Sanya Ristic is the Director of Innovation and Client Relations at 2buy1click, the UK’s leading Certified Adobe Commerce & Magento Agency, ranked #1 on Clutch.co. Sanya and her team create and maintain high-performance Magento 2 eCommerce websites that boost sales and improve conversion for their clients across B2B, B2C, and D2C.
AND Sanya’s bought one of her clients along: yes, we’ve got the brilliant Janis Thomas from Look Fabulous Forever back on the show!
Tune in to discover what a truly collaborative, high-trust agency relationship looks like—and how it can transform your eCommerce success.
Key timestamps to dive straight in:
[03:40] “Finding Mr. Right Unexpectedly”
[08:15] Successful Website Outsourcing Experience
[09:49] Client-Agency Collaboration Dynamics
[13:52] Psychologically Safe Agency Relationship
[18:14] Break Down Communication Silos
[21:02] Podcast Insights: Navigating Business Relationships
[22:25] Listen to Sanya and Janis’ Top Tips!
[27:31] Find out more about 2buy1click https://www.2buy1click.com/
Episode sponsored by 2buy1click. Watch Sanya’s Meet Magento talk on co-creation, experimentation, and co-creating future together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENFydeUcwQk .
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[SPEAKER_02]: while it does take an hour out of my month having a deep, because it is normally a deep conversation with Sanya about strategy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s the highlight of my month.
[SPEAKER_02]: I so look forward to speaking with her because she’s a real partner in our business and I would consider her a friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cutting through the hive to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hello and welcome.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s great to have you here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to two of our inspiring guests.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is one of our masterclass episodes where we get an e-commerce expert or in this case a couple of e-commerce experts on the show to share the key things you need to know about one e-commerce subject and this time the topic is all about how to
[SPEAKER_04]: have a great relationship with your web agency.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, a lot of this also applies to your marketing agency, but we’re going to be diving into the web agency side of it all.
[SPEAKER_04]: I’ve got two brilliant guests.
[SPEAKER_04]: We’ve got Sanya who runs a website agency for Ecommerce and who has been on quite the journey taking her business to a super collaborative
[SPEAKER_04]: process internally and with their clients.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we’ve got one of her clients, Janice Thomas, who’s been on the podcast a couple of times already.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you’re in the UK, you’ll have seen her speak somewhere, because she’s always out and about helping other businesses.
[SPEAKER_04]: But she runs a very cool beauty brand in the UK called Look Fabulous Forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she’ll be giving us the honest client experience of the type of relationship that Sania’s going to be taking us through.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you’re trying to work out how you can get more out of your relationship with your website agency, make it less stressful, make it more impactful, involve other members of your team in the relationship, have that more all encompassing impact, then this is definitely an episode for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Please listen to the end of the episode because you don’t want to miss the guest top tips.
[SPEAKER_04]: We’ve got Stania taking on the booktop tip with a great one, a nice classic and a tooltop tip, something I’ve never heard of, and we’ll be Googling straight after I finish recording this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also some really cool insights on the carbon top tip.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Janice has got a very up-to-date recommendation for the traffic top tip.
[SPEAKER_04]: So listen to the whole thing, you won’t regret it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now to introduce our special guests.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sanya Ristic is the director of innovation and client relations at two by one click.
[SPEAKER_04]: The UK’s leading certified Adobe commerce and magento agency ranked number one on clutch.co.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sanya and her team create a maintain high performance magento to e-commerce website that boost sales and improve conversions for their clients across B to B, B to C and D to C.
[SPEAKER_04]: And San Jose bought one of her clients along.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we’ve got the brilliant Janice Thomas from look fabulous forever back on the show.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hello, Sania.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lovely to have you here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And hello, Janice.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great to have you back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for having me, Chloe.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we’ve had Janice on the show a couple of times before.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we know how she going to be.
[SPEAKER_04]: But how did you get into e-commerce?
[SPEAKER_04]: What’s your crazy e-commerce journey story?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it is a crazy, funny story, actually, through speedating.
[SPEAKER_04]: Speed, business speed dating or normal speed dating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I was looking for Mr. Wright.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I came to the UK when I was thirty years old and after some time I decided to look after Mr. Wright and people told me that speed dating is a good way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gone there and as it works, you speak to different men for three minutes and there was Lyndon.
