October 2, 2023 • 42 mins
Get ready for a masterclass in e-commerce as we invite Tom, co-founder of GTSE, on a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of running a successful online business.
From finding a unique niche in cable ties to managing a massive product data catalogue of 5,000 SKUs, Tom shares the challenges and achievements in his journey. You'll gain vital insights into how GTSE stays on top of search engine rankings and optimises its website conversion rates.
We're not just about business strategies; we delve into the human side of e-commerce too. Tom opens up about GTSE's dynamic marketing techniques, with a keen focus on customer service. Hear about how they tap into AdWords, email marketing, and customer reviews to keep their message relevant for different customer segments.
Plus, learn about the crucial role of understanding the lifetime value of customers and maintaining a constant communication line with them.
In our final segment, we pick Tom's brain on the e-commerce tools that have proven instrumental for GTSE. We get into the weeds on testing methods and how tools like Microsoft Clarity help identify customer pain points. You'll discover how to gather feedback from diverse sources and how to make your website customer-search-friendly.
Lastly, we discuss how GTSE caters to both B2B and B2C customers, maintaining a cost-effective website, and optimising order value. Join us for this enlightening conversation that's packed to the brim with e-commerce wisdom.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, welcome to the Big Commerce Podcast.
Hello, welcome to a brand newepisode of the Big Commerce
Podcast.
I'm your co-host, luigi.
I'm really excited to have thisguest on the show today.
Tom is a co-founder of GTSCcoukand I've been wanting to get
Tom on the podcast for some timeso he can share some insights
on his journey and the successof his e-commerce business.
(00:22):
We cover the how and why Tomand his business partners set up
the business, the importance ofoffering a high level of
customer service, how GTSCmanages products, product data
and inventory, and how itcontinues to increase its search
engine rankings and websiteconversion rate.
I really hope you find valuingthe episode and enjoy it as much
as I did recording.
Hi, tom, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hi Luigi, I'm not too bad, Thanks yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Not too bad, thank you.
How's Chesterfield today?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I frankly don't live in Chesterfield anymore.
It's a town I grew up in andwent to school my business
partner there, but now I live inLeeds.
Now or office is basicallyManchester, so we're in two of
the biggest cities in the north.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So I should have said how's the north today?
Good, well, so we've known eachother for some time, but why
don't you introduce yourself toour listeners and then your
business?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, sure.
So I'm Tom, I'm an anti.
I'm the e-commerce director andco-founder at GTSE.
We are a trade suppliesbusiness that specializes in
consumable products and cableties, tape, drill bits, solder,
(01:38):
all sorts of more smaller thingsthat businesses tend to use
repeatedly to get jobs done, andhome users as well.
We started out quite a fewyears ago now, back to 2014, 15
as go cable ties.
So quite a niche entry to themarket as a bit of a hobby
(02:00):
between myself and a friend Iwent to school with and his
parents and, yeah, the businessjust grew from there.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So how did you identify to start off working
with cable ties?
What was it that sparked thatidea?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So, yeah, it was not my idea, it was my business
partner's parents' idea.
They found them a usefulproduct really and thought that
they'd be a good thing to sell.
There's lots and lots ofapplications for them.
The niche is a lot moredigitally savvy now.
(02:46):
There's a lot better websites,but when we back, when we
started, the competition was abit behind the curve, to say the
least, and I think to a certainextent it's still for trade and
B2B in general.
It's still not quite there yetand I think big commerce, more
than anyone, is doing a massivepush to try and take advantage
(03:07):
of that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It works better with the American pronunciation when
they say niches bring riches.
And obviously us as an agency,we specialize as well.
But I can't disagree with thatthat you just choose something,
you choose a vertical and justgo all in and it does eventually
bring riches.
So what are the pros, from yourperspective, of just focusing
(03:33):
on a vertical?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So, yeah, I think there's pros and cons to start
with, I guess, but the pros forus.
We really kind of developedthat kind of product knowledge
and expertise in the area.
My background is digitalmarketing.
I know a lot of people in theSEO world and the e-commerce
(03:56):
world and my business partner'sbackground was in finance.
We didn't know that much aboutcable ties when we started out
and it's not the mostcomplicated products in the
world, but they do have theirniche requirements, and just
learning and being thatspecifically focused on a
(04:16):
product area gave us anadvantage over people that sold
a lot broader range at the time.
And then a kind of similar thingwith tape as well.
We really kind of drilled downon tape to where a kind of huge
seller of duct tape andelectrical tape and the sort of
(04:40):
the nuances in these productranges are quite surprising
sometimes.
