S1:E5 - Matt Rigney on E-commerce Evolution, AI & Personalisation

Tune into Episode 5 of Digital Discovery Podcast as Matt Rigney dives deep into online shopping's transformation in Australia, the intricate art of personalisation, and the future promise of AI in e-commerce. Plus, a sporty detour with Warrior Sports and Matilda's iconic soccer match!

Notice: Before making any decisions regarding your ecommerce strategy, we strongly recommend you conduct your own in-depth research and seek expert advice.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, Matt. It's great to have you on the show, mate. I'm super excited to talk to you because

(00:21):
I know you've been like me, you've been in the industry for a long time. It's let's
just say seasoned. I mean, I'm going a bit white myself, mate. But yeah, I know you've
got a really interesting background and I thought we could start on a bit about yourself.
Well, these days, obviously, I'm sort of in the personalization space, I sort of run a

(00:44):
personalization technology, but I can't cut my teeth in media. So that's kind of where
I sort of, you know, learned the industry and came out as a young fella, you know, in
through media sales and predominantly in the tech media industry. Back then, you know,
print was king. And pretty quickly, technology media evolved into digital. But yeah, media

(01:08):
sales and director and being a young publisher of sort of business and tech media publications,
PC world, which you might remember from the old days.
I do actually. Yeah, PC world magazine.
Yeah, it was back when you had 350 pages of magazine and 150 pages of ads. Yeah, 100%.
It was really good. It was it's actually interesting. Net Guide magazine was the other one as well.

(01:32):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Back then, you know, every brand advertising used that media and every
reseller sold off the page at the back. Yeah. And they were the first to embrace digital.
You know, those advertisers back then, it was the HPs and the Dells and compact, those
sort of brands. They were the first to embrace digital media, you know, as well. So it allowed

(01:53):
me to sort of come through and see firsthand how those big tech brands were leading in
the tech space and then gradually migrate into into sort of technology media. So I cut
my teeth on that and wound up at Fairfax in a B2B global media role there running their
B2B media division.
Right. And I read your title, mate. And I have to say, I'm so impressed. I didn't know

(02:16):
because I've known you for so long. You know, we've been around the scene for so long. And
I'm like, so you're like the international GM of technology media or something that was
like your title. So I hope I didn't self assign that. But to be honest, I was actually an
interesting role. They had acquired another B2B media business that had operations in

(02:38):
New Zealand, England, Hong Kong, Singapore. It was MIS and it was CFOs. It was B2B technology
media, business media. And I was thinking the international manager for all of those
global offices. We're a little island in the Fairfax business media world. So fascinating

(03:00):
role and leading big sales teams, advertising sales teams and talking to technology companies
every day of the week, more or less from an advertising perspective. And then I did a
hard 180 after about three years in Fairfax. I did a hard 180, sort of was a little burned
out on the corporate and wanted to sort of roll the sleeves up and go to something that

(03:22):
was a little different, a little more hands on and a little more cutting edge and something
where I had a bit of skin in the game. And I met a couple of guys who had just started
a business called Get Price, which was a price comparison engine, really smart guys. And
at that time, price comparison engines were really some of the largest shopping traffic

(03:45):
websites in the country.
Yeah, they were huge. I mean, everything. I mean, if you wanted to buy something online,
you would go to get priced. A lot of retailers never really sort of thought, well, people
are shopping on price at that point, even. So the whole concept of the hat, you can get
a price online. I think the naming of it, I think the timing of it was just genius.
I thought it was fantastic. So kudos to you and those guys that started that. It was really

(04:08):
good.
Yeah. So we rode the wave and it was pre-Google shopping. Well, it really did. It got Google's
attention because at the time, there were two or three major comparison shopping sites
and they were taking most of the traffic. I think we at one point went from half a million
visitors a month to about four million. And I think eBay at the time was about eight million.
So yeah, I think that was huge back then. So everybody was going to eBay for everything.

(04:32):
Absolutely. Yeah. And the other difference was back then the traditional bricks and mortar
retailers hadn't embraced e-commerce. So we were dealing with a whole little economy of
fuel plays like deals direct. Oh, oh, Graze online.
Yeah, they've been around forever. Graze online. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember Matt from e-Wave.
He was the only real serious online payment gateway. You could, you know, you know, he

(04:57):
really killed it. He was such a smart guy, you know, and I remember I spoke to him a
while ago and I haven't spoken to him for years and he, I wrote my first website in
ASP.net and this was before Google and I used a platform called VP ASP. And it was the first
off the shelf platform that you could buy and it only had a plugin for his gateway.

(05:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And it was so like, so that was so VP ASP was like one of the first actual
kind of like big commerce or sort of Shopify where you could, you know, just install it
and the hosting costs me $1,500 a month for that. I remember it was so expensive. So I
built my own server and everything anyway, long story short, that's probably for another
podcast one day. I'll get Matt on, we'll have a chat to him.

(05:44):
Well, no, he was interesting. And back then we all shared leads. So I remember we actually
did a deal with Matt about selling. So if they were a get price customer and signed
up to that and vice versa, you still see that collaboration in e-commerce today. But back
then it was even more important because no one really took e-commerce that seriously
then even the big brands. And so it was us really pushing the industry forward and eventually

(06:06):
first technologies. Do you remember them Harris technologies? They were one of the big ones.
Yeah. Well, they were actually our biggest advertiser. They used to do catalogs in the
back of the PC. That was like a Bible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Telephone books and they
would insert their catalog and in a hundred thousand copies of a, of a PC world magazine,
the pre internet days. It's unbelievable. Anyway, News Corp actually bought our business

(06:31):
get price, which was in 2010. So it got the attention of the big media companies. Yeah.
And that was an amazing result. It was. Yeah. We bought it back in 2012 and, and then re
established ourselves, launched a company next commerce. I remember that. We took it
price and we also launched a discovery business called hint and a fashion discovery business

(06:53):
called Trova. So we sort of extended that as people started shopping less on price and
they were more looking for, it was more visual and discovery. And that's why we sort of extend
the range into that and sold that business to future publishing in 2016. And at that
point I took a big deep breath and said, what do I want to do from here? And interestingly

