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Host David Mannheim chats with Guest Matthew Lawson, Chief Digital Officer at Ribble Cycles. With over 20 years in eCommerce, Matthew shares his insights on the industry's evolution from capability to efficiency, the tension between short-term and long-term goals, and why the context of wider business objectives and market conditions should inform how brands treat their customers.
Topics Covered:
- The evolution of eCommerce from innovation to efficiency
- Balancing business KPIs like marketing costs, sessions, and conversion rates
- Adapting strategies and tactics based on wider business goals and market conditions
- The tension between short-term and long-term objectives
- Treating customers appropriately throughout their purchase journey
Key Quotes:
- "Conversion rate is a barometer of what you're willing to, or what you can afford in regards to driving sessions and marketing."
- "It's harder for someone to say let's go for the long term investment."
- "Don't chase the sale, build the brand."
Episode Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:14 Guest Introduction: Matthew Lawson
08:14 Matthew's Statement: It's All About Context
13:28 The Impact of Short-termism
19:22 Customer Treatment in Long Purchase Cycle
21:34 Understanding Customer's Intent
24:17 Outro
Social Media:
Matthew’s LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjlawson/
Creators & Guests
Host
David Mannheim
David is a big kid, a big Disney fan and a big geek. He founded User Conversion which was acquired by Brainlabs, is the author of The Person in Personalisation, and now the host of Statements of Intent. His mission is to help retailers care more for their customers by listening, being appropriate, being familiar and creating a relationship. He is doing that through his new start up, Made With Intent, a platform that helps retailers do just this by diligently understanding customer intent.
What is Statements of Intent?
eCommerce has lost sight of the people at its heart—the customer. After working with the world’s biggest retailers for 15 years, David Mannheim (author of The Person in Personalisation, founder of Made With Intent) wants to change this.
Through solo shows and guest conversations, you’ll hear eCommerce leaders share how they intend to break the status quo gripping online retail. The lack of care. The short-sightedness. The sea of sameness.
Each 20-minute episode centres on the sharing of a statement of intent—A personal promise or guiding principle. It’s a vulnerable yet fun source of solidarity for weary commerce marketers who want to change things for the better.
~ This transcript is automatically generated so may contain some errors ~
Am I taking somebody who's just touched the brand to go in, well, I'm now investing time in researching the brand. And they're looking at, are they going from investing in research into band for us building a bike and configuring the bike and customizing it and making it more like what they want.
That's, the success. That's where brands are formed. It's, it's not the conversion. It's not the awareness. It's that transition between the lines.
Welcome to Statements of Intent. In this 20 minute episode, we're addressing how e commerce has lost sight of the people at its very heart. You, the customer. It's a chat that's optimistic, it's casual, it's probably slightly ranty in places, but that's okay. But it's a place where I talk to senior e commerce marketers.
And share their statement of how they're looking to change the status quo of e commerce, adding more care, being more considerate to those very people that they're selling to the customer. I'm your host, David Monheim, the founder of Made with Intent. And we're going to jump right into it. Have fun
Hi everyone. And welcome to Statements of Intent.
I'm here with Matthew Lawson, CDO at Riddle Cycles, ex e commerce director, Love Holidays, and ex head of conversion at AO.
Yeah, there's like 27 roles at AO, so, um, that was the last one. Yeah, it's been a business that was at the early stages of e commerce.
You didn't really have a role. You were just learning new stuff, doing different things.
When we had a conversion, what was the, um, I don't know, what year was that? And how was it 30 years ago? 40 years ago?
Oh, no, thanks a lot. Um, feels like it. I don't know, I've said I've been in e commerce coming up to 20 years.
So it was the early part of that phase. Um, I think it's one of those where, um, yeah, I don't know. Interesting.
20 years in e commerce and you know, you know about like, we're all about status quo in e commerce, the dogma, the different perspective. It has to, has to change. Do you, how have you seen e commerce change over those 20 years?
Bit of a
deep loaded question for you. Yeah. So, um, Econ S has been from being first to market with things. So being the first to be able to do something. So whether that was. Being able to give reviews, whether that was to, uh, facilitate customers, whether that was to give a proposition that was actually good.
So that was not necessarily an e commerce experience, but trying to execute that. So like, you know, if we went back to, I don't know, I don't want to stress about the old times, like AO, it was like, it was game changing being able to offer next day delivery. Um, which was rock hard for massive white goods, but, you know, it was ultimately, um, we started with what was right with the customer and then tried to reverse engineer it and that was very much how we approached our website.