And then also kind of if youare more focused on one specific
niche, it does let you sort ofoptimize from an SEO point of
view or a web usability point ofperspective a lot more than
(05:02):
kind of the compasses can, whoare kind of targeting a lot
broader array of products, andwe really took advantage of this
and things on our website, likecable tie selector that's got
drop down sizes and colors andjust how we sort of kind of laid
the products out for someonewho would be sort of browsing a
huge range of cable ties.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And there's the rebrand that you said.
You changed the main some timeback.
Was that part of the kind ofexpansion of the product catalog
?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and that's kind of on the negatives of being
targeting too much of a smallniche.
We kind of felt that from abranding perspective we'd kind
of backed ourselves into acorner and having cable ties in
the domain it's helpful from anold school SEO perspective, but
(05:52):
I think from a more brandingpoint of view it really kind of
limited what we a customer'sperspective of what we could do
as a brand.
And we searched how in low fora new brand name, a new domain,
and I think GTSE really stoodout for us as something that
(06:14):
kind of rolled off the tongueand also it's a good domain.
It's four letters as well,which is it kind of adds the
usability of it and it's easyfor people to find.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So you started off with cable ties and
predominantly, or you alsosupplied a trade, so the trade
market traditionally needs a lotmore data to make an informed
decision.
So I'm guessing kind of the waythat you also manage a product
data is a bit more complex.
There may be a DTC brand thatsells apparel or a beta brand
that sells, maybe, a supplement.
(06:51):
So how, what challenges haveyou faced?
I'm presuming you've faced somechallenges in terms of managing
that product data, because itcan't be, because how many
products have you got in yourcatalog?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So now we've got about 5000 SKUs in total
products, parent products evenprobably about sort of two,
three thousand.
We've got one of our issues andcomplexities and the reason
that we ended up on big commercewhen we migrated off our
initial platform, which wasMagento, was the complexity with
(07:25):
those variants.
Shopify at the time just didn'tlend itself to a product that
had black cable ties, have like65 plus variants and it was
really kind of made it overlycomplex to use that platform.
And so big commerce isfunctionality and kind of
(07:48):
features really Really sort ofhelp to sort of more easily
accommodate the sort of how wewanted to display the range.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And cause is it more flexible in terms of how you can
manage a product data yeah,exactly, and then you could you
know each, each size.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Each size of cable tie is very different and so you
know, if you're looking at ahundred mil cable tie compared
to a you know a meter long one,then it's it's, it's gonna be
massively different in weight,price, how many can fit in a box
, which are all kind ofimportant aspects.
We need to store, store on thecommerce platform.
(08:32):
I think in terms of managingthat product data we as a
company haven't done anything togroundbreaking with.
There's been a lot of excel useand lots of different
spreadsheets.
We kind of how big commerce nowthat kind of stores.
You know all of thedescriptions and all the main
(08:56):
bits of information and if weneed any of that for anything
else, we can just export it fromthere and use it that way.
Probably not the best way ofdoing it, but finally, you know,
pins are very expensive pieceof kit, obviously have Huge
advantages, but I think just theway that we do it in terms of
storing the majority of the coreinformation in just Various
(09:19):
different spreadsheets kind ofworks in a fashion and we kind
of utilize one drive within thebusiness and so everyone can
kind of edit spreadsheets live,which we find quite valuable.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, I think that collaborative element there,
because one of the risks you runwith kind of having excel
spreadsheets been emailed around, this kind of like you know,
trying to manage diversioncontrol by having a centralized
kind of tool that's online tosomething, you've got a you know
I guess a semi Form of a youknow pin within your excel
spreadsheet and that's got theaudit trail as well.
(09:54):
So if anything works for youknow again, you know you said
that pins can be quite expensiveand they do hold value nothing
gets Is when you start having abroad range of products that
maybe Share different types ofattributes, where you know maybe
you're managing digital assetsas well, maybe you're also multi
regional, so you gotta havedifferent languages and so on.
(10:18):
That's, I think, where you canstart seeing those complexities
and where maybe a pin starts tocome into it's you know it into
its own.
But I think you know whatyou're doing for the time being,
if it works for you and it'skind of refreshing in some
respects Whilst we've had youknow pin providers on on the
podcast before you know kind ofsaying the dangers around excel
spreadsheets, does it.
(10:38):
You've got that process kind ofnailed and everyone knows what
they, what they need to do, howit works.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
yeah, and that was localization, was one one hour
really consider the pin, becausewe we've got the pretty big
presence on Amazon as well andwe have with selling sort of
Amazon, the ESI, t, etc.
So all mostly European marketsand managing the content, while
(11:06):
Amazon translates Some of itautomatically to a certain
degree.