(07:14):
enough, Beryllions had been on my radar because we'd been watching what they were doing. And
I think they were just about the only personalization platform back then they launched in 2009. Wow.
Yeah. So that was so far ahead of the head of the curve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's,
that's a, it's a, it's a definitely a great product. And I think when I was at Bingley,
I remember at the same time we were having a, I think there was a huge boom in, in mobile

(07:39):
commerce and you know, we, we just couldn't get the customer to convert. You know, we were having
like horrendous to convert. Yeah. Conversion rates on, on mobile customers. And, and I was actually,
well, part of the agency that, that I was using at Bingley, Fontus and Lloyd has actually, we sat

(08:00):
down and we, we strategized a bit and he said, look, I think you should go responsive on, and
as a responsive designer, everybody had apps at the time, apps in the apps on Harvey Norman
had just launched their, their app. And I think Gordon Nugent was running it at the time. He was.
Yeah. Yeah. Good old Gordo. And then, you know, and then, so, you know, I took a massive hit.

(08:24):
I remember this because I was getting so much pressure to have, why don't we have all the buyers?
Why don't we have an app? And then literally, you know, and the conversions were so, so bad,
I was actually feeling, I was starting to feel the pressure a lot, you know? And then all of a
sudden there was this sort of flip. I think people just did not trust the device because it was so,

(08:44):
you know, they just weren't used to like it had gone from the Blackberry to then to now iPhones.
People had a browser. They just weren't in that. It was only a few years. It's like five years in.
They weren't really trusting the device so much to shop and buy. You wouldn't buy a washing machine
or a TV on your phone and nobody could get the concept. I'm like, guys, we don't need an app.

(09:05):
We need to go responsive. We launched the responsive site. Then everybody backtracked
and they had millions of URLs in Google SERPs that were all pointing towards apps. And it was just an
absolute fight. And we started to outrank everybody being leaded because our URLs were clean. And
that decision very early on from Lloyd and myself to go responsive saved the company millions of

(09:29):
dollars. And it wasn't until we started looking at the engagement on mobile commerce and trying
to redefine the experience, we started looking at recommendations very early on and recommendations
and how, you know, Google spoke very early, I think it was 2014 or 2015. Google introduced a

(09:53):
concept called, you know, mobile moments. They're saying that people, they did a huge study and they
said, you know, people have these mobile moments in search or where, you know, and micro moments,
I think they called them as well, buzzword. But it was more like when you when it's sort of brain to
keyboard, now your computer, your phone is now replacing your computer. And I think that will

(10:16):
really concern because they could see that a lot of retailers had not invested enough in recommendations
in personalization in the mobile experience. And I think that sort of led to, you know, what we
actually are seeing today is this sort of this mobile, mobile customer and the future of discovery,
I really feel is, is in that mobile experience. Maybe tell us a bit more. I'm like super

(10:42):
interested because I, you know, in full in full transparency, I was a was a Barillians customer,
David Shepard, actually, who's over now is actually over at Google. We sat down. Yeah, we sat down and
we did a lot of strategy around why mobile wasn't converting. And, you know, we were spending quite a
bit of money on on AdWords at the time. Now it's called Google Ads. But, you know, and we just,

(11:08):
you know, it wasn't until we started working with you guys, I think that's really when, you know,
we took the business from both David and I from doing about five to six million dollars to over
150 million in 2019. Yeah. And we did it through personalization and we did it through. No, no,
I think that the number one thing for me is was not over complicating it. And I think one of the

(11:30):
things I really, really resonated with Barillians at the time, as you said, they were very early on.
They there were only a few players we tried. At the time, it was a product called Baynote.
Yeah. You remember Baynote. Yeah, I do. Yeah. The implementation was a was wasn't great on our side.
The product was good. We just we just couldn't get it to work. We tried a number of things,

(11:54):
but the Barillians was the one that always tended to come out up on top for us at the time.
And, you know, it's all transparency. You don't pay me for this. But, you know, I'm only speaking
the truth as a retailer that's been in retail for 15 years. When you find something, sometimes,
you know, you want to shout to the rooftops. You want to tell everybody how how something like

(12:18):
Barillians can really change the dynamic of your business. Yeah, no, look, it's interesting. And
look, we we we value that relationship. A lot of our business does come through that referral
network. So it's interesting. But I think personalization matters. And it's now mainstream
for a reason. It's no longer a sort of a nice to have. It's now a must have. And for the simple
reason that customers expect it. And I think retailers need it. And so to unpack that a bit,

(12:43):
we've all become I think consumers have become conditioned to expect personalization in our
everyday transaction. So even when you go down to your local barista and you get your coffee or tea
in the morning, you know, you can look at that barista. They know exactly they all know your
name. They know exactly what coffee you have when you have a sugar with it, whether you're buying it
with toast, you can be six deep in the line and they'll just give you a nod. Yeah, that's great,

(13:07):
isn't it? There's no better feeling right? Yeah, you feel wanted, you feel feel like they know you
as a person. And you feel and for them, that's relevance, right? Everything about them is
maintaining their relevance with you because you could just walk to the next coffee shop and
yeah, you know, you know, there's there's some point of difference in relevance to
to that audience. I think personalization drives loyalty, you know, and that's a really good example.

(13:28):
Same with like, you know, you find you're with Spotify, you're listening to beautifully curated
playlists. And we take that for granted today that, you know, personalization is actually
driving discovery, right? Yes, yes. Spotify or Netflix are giving you really great cross cells
based on real time data. That is driving discovery and the discovery that drives engagement and the

(13:49):
engagement drives loyalty. So it's this self fulfilling prophecy, isn't it? Prophecy that
so customers expect that the other side of that is customers are now in 2023, starting to get
frustrated if they don't get it. So we know we're giving up more data signals than we ever have. And
we know that retailers are capturing that data. So we expect them to use that in a smart way. And

(14:12):
you know, I have a pet, I'm a dog. And it's my only pet, and it's been my only pet for six years. And
I shop at the same brand store physical and online. So they have all the data signals on me. They know
I don't have a fish, they know I don't have a cat. I should be very simple to market to and those
that are actually this brand I'm talking thinking of actually does it pretty well. I get pretty

(14:34):
targeted messaging. But we expect that and if I have to wade through 80% of content that is not
relevant to me, where you know exactly what dog food I buy and what medication and what treats,
it can actually work the other way. So customers want it. And I think retailers need it because
retailers need an edge. And yeah, they do. Yeah, too often that edge point of difference driven.