[SPEAKER_01]: My partner, life in business partner, and that was the most unusual conversation where I would say, I’m an engineer and he would say, I’m an engineer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say, I’m a software engineer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’m software engineer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’m mobile phones.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’ve done mobile phones.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’ve done robots.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’ve done robots.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how it was going.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next thing, I have a sports car.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a sports car.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a mix five.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a mix five.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, is this guy for real?
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, this is how I’ll start it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can properly see you there going, is he just saying everything I’m saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: But he was for real and what’s the crazy thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: His surname is right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I found my Mr. Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was working in e-commerce.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, soon after that, he was starting to set up e-commerce agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, well, why don’t I join you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And being an engineer myself and knowing how easy it was for me to have a good job in the UK, I was like, well, let’s fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I’m Serbian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let’s find some Serbian team members.
[SPEAKER_01]: And long time now, seventeen years ago, we are still
[SPEAKER_01]: established and enjoying and clients with us and happily married as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it all went right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said yesterday, Lino said yesterday, you didn’t look for Mr. Perfect just from Mr. Wright, but
[SPEAKER_04]: That’s a good line.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that’s definitely in the top ten strangest routes into e-commerce, almost unique routes into e-commerce that we’ve ever had.
[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously you’ve been building this agency for nearly two decades now.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is it that makes your agency great?
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you go about creating those really strong relationships with your clients?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, over all these long time, seventeen years, we grown in different ways and in particular in the last eight years, I was very much focusing on inner development and through that through the relationships with people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I would say in a very connecting deep way, we work with clients and solving complex problems, this is what makes us unique and what make Manjik as I like to say.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is the way you do it now and the same as the way you’ve done it the whole time or has there been kind of like a development journey within the business to get to the point where you’re you’re now providing what makes a great agency relationship.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it always been the same or have you evolved as I guess is what I’m trying to ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the reason I gone through this personal development was actually all the difficulties and struggles ahead in business.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was actually years ago causing client conflicts because all the complexities I didn’t have capacities and understanding to deal with, so that got me on the personal journey to understand what’s going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the source that struggle is a source now of all the greatness where we are.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you went on the journey yourself and then that kind of helped you realize how you needed to change the agency and now several years on your in this brilliant space.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that’s a beautiful question because the journey was very personal and it overspills like my personal transformation, then created the business transformation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a parallel process.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like as I was changing,
[SPEAKER_01]: and bringing those changes in the business than it impacted team, it impacted relationships with clients and basically lots of things change over the last eight years.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you wanted to bring Janice on the podcast with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, we know, Janice is a great person in the world of e-commerce and the UK, but what would you reason for being to bring Janice on to the show?
[SPEAKER_01]: Loving being of a Janice and it’s not that we worked together for five years and look fabulous as is with us for the last ten years, but Janice is so inspirational.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she inspired me and motivated me to show up more this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a speaker of meet Magento.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say thanks to Janice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Naging me and of course the talk was very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about co-creation experimentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as well this podcast Jan is told me about so I would not be here without Janice.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there’s lots of us you can pretty much say that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Janice, obviously, you’re one of Sanyas clients at Look Fabulous Forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: You’re using two by one click to run your website and your beneficiaries, I suppose, of Sanya and her teams more in light and approached her on the agency.
[SPEAKER_04]: How is it for you working in this way with a web agency?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so when I joined look fabulous forever five years ago, this was the first time I’d ever had a complete outsource of the whole kind of website development front end back end, all of those things that I had previously worked in environments where we had predominantly had an in-house team.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we might bring in extra resource as a when it was needed.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was, I guess, a little bit skeptical about can an agency do as good a job as an in-house.
[SPEAKER_02]: team can do and I think working with Sanya very quickly, I came to understand that because Sanya is really focused on being a true partner in the business.
[SPEAKER_02]: She and her team have a deep understanding of not just the technical aspects of our site, but our business and what we’re trying to achieve and all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s the best of both worlds.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have an incredibly skilled expert team working on my business, but I don’t have a full-time resource that our business doesn’t need.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don’t have to manage developers, you know, kind of all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think working with two-by-one click is the perfect solution for us.
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of the keywords you both use so far are things that a lot of people talk about.
[SPEAKER_04]: We’re going to remove silos.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s like having them within their existing team with as a values match.
