eCommerce Master Plan

eCommerce MasterPlan | 566: What Would You Do if growth at your eCommerce brand has stalled? – with Janis Thomas

Listen Later

Janis Thomas is an eCommerce & Subscriptions Expert, recently named in the Top 100 UK Marketing Influencers list. 

 

In this episode of the special WWYD? (What Would You Do?) series, Janis answers the big question: 

What would you do as a Head of eCommerce tasked with massively improving operational efficiency — especially when growth at your brand has stalled? 

 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

 

  • Why stalled growth is actually a wake-up call for your eCommerce brand 
  • The ruthless audit every Head of eCom should do on costs, teams & tech 
  • Quick wins that free up cash and time to spark new growth 
  • How to stop wasting hours on admin & turn time into your secret weapon 
  • The smart way to use AI for creative output (without losing your brand DNA) 
  • Why an inspiring vision — not cost-cutting fear — gets teams on board with change 

    •  

    Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

    [04:42] Streamline and Audit for Growth 

    [07:19] Evolving Design and Business Practices 

     

    [12:31] Strategic Prioritization for Quick Impact 

    [15:46] Experimentation Drives Business Improvement 

    [19:18] Team Meetings: Encouraging Experiments 

    [22:28] Focus on Brand Consistency 

    [26:22] AI Design Needs Specificity 

    [28:17] Listen to Janis’ Top Tips! 

     

    Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/566

    —

    Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

    Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

    Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify.

    Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor

    Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    WEBVTT

    00:00.611 –> 00:12.738

    [SPEAKER_02]: Right now, every business should be ripping it down to the tax and saying, okay, what should our team look like, what skills do we need to have?

    00:13.038 –> 00:14.899

    [SPEAKER_02]: What should our tech look like?

    00:14.939 –> 00:21.142

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think doing that audit on your costs, what are you spending and on what should you be spending?

    00:21.162 –> 00:26.825

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think looking at the ROI of your different channels and what does it cost you

    00:32.193 –> 00:34.576

    [SPEAKER_00]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

    00:35.217 –> 00:39.203

    [SPEAKER_00]: It is a help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

    00:39.724 –> 00:47.515

    [SPEAKER_00]: Cutting through the hive to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

    00:50.845 –> 00:51.945

    [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome.

    00:51.985 –> 00:53.086

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

    00:53.166 –> 00:56.987

    [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

    00:57.467 –> 01:09.272

    [SPEAKER_01]: This is the second of our new format the WWYD episode unique in that WWYD takes longer to say than what would you do it it’s short for.

    01:09.592 –> 01:17.641

    [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, these are the episodes where we invite one of our favourite people in e-commerce onto the show to share what they would do in a given situation.

    01:18.102 –> 01:26.491

    [SPEAKER_01]: This time we’ve got regular guest Janice Thomas, no relation, back on the show to answer what would you do if growth at your e-commerce brand has stalled?

    01:27.212 –> 01:30.515

    [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, big question, big one to be tackling.

    01:30.715 –> 01:31.636

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a great topic.

    01:31.776 –> 01:34.118

    [SPEAKER_01]: We are going to be getting into so much stuff.

    01:34.618 –> 01:42.284

    [SPEAKER_01]: Cost savings, prioritization, goal setting, team management culture will also be talking about marketing channels.

    01:42.905 –> 01:45.227

    [SPEAKER_01]: And those of you who know Janice will know she’s been

    01:45.978 –> 01:51.805

    [SPEAKER_01]: pretty much of the forefront of adopting AI within an e-commerce business, so I’ll also be asking her about that as well.

    01:52.225 –> 01:59.113

    [SPEAKER_01]: So make sure you listen to the end of the episode so you don’t miss any of it, plus so you get to listen to Janice’s top tips too.

    02:05.101 –> 02:07.142

    [SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest.

    02:07.522 –> 02:15.624

    [SPEAKER_01]: Janis Thomas is an e-commerce and subscriptions expert, recently named in the top 100 UK marketing influences list.

    02:15.924 –> 02:16.804

    [SPEAKER_01]: Hello Janis.

    02:17.324 –> 02:18.105

    [SPEAKER_01]: Hello Chloe.

    02:18.565 –> 02:23.146

    [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome to have you back on the show, especially for our new format, what would you do?

    02:23.186 –> 02:28.267

    [SPEAKER_01]: Which we will get into very shortly, but first of all, how have things been since we last called up, because it’s been a couple of months?

    02:29.028 –> 02:33.829

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s been good, there is a lot of change going on, which I think is what we’re going to be talking about today.

    02:34.551 –> 02:35.552

    [SPEAKER_01]: it is indeed.

    02:35.633 –> 02:38.777

    [SPEAKER_01]: So let’s I’ll take that cue from you and let’s get straight into it.

    02:38.817 –> 02:41.000

    [SPEAKER_01]: So the what would you do you suggest it was?

    02:41.580 –> 02:45.105

    [SPEAKER_01]: If growth at your e-commerce brand has stored what would you do?

    02:45.165 –> 02:48.470

    [SPEAKER_01]: So why did you pick this as your what would you do?

    02:49.730 –> 02:54.094

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think we’re just in this period of change.

    02:54.194 –> 03:00.721

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think particularly with AI coming in, we need to revisit our processes.

    03:01.541 –> 03:10.029

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think for Ecommerce brands in particular, there’s a lot of people who scaled and invested in certain things.

    03:11.110 –> 03:20.055

    [SPEAKER_02]: on the back of COVID and they had this massive growth and they invested thinking that growth was going to continue and in a lot of cases it hasn’t.