With with we've kind ofimproved the content of the long
and, yeah, managing that hasbeen quite complex and, yeah,
having a kind of a collaborativeshare, a version of excel, has
been really helpful for peopleto sort of jump in and out and
(11:26):
kind of add it things together.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So got 5000 skews give or take, and I'm guessing
inventory management can be abit challenging as well.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, I mean it's just we hold a lot more of our
core lines and we kind ofthrough trial and error and sort
of consolidating the supplychain.
We've kind of learned that whatworks and what doesn't really,
and we are merchandising teamdoes a sort of a fantastic job
(12:02):
in making sure we've got enoughstock of the right product,
especially in Amazon as well.
So we kind of fly through stockin Amazon.
We do all of that through FBAand it's just about, you know,
then, making sure there's enoughstock in each sort of region of
Amazon to sort of mean that wedon't sell out because we know
(12:28):
if it's on our website, we canmanage it a little bit better by
saying to the customer you know, this is an estate when we're
getting new products in and justmanage expectations a lot
better.
If it's Amazon, you know you'llstart losing rankings pretty
quickly if you don't have thestock of that product.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And kind of in terms of the Excel spreadsheet and the
systems and so on.
I'm presuming that over theyears you've kind of developed
them and iterated and put insome Whether they're formulas or
processes, to kind of make surethat you've got the data you
know.
Just talk us briefly throughkind of what kind of information
(13:06):
you manage within those Excelspreadsheets and you know what
are maybe the things that you'veyou've done to make them work
for your business.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, so we've.
We have kind of moved a littlebit on from the Excel
spreadsheet to a certain extent.
We now have an ERP system calledNetSuite, which is pretty
common in the industry, is oneof the big names, and that does
(13:35):
a sort of a much better job ofkind of handling stock in
multiple locations as well andgives us, gives us, that
traceability and visibility thatwe need.
So it's not quite PIM, it's kindof a different job, but it kind
of helps us, especially interms of kind of finance side.
(13:56):
So we originally bought itbecause we were just outgrowing
zero that we were using beforefrom a finance perspective, and
you know when you've got itemsthe same item all over the all
over the world that we bought atdifferent times you know you
need to have a kind of a blendedcost price or a piece of
software that will hold thatinformation and so.
(14:17):
So for that finance as much asfor the stock management it was,
it was kind of a smart move forus.
We probably could have lasted abit longer, but I think going
through that initial pain ofonboarding to a massive piece of
kit like that was was kind ofworth it now.
Now all the dust has settled.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Short term pain for long term gain.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yes, very much, so there was lots of pain.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And so you've.
You know, obviously a bit ofyourself and each got a name in
the market for what you do.
You've been successful over theyears.
So let's talk a bit aboutmarketing and you've obviously
got your history from a digitalmarketing perspective.
You supply different segmentstrade, btc and marketing is all
(15:06):
about segmentation.
You have to tailor the messageto the customer.
So what kind of strategies haveyou implemented or what kind of
things have you done to try andtailor your message to your
different customer segments?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's a really good question and I think it's it's a
massive thing for us becauseour website, you know, we've
heard the B2B customers becausethey kind of stay with us for a
long period of time and theythey tend to do bigger orders
because of the bigger jobs thatthey're working on the.
(15:43):
The issue is there's no real way, especially with AdWords, which
is our biggest kind ofadvertising spend, as it is, I
imagine, with everybody or mostpeople there's no real way to
differentiate if you're, youknow, you're kind of bidding on
that keyword level If one personsearches for cable ties and
he's looking for a cable, a packof cable ties, versus the next
(16:05):
person who's looking for a boxor even a pallet.
And so, yeah, we had to be sortof quite smart about looking at
the lifetime value of thesecustomers and kind of what we
need to do to kind of bring inthe bigger customers that will
fill those B2B gaps and then,once we've got that data in just
(16:30):
keeping in contact with thosecustomers and kind of keeping a
communication strategy with themvia email marketing or via our
sales team that is suitable foreach different type of customer.
Really, and you know some ofthe bigger trade customers.
(16:51):
They require a lot more commswith different members of their
team than some of the middlesize customers.
You know tradesmen who justwant a box tape or a box cable
ties every so often, where youknow an email to them from sort
of our email marketing platformwill kind of be enough to yeah,
(17:14):
be enough to do the job.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So do you have any email kind of automations in
place in your?
What do you and marketingsystems use?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Clavier.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And have you got that set up with kind of automations
and flows?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, got all the fancy, fancy mod cons and
features in it.
Yeah, and I think it'sfantastic and the ease of it as
well is just, you know,phenomenal like to be able to
kind of target a customersegment and sort of, you know
these customers who are thisproduct contact them again in X
(17:47):
months time to see if they needto need it to be topped.
Up or something like that.