(14:55):
Yeah, yeah, coming to price driven. It's always on sale. Yeah, that's right. Well, when you're
selling pet food, for example, I mean, your only difference sometimes is your range, but that range
is sometimes differences is very limited. So it's as Bingley was exactly the same, you know, we were
selling TVs, Harvey's were selling TVs, you know, whoever else, you know, video pro. So we're, and

(15:17):
then appliances online when they bought big brown box, they were, you know, obviously trying to go
into the brown good space and stuff. So, you know, it's it's if you're if your only point of
difference is your, your service or your store locations, or your price or your, your, your
your range, it has to be a big difference in terms of range, like, you know, Amazon, for example,

(15:40):
obviously, with its flywheel is exactly how they grew that business, which is super smart, right.
So, but yeah, you're right. I mean, personalization, in my mind, you've got to have it,
it's got to be done right. Maybe we should touch on on that a little bit. I mean, you know, it's
it's not should I have personalization, it's sort of what kind of how deep is my personalization

(16:02):
going to kind of go in my in my mind. Yeah. And there's a there is a bit of a creepiness factor,
as you said, there are more intense signals, there are more data signals. We're giving out
than ever before. Everything has observer tags these days, you know, watching your every move
online, tracking your mouse tracking pretty much everything. I mean, it was only just recently

(16:24):
even WhatsApp was they were talking about was listening in on your conversations because the
mic was activated. Now, I don't know how deep that runs. But at the same time, you know,
people get freaked out. So how do you find that sort of technology balance, I suppose, let's call
it between offering a point of difference to your customer through your brand and your range,

(16:45):
your messaging and you know, it's that old saying right product, right person, right time. But
you know, maybe how do you find that balance? How does Barillians find that balance?
Yeah, so it's very topical, right. So the reason I balance you have to find with with privacy,
I work on the basis that your it or your personalization should actually be invisible

(17:05):
to a degree. So it should be a seamless experience. It's not about showing how many
personalization tricks you have. It's about having a seamless integration into the total experience.
And, you know, if you go on Amazon, obviously does it better than anyone, you'd never feel creeped
out by Amazon, but they've managed to make every cross cell available to you in one click. And

(17:26):
you get to the checkout and then to transaction is so seamless in that experience. So it is
virtually invisible, but they're using smart data signals to get you to that checkout as quickly as
possible. So that's the first thing don't overplay your hand in the sense of trying to show as many
tricks as you can. It's about being seamless in seamless integration. Also, we can get a lot of

(17:48):
opt in signals now. So there's a lot of permission based personalization you can do, right. So,
yeah, when you're gathering all of this data, you've got loyalty programs, you've got your CRM,
you've got people opting in for emails, there's various ways that you can capture what a customer
does want to see and does not want to see. And so that's the other part is, you know, we do a lot
of permission based, you know, rather than just send somebody a browser band of an email, which

(18:11):
can trigger a little pop up or message bar saying, would you like us to send you the items that you
looked at? Because we know you also, you know, we know that customer might have also looked at the
store locator. So we know they're about to go into store, but don't put them out. Let's just ask them
if they would like that so they could, you know, peruse those products on their phone when they go
in store, things like that.
The thing I think a lot of a lot of retailers don't do well enough is understand the interactions

(18:34):
that customers have with their brand and their website. And I think for me, one of the really
cool things about that I felt about brilliance as a, you know, the department running the
department, I had faith in the fact that I think that if the owner walked over and asked me
questions, I could pretty much answer them, you know, like, these are the things that we could see

(18:56):
it, we could visualize it. But there's a sense of trust, I think that the interactions that
software like brilliance, for example, or recommendation software is going to have the
right nuance around the customer and a right nuance around that, around that particular
interaction. And I mean, that's a whole topic in itself, really. I mean, it's how far does that

(19:18):
rabbit hole go in terms of technology, but I feel is do you do you feel that brilliance is really
honed? You know, it's that saying it's hard to it's easy to make it complicated. Yeah, but it's
hard to make it simple.
Yeah, well, the difference with us is every technology tackles personalization different,
but we are actually a suite. So we are we try to be able to tackle personalization across every
channel and every device. And every every area you can think of in the personalization world,

(19:43):
whereas an email provider might be tackling personalization in an email. And what we do
build in is suppression logic. So because we can run everything for a retailer, even if you
qualify for four triggered emails, you don't get four triggered emails. So we have a suppression
logic, we have priority links. So everything's got a rating. So that if you fall into four
different personalization rules, as an example, you will see the most important rule for that

(20:05):
customer that we've we've designated. So if you're I gotta say, I love I love your passion for this
stuff. Because it really gets my propeller spinning as well. So if I had a propeller spinning,
I mean, it's it's super interesting, I think, because right now, I mean, if you're on Shopify,
or if you're on BigCommerce, your only point of difference realistically, from a technology

(20:29):
realistically, from a technology, now, this is purely technology standpoint, is actually
something like beryllium, something that is doing and driving your personalization and your
engagement, right? You're refactoring of your results, you know, what products to show here
and there. So this is why I think, you know, like, at some point, it's going to become that,
you know, your point of difference is essentially how well you do this personalization piece.

(20:52):
Yeah. And I think the key to it is the ease of ease of integration and flexibility. So
you're there's really three levels, you've got brands that are using plugins, they might be
smaller companies, they're using basic plugins to get started. But they run out of pump pretty
quickly, they're not supported. And they're pretty quickly looking for a more robust tool.
Then you've got your medium sized business that's using maybe a personalization platform of some

(21:16):
kind. But they might be using five tools, they might be using something for triggered emails
and cart abandonment, another recommendation tool, another social proof tool. That's so hard to manage.
Yeah, yeah. And they don't talk. So personalization has to connect, right? So you need to know that if
I'm running a social proof notification, that could be running in the recommendation widget.