    03:20.536 –> 03:24.958

    [SPEAKER_02]: So we’ve ended up with organizations that aren’t fit for purpose.

    03:25.459 –> 03:30.562

    [SPEAKER_02]: So I really wanted to say, look, if you’re in this position, what do you do?

    03:31.751 –> 03:51.655

    [SPEAKER_01]: Because we, organizations got a bit bloated with that fast, some wrong decisions about things to add into the tech stack, team members to add outlets to add potentially as well, and then channels to add, and then we’re always worse at saying no and cutting out and cutting back than we should be.

    03:51.755 –> 03:55.716

    [SPEAKER_01]: So good decisions at the time, bad decisions at the time, but we’re left with that hangover now.

    03:56.256 –> 03:56.836

    [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

    03:57.616 –> 04:09.779

    [SPEAKER_01]: So, any criteria to this is this advice, you know, is this what were you doing a particularly large brand, particularly small brand and multi channel brands, specific product sets, or is this relevant to anybody in the e-commerce space?

    04:10.579 –> 04:13.920

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think there’s elements of this that’s relevant to everyone.

    04:14.200 –> 04:20.141

    [SPEAKER_02]: Like you might have the perfect team and skill set, but you might have a bloated text stack.

    04:20.461 –> 04:25.503

    [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think there are different elements and different lenses that you could apply

    04:27.843 –> 04:30.064

    [SPEAKER_01]: Cool, because this is going to be looking at everything, isn’t it?

    04:30.104 –> 04:33.644

    [SPEAKER_01]: This isn’t a, your growth has stalled, sort of at your Facebook ads.

    04:33.704 –> 04:34.885

    [SPEAKER_01]: We’re going a bit deeper than that.

    04:35.245 –> 04:36.845

    [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

    04:36.865 –> 04:40.906

    [SPEAKER_01]: OK, so then, what would you do if growth that you’re e-commerce brand has stalled?

    04:40.926 –> 04:41.706

    [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you start?

    04:42.306 –> 04:50.508

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I think, particularly if you’ve got to that point and you’ve plateaued, chances are you’ve tried the easy things.

    04:50.848 –> 04:52.869

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve tried iterating.

    04:53.909 –> 04:56.630

    [SPEAKER_02]: And if you’ve got to the point where you’re stuck,

    04:57.650 –> 05:00.691

    [SPEAKER_02]: getting unstuck is going to be painful.

    05:01.011 –> 05:12.693

    [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that’s the first thing to acknowledge that this is going to hurt to become unstuck and you’re probably almost going to have to go backwards a little bit to go forwards.

    05:13.193 –> 05:16.134

    [SPEAKER_02]: But if you invest that time now, you’re going to be able

    05:21.015 –> 05:31.681

    [SPEAKER_02]: right now, every business should be going, like, ripping it down to the tax and saying, okay, what should our team look like?

    05:31.821 –> 05:35.003

    [SPEAKER_02]: What skills do we need to have?

    05:35.784 –> 05:37.585

    [SPEAKER_02]: What should our tech look like?

    05:40.086 –> 05:44.149

    [SPEAKER_02]: while I’ve typically worked on Magento sites.

    05:44.389 –> 05:48.932

    [SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of people on Shopify because of you got that app environment.

    05:48.992 –> 05:56.176

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s really easy to like add this app and add that app and I liken it to an all websites, not just Shopify.

    05:56.536 –> 05:58.958

    [SPEAKER_02]: It becomes like an over-stuffed handbag.

    05:59.538 –> 06:20.353

    [SPEAKER_02]: you kind of have to tip it out and start all again and I think that’s the philosophy the organizations need to go through from both a team and a tech perspective is like what do we actually lead and I think doing that audit on your costs where what are you spending and on what should you be spending and I think

    06:20.953 –> 06:28.338

    [SPEAKER_02]: looking at the ROI of your different channels and what does it cost you to maintain those channels?

    06:28.398 –> 06:42.288

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think particularly with the changes in meta and Google that you need a lot more assets, you not need a lot more data and some things is like, what is this actually bringing

    06:45.950 –> 07:04.537

    [SPEAKER_02]: I’m not saying, you know, switch off if you’ve got your spending millions of pounds of year on PVC, but you know, if you’re only spending a few grand a month then why not pause it for a few months and see what happens is it actually bringing the incremental utility that you think it is and I think

    07:05.337 –> 07:14.103

    [SPEAKER_02]: that is the main thing is like do you know what you really have to have a hard lens and say what do you need?

    07:14.644 –> 07:22.829

    [SPEAKER_02]: And you look at the team skills in particular, like you think of design, like you used to

    07:23.890 –> 07:28.372

    [SPEAKER_02]: put a brief out to a number of agencies they would come and pitch.

    07:28.432 –> 07:38.216

    [SPEAKER_02]: There would be this big creative idea that would then run for months or even years and we just don’t work in that environment anymore.

    07:38.677 –> 07:40.537

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s, you know, experiment.

    07:40.617 –> 07:41.698

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s try things.

    07:41.858 –> 07:43.679

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s do it quick and dirty.

    07:44.039 –> 07:48.321

    [SPEAKER_02]: And do you have people who are able to do that?

    07:48.761 –> 07:50.302

    [SPEAKER_02]: The same with, you know,

    07:51.062 –> 07:56.684

    [SPEAKER_02]: processes and analysis and reporting and things like that, what happens to these things?

    07:56.944 –> 08:01.625

    [SPEAKER_02]: Are these reports being used to actually drive decisions?

    08:02.025 –> 08:05.927

    [SPEAKER_02]: Is that useful to people in their day to day job?

