S2:E1 Revolutionize Your Retail Strategy with Data-Driven Conversion Insights
 
Season Two of The Retail Razor: Data Blades opens with a sharp focus on the retail metric that makes or breaks growth: conversion rates.

Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Gareth Johns, Chief Data Officer at TruRating, to reveal how real-time shopper feedback and data-driven insights are helping retailers unlock millions in revenue.
 
In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why conversion is the biggest untapped retail growth opportunity.
• The flaws in exit surveys, QR codes, and focus groups.
• How staff availability and customer expectations directly impact sales.
• A footwear case study that drove an 8% lift in conversion and unlocked $16.7M in revenue.
• Practical steps to increase in-store conversion rates and improve customer experience.

 
If you’re a CMO, COO, or CEO looking to optimize retail performance, this episode delivers conversion strategies you can act on today.

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Guest Info:
Gareth Johns, Chief Strategy Officer, TruRating - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-johns-7166524/
Gareth Johns is an internationally experienced product and data development leader with 20+ years of expertise in using big data and technology to drive business growth for major retailers. He played a key role in scaling dunnhumby, a global leader in customer data science, from a 30-person startup to an international powerhouse in marketing analytics and customer insights for Tier 1 retailers. After leading strategic initiatives across the US and Europe, he went on to Starcount before joining the TruRating team. Gareth is passionate about transforming the way retailers collect and use customer feedback. At TruRating, he’s helping businesses access real-time, transaction-tied consumer data at an unprecedented scale; revolutionizing how retailers measure and improve business performance.

More from TruRating about optimizing conversion:
https://trurating.com/blog/5-takeaways-from-our-conversion-analysis-masterclass

Chapters:

(00:00) Preview

(00:41) Show Intro

(03:17) Welcome Gareth Johns, Chief Data Officer, TruRating

(03:57) Challenges in Measuring Conversion

(08:36) Effective Shopper Feedback Mechanisms

(13:54) Case Study: Footwear Brand Conversion Success

(18:22) Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights

(20:11) How to Learn More

(20:53) Show Close

Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail data insights:

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, and named him one of the Top Voices for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.