(21:37):
And the recommendation widget can be running in the cart abandonment email. And if you use
different technologies, you're not going to get that seamless experience. And to your point before,
that's when you start to creep out the user because they're a little confused by what's
going on. Whereas if you have a platform that can actually link all of those pieces, and you don't
have to do it all, you just tackle one problem at a time. But you know that if you do expand to more,

(22:01):
it's interlinked. And I think the other part of it is it must be real time, you know,
personalization is, it has to be cross channel, it has to be cross device. But it has to be real
time. And I think, yeah, if you're not doing that, you're possibly not doing personalization in the
true sense. And you're probably not maximizing the point of difference you could be giving
your retail experience against the next player. Totally agree. Totally agree with that. Yeah,

(22:26):
it's similar with serving ads. I mean, it's, you know, you want your ads and you want your
personalization and everything else to kind of talk together. And your ads give off intense
signals based on, you know, what campaigns they're in, where the source is, what the refer,
like all, there's enough information for a marketer to be able to make decisions on what type of page

(22:49):
should be displayed, what the product layout should look like, is the person in the discovery
phase, or are they actually at the end of the purchasing funnel? Are they now, you know,
within intent to buy signals? Are they actually now shopping on price or stock? Are they looking
at where's the mouse? You know, Barillion sort of looks at all of that, doesn't it? It sort of
looks at all of that, those intent signals and says, okay, this person, maybe if it shows an

(23:13):
exit intent, as you say, you've got a suite of products potentially to show a pop up with an
offer in it, or, you know, or, you know, there are ways for you to you guys to actually try and keep
the customer on page and stop them from bouncing. And you essentially get more out of your marketing
spend, right? Yeah, well, exactly. Well, I think, you know, any of the personalised, the major

(23:37):
personalization platforms are built on machine learning and AI, really. Yeah, every part of that
process from data collection. So being able to track the full digital footprint of a customer
once they hit a website, that's the start of it. And then being able to segment that data,
and then being able to look at collaborative filtering, which is where you actually look at

(23:57):
the patterns across a whole website. So you take all the signals. So we know this customer is
looking at X, Y and Z. But if we put that index that against the whole Bing League customer database,
what are they most likely to buy after they look at that Samsung TV? We can start to build these
patterns together. And all this is happening in the background, but it's basically machine learned

(24:19):
logic and algorithms working together. And then the brilliance experience piece that the retailers
take advantage of is just the ability to then use and unleash experiences that tailor that data,
they don't need to get involved with the data, it all happens automatically. But they can say,
look, I just want to run a campaign or a pop up or message bar to anybody who's viewed

(24:39):
a Samsung TV from Bing Lee in the last three days, and where that product's dropped in price
by 5% or more, we're going to target those customers. It can be very micro or it can be macro.
That's an interesting one, isn't it? Because I mean, we in a couple podcasts ago, I had
Thilma Jays, he was a, he's actually who I work with. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, he gave us some really

(25:05):
great insights on, you know, what's going on with the economy and what the future outlook is. And
I mean, as much as you can kind of cram into, you know, 50 minutes, but we could probably take one
topic and talk for 50 minutes about it. But he's got so much knowledge in the retail space and in
the industry. But, you know, one of the things I feel that it's starting to happen now, and a lot

(25:30):
of, I don't know if a lot of retailers, I wouldn't say a lot, a lot of them still are very switched
on, but some of them just even some of the better ones, and I'm not going to name any names, but I
jump onto their websites now. And I think they're like, they're missing a lot of opportunities,
which Brilliance could actually bring. And I think only one or two things need to be done really

(25:53):
well. As you said, you mark that list off as you go, and you incrementally improve your conversions
to a point where I remember when we implemented a simple thing like abandoned cart emails on cross
device, we had a couple issues, I think, originally, you know, because there's privacy
concerns around, you know, you jump on your mobile device, you look at a particular product, then

(26:16):
you jump on your computer at home, it's very hard to stitch some things together. And rightfully so,
and that's to protect the customer, essentially, and their privacy. But just implementing the
the very basic email abandonment the right way, which we did the right way. And that's the key
point. We massively increased our conversions. I mean, I think it went up something 300 odd percent,

(26:42):
you know, conversions off mobile devices and off. And then off of the email campaigns we were sending
out as well. Yeah, so it had this flow on effect to these other channels as well, because people
were then starting to see and we knew when someone had already purchased something because it had
all the conversion tracking tags. And I was seeing, you know, big advertising companies having issues

(27:05):
with understanding that I'd already bought that particular product, I don't need to see that ad
anymore. But you know what I'm saying, you know, you come from the media space, you understand this,
like it's so, you know, it's just you do one thing, you do it well. And I said this a few podcasts ago,
then you move on to the next thing. Correct. Break it down. I think, to your point about why you look

(27:27):
at some of these experiences, and they don't look too personalized, I think part of the problem is
the term personalization is being generalized a little bit. And it's probably used in areas.
Actually, maybe let's go into that. Because I think that's an interesting one.
We talk to retailers every day, and we consult two retailers, and we listen to retailers. And
I observe, you know, I can look at a website, and immediately if you and I go onto a website and

(27:49):
interviewing the same, pretty much the same recommendations on the same product, they're
not personalized, that's product to product correlation, that is, I would say it's the start,
it does have a place, but it's the start of the personalization logic journey. And
I think what's happened is we've seen personalization become mainstream. And there's
some great technology out there. And some of the marketing automation platforms and some of the

(28:10):
tech out there is outstanding. But I think it's almost become a buzzword where everybody wants
to add on a personalization component. Whereas I think, and some of that can be done really well,
but often you'll actually look at it and go, that's actually not personalizing. It is a
recommendation tool. It's better than nothing. But to me, again, a personalization has to be

(28:33):
real time. So I think retailers under invest in it. So if you're running hard abandonment
and product recommendations, you know, you're doing, you're on the journey, but you haven't
solved the problem. And I think it starts with either, you don't even need to have the full
strategy. I think you can start with a problem. You know, we've had a lot of retailers, what's
the goal? And the goal might be in the next three months, my mantra, the goal is purely increase