    08:06.567 –> 08:14.269

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s a hard lens to put things through, but almost everything you do in the business, you need to be saying, should we be doing this?

    08:14.309 –> 08:16.030

    [SPEAKER_02]: Because the reason that you’ve

    08:16.550 –> 08:29.799

    [SPEAKER_02]: plateaued is you’ll keep doing the same thing in the same way the only way you’re going to get out of that cycle is to say stop should we do be doing this what should we be doing?

    08:29.839 –> 08:40.087

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think if you can slim things down there’s a temptation to spend as much as you can to break even presuming that you know

    08:40.667 –> 08:45.848

    [SPEAKER_02]: free, easy investment is not on the table as in the way it was pre-COVID.

    08:46.508 –> 08:49.829

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve got to fund from your existing business.

    08:49.869 –> 08:58.850

    [SPEAKER_02]: So if you’re just ticking on or around the breakeven point, it’s very difficult to take bigger risks and make bigger investments.

    08:59.190 –> 09:06.271

    [SPEAKER_02]: You all have to bring your cost based down a bit so that you’ve got a decent amount of cash in the bank to play around

    09:10.193 –> 09:12.497

    [SPEAKER_02]: otherwise you’re going to be stuck in the cycle of doing the same thing.

    09:13.800 –> 09:16.241

    [SPEAKER_01]: loads of juicy stuff for us to get into their journalist.

    09:16.601 –> 09:24.425

    [SPEAKER_01]: First, one for me would be, you know, this is kind of like the polar opposite of what I end every of one of these episodes with words keep optimizing.

    09:24.465 –> 09:26.165

    [SPEAKER_01]: We’re not doing little optimizations.

    09:26.265 –> 09:29.927

    [SPEAKER_01]: We are, I guess almost going back to kind of like zero based accounting.

    09:30.147 –> 09:33.188

    [SPEAKER_01]: You’re ripping, you’re starting blank sheet of paper, aren’t you?

    09:33.208 –> 09:42.873

    [SPEAKER_01]: And gang, actually, for what we know about our customers and what we know about what’s working at the moment, what do we actually need, ripping it down and building it back up again?

    09:44.033 –> 09:44.694

    [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

    09:45.354 –> 09:56.020

    [SPEAKER_01]: And then timing wise, this one, everyone, you’re hearing this at the end of October, which may seem like exactly the time you don’t want to start doing this.

    09:56.781 –> 10:03.705

    [SPEAKER_01]: But many a retail, I know, most of you have, you know, almost calendar year, financial years on the go.

    10:04.465 –> 10:10.873

    [SPEAKER_01]: And you’re kind of committed to what’s going to happen for the next two months, but January is a wide open field of opportunity.

    10:10.913 –> 10:13.156

    [SPEAKER_01]: So actually, sorry, everybody.

    10:13.597 –> 10:15.539

    [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time to be plotting, isn’t it?

    10:15.660 –> 10:17.101

    [SPEAKER_01]: I would say Janice, would you agree?

    10:17.682 –> 10:20.326

    [SPEAKER_01]: November December are a good time to start working on this.

    10:20.942 –> 10:21.502

    [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

    10:21.522 –> 10:35.793

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think that November, in December, you’ve got such high expectations of what will happen that actually taking a really hard lens on, well, if it didn’t happen, why didn’t it happen?

    10:35.813 –> 10:38.455

    [SPEAKER_02]: And what could we have done differently?

    10:38.495 –> 10:40.777

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s almost the perfect opportunity.

    10:41.557 –> 10:54.580

    [SPEAKER_02]: to put that hard lens in place and make those difficult decisions because if you didn’t, if you don’t have an amazing November and December, it’s only going to get worse into next year.

    10:54.900 –> 10:57.581

    [SPEAKER_02]: And maybe you did have a strong November and December.

    10:57.961 –> 10:58.961

    [SPEAKER_02]: What can you learn?

    10:59.041 –> 10:59.722

    [SPEAKER_02]: What did you do?

    10:59.742 –> 11:05.603

    [SPEAKER_02]: Because you probably, if you did have a strong November and December, you probably have to be agile.

    11:05.903 –> 11:13.529

    [SPEAKER_02]: You probably had to change your plan the what you had in place and you were involved to take advantage of opportunities as they came along.

    11:13.910 –> 11:14.790

    [SPEAKER_02]: How did you do it?

    11:14.890 –> 11:24.238

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think that’s the other thing that so many organisations in Covid were able to make those difficult decisions.

    11:24.618 –> 11:31.504

    [SPEAKER_02]: And did almost go back to that blank sheet of paper and say what staff do we need, you know, what should we be doing?

    11:31.584 –> 11:32.585

    [SPEAKER_02]: Where’s the focus?

    11:33.325 –> 11:41.071

    [SPEAKER_02]: and going back to that COVID mindset again, how did we do that and almost doing that again?

    11:41.091 –> 11:48.837

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s like it was exhausting, but it was hugely creative and innovative time for many businesses, everything changed.

    11:49.398 –> 11:51.640

    [SPEAKER_01]: Crazy fast, uncomfortably fast, but

    11:52.635 –> 11:59.245

    [SPEAKER_01]: We reacted up, now we need to not react down, but react back in line with where we should be.

    11:59.926 –> 12:08.218

    [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve talked about cutting costs in order to have better cash flow and you’ve talked about optimizing marketing channels.

    12:08.959 –> 12:16.285

    [SPEAKER_01]: Can you do those two at the same time, or is it more, you know, we need to first of all, we need to cut back.