[SPEAKER_04]: We found the right people for the relationship, but it’s so much harder to actually
[SPEAKER_04]: deliver on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it’s like a back when I had an agency, I would became very aware of the fact that a lot of the agency relationships, marketing agency, website agencies, when they break down, it’s as likely to be the client’s fault as it is to be the agencies fault and often because the client picks the wrong agency in the first place.
[SPEAKER_04]: I am getting my way to a question honest.
[SPEAKER_04]: So within all of that, what I suppose are your your key benefits.
[SPEAKER_04]: to doing this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let’s talk about what it looks like, because I think that’s probably the best way to help people find it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s to understand what it actually looks like in practice when things are working well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Sally, you mentioned about co-creation and collaboration.
[SPEAKER_04]: So often agency relationships are kind of it feels like war.
[SPEAKER_04]: Clearly, that’s not what we’ve got to go on here.
[SPEAKER_04]: What does co-creation and collaboration really look like when it’s not a buzzword when it’s something you’re doing in practice?
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the question and actually any difficulty that exists is actually a opportunity for a co-creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am overlooking all our operations and what’s happening in all the project and as well on the monthly strategy calls with clients we share quite a lot about the future plans and what’s going on and I often bring either things I noticed in our work or in our relationship and clients as well bring
[SPEAKER_01]: Some things they would like to talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically, often there is some complexity or unknown way forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as well, if it is a relational difficulty that sometimes happened because of misunderstanding, we just go there, we explore, we share.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that process, lots of new knowledge comes and new ideas for the way forward.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you expand the conversations beyond just we want the checkout to work this way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Into, I think you got a bit annoyed with us on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why did you get annoyed?
[SPEAKER_04]: You literally go there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: To give another example, once inclined business, the management change and different people take a non-communication with us and
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything changed overnight, basically, and it took us time to catch up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I noticed in that process, something was going off in relationship and email communication.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I’ve done, I invited everyone to the call, the client, the our team, myself, and I was called in conversation, where I would go directly into, oh, I’m noticing something is not okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you a little angry with us?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that opened the beautiful connecting share, we just found the better way forward.
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, it’s one of these things we’re like, well, obviously that’ll work, but the bravery to do it, especially in a scenario where, you know, when things change at a client, it’s a nerve-racking time as an agency owner, you know, are we gonna keep the business or we’re not?
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I commend the bravery for going there and clearly it’s paying off, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?
[SPEAKER_04]: There’s a real mix of the practicality of committing to regular calls and regular conversation, but also the mindset
[SPEAKER_04]: to be thinking collaboratively and to not, you know, because lots of people, they’re getting angry with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We’ve got a good angry with them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think a lot of agencies put into place the nuts and bolts of it, or clients put into place the nuts and bolts of it, but that mindset bits more difficult.
[SPEAKER_04]: How have you managed to shift that mindset, Sania?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, honestly, Chloe years ago, ten years ago, even in that place, when if something was off, we would hiding behind it or not just like trying to get through different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: But thanks to the work I’ve done, and especially last three, four years, quite a lot of relational work.
[SPEAKER_01]: that opened my heart and I’m now able to connect with clients differently and sometimes the mean Jan is can say that if Jan is sometimes shared the difficulty their time team had I would cry on the call because I would feel the pain as you know we want to do an amazing job and if something is not okay we are the first one to know so we can change something so talk me long time and it is possible
[SPEAKER_04]: Janice, you’re on the receiving event end of this.
[SPEAKER_04]: What’s it like from a client’s perspective to work in this way rather than other agency ways?
[SPEAKER_02]: It is definitely the most psychologically safe agency relationship I’ve ever worked in.
[SPEAKER_02]: That not only do I know that if there is an issue, Samuel wanted to hear about it, but
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me mindful of things where I’ve got frustrated and why have I got frustrated.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that Samuel will want to have that conversation with me about how did I feel?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did this happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: What can we do?
[SPEAKER_02]: to improve that this isn’t just, you know, all let’s talk, I genuinely feel all that Sanya wants to hear my side of the story, what’s going on and not just what’s happening from a technical perspective, are we pleased with the work, but are we pleased with the process of how the work went and what can we do to improve it?