(28:57):
average basket value, and ensure that we can get another one or two items. So added to the cart.
So on average, we want to go from 1.5 to 2.5. Yep. Yep. Yep. Basket size. Yeah. So we can then take
that and go, okay, based on that, looking at the suite, here are four techniques that we could use
and might do a pop up recommendation widget at the car page. And with a logic that looks at the

(29:18):
cross selling opportunities for the items that are in that card at that point, positioned in a pop
up, we'll then run a message bar that targets users based on that cart content with a cross sell at
another product and get 50% off. There could be a free shipping, live notification message, etc. So
we can cherry pick for the retailer the solution for that. And I think retailers get over to the

(29:42):
retailers get overwhelmed by personalization because there's so much available in it. We take
sweets like it's really it's and there's others, we have a lot in it. And sometimes you've got to
simplify it, break it down to one component that's most relevant for you as a retailer that day,
or that month, or wherever you're getting the pressure internally, whether it's conversion
rate, you need to reengage more shoppers. We're entering a really tricky period, right? We are,

(30:05):
we're going to have new businesses tough for retailers. So you've got two options, you need to
reengage lapsed shoppers, and get them back to the site and get your active shoppers more active
return shopping. And you need to make sure that as users reach the website through whatever channel
that they're coming there, that you're converting more of them, you must look at conversion rate

(30:25):
optimization of those users. And I think, being in the industry a long time, I'm convinced that
it's still the easiest, most affordable low touch way to do that is through personalization, no
matter who you use, a personalization strategy is the simplest way to do it with the way the tech is
today. It's playing play, like it really is. It doesn't need to be expensive. It's just,

(30:46):
Yeah, well, that's the other thing too, right? I mean, a lot of, I know, Ecom guys, they're
under a lot of pressure to actually perform, and especially after COVID. And this is one of the
things, Phil, and I spoke about, you know, the value conscious consumer where they're, you know,
the customer is looking still, still there's a desire for the Adidas, the Nike, the Dyson,

(31:10):
the Sony TV, whatever it is. But they're looking for value in the price. So they're looking for
offer, or just a first price that's low. So the balance will be, do you, you know, I think in the
future, a lot of retailers need to understand that it's not about the 20% off site wide anymore.
It's actually about firing off the offer at the right time when that person is showing the right

(31:36):
intent signals, because if they bounce and they go somewhere else, the likelihood of you getting
the back is very, very low unless they're a loyal shopper. You know, this value conscious consumer,
just getting back to that point again, I think we're going to see more of that. As you said,
the times are getting tough now for retailers. This pressure that's on these Ecom guys, I think
they're seeing it, they're feeling it, especially from C levels sort of sort of down. And I think

(32:00):
the reason, you know, people are back out in the shops again, and Phil spoke about this,
people are enjoying being out and socializing again, now that, you know, after the lockdowns,
and they were stuck to shopping online. But one thing I realized pretty early on was
people were forced to shop digitally, they'll actually they didn't really have much of a choice.

(32:22):
Right, because the lockdowns, there was shops that were that were shuttered,
you had to do either a click and collect or you had to do you know, so you were limited,
you were forced to actually experience that brand and how little they had invested in that
digital experience, or how much they'd invested in it. And thankfully, at the time, you know,
we were taking we're gaining market share. In fact, I think brilliance and the and the

(32:44):
personalization piece inside of all of that was key to actually making sure that when customers
jumped on the site, they were seeing decent, you know, decent recommendations on the homepage,
we didn't swap out the homepage completely, like some brands do. And I know that that's
actually quite annoying, because that you don't know whether or not someone's changed their mind,

(33:06):
and they're no longer looking for a particular brand or particular TV anymore, they actually
want to, you know, they want to start again and start fresh. And sometimes they don't show those
intent signal. So you go back and you're seeing all the recommendations you last saw. And it's
just so it's just as in first, just as frustrating to be over personalized to. Yeah, we're not
anywhere near being able to breed people's minds, of course, right. So there's only so much you can

(33:30):
do. But I think that that personalization, in my mind is, is actually the future. But tell us about
this balancing act, you know, a little bit about the balance, you know, privacy versus personalization.
And what do you think are the sort of key things here, retailers need to consider with this
balancing act? Well, I mean, I think, as I said before, it's keeping it simple, it's making sure

(33:55):
that the things you do, being using personalization to its major, I guess, potential,
is not always just about lowering the price that we talk even about value shoppers and things like
that. Yeah, value is support service, ease of use, getting customers through the funnel quickly,
all of that is part of the value equation. It's not just the price. So, you know, when I talked

(34:18):
earlier about you can make customer experience actually a competitive advantage that can give
you an edge over another customer, we get frustrated when we can't find products easily,
right? We get frustrated with, hate it. Yeah, it's so frustrating. The other one is don't send
me back to the beginning when I've left the site, you know, you've got the data. So, you know,

(34:38):
we allow people now to like pin items, like you can pin items that you're interested in.
I do that all the time, to be honest. You know, I've got four kids. And one of the things I use
the most is the love heart button or the, you know, the pin or the like button, because yeah,
exactly. You want to, sometimes, you know, they, a lot of recommendations, a lot of sites show you,

(34:59):
you know, that your last viewed products and they think the guy, the webmaster, let's call it,
running the site, turned from the nineties, thinks, oh, that's enough. Why do we need, you
know, why do we need a pin button? You've got the, you know, you previous, no, mate, that's not how
it works because I've already looked at that stuff. It's this, having the experience of understanding

(35:20):
and knowing the difference in that, that shopper's journey is super important. So important. And I
think one of the things that I don't think enough retailers do is this dynamic homepage personalization
where you can literally, I might've been on Bingley and I bought, I might've bought a TV in the last,
you know, two months, but once you're there now, you might be looking at a microwave or a soundbar.

(35:42):
And so what we allow, we always put the highest weighting. I think any platform should put the
highest weighting on the current session. So you never disregard the past because there's some
fantastic signals there. You still know their location, the price points they'd like to buy
and the brands they resonate. Well, you have your first party data. Does this,
Brilliance consumes first party data. It's all first party data. We do local based storage. So

(36:03):
the cookie world change doesn't, doesn't sort of impact us, but I think the kind of experiences
you want to build a real time experiences. And there are a couple we did with, with weather
targeting is one that I feel is, you know, we talk about trying to, you know, reactive sales.
So if it's raining outside, we know umbrella sales go up. I know the example we have was,

(36:23):
we used to do when it was a really hot day where the user was logged in at, if you're up in North
Queensland, it's 30 degrees. There's an air conditioner promo that's running. Oh, portable
air conditioners. I mean, you know, I want relief right now. It's going to be 40 degrees for the
next three or four days. And yeah, I, you know, I don't have time to find someone to install a big
spit system. I just want to get cool right now. And my current one, all my current one's broken.