    12:16.926 –> 12:30.157

    [SPEAKER_01]: So then we’ve got the resources starting to come into enable us to do the new experimentations and to make the addition changes, because we’re not entirely talking about cutting back, we’re talking about adding some new stuff in as well.

    12:31.102 –> 12:31.622

    [SPEAKER_02]: absolutely.

    12:31.662 –> 12:36.025

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think a part of this process is of prioritization.

    12:36.045 –> 12:39.968

    [SPEAKER_02]: If you’re like, what is going to have the most impact the most quickly?

    12:39.988 –> 12:44.671

    [SPEAKER_02]: Because this is not going to be something you can just do in a month that it’s sorted.

    12:45.031 –> 12:51.715

    [SPEAKER_02]: This is going to be a long program of change and it’s working out where you can see the most impact quickly.

    12:51.995 –> 12:53.656

    [SPEAKER_02]: And that might be, do you know

    12:59.540 –> 13:01.221

    [SPEAKER_02]: whatever it might be.

    13:01.401 –> 13:06.563

    [SPEAKER_02]: What can we do quickly that starts to put us in that better position?

    13:06.683 –> 13:11.085

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think making people focus on the right things.

    13:11.225 –> 13:19.168

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s not necessarily like, oh, we need to cut staff, but actually our staff doing things that they shouldn’t.

    13:19.968 –> 13:20.828

    [SPEAKER_02]: I don’t add value.

    13:21.849 –> 13:27.731

    [SPEAKER_02]: Are they spending, how much time are they spending on reporting, on admin and all of those things?

    13:27.831 –> 13:36.774

    [SPEAKER_02]: By taking that layer out, it’s almost like you’ve got free staff members because you’ve automated those processes.

    13:37.214 –> 13:47.578

    [SPEAKER_02]: You then can invest their time, so that becomes time is a resource that is potentially a break-even and you can move it to

    13:49.098 –> 13:50.918

    [SPEAKER_02]: as well as actual costs.

    13:51.779 –> 13:57.900

    [SPEAKER_01]: I think in the e-commerce space or the retail head office space, this is not.

    13:58.540 –> 14:04.201

    [SPEAKER_01]: What I’m about to say has no shade to be placed on in store teams, okay?

    14:04.582 –> 14:06.442

    [SPEAKER_01]: Very much not, but this is not about in store teams.

    14:06.462 –> 14:10.323

    [SPEAKER_01]: This is about head office staff sitting at their desks in the e-commerce and retail channels.

    14:10.883 –> 14:14.524

    [SPEAKER_01]: We are horrendous in this industry at valuing time.

    14:15.324 –> 14:17.625

    [SPEAKER_01]: absolutely horrendous at it.

    14:18.446 –> 14:30.353

    [SPEAKER_01]: You just have to look at the people who are doing long-winded complicated reports every Monday, which could have been automated, but it would have cost $20 a month to buy the software that would automate it.

    14:30.953 –> 14:33.015

    [SPEAKER_01]: We are so shocking at time, aren’t we?

    14:33.075 –> 14:37.037

    [SPEAKER_01]: Would you I would go so far as to suggest everyone starts filling in time sheets?

    14:37.097 –> 14:38.037

    [SPEAKER_01]: Would you go that far,

    14:40.819 –> 14:43.299

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think it depends on the size of your organisation.

    14:43.339 –> 14:52.821

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think a big organisation you have to go through, that because that’s the only way you’re going to get enough data to make these decisions in a smaller organisation.

    14:53.161 –> 15:05.143

    [SPEAKER_02]: You can do it in a more informal brainstorming session, you know, like for example, I recently had one of my team going on maternity leave and it made us think about what does she do?

    15:05.464 –> 15:07.664

    [SPEAKER_02]: How does she spend her time?

    15:08.384 –> 15:14.529

    [SPEAKER_02]: and who should take over what and is that something we should continue to do while she’s on maternity leave?

    15:15.329 –> 15:16.770

    [SPEAKER_01]: Which it’s interesting, isn’t it?

    15:16.830 –> 15:21.814

    [SPEAKER_01]: Like a lot of this, you talked about the need for prioritisation, but also the need to make fast changes.

    15:22.394 –> 15:28.799

    [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so ideally we gather all the data, way up all the opportunities, and then do a lovely big old project plan.

    15:28.819 –> 15:31.741

    [SPEAKER_01]: But you’ve got to be fast, and you’ve got to be data-focused.

    15:31.761 –> 15:36.264

    [SPEAKER_01]: There’s kind of like, there’s an element that has to be done initially on gut feel.

    15:37.025 –> 15:41.013

    [SPEAKER_01]: but then there’s also a big old element of data gather and analysis.

    15:41.033 –> 15:45.001

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s like two competing methods but both in the same project in some ways.

    15:45.101 –> 15:45.863

    [SPEAKER_01]: In my head anyway.

    15:46.393 –> 16:10.705

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah and I think almost part of it is getting those quick wins and making the business case for that wider investment of doing it in more detail and you know in more depths and properly planned out but you’ve kind of got to experiment to find out what is going to make a difference is like oh we think by automating our reporting it’s going to free up you know

    16:11.705 –> 16:15.030

    [SPEAKER_02]: x hours a day for everyone and does it actually do that?

    16:15.470 –> 16:18.795

    [SPEAKER_02]: Does that then have the impact that we think it will on the business?

    16:19.776 –> 16:20.037

    [SPEAKER_02]: What?

    16:20.437 –> 16:24.643

    [SPEAKER_02]: And asking people, what would you do if you had the time?

    16:25.184 –> 16:27.527

    [SPEAKER_02]: Like you would be surprised at the projects?