[SPEAKER_02]: in the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think one of the things that I particularly value, he’s saying you know me really well and she knows her team really well and often her perspective will be really useful because you’ll be like, yeah, you’re looking at like this and then even is looking the same problem like this and this is why you’re not communicating.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it’s so easy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember back when I was agency, we used to do a project manager few site builds with someone building the site and the client.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I swear half my day was translation.
[SPEAKER_04]: from, you know, like, that’s what they’re saying, and that’s what you’re hearing, but that’s not, that doesn’t match up.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Sam, it strikes me that as you’re building this relationship with the clients, there’s an awful lot of trust being built up.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it must make it a lot easier to push the boundaries
[SPEAKER_04]: of what would normally happen in a web agency client scenario.
[SPEAKER_04]: By which I’m assuming you can bring more outlandish ideas to the table.
[SPEAKER_04]: Help the client push themselves further than you would normally be able to.
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess I’m talking about experimentation.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you find this enables greater leaps forward more experimentation more openness to trying new things?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I would say I don’t feel a boundary.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned boundary, but for me it’s a very open, flowing, generative conversation where both the client or us bring different ideas and from that we decide what to do together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you now mentioned this, we had this call, Jan, is about moving the look fabulous to our speedy platform because the speed was a critical matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, that was quite a big job and it was just one conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we’ve done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please take a look at this project.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the results and we’ll as well in the process improve and renew the project and upgrade and we’ll do all these things at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in just one call, I think Janice, you almost said yes to hundreds of hours of work.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just like conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: But because you know the client well enough to be able to bring the right things to the table, because you know their business, that bit better than if you’re just going, well, we’ve got this project to do in this project today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the key is trust that you mentioned because we have a different clients, a different
[SPEAKER_01]: stage of growth and be shared these ideas where we feel it’s useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So different clients will be suggested different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as Janice said, we know the businesses and we know other businesses and we have industry insights and we can really holistically look after clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: plus another thing Chloe you mentioned, our developers, we don’t have managers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have self-organizing teams and our clients work with developers directly, which means they know people who are doing the work and they know me and I’m often holding relationship in the space and helping the technical decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are all co-creating together.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no silo.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there’s no a project manager as such.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not as such.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have people who are, of course, looking after incoming work, but team is agreeing together and working together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often with clients, we would say, oh, can you please come on a call?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is too complex.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can they just explore?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there is this exploration, experimentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you’re not quite sure in the way forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we would install something, take a little step, see what we’ve got and move from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it’s a quite
[SPEAKER_04]: careful and quite a fluid it must be such a fluid experience which makes me think right we talked about the needs to remove silos between partners between the agency and between the client but it also strikes me that this isn’t possible if you kind of
[SPEAKER_04]: breach the wall of the agency and then there’s a load of silos, but you breach the wall of the client and then there’s a load of silos, which I suppose fits into the values and the mindset piece.
[SPEAKER_04]: If there’s a client you’re going, everything has to come through me and you can’t talk to anybody else.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or as an agency you’re going, you can only have a relationship with a project manager.
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody else is allowed in the Zoom call or whatever it might be.
[SPEAKER_04]: At that point, this just isn’t going to work, is that you have to have that
[SPEAKER_04]: that open relationship mindset.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because it’s quite a lot of wisdom in the space and only when they bring together different people often on these goals or as well third party providers and in the conversation is actually where there is a juice and where new knowledge
[SPEAKER_01]: happens and then we decide on the way forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in the past from knowing how we used to work, we would miss client requirements because they would receive something and we would do the job and client is like, this is not what I meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: So over years, we need to put in different ways of reflecting, checking, asking, going on the call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you, this is about simplification.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to do the simplest, quickest, most efficient job.
[SPEAKER_01]: The client will be happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is quite our guys, like they’re proud of the excellent rook they do.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to do a good job.
[SPEAKER_01]: We care a lot as an agency.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whenever I think of this kind of web-do business, and I’m a believer, very much so, but you kind of think, oh, that’s gonna take more time.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s gonna be more complicated for us as a business to manage a relationship like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that how you find it, Janice, or does this overall make your web relationship easier?