(36:47):
So the other one is time of day. Like we're working with a major tea retailer and you know,
the tea that people buy in the morning, there's breakfast teas and there's afternoon teas that,
and so we actually have completely different rules set up for different audiences. And obviously
then we've got different territories. So you might be seeing iced tea promotions because it's hot

(37:08):
where the user's logged in at and an English, you know, breakfast tea somewhere else. So being able
to use time of day, weather targeting, those types of triggers actually gives you a competitive
advantage. You're making it easy for that customer to want to engage with you, to want to transact
and to ideally return. And that's the nature of the game. It's not a race to the bottom on price.

(37:29):
It should be about delivering an experience that is truly valuable to the customer. And I think the
rest follows on. And yeah, as I say, don't do too many tricks, just keep it simple and go in based
on a particular goal or a particular objective for the site. You might be that your conversion
rate's not converting on mobile. So we can come up with tactics that are specifically designed to

(37:49):
that. And if you've got an agency, the agency can help you with that, but they're often going to be
using a tool or a series of tools to do that. And that's where the personalization platforms or
plugins or whatever you're using can have an impact. Yeah, 100%. And I think one of the things
I remember clearly was when we implemented the recommendation side. So we'd realized, well, I

(38:13):
did a bit of work in Tableau. We were talking to Eddie Peel just recently. He runs DataCube out of
New Zealand and APAC. He's the co-founder there. We use our first-party data to realize that if
someone buys a Dyson vacuum cleaner, for example, or anything. So for example, you buy,

(38:34):
I don't know, a computer, for example, that you're more likely within the next two weeks to buy
a hand stick vacuum, for example, or you're more likely to buy during COVID, you're more likely to
buy a set of speakers and a mouse, but you didn't buy them straight away. Okay. So you could show
them throughout the journey, those recommendations, and that had a top of mind influence next time.

(38:59):
But if you, as you say, get them in and out of the funnel really quickly, the likelihood of them
coming back within the next two weeks and shopping with you again, based on the fact you serve them
relevant recommendations was about 50 to 60% higher in my experience. And like I said, you can
take market share and if you get them in and out quickly, I think appliances online, the number one

(39:19):
proposition for them has always been their delivery service. So as an e-commerce business, you're
actually a logistics company that's also a software company. And if you can learn from those who are
doing it really well and implement that and then learn from that and iterate quickly, then you can

(39:40):
actually focus on parts of the business that you know needs it, need improving and let the best of
breed platforms take care of those other things. And I think when I look at, I'd been competing
against appliances online for over 10 years, first with Big Brown Box and then with Radio
Rentals and then moved over to Bing Li with Peter Crideris. The way that they've built their business

(40:02):
of getting people in and out really quickly, getting the product to them as quickly as possible
for as cheap as possible has led rise to just taking market share. They have and I think they're a
really good example of the fact that personalization and that fantastic experience starts the minute
that customer hits the website and it doesn't end until that customer comes back and puts in a

(40:26):
feedback form and a review on the product or the service. Exactly. The whole iteration from how
easy it is to find a product, when people attend, how quickly they get there, the types of people
that deliver that product and then the post-sale experience. That is all part to me of the
personalization journey and experience. Some of it through tech, some of it through people, but

(40:47):
there's a strategy there that they've actually put in from the front to the beginning to the end
and it's a real challenge for retailers even now just to be able to be cross-channel and to take
all the in-store data and be able to personalize based on that and to be able to marry up your
browse data with your in-store data. That's difficult. Do you have any boardroom conversations

(41:10):
around how ethical any of this is? Nine times I've seen these conversations have already
happened between the director of marketing and the CFO and the CTO and the CEO and all the founder
or whatever and the last thing you want is for them to appear on a current affair because they've
shown, I mean I know there's some nightmare examples and I remember being in the online

(41:33):
retailing event over in Seattle I think and it was one example of Target. I think they were showing
pregnancy testing kits or something to their father and he quickly worked out
on the home computer and then he quickly worked out his daughter was pregnant or
like there's horror stories they hear about that. Yeah it was ads actually, yes it wasn't actually

(41:54):
on well I think and they also think they were doing on-site personalization as well but anyway
do you have these conversations and I mean is it like we don't care we just want more customers?
I mean what is the general vibe? Oh no look everyone trends very carefully on it now and
I think they're more ethical than ever. Yeah it's good isn't it really in a way. Yeah and look the
customer always dictates that so the platform will always sit in the background and you know we will

(42:19):
only ever pick up the signals they want we will only send an email to people that they agree we
should send them to so yes the customer the retailer is always driving that program where
we're just fulfilling it based on whatever their opt-in rules are but yeah we do have exclude
product features in all of our you know like one was maternity where you like attributes you get

(42:41):
like product level attributes yeah yeah so you would actually exclude particular products from
from product recommendations and things like that so there's normally business rules that we will
sit down and discuss with a customer prior to make sure that if there are any exclusions or anything
that might be perceived in a particular way we will move those away or exclude those from things
like recommendation widgets or particular personalization rules but yeah you've got to

(43:03):
be careful like but you do have full control because you know we're just following the experience
of the the guidelines that the retailer sets. So do you have a implementation team that would take
you through some of the pitfalls potentially or some of the gotchas that might be part of it or do
you do the implementation or hand over the keys or maybe give a sense of how someone would engage

(43:23):
with you guys? Yeah so we you know we do all the setup so we try to make sure the retailer really
doesn't have to do anything beyond put the script on the website and maybe provide a data feed
and at that point the retailer can step away and we sort of through that script can pick up all the
data signals and the like but we walk them through it we make sure that everything every single