Uh, Our shopping experience was, okay, what, what do you actually need? And then figured out how to do it. That was, you know, that was including building video studios in a, um, in a warehouse in the, the armpit of the northwest. And you're just like, middle of nowhere just trying to find something to be able to do it.
But we did it. Um, it was, can I, can I just
like double click on the fact that you called Bolton the
armpit of the northwest? I, no, it said Bolton. I didn't say Bolton. You said bolt problem. Fundamentally, it was trying to figure out like, uh, what we do. Um, but also to be like, not throw money at it. You know, you can't just, it's not an infinite pot of money.
Um, and I think one thing that the wider context of this is that I feel like historically e commerce has always been seen as being cheaper. Then bricks and mortar as a cheap route to market, but it's definitely not when you start adding up the costs of the, the, the talent needed to do it, the, the, the tech needed to deliver it, um, the, the investments in, in trying to drive sessions.
It really isn't, um, a cheap game to be playing in and I feel like that has evolved over the years where it's become more invested as people see it as the default route to market. But, um, the opportunity is where you can you be efficient. In that space, because that's where the, that's where the, the, the, the, um, evolution is, is heading towards.
It's not about doing it. Yeah. Because everybody can do it, but it just costs you a lot to do it with. Quick way to do it. Um, to, to, to be the best at it, you've got to be efficient at it and that efficiency is across all the things from how you acquire customers, how you convert customers, how you look after the customers and the tech that is there to deliver it because there's, uh, there's There's tech to do everything, and there's every, every niche you can imagine.
There's tech to do it, and they all have their costs. And then you've got all the people that you need to put on those tech costs, tech to maximize those costs so they can very easily inflate. And the same goes for, for market, like, uh, acquisition. That that there's you can drive efficient costs or you can be inefficient with your costs because you're chasing a fanciful number All these type of things like where you know when we talk about sessions and conversion, which is which is the one that you want Um, it's debated all the time, which is better.
Um, and where can you find your opportunities? Yeah
But it is a tension, um, because the, the one thing I would say is that when people say what's the perfect conversion rate, you say that, uh, back to my, my, my, it's, it's, it's relative because that conversion rate, once you get it to a number, You will want to drive more sessions that will drive down that conversion rate.
So conversion rate is a barometer of what you're willing to, or what you can afford in regards to driving sessions and marketing. So that is, it's, it's all about playing or once it dials it up, I'm going to smash it down with more sessions. Once I dial it up, I'm going to smash it down. So there's no, there's no winner when it comes to conversion rate.
You just got to, you've got to really work hard to make sure you are fulfilling the, the, the required performance to drive, uh, an efficient, effective business. There's so
much to focus on what you just said, because you've been, you're talking about the evolution of e commerce as we've moved from a doing phase, like we can do it, we're going to work backwards from the customer, we can do X, to an efficiency phase.
Then you talk about the metrics of success being sessions or acquisition, traffic, numbers, more is more, and conversion. And the two are like relative, like where do you want to focus your attention? Again, efficiency. So before you came on, we talked about your statement of intent, your thing that dictates how we should treat customers, and by virtue, how we should measure them.
And your statement of intent is, it depends, it's all about context. Mm hmm. Can we double down on that? What do you mean by that? What do you mean by, by it's all about context?
So it's all about context because I, and again, it's probably to give context to why it's about context is that I, as a role at my current place, Ribble, I oversee all the performance marketing, all the tech and e commerce.
Um, so it's quite a broad remit and in some businesses they are completely separate entities and that does have a, you know, allows focus, but also, um, can drive a tension between departments. It's not about my sessions. It's about the conversion. It's not about the conversion. It's about the quality of the traffic where I sit across both.
So therefore I'm looking at the. The balancing figure, where do you want, you know, we, you know, I'm responsible for both. So therefore I'm, I'm like trying to find that, um, the, the, the right balance in my own priority. And what there's the noises that I'm hearing from the wider business, the commercials, the, the, the, the, the wider market conditions, all those things that have to be factored into this.
And when it comes to context and whereas it's, it's, it's trying to understand what we're trying to achieve right now, because that changes the dynamic altogether. So I could be having a conversation with my, with the board about trying to be profitable and therefore profitability can be driven through looking for.