    16:27.627 –> 16:31.989

    [SPEAKER_02]: that people want to be working on, but don’t currently have the time to do.

    16:32.009 –> 16:42.175

    [SPEAKER_02]: So it’s no good just saying, oh, we’ve saved all this time, because tasks will expand to fill the time available.

    16:42.195 –> 16:46.838

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think particularly, you know, I worked a long time in marketing in e-commerce.

    16:46.858 –> 16:49.759

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think there’s a tendency towards perfectionism.

    16:49.779 –> 16:56.183

    [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh, I’ve got more time to do that deck, then I’m gonna make it look even better.

    16:56.943 –> 17:00.926

    [SPEAKER_02]: If I’ve only got two hours to do the deck, then it’s going to be what it’s going to be.

    17:01.266 –> 17:09.831

    [SPEAKER_02]: So I think putting that expectation in place, not just, oh, you can save time, but what’s the project you want to work on with that free time?

    17:10.411 –> 17:11.291

    [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it’s very easy to go.

    17:11.332 –> 17:14.673

    [SPEAKER_01]: We saved a load of hours, but we haven’t actually spent the one-on-eating worthwhile.

    17:15.514 –> 17:25.119

    [SPEAKER_01]: I’d like one of the other points you made a little earlier when you were talking about prioritisation and making a quick whim, which was that you need to get everyone aligned around

    17:26.932 –> 17:39.036

    [SPEAKER_01]: which I think when you’re doing these fast moving projects and you’re asking people for their opinion and you’re asking teams to get involved, you have to have that clarity of goal, which means you kind of have to go, actually no, do you, do you, Janist?

    17:39.076 –> 17:45.559

    [SPEAKER_01]: Do you need to go more in depth with what the goal is than we need to reignite growth?

    17:45.939 –> 17:48.280

    [SPEAKER_01]: Is that good enough goal or do we need more detail?

    17:49.100 –> 18:02.507

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think you need an inspiring goal that is going to get people on board because I think the only way this works is everyone is looking everything that they do and they have to be on board with this.

    18:02.567 –> 18:07.270

    [SPEAKER_02]: They can’t be like, oh well, if I do this, you know, I’m going to be made redundant.

    18:07.290 –> 18:09.471

    [SPEAKER_02]: My job is going to be taken by AI.

    18:09.711 –> 18:11.873

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’re never going to get anyone on board with that.

    18:12.733 –> 18:19.935

    [SPEAKER_02]: But if you say we want to build the company of the future, this is a vision of what our company is going to be.

    18:20.295 –> 18:22.135

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s going to be efficient.

    18:22.235 –> 18:25.776

    [SPEAKER_02]: We’re not going to waste time on admin.

    18:25.836 –> 18:31.537

    [SPEAKER_02]: We want you to focus on the things that you’re good at and that you enjoy and all of these things.

    18:31.597 –> 18:38.359

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think you need an inspiring vision for people to buy into rather than just we want to make

    18:42.900 –> 18:48.702

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s not, we need to cut 20% of costs because that’s enough to send fear through everybody.

    18:49.342 –> 18:56.944

    [SPEAKER_01]: So given that, this is also something you’re not going to kick off amongst the, you know, within the business with an email is it.

    18:57.004 –> 19:03.005

    [SPEAKER_01]: So would you do an hour long tea meeting, doing away day, half a day, something with pizza?

    19:03.225 –> 19:07.527

    [SPEAKER_01]: How would you launch this to get the best

    19:09.267 –> 19:17.887

    [SPEAKER_01]: understanding from the team so they’re not ten minutes later standing by the water cooler going well they’re going to make us all redundant on that which is the worst outcome you can end up with.

    19:18.573 –> 19:30.736

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I’m a big believer in regular team meetings and one of the things I like to do at regular team meetings is set people with a challenge.

    19:31.356 –> 19:41.498

    [SPEAKER_02]: It might be go experiment with AI this month and come back and share what you’ve learned, what you tried, what worked, what didn’t work, it might be we want to improve our

    19:41.838 –> 19:49.219

    [SPEAKER_02]: product pages, go find examples of brands that you like that think do the product page well, why do they do that?

    19:49.259 –> 20:02.702

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think breaking this down into bite size challenges that everyone can go away and come with their own opinions and feel like those opinions are valid and listen to.

    20:03.322 –> 20:07.043

    [SPEAKER_02]: And also, you know, most organizations, why do you want to

    20:09.723 –> 20:22.937

    [SPEAKER_02]: looking at what somebody else does, when you can have that person share, what they do, how they do it, how they think that they can improve it, and that person’s going to be on board with those changes rather than someone imposing them on them.

    20:23.559 –> 20:30.846

    [SPEAKER_01]: I love that, because then you’re also creating a culture that helps deal with such problems in the past.

    20:31.146 –> 20:39.474

    [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it’s a lot easier if you’ve been doing that sort of thing already, then it’s a lot easier to embark on this than if it’s been, oh, they’re doing their sequence squirrel thing again.

    20:39.574 –> 20:42.877

    [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the bosses are doing their thing and we’ll, we won’t get told anything.

    20:43.217 –> 20:46.520

    [SPEAKER_01]: if you’re in that scenario this is an awful lot harder to do.

    20:47.081 –> 20:54.669

    [SPEAKER_01]: So would you in that example would you kind of drip feed it to the team or would you do a big reveal to kick things off?

    20:55.562 –> 21:03.204

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think that there’s good to have a big conversation, but setting people’s expectations about what sort of things you’re going to ask.