[SPEAKER_02]: It definitely makes my life easier, as San was touched on.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I brief something in, and I’ve said, I want to do it like this,
[SPEAKER_02]: then I know that the developers will push back, if they say, actually, we know you’ve asked for this, but if you did it this way, it would cost you half the money.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are not many agencies that would take that approach, but they’d be like, look, that’s what she’s asked for, you know, it’s more billable hours, so we’re just going to do it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: So while it does take an hour out of my month having a deep, because it is normally a deep conversation with Sanyu about strategy, it’s the highlight of my month.
[SPEAKER_02]: I so look forward to speaking with her because she’s a real partner in our business and I would consider her a friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you, Janice.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that, because I don’t, I suspect most people listening are going, you’re meeting with your web agency as the highlight of your month.
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, just go, I need some of that and I find it, it’s so into because often when we’re doing these podcast episodes, we dive into specific topic.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s kind of like we end with a bit of a, so how can you fix it?
[SPEAKER_04]: How can you do this in your business?
[SPEAKER_04]: How can you embrace this?
[SPEAKER_04]: But of course, it takes two to party, doesn’t it?
[SPEAKER_04]: So it’s not like as a brand you can change an agency.
[SPEAKER_04]: and or as an agency, you can change the client.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if someone does realize they’re in the wrong space, is there any hope in helping their agency see the light, sanny, or do they need to think about moving on?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I depends on what I find as well in my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: He’s like, if we work with someone and things are not moving forward, there is a difficulty that is discomfort and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, often we have some gut feeling that something is not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would invite audience to follow that gut feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if something is not right, we need to bring it with the other party and see, can be more one from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they’re repeating attempts to change something and improve something and nothing is happening, then I think the rest is waste of time and waste of energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it’s time to move.
[SPEAKER_03]: E-commerce master plan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.
[SPEAKER_03]: It’s time for the top tips round.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.
[SPEAKER_04]: Ladies, are you ready for the top tips?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, nervous.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it’s all around there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sandy, we’re going to start with you because I know you’ve got a great book top tip for us.
[SPEAKER_04]: Say the book top tip.
[SPEAKER_04]: If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?
[SPEAKER_01]: It is atomic habits by James Clear and it as well it goes well with this topic because it’s how you can do little experiments to introduce a change and it’s applicable in business and in life in general.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a good way to get started with this mindset shift if someone wants to do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, very cool atomic habits everybody then a class can we call it a classic yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think we can’t wait.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it’s been out for a few years.
[SPEAKER_04]: Janice, you get the traffic topped it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press?
[SPEAKER_04]: It deserves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, recently we’ve been experimenting a lot with avatarial, which is working really well for us, particularly digital avatarial.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think with the way that
[SPEAKER_02]: SEO and AI as changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You’ve got these really credible sources talking about your brand, which is really helping teach LLMs about your brand helps from SEO perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as well as the advertorial itself, I think in the environment we’re trading in it’s got big long-term benefits as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And by digital advertorial, are we talking about people writing blogs about you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Was it that simplistic or is it something else?
[SPEAKER_02]: If normally publishes, so it might be the mail online or the Guardian website or so all the things that you would target from a digital PR perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of those publishers are willing to partner on avatar or where you’re specifying what it is that you want to say, what pages you want to link to, all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it’s the best of both worlds.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get your advertising stuff, but you’ve also got that kind of credibility of advertorial and link building and domain authority in all of those things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, Sanja.
[SPEAKER_04]: Tool-top tip is yours.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe a collaboration tool, especially via plug-in, a phone app or just a way of working, is there a little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day and I am fascinated to find out what your answer to this one will be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, of course, it’s related to co-creative conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in particular, I like to follow a TREU framework, which is a place going through a complex challenges when we bring different voices and different things in the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we co-create, cause sense, co-field, and make a step forward together.
[SPEAKER_04]: So theory you, is that what it’s called?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it’s a change.
[SPEAKER_04]: A change management framework.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, that brings in a lot of emotional elements.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because that’s actually the key because at the bottom of the theory you is actually where the breakthrough happens when we touch this hard place.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we don’t know what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the place of magic when the shift happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can speak about this for ages.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe another podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: Very cool, that’s one for us, certainly one for me to go and Google, because not one I’ve come across before.