If like efficiencies across all time, what, what tech do I not need to use? What can I cut out about efficiencies, but then they can talk about growth and therefore my track tactics can be more aggressive with where I want to spend. I could be more about, um, what lever I can pull for, for, for where I can put investments into, uh, new channel optimization or, uh, where I'm willing to.
Accept a lower ROAS on my marketing, but equally when it comes to like all the challenges, it might be cash flow is a challenge and therefore I go, okay, let's take off my long game look after the customer hat and let's start layering in a promotional, uh, leavers and using, um, Urgency or scarcity or all the tactics to get that conversion over the line and you go, okay, because that's the, at that time, it's the right thing to do because it's this thing that you have to do, but you are like playing one off to the, I'm a bet in the future for the short term and I invested in the long term taking my time in the short term and it depends on what I'm trying to do.
And for a business, there's never a perfect answer. Because there's so many other tensions in the air and tensions in the room and tensions in the business and some of those things you can control like what promotional levers that you want to pull and how hard you want to push it. But there's things that you can't control like the macro market environment.
So like you go, okay, I can't control the fact that cost of living is coming and I can't control that we're in a. Um, we're going into a holiday season where people might not necessarily be thinking about my product. So do we chase or do we wait? And do we wait and fish where there's fish or fish when there's fish?
Or do we try and throw out a trawl and enter the abyss and hope that we get lucky? That's where the context is because the context is so many other factors and I feel like it's very easy for people when in their own isolated bubble of a sector or a, or an industry or a, um, uh, like a professional field to not appreciate the wider context of it.
Yeah. All the other factors. Well, that's
always been like commercialism for me. When I was hiring at my agency, I always found the abject lack of commercialism mostly related to experience, right? The younger the person is, the lack of commercial experience they have and that can only be garnered over time.
I found that to be like the killer.
So what I found really interesting in what you're saying is if context is king and context comes from alignment, I just kind of feel as though Maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder, Matt, but I feel as though a lot of retailers out there focus on nothing but short termism.
Is that like a statement of the economy currently? Do you think that's an accurate statement? Do you think that's a short termism, a need for immediacy?
Um, there's definitely an immediacy because we need to keep, we need to keep the lights on. You know, ultimately cash coming in is the lifeblood of any business in any sector.
And obviously the more profitable you are, the bigger the buffer you've got, the bigger the war chest you can have. But momentum. In a, in a, in any business is important when it's keeping hold of momentum. It's easier to feel momentum on yesterday's numbers rather than looking for wider, like wider long term growth.
Long term growth assessments usually come once or twice a year, quarterly figures. You don't talk about it every day. Because that's, I, I, you know, I'm guilty of it in every business that I've been in when I've gone, right, let's take a look back, which is very fair, very few times. It's like, wow, that has grown.
We were looking on significant growth, you know, um, rebel alone from when we focused on bikes, we've gone from, you know, single digit millions, low digit millions. Into, um, like, well, quadrupling, if not, uh, centriplating the number of growth and you'd like, oh, wow, that's a centriplating. Yeah, I don't even know what a number is, but you know what I mean?
It's like, it's, you go, we've, we've grown the business by a factor of, um, by factors rather than percentages. And. You don't get, you don't get that, you don't do that reflection very often. Therefore I am looking back at yesterday and yesterday's important. What am I going to do to make it better tomorrow?
Because there that I've got to go to the weekly trading meetings to justify what we're doing and it's harder to do that investment. And when it comes to budget allocations and where we want to place our bets, it's harder for someone to say. Let's, let's go for the long term investment. We're going to, it's harder because they're not necessarily going to feel it.
And sometimes those investments are bigger. Um, the analogy that is being, I see quite a lot right now, cause the seasonally relevant, like when it talks to like brand and trying to get an ROI on your brand investment, it's like believing in Father Christmas. You have to believe, you got to believe it to, for it to happen, you know, you got to really got to go on it, but you got to look on long term and that happens across all fields, like what am I, what can I do today?
Um, and that immediately, that's why when it became the dynamics that you've seen in Black Friday, Black Friday was a day, then it was a week. Yeah, it's now a month because people do not want to miss. They don't want to be seen as not being on the pulse, so they go early, because if they go early, they can say we went, we were, you know, we were ahead, we did it first.
But again,
do you not feel, do you not feel that drives like a short termism factor? I think Black Friday is a really good example of we have this one day. To drive up sales. Oh, no, we need a week. Oh, no, it's the beginning of November. It's like Christmas comes, feels like it comes early and early every year.