    21:03.284 –> 21:07.205

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think getting everyone involved is really useful.

    21:07.345 –> 21:11.226

    [SPEAKER_02]: For example, who in the business is using these tools?

    21:12.047 –> 21:12.927

    [SPEAKER_02]: Are you using it?

    21:13.047 –> 21:14.667

    [SPEAKER_02]: Are you dependent on it?

    21:15.508 –> 21:23.730

    [SPEAKER_02]: All of these things that you’ve ended up that you’ve subscribed to with ongoing recurring billing and who is actually using them?

    21:24.250 –> 21:30.937

    [SPEAKER_02]: and how many people are using them and how much are they using them and is this the best tool for what they’re using it for.

    21:30.957 –> 21:36.762

    [SPEAKER_02]: So only three people find it really useful is there’s something else that those three people could be used.

    21:36.982 –> 21:40.886

    [SPEAKER_02]: If everyone uses it well clearly this is the tool that we should be investing in.

    21:42.131 –> 21:43.931

    [SPEAKER_01]: a user account amnesty.

    21:45.532 –> 21:48.552

    [SPEAKER_01]: I’m sure that would save everybody a lot of money.

    21:49.232 –> 21:50.613

    [SPEAKER_01]: Not a bad one to do week one.

    21:51.133 –> 22:02.375

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I’ve done that with recurring costs as well, so everyone in the marketing team down and be like, what is this cost and line by line?

    22:02.675 –> 22:07.956

    [SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, that was that software that we signed up for for that project three years ago and we’re still paying for.

    22:08.396 –> 22:11.957

    [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or Lindsay, who left three years ago was to do with that one.

    22:12.397 –> 22:12.577

    [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

    22:12.637 –> 22:12.837

    [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

    22:14.017 –> 22:19.599

    [SPEAKER_01]: And then you really love the fact you have an accounts team, because they can go and chase it all down for you, work out how to cancel.

    22:20.339 –> 22:21.399

    [SPEAKER_01]: And cool.

    22:21.579 –> 22:27.681

    [SPEAKER_01]: Anything else we should do if growth at the Ecommerce brand has stored, anything else you’d add in.

    22:28.981 –> 22:38.014

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s again going back to basics, like really understanding, why do you exist?

    22:38.575 –> 22:40.618

    [SPEAKER_02]: Why are you in business?

    22:41.038 –> 22:43.562

    [SPEAKER_02]: Why should customers buy your

    22:44.343 –> 22:44.943

    [SPEAKER_02]: products.

    22:45.823 –> 22:49.745

    [SPEAKER_02]: That focus, I think, helps this whole process.

    22:49.765 –> 22:54.466

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s like, well, why, you know, what do we do and what do we not do?

    22:54.746 –> 22:59.567

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the whole exercise is about focus and what should we be doing?

    22:59.627 –> 23:01.528

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think brand is a really

    23:02.348 –> 23:03.509

    [SPEAKER_02]: important part of it.

    23:03.629 –> 23:30.170

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think particularly as you are using potentially AI tools for creative development, being really clear what the brand is, who is for all of those things and having that as an input into prompts and processes and all of those things and everyone is consistent about what they’re saying and all of those things means that you’re going to get more consistent

    23:30.510 –> 23:31.030

    [SPEAKER_02]: outputs.

    23:31.070 –> 23:40.958

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that’s an exercise, even if you’re a massively growing brand that has no issues around growth, you should be doing right now is aligning.

    23:41.618 –> 23:43.960

    [SPEAKER_02]: What are you saying about your team?

    23:44.040 –> 23:47.222

    [SPEAKER_02]: What prompts are you using?

    23:47.482 –> 23:53.027

    [SPEAKER_02]: Because if you’ve got 12 different people, you know, in 10 different teams, you know, or using different

    23:53.747 –> 23:56.891

    [SPEAKER_02]: prompts, then you’re going to end up with misalignment.

    23:56.911 –> 24:04.920

    [SPEAKER_02]: So I think being really clear about what your brand is, why you exist, what you stand for, is an exercise everyone should be doing right now.

    24:05.660 –> 24:06.501

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s interesting, isn’t it?

    24:06.521 –> 24:12.346

    [SPEAKER_01]: We seem to get involved in a lot of conversations about the moment that can be summarized as garbage in garbage out.

    24:12.466 –> 24:28.480

    [SPEAKER_01]: And usually in e-commerce, they are down to product data, which powers so much of the AI activity on product data and tracking data on ads, on emails, on the website, in geo, and all that kind of stuff.

    24:28.500 –> 24:31.022

    [SPEAKER_01]: But not so many people are talking about

    24:32.983 –> 24:42.586

    [SPEAKER_01]: In head office use of AI and the way that, as you’ve just eloquently explained, can be garbage and garbage out and you can quite quickly lose track of things.

    24:42.666 –> 24:51.488

    [SPEAKER_01]: If you don’t have that DNA or the core of things, all projects are easier if you have business DNA of this is who we serve, this is why we do it and everything else.

    24:52.268 –> 24:54.789

    [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone Janice was nodding very enthusiastically.

    24:54.809 –> 24:55.729

    [SPEAKER_01]: I know you guys can’t see it.

    24:55.749 –> 24:57.490

    [SPEAKER_01]: She’s nodding very enthusiastically by that.

    24:57.510 –> 24:59.791

    [SPEAKER_01]: So I’m not going to bother to ask it or comment on that.

    24:59.831 –> 25:00.371

    [SPEAKER_01]: Clearly agrees.