[SPEAKER_04]: So theory you, everybody, and signifyly carbon top tip, what’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we are crazy, fanatics about improvements, removing bottlenecks, improving speed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we would do anything to highlight problems, solve them before the happens and improve speed of the website.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think Janice with improving speed of look fabulous, I think we achieved some amazing results.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I believe we went from something like ten seconds average page load time to about two seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a massive move.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, from a carbon perspective, that makes a massive difference.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and what an eighty percent reduction in energy, because literally time is speed is money and energy when it comes to carbon.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so now you mentioned about moving bottlenecks and blockages.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that purely from a code perspective or is that from a team and a structure and a decision making as well as simply speeding up the site?
[SPEAKER_04]: She says simply speeding up the site like that was ever simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there is of course technical side removing bottlenecks in that way, but I would say like difficult relationships are as well a bottleneck, and I think it’s a bigger bottleneck difficult relationship than technical problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it goes everywhere, as I said before, it’s holistically removing any possible bottleneck.
[SPEAKER_04]: the elimination of waste, the alternative name for the world of sustainability.
[SPEAKER_04]: Before we say goodbye, I know the listeners would love to know how they can get in contact with both of you and find out more about your business.
[SPEAKER_04]: I’ll come to you first Janice, where can they get in contact with you if they want to?
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find me on LinkedIn and we are look fabulous for our.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the website built by two by one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sanya, let us know a little bit more about what you guys do day-to-day at two-by-one click and then how people can get in contact with you if they want to continue this discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we are solely focused on specialising in Magento and Adobe Comments and since recently I am very much in a leadership role and as well
[SPEAKER_01]: meet Magenta speaker, so I will be my Tony and still check me on the LinkedIn profile.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have some very interesting posts down the line about this book here, and as well my YouTube video from Meet Magenta, which was exactly on this topic, co-creation, experimentation, and co-creating future together.
[SPEAKER_04]: very cool and we’ll make sure links to all of that are in the show notes for all of you.
[SPEAKER_04]: For those of you watching on the web version, we’ll just put up how you can chat with Sanya further on the video as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would highly recommend going and checking out the meat magenta UK videos because it’s very cool that they just chuck it all up on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_04]: More conferences should do that for those who can’t make it in person.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much Sanya and Janice with being on the show.
[SPEAKER_04]: It’s been a pleasure chatting with you both and I hope
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope you’ve inspired more brands to build better agency relationships as we go into peak and big changes quite possibly in twenty to twenty six.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much for being here to chat about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Janice for joining me today.
[SPEAKER_04]: what a great topic to get into and to get to see both sides of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: How that process that Sanyan her team have been through to create a business that’s able to have those open, honest, co-supportive conversations with their clients and also get the insights from Janice on how it’s happened for their business and how, I mean, you know, she said she came from a
[SPEAKER_04]: previous businesses where she’d always had some element of the web team in house.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a big shift is suddenly having it all outsourced, but to be able to say that the highlight of her month is her catch up with her web dev team.
[SPEAKER_04]: Madness, just for many of you are going, I don’t believe it, but it is the case for the two of them and for how they’ve built that relationship together driven by what the agency wants and the way the agency wants to work with their clients to create those long term impactful relationships.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, as we said during the call, if you’re not
[SPEAKER_04]: of the same mindset of the same values, it’s going to be very, very hard to build that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it’s not something you can really fix as a client, unless your agency’s already pushing for it and you’ve been resisting.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I hope this doesn’t cause too many of you pain in moving to another agency.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I really hope it has both inspired some of you to realize that the grass is greener elsewhere and that there is opportunity with this.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you’re going down that route, make sure you do the due diligence on finding the right type of agency that fits for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if there’s any agencies listing who are going, oh, wow, we want to go down that route.
[SPEAKER_04]: I suspect San you would be happy to chat to you guys about it too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now you can get your hands on our notes from the episode, including those top tips, the links to the YouTube, video and other bits and pieces by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.
[SPEAKER_04]: You could also use our direct to episode short links, just put ECMP or info forward slash
[SPEAKER_04]: The number of this episode into the URL bar and you’ll be redirected straight to the right page of the website.
[SPEAKER_04]: When you get to the site, you could also add yourself to our email list so you don’t miss out on any of the other things I share to help you improve your business.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for tuning into this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: I bring you a new interview every single week.
[SPEAKER_04]: because I want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners just like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including progressing along the path to net zero.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce master plan podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Find out more at e-commerce masterplan.com slash podcast.
