in the middle of ireland called mullingar and as we were younger my favorite shop
in mullingara was a bike shop down a little alleyway and for days of the year they had a
countdown just a piece a post-it note with a picture of santa saying how many days of christmas left so you would go there in january and i
would say days until christmas oh wow count it down right not sure if it
worked for them it's closed down since but anyway what you have is if you remember it i
certainly do and i took a lot of commitment from them to to do that every day yeah but think about what you're trying
to to promote on on your website is that countdown to
make sure you get your orders in or you will miss out is that the kind of emotion that you
want to promote in your consumer is it anxiety is it pressure is it that feeling is that what you want your consumer to feel
when they go on to your website or is it something like days until you see the smile on your loved one's face
yeah days until they experience the joy of having your product and that you're saying okay now this is
this isn't something that is driven by what we call negative reinforcement that i need to do this thing in order to avoid the
aversive of missing out or do we want to promote positive reinforcement where we say
i need to act on this because i want to get this really nice response um from my loved ones from
my family from my kids for myself whatever that is so the message that we put onto our website creates the
emotional state and it has to match up with the emotional state we want to see from a consumer and is is your consumer more engaged
with your website when they are feeling good about themselves when they are feeling like yes there's a sense of hope yes there's
a sense of positivity yes actually i can see the influence that this product is going to have come
christmas day when that deadline is there so the deadline and the nudge still remains but it's not a case of don't miss out if
you miss out they're going to be really disappointed but actually saying look at the joy that this will bring
so that's the that's the conundrum that presents with uh with an e-commerce site and it relates
back to the emotional state that you want to present for your for your um for your consumer how do
they want to feel when they act on this yes have your nudges there maybe what you're like you'll see on
sites this is a very popular product with lots of other people or this is how people are saying this is
what they're the feedback they are giving to us about this product and rather than keeping it at the bottom of the page we incorporate that into
the the front page of our site these are popular because our this is the feedback that we're getting from our consumers because
that feeds into that group thing that we see outside a shop on christmas day that but it's
moving that onto an e-commerce platform that the christmas is there that you
you take those three different elements and say okay there's a queue outside a shop there's a queue outside
brown thomas on grafton street people are going to say well maybe i'll try and go in there there must be something going on
how do you map that onto your e-commerce site to say well this is in demand you see only x number of products left
or you know those are incorporated there but not having it this sensory overwhelming um
site that is putting pressure on your consumer to act now act now that it's not a hard sell like what i was going back to remember
in our first conversation i talked about the date analogy where you're saying if you're talking about yourself all the time on a date
and not trying to inquire as to what they what the person across the table from you wants they're not going to ask you for a
second date so similarly for an e-commerce website try to understand your consumer get some information from them as they
come onto your site and visit your store so that you can point them in the right direction and say given what you who are
you look who are you looking to buy for is it a loved one is it a child is this a colleague
and then here are the things that are popular right now for people who are purchasing for a colleague
so that would be my thinking on it on that match where you're mapping what's there onto an e-commerce platform no that's
brilliant thanks bori i just i love that what's the emotion that you're wanting to create in your customers and then
figure out the best way to to do that with those three things no that's fantastic that is absolutely fantastic i like it
i like in the um i was reading some research oh geez yesterday the day i don't know
all blurs into one doesn't it um i was reading some research around the beauty industry and how people when
they buy skin care products they like companies that make them feel um good
about themselves without making them feel um negative i mean and
it's that kind of yeah yeah without feeling inadequate and but the research but what they came
back with and saying was people like these companies they do like these companies and they like to deal
with them but for them to understand that you've got to make them feel inadequate in the
first place and so the beauty industry has done this very good job at making people feel inadequate despite the imagery for
example that they would use you know i mean you'd photoshop an image of a beautiful person it's like i don't look like that therefore i feel
inadequate therefore i need the product kind of thing how do you how do
you i guess i i don't know if there's a question in this other than how do you
do that positive reinforcement um without and
not the negative side of things because i i think with our beauty business we're very much on the positive side and we we avoid at
all times to try and stay away from the you know making someone feel an adequate type thing um i don't know if i'm making sense or
if i'm just blowing stuff out let's let's let's pair it back a little bit so so somebody is is looking to purchase a
beauty product okay is that what is the goal of
that so you think about any behavior that we that any of us engage in there is some reason that we're doing it
there is some consequence that we would like to achieve from that sometimes we know it other times we don't okay however what
we have then is a is a scenario where
you are helping the person to identify the why okay so is the why that i would purchase
something in order to look like this photoshop model that is not a good why and we know the reasons for that
because the psychological impacts that has health impacts the fact that it's unattainable etc etc etc mental health
difficulties that emerge from this body dysmorphia so then we start to say okay there is another
reason why you might want to engage with this product or this service but it's based around well-being it's based
around you feeling good about yourself that it's more based around accepting who you are and saying you're going to be a little
bit better of who i am rather than trying to achieve some other alternative goal
so maybe what you're talking about or what i'm hearing is that there is this changing of the why
that it's not trying to say the reason you buy this product is because you need to look more like this unattainable
photoshopped uh barbie doll that is in front of you but actually what it is is saying that
you are you can be a better version of yourself with this product you can feel better on your day to day
and you you there is benefits to to using this which would have to be shown and
demonstrated scientifically but you would need to be able to demonstrate that this product is actually it's
achievable when we think about any goals when we think about any why's we talk about smart goals we say it's
specific measurable achievable achievable uh realistic realistic
and timed so we're looking at the a and the r that achievable and that realistic goal this is is this
going to make me feel better so why would i why would i engage with this product or why would i engage with this service
well there is demonstrable evidence here that it is going to make you ever so slightly feel ever so slightly
better it's going to improve your quality of life and the why is not to say you are going to look like this person on a poster
so maybe that's what it is that's changing yeah that's very good very very good love it well a big thanks
Close
to my special guest in today's show to ian moyes and paulik walsh you guys are amazing fantastic to
absolutely catch up with you uh always always fun uh and you know what my aim
whenever i speak to a guest is to find some real practical nuggets that i can use on my own
e-commerce uh websites and i would say gentlemen mission accomplished oh yes so i hope
you got some great stuff out of it too if you did then i would appreciate it if you could rate the show
on itunes or wherever you listen to your podcast and even share it out so that by doing
so we can connect with more folks around the world which is always good fun to do
as i said at the start of the show all of the notes links and transcripts to today's show
are online and you can get them for free at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
that's all from me just to say a big thanks for listening and make sure you come back next week as
we are gonna carry on our mashup series we've got some amazing guests coming up
i know i genuinely know what is coming up and it's gonna be good you're not gonna want to miss it so make sure you
stay subscribed uh that's all from me uh thanks for watching and i will see you again
very soon
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