    25:00.831 –> 25:11.575

    [SPEAKER_01]: Well, now I’m going to ask you, Janice, I know you’ve been probably one of the, one of the retailers at the forefront of embracing AI and the business without doing it stupidly.

    25:11.595 –> 25:16.717

    [SPEAKER_01]: I had that caveat because there’s some who’ve gone all the way and it’s a really terrible idea.

    25:18.218 –> 25:23.243

    [SPEAKER_01]: How have you found it’s helped bring inefficiency and help build growth?

    25:23.303 –> 25:32.712

    [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is for the benefit of the listeners, where are key places to start building it into the business, to gain success, not to gain confusion and problems?

    25:33.433 –> 25:47.932

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think particularly from a marketing point of view, in terms of creative outputs whether that is, you know, product page copy or press releases or add imagery or all of those things.

    25:48.793 –> 26:10.336

    [SPEAKER_02]: it can be amazing, but you have to invest in, you can’t just give it, you know, so I’ll produce an ad for this, you have to be like, well, this is our visual, you know, this is our tone of voice, this is examples of what is good and what is bad and as you say, if the product data isn’t there, then it can only build with what you’ve got.

    26:10.416 –> 26:10.796

    [SPEAKER_02]: So I think,

    26:11.517 –> 26:19.843

    [SPEAKER_02]: It is great at particularly the creative production side, but you need the foundation to underpin it otherwise.

    26:20.123 –> 26:22.545

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’re just going to get really generic stuff.

    26:22.605 –> 26:39.917

    [SPEAKER_02]: And that’s what the AI brush gets to hard with is, well, no, if you haven’t told it about your brand and your customer and your tone of voice and given examples of what does good look like and all of that stuff, if you’re not setting the tone correctly,

    26:40.718 –> 26:42.099

    [SPEAKER_02]: And then you’re not refining it.

    26:42.280 –> 26:42.880

    [SPEAKER_02]: What comes out?

    26:42.940 –> 26:46.003

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’re like, no, that’s wrong because we don’t use blue.

    26:46.444 –> 26:49.106

    [SPEAKER_02]: That’s wrong because we don’t use that language.

    26:49.227 –> 26:52.310

    [SPEAKER_02]: That’s to, you know, generic.

    26:52.550 –> 26:54.272

    [SPEAKER_02]: There’s no spark, there’s no tone to it.

    26:54.572 –> 26:56.154

    [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that needs to be more bullet points.

    26:56.414 –> 26:57.395

    [SPEAKER_02]: You need to feel…

    26:57.975 –> 26:58.956

    [SPEAKER_02]: kind of feedback.

    26:59.176 –> 27:22.329

    [SPEAKER_02]: I was at an event last week, where somebody was talking about the a fashion retailer and they’re talking about using AI design tools and they’re saying an experience designer using one of those was giving a really specific brief with a good understanding and then the tweaks that they were making to the output.

    27:22.949 –> 27:24.290

    [SPEAKER_02]: were outstanding.

    27:24.350 –> 27:34.014

    [SPEAKER_02]: So what an experienced designer was able to do with that tool versus a lay person was, you know, night and day.

    27:34.134 –> 27:38.956

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that it’s very easy for us to think it’s like just like, oh, AI is going to give us the answer.

    27:38.996 –> 27:49.181

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s like, no, you have to have the experience and the understanding and invest in teaching it to get the outputs that you want.

    27:52.259 –> 27:57.043

    [SPEAKER_00]: The Ecommerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the Ecommerce sector.

    27:57.203 –> 27:58.624

    [SPEAKER_00]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

    28:09.993 –> 28:14.935

    [SPEAKER_01]: I love this section because it gives me and I’ll list us some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

    28:14.975 –> 28:16.635

    [SPEAKER_01]: Janis, are you ready for the top tips?

    28:17.075 –> 28:17.476

    [SPEAKER_02]: I am.

    28:17.836 –> 28:18.176

    [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.

    28:18.476 –> 28:26.599

    [SPEAKER_01]: Booktop tip first up then if everyone listing to this podcast to group take Friday off to read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

    28:27.519 –> 28:41.533

    [SPEAKER_02]: In this context, it would have to be Adam Grant’s thing again, which is all about the assumptions that we make and the decision-making processes that we use that don’t serve us and all of those things.

    28:41.653 –> 28:46.558

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s the absolutely perfect book to read before embarking on this project.

    28:47.364 –> 28:48.385

    [SPEAKER_01]: Nice.

    28:48.405 –> 28:54.409

    [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves.

    28:55.670 –> 28:58.412

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think I’m going to be counterintuitive.

    28:59.112 –> 29:11.921

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think increasingly it’s not about traffic that I think more and more user journeys are going to take place off your website whether that’s.

    29:12.781 –> 29:19.146

    [SPEAKER_02]: LLMs and Geo or YouTube or Meta or any of those things.

    29:19.326 –> 29:31.476

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think we all need to get a lot less hung up about traffic and actually about how do we communicate clearly with our customers wherever they are.

    29:32.557 –> 29:37.963

    [SPEAKER_01]: Nice, which comes back to great product data, clear DNA, and all of those great things.

    29:38.985 –> 29:49.056

    [SPEAKER_01]: The tooltop tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug in a phone up or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

    29:49.917 –> 30:05.079

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the things I’m finding really useful is understanding how to structure a prompt to get the output that you want, that telling it like, right, who are you?

    30:06.080 –> 30:08.461

    [SPEAKER_02]: What are you trying to achieve?

    30:08.862 –> 30:10.943

    [SPEAKER_02]: What does the output look like?

    30:11.303 –> 30:14.345

    [SPEAKER_02]: What process do you want it to go through?