(43:44):
iteration of the website whether it's a recommendation widget or rule everything has to be previewed
first so we have preview links for everything that we do and everything has to be customer
signed off before anything goes live. Yeah that's nice. So the usual the usual. You don't just push
things into production without anyone knowing. Well it's not even that it's just making sure

(44:05):
everything can be previewed as it would look in the site but it's not live you know so it's
not a deal with the preview link that can see it but the pitfalls really are around data like I think
the biggest challenge is an engine like ours can pick up and personalize based on any attribute
you can provide so the more attributes the better but that then means that you need to have your

(44:26):
data sorted so you need yeah product data product data feeds with a lot of attributes category trees
that are reliable and consistent between the website and the data feed and so we do do that
analysis work up front so they we get a data feed we'll say can you add this that doesn't match
this on your website so we do all that in tune with the retailer and give them advice on how

(44:47):
to get that consistent so in a way that consultants are often good for the retailer because they're
like okay I didn't even know that or that's great because it'll make our other marketing more
effective as well if we have those attributes. 100% I mean that's that's such a good point and
I just want to jump in here because I know in a previous life I mentioned it any names I mean I
implemented a completely new CMS and in the CMS was all new product data and data attributes and

(45:12):
we spent a huge amount of time one of the content managers that used to work for me
brilliant guy you know we spent a lot of time doing it but I think a lot of it's been lost you
know when I look at the site now a lot of it yeah they don't really realize how powerful
you really need to have teams of people and we outsourced well I was outsourcing at the time

(45:33):
but you have to have unique content on in those attributes and a lot of the times we found you
know product information was incorrect from suppliers or a lot of or even data gets entered
you know incorrectly does I mean this this sort of level of control within
Barillians to actually choose the attributes you want to personalize on

(45:56):
is it a sense that you is it the more you the more data like with machine learning we're talking
about in the last podcast the more more data you guys have the more more likely or the probability
of having a better statistical significance to that particular session goes up right yeah yeah so
the more product data and unique product data that you have the more likely shoppers are actually

(46:20):
going to shop the correlation between your data and the shopper where the gap between the data
and the shopper where the gap I think exists in my mind between product teams buying teams
marketing teams I go to some sites and I can't believe there's only like one or two attributes
on a product and I actually want to have personalization and I think the best
personalization is the type you don't notice right you just you just shopping and it's yeah

(46:45):
yeah and it's all happening how much and I'm this is this is more of a segue into a bit of a topic
and it's more about does beryllions understand images and we spoke about image recognition
and personalization or image recognition and data ed was is working on one at the moment over

(47:06):
data cubed does does beryllions know what it's looking at does it understand that a black
t-shirt is a black t-shirt without understanding the the product or having the product data with
it to to to reinforce that learning or does it does it actually have any machine learning base
because I know it's a super hard thing to do and do it right I'm just curious you mean is there a
visual like are we picking it up visually like a visual match of the product yeah yeah yeah yeah

(47:31):
yeah exactly so does it does it just like pinterest knows when you highlight something that says oh
it does it basically does a match and it tries to find in the database an image
similar to what you've chosen yeah does it know that it's you're looking at a black t-shirt has
a print on it for example with the words does it does it do that type of um image based recognition
or not is it just purely based on feeds yeah at the moment it's based on attributes provided really

(47:56):
and then we're going to enhance that out it's not actually visually detected although we're seeing
now all this generating i was gonna if you said yes i was going to be really concerned to be
honest with you because i know image recognition and and and and and they were showing me some
examples of um i think it's dali dali 2 um where it where it um you know it can build ai generated

(48:19):
images based on what you describe so it actually does it in reverse well exactly and it's so bad
there is this generative ai now right so yeah retailers are going to be using ai to create
product descriptions and creatives and all of that and yeah i think i mentioned before that you know
there's some all this virtual reality now and all mental reality that retailers are tapping into and

(48:42):
yeah there's a crossover between that technology and the personalization world that i think is
really exciting you've also got to have the attributes to know that those similar products
would fit into that space so you're looking at the size dimensions dimensions and all the attributes
yeah once you've got that so that's why the more attributes that you can provide a personalization
partner the better that experience will be and and the the core of the the kind of uh

(49:04):
uh features you'll be able to run and the results will flow on the back of that yeah i think i think
mate i think ecom guys are too focused and just ecommerce departments in general and this is coming
from years of experience they're just too focused on what the site looks like because that's what
the cfo looks at yeah you know like it's almost like in the old days when you know outdoor furniture

(49:26):
guys in marketing would buy a billboard that um or a bus stop or something where the the ceo lives
you know because he just to it's it's all about um it's all about um you know these impressions
that people get on on things it's not it's not about what actually works it's about uh first
impressions sometimes and it's it's you know it's it's sad because in my mind everybody should be

(49:51):
focusing on their cms their product data how clean it is they should have teams of people working on
unique descriptions um using ai now ai is never going to replace human intuition it well hang on
hang on it might at one point when it becomes sentient and passes the turing test but

(50:13):
i think that the the benefits and the flow on is everywhere it's on on your your feeds to google
it's your feeds to you know your personalization engine to feed to your website it it flows through
to your erp to your invoicing your product descriptions match your invoices you know your
shipping labels match your erp which match your website you know it goes through everything and

(50:37):
you know and the net result is just a better experience for the customer because it starts
with the personalization if you've been able now to identify accurately through the product data
you know that the the collective um recommendations and accurately and which we know
flows on to just buying more and spending more and having a better affinity to your brand so

(50:58):
yeah i mean it's it's huge isn't it matt i mean we're getting we're getting right on an hour
and an hour now i'm i'm loving actually absolutely loving talking to you mate and um
i was going to go into some trends and predictions for for you but i think we could maybe i'll get
you back on if you don't mind yeah um you know in a month or so we'll catch up maybe we do it even
face to face even and yeah have a set up a couple chairs and have it over over a coffee but um

(51:26):
i've got one thing for you and i know you're a sporting goods nut and i've got my western
cindy wonder's hat on no um your thoughts of the matilda game and i've got my um you know my
scarf here my um kerb was she's she was in she had so much pressure on her i don't look i don't know
i know how she missed those couple goals in the end but yeah those those legs were dead i think