I mean, you start seeing Christmas sandwiches, Pret A Manger. Uh, it's not terribly middle class, isn't it? It feels as though, you know, it comes earlier every single year in the first November. It feels as though brands, retailers try to get more of that pie as early as they can to be more immediate. And let's relate it all back to context, right?
It comes down based on the context. Based on the alignment of the organization and that impacts their strategy. Does it also impact how they treat their customers?
Well, it depends on what your treatment of, um, how you communicate to the customer, what you're saying to the customer, you know, you, you go from potentially talking about the story of the product that you're trying to sell to talking about the price of the product that you're trying to sell. Um, and.
That's good. It potentially of those people you've been already warmed up, but that could be the first interaction with somebody else. And that is that, is that the right thing to do? Um, How do you
approach that? If you don't mind me asking at Ribble, which is basically a long purchase cycle, you know, it's an edge, it's a product that requires education.
It's a product that has a high value attributed to it. So there's a considered. Purchase cycle there of not just I'm going to purchase at the session. It's going numerous sessions and it's going to take me some time.
How do you treat customers over that purchase life cycle?
So, um,
we, we definitely have, um, well, a mantra, particularly in, in the team of Um, don't chase the sale, build the brand, you know, we don't have, um, our store teams with any sort of commission levels or anything like that to try and get them to get the deal. Obviously, we measure them on it because it's important.
It's a conversion rate. It's a factor. It's KPI. Are we, are we doing consistently? Well, that's a factor. So that's the wider context. You know, ultimately, that's, that's a good principle to follow. But our buying cycle is exactly what you said. Very long. I was debating, uh, with, um, uh, attribution technology.
How long do you need to actually run an attribution model for, for it to be a rel relative to our industry or to our sector or to our brand. And we were talking about not like a 90 day window. We were talking about a two year window because. That's usually the average buying cycle for somebody in our sector who's in our market.
That's massive. That's so much data that actually every day for the next two years, I'll be judging the effectiveness of that one pound we spent in 2021. You're like, wow, can you run like that? No, you can't. So back to that point of, do you believe? It's not, it's important that we are doing the right things and in communicating the right.
the right message to the correct standard and that is important to, to, to be your guiding, guiding star. That said, we try to get other barometers of success. to help inform decisions.
So we like to look at what the consumer's behavior is like on the site to say, are they looking like somebody at a similar stage?
of their journey, and are they transitioning from one to the other? And so that progression is the thing that we need to look at. Am I taking somebody who's just touched the brand to go in, well, I'm now investing time in researching the brand. And they're looking at, are they going from investing in research into band for us building a bike and configuring the bike and customizing it and making it more like what they want.
That's, that's, that's, that's the, that's the success. That, that, that's the, that's where the, the, that's where brands are formed. It's, it's not the conversion. It's not the awareness. It's that transition between the lines. Am I becoming engaged? And that engaged element is what we are, well, what the, the team is obsessed about measuring and chasing and making happen.
And that is not just one dimensional about acquisition. It's all about all touch points and all those touch points can happen. In and outside the website and we need to understand the journey that comes with the customer and actually I can't win it for us. I got like all the marketing I can do for cycling.
The biggest influencer for what bike someone's going to buy in cycling is usually. That person's best mate who rides a bike. Yeah, of course. Because they are looking for that guidance. They're looking for that, just give me something to where to start. But then when they come into market, that's when I've got to be the best of the best.
I've got to be, um, trying to find that balance.
You can sell better once you understand the context of that individual. I mean, it's just, it sounds very much like trying to understand somebody's intent, if you ask me. Yeah. Well, look, that has been, that has been eye opening. You speak with such, like, articulation and passion, clearly.
So, context is king. I love your analogies about Father Christmas. The trawling fish. I don't know if you've used those before, but they were very apt. So, well done. Um, thank you very much for your time. And have a good day. Well done.
Thank you. No, thank you for listening. Cheers.
There we have it. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and share on whatever platform it is that you're listening to on today. This show comes from the team behind Made With Intent, the customer intent platform for retailers. If you are of course, interested in being more profitable, whilst being more personal.
And please feel free to check us out at madewithintent. ai. Thanks again for listening and joining us on our mission to change how e commerce sees, measures, and treats their customers. I've been your host, David Mannheim. Have a great day.