    30:14.845 –> 30:20.209

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think for me, thinking about how do you, not just like do this task?

    30:21.069 –> 30:30.014

    [SPEAKER_02]: And then giving it examples of what good looks like, like thinking about, or actually, what does it a good prompt structure look like?

    30:30.595 –> 30:32.516

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think is something that I’m evolving at the moment.

    30:32.556 –> 30:34.037

    [SPEAKER_02]: I’m finding really useful.

    30:34.983 –> 30:38.405

    [SPEAKER_01]: It is quite impressive that there are now tools to help you write the prompt.

    30:39.565 –> 30:42.046

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s like, so we’ve almost gone full circle now.

    30:42.767 –> 30:44.768

    [SPEAKER_02]: But you’ve got to have the answers.

    30:44.808 –> 30:47.669

    [SPEAKER_02]: And I think this is the bit that people are trying to skip.

    30:48.209 –> 30:52.471

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s like, actually, you have to feed it with really good quality stuff.

    30:52.771 –> 30:56.433

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve got to feed it with really good quality examples.

    30:56.473 –> 30:58.634

    [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve got to feed it with all that data.

    30:59.134 –> 31:02.276

    [SPEAKER_02]: You can’t just expect it to make it up because it will.

    31:02.996 –> 31:04.377

    [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then you’ll pay the price.

    31:04.977 –> 31:06.398

    [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the carbon top tip.

    31:06.438 –> 31:10.241

    [SPEAKER_01]: What’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

    31:11.202 –> 31:13.803

    [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s all about what we’ve been talking today.

    31:13.823 –> 31:14.964

    [SPEAKER_02]: It’s about focus.

    31:15.384 –> 31:26.772

    [SPEAKER_02]: If you think about how much time and resource is wasted in every organisation, this is the exercise that we should all be going through right now to reduce our carbon footprint.

    31:27.552 –> 31:34.993

    [SPEAKER_01]: It is as simple as that as Nick carbon footprint reduction is waste reduction and focusing and knowing what you’re doing will reduce your carbon footprint.

    31:35.153 –> 31:36.354

    [SPEAKER_01]: I love that as an answer.

    31:36.394 –> 31:41.155

    [SPEAKER_01]: That’s perfect Janice 10 out of 10 Janice before we say goodbye.

    31:41.215 –> 31:46.776

    [SPEAKER_01]: Could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and get in contact if they want to chat with you.

    31:47.516 –> 31:49.896

    [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, please get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

    31:50.076 –> 31:52.157

    [SPEAKER_02]: I’m Janice Thomas and that’s J.A.

    31:52.337 –> 31:53.097

    [SPEAKER_02]: and I.S.

    31:54.097 –> 31:55.439

    [SPEAKER_01]: Simple as that, everybody.

    31:55.720 –> 32:01.789

    [SPEAKER_01]: Janice, thank you so much for being on the e-commerce Master Plan podcast and for being so generous sharing your experience with us.

    32:01.849 –> 32:03.652

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s always a pleasure to catch up with you.

    32:04.213 –> 32:05.275

    [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for having me, Chloe.

    32:11.074 –> 32:13.415

    [SPEAKER_01]: brilliant insights there from Janice.

    32:13.435 –> 32:21.037

    [SPEAKER_01]: So if you are looking at restoring the growth of your e-commerce business, then it’s not about playing around with the marketing.

    32:21.438 –> 32:30.040

    [SPEAKER_01]: It’s time, given COVID and all the AI changes and all the rest of it, it is time to rip it up and start again, metaphorically speaking.

    32:30.261 –> 32:34.402

    [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, get out that blank sheet of paper, work out where you should be going.

    32:34.982 –> 32:47.430

    [SPEAKER_01]: involve your team in the process, take them along for the ride, make it inspiring and exciting, see what untapped resources you’ve got in the business, cut those unnecessary costs and get really good at prioritisation with that clear goal.

    32:47.510 –> 33:01.519

    [SPEAKER_01]: And as we talked about again and again, get the DNA and the building blocks right in the business, the vision, the values, he or target customers, the product data, it will make what is quite clearly coming down the road for us so much easier to deal with if you’ve got all that right.

    33:02.580 –> 33:10.806

    [SPEAKER_01]: You can get your hands on our notes of this episode, including those top tips and things links to the things we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

    33:11.326 –> 33:16.510

    [SPEAKER_01]: You could also use our direct episode short links, just put ECMP.info for us.

    33:17.030 –> 33:22.094

    [SPEAKER_01]: The number of this episode into the URL bar, and you’ll be redirected straight to the right episode page.

    33:22.534 –> 33:29.800

    [SPEAKER_01]: When you get to the website, you can 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.

    33:30.440 –> 33:38.423

    [SPEAKER_01]: And if you like this episode, then why not go back and have a listen to episode 561, which is our very first, what would you do?

    33:38.443 –> 33:45.305

    [SPEAKER_01]: A what would you do if you were to take over an e-commerce business in the 10 to 25 million range?

    33:45.866 –> 33:48.186

    [SPEAKER_01]: And you can find all our what would you do is at

    33:52.688 –> 33:56.651

    [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for tuning into this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

    33:56.711 –> 34:06.079

    [SPEAKER_01]: I bring you a new interview every week to inspire and help people like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including progressing along the path to net zero.

    34:06.500 –> 34:12.064

    [SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

    34:12.385 –> 34:15.027

    [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

    34:18.540 –> 34:21.883

    [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

    34:22.303 –> 34:27.107

    [SPEAKER_00]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    eCommerce Master PlanBy Chloe Thomas