(51:47):
mate it felt like didn't she had heavy legs and yeah she should have been subbed after the first
goal i reckon now the first goal was probably one of the best goals i've seen in in the women's
premier in the women's world cup so far the england one or her yeah yeah yeah the yeah the england
one yeah um mate that that that was from outside people don't understand what is actually so i'm a

(52:11):
huge soccer nut right yeah and they don't understand how phoned someone's skill that doesn't happen just
by chance yeah oh she she hit that at full pace she had a couple of quick steps and she just
cracked that thing in the top corner and mate honestly that as a coach uh i know there's coaches

(52:34):
around the world going whoever's got her mate you know they're as a mate she's unbelievable and then
she had a lot of pressure on her i feel ross uh resso she killed it um but she wasn't performing
in that last game and um you know i just felt like the team had kind of thought that they'd

(52:55):
achieved what they'd set out to achieve and i feel like maybe the coach didn't kind of reset their
minds again they kind of came on field and thought whatever happens from here we've done an amazing
one of the one of the biggest achievements in sport what do you think i think their motivation
was huge i think you've got to give a bit of credit to england i think that was actually a perfect
hit job really like they were 100 percent precise and accurate in yeah you know when teams just play

(53:19):
aggressive and they're they're kind of defensively like look at jamaica did you see jamaica against
columbia my friends columbian and um carlos and and you know we were having jokes and stuff
mate they were getting chopped left right and center but columbia just kept going kept going
i kind of felt like it rattled the aussies a little bit thank you feel i'd love to say we were
robbed because i always love saying that when when we're playing england but they are not

(53:45):
and i'm like they didn't nobody yeah wallaby's gonna inflict us in reverse pain let's let's hope
we're made you know a lot of people don't know you've got a sporting goods uh company that you run as
well yeah yeah i've got a business called warrior sports which is a sort of sports retail we we uh
we have an e-commerce business or but we also sell director clubs at the schools we do sort of

(54:05):
equipment and apparel and yeah but you know what look like i've spoken to retailers you know about
how to get traffic you know through get price yes years and years and the last seven years on how
to convert it and it's really interesting yeah living a day in the life of the retailer and
i think it homes what i do i'm a i'm actually a retailer i'm not a podcaster yeah i am i am a
podcaster that's what i'm doing now but um and and i also help people make decisions in business

(54:31):
and it's just a simple discussion um that that just kind of points things in the right direction
you know just that little bit you just need that little bit of reassurance and someone like me can
come into your business and say hey you know like what i think you should do is implement something
like beryllions when you know something works and you know it works well and you can trust
in the people that you're going to the implementation is going to be good so yeah all

(54:53):
right mate well look every every um guest gets a gets a little gift and i've got this one for you
it's a digital discovery podcast um mouse mat uh these just these just came in and i've got
i've got a mug as well and i've got a t-shirt as well that's coming
and uh i know as i said i know you're in sporting because i want to show you these these things and

(55:14):
this came in i'm a sucker for things on instagram um and i bought this i don't know if you've seen
these before it's called the playmaker lcd um have you seen have you seen this i should be showing
those yeah you should be and i'll tell you it came from canada because i was tracking the shipping
on it uh and right so as as a coach right i'm sitting here and i'm going run your little

(55:38):
shits now i'm just saying all right that's awesome yeah see this yeah right and then you can get all
right so that's a bad example but i just did that on purpose because then you can just go like this
oh hang on i've locked it it has a lock button on the side where you can lock it from um from
from not being deleted yeah so then you hold the button down and that's it it's gone right did you
see that yeah because we do the whiteboard version but i like that i think that's cool because afl

(56:01):
used a lot of that as well you know in positional play yeah exactly so you know you can say there's
your back line and then you want to you got you know two here you want to go goal side and then
you want to we're in defense you want to come back to the posts and defend and then you're
going to bring you know like you can do sketch what was it the one with you said right it's exactly
what it is it's just i'm a sucker for it i'm like you know that's actually just an etch a sketch

(56:24):
yeah it's a retro i like it yeah you have to show me one of those i think they're pretty cool i
reckon that we'll throw that might throw those up on the website yeah mate i think i think you
should i think you got a winner there and i don't have to give you some footies too to test out
yeah i'll have some footies and i'll tell you yeah yeah still coaching and i'm doing some soccer at
the western city wonderers and that's why i've got my hat on and any of the listeners out there

(56:44):
that are interested they should go on to the western city wonders website and register their
soccer team for the fives so um yeah yeah the five fives are on um starts in september
uh 10th of september so you've got to get in quick and um i was actually going to reach out to you
because i um ordered all the um jerseys but i wasn't sure if you did the personalization of

(57:08):
jerseys so we do all that so we um our guy see i could have i could have sent business your way
well we'll see we're gonna go i'm saying kovic i don't know if you remember i'm saying he was a
goalie for the soccer rules and yeah man yeah yeah yeah yeah he heads up our soccer division
so he does all the soviet correct creation i think yeah yeah yeah oh man i have to talk to him yeah

(57:29):
yeah yeah well i'll connect that up mate we'll we'll have a chat because he's uh he's the man
and the the soccer kid is incredible because he's designed it all basically uh redesigned it all over
the last year soccer people are very particular in their gear mad it's a little different they are
to the rugby of the league world and the afl world they want it's like european cups and you know
yeah they are they're very particular and i'm in it obviously minor minor minor 13 boys so um they

(57:54):
just get what they're given um yeah yeah that's true but they're excited this this year because
for soccer so we were in the finals last year at the wonderous ground uh we were in the
finals we just lucked out to to another team better team they they would play they had a couple of
really good players and all credit to them looking at all the different customized jerseys you can
see the really bad quality ones yeah like they're that really cheap kind of almost looks they look

(58:18):
like plastic almost the material doesn't look you know and it doesn't it says a sweat wicking
and all that but you can see the the the leaguer ones look really good so i'll be really interested
to see and talk to him to see what his his stuff is like as well so anyway i mean something something
worth the chat later anyway mate look it's been fantastic talking to you mate and um you're

(58:38):
looking well and i i um i hope to talk to you again soon and thanks for your time for for coming on
the podcast and enjoy the rest of your week