We do a lot of that Because youknow the nature of our products
is they're usually things thatpeople will need again when
they're kind of when they'veused them up the first time.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And kind of you spoken about kind of
communication strategy and Ithink also your level of service
clearly very high as well.
How does that fall into, Iguess, the marketing?
So how much emphasis do youplace on on the level of service
?
You know, does it, do you, Iguess, discriminate through a
word, but you know, betweendifferent types of customers?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
No, not at all.
I think you know the smallercustomers are as valuable as the
bigger customers, that theythey kind of.
And actually the other thing wefound as well is a lot of big
companies will go and do a smallorder just to test the product,
and so you know, if you're notbeing sort of as courteous and
(18:44):
as good with every customer, youmight end up sort of annoying a
bigger fish that you kind ofdidn't realize was a big
customer in the first place.
And I think you know we kind ofneed every, every customer.
We try and get as many peopleto convert on the website as all
(19:05):
e-commerce businesses do, I'dimagine, to, as possible.
So I think just that consistentlevel of customer service is a
huge thing for us, and I thinkthat can be seen across our
reviews as well.
Like, we use reviews, the IOand the solid 4.9 out of five
sort of thing.
And then we're you know we'revery keen about making sure that
(19:25):
we maintain that level ofservice, especially as we grow
in scale as well.
We've not yet brought a kind ofticketing system on board, but
we're looking at a gorgeous ornot?
Yeah, that that seemed like areally good piece of kit, and
they have a integration into bigcommerce now as well, which is
(19:46):
which is very handy and clave.
And clave yeah different systems.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, Kind of no big secret.
I'm a massive fan of gorgeousand I think you know the fact
that they're built free commerceas well helps.
They're not like a ticket, likea generic ticketing system that
you know.
They've just got everything setup for different channels.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
You've done a demo, but I just think it's a
phenomenal product.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, I was incredibly impressed when I had
it demoed to me recently, Ithink, the fact that you could
even the extent of when acustomer rings up, it could
bring up their all their recentorders in the side panel of the
platform and you could justclick a button to reorder the
last order and integratestraight into big commerce.
Like that functionality isn'teven big commerce, so it's
(20:31):
always, yeah, very impressed.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So you spoke about kind of conversion rates,
because obviously thateveryone's working towards
trying to increase theconversion rate.
So what other strategies do youutilize to try and make sure
that you're constantlyincreasing that or at least
maintaining your conversion rate?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
So we do a lot of testing and sort of making sure
that we we're with, you know,traveling the user journey of
the website ourselves and kindof try to pick up everything
that a customer would find as afrustration.
And then on top of that we usewe use Microsoft clarity, which
(21:20):
is kind of like your hot jarsort of thing, which cause the
sessions, and then we can seethe direct frustrations that the
customers have had themselvesand then and then that really
helps us to kind of narrow downonto specific sort of obstacles
(21:41):
and issues with the sites thatneed that need addressing.
I think the other thing as wellis like internal meetings with
it, even within the business,and just you know people that
are not kind of directly,directly associated with the
website and the usability of itand saying you know, what do you
(22:02):
think of the website when you,when you sort of navigate it?
There is someone from ourfinance team, I think the other
day said you know they had alook on the mobile site and they
found it really hard to findthe phone number and kind of.
We are, we already have a kindof project in place to redo our
whole mega nav and have on themobile version.
(22:25):
When you click on the menu, themobile number will be at the
bottom there and yeah, I think,yeah, you kind of everyone kind
of looks at it a slightlydifferent way.
So kind of the more opinionsyou can get, the better is
usually a good thing.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, I mean nothing wrong with kind of getting the
feedback, because obviously somethings you can kind of say well
, you know, we disagree.
Maybe it's just for thatindividual, you know, for that
individual person frustration.
But just going back to yourpoint about not every idea is a
good one.
Yeah, always you know where'sthe value in that could be that
you know that that individualmaybe had a bad experience
somewhere else and and obviouslythey're using that as a
(23:04):
reference point.
But with Microsoft Clarity Ithink it's still underutilized
tool.
I mean I, you know I getimplemented on on merchant sites
when, when, when we're speakingto them, especially, you know,
even before we start redesigning, because the amount of
merchants I've spoken to thatjust have the website in a way,
because they think the customerjourney is and that's the thing
(23:28):
that they feel, or they believethat the customers should be
doing, should be navigating andso on, and it's not to get
systems like hot jar or clarityin place that you actually say
well, the data is sayingsomething completely different.
You know the data is saying thatpeople are not clicking there
or maybe they're using search alot more than you think.
We see that quite often.
Actually, in a lot of websitesthat we now launch have like an
(23:50):
enhanced search solution,because you know we'll be coming
a lot more impatient.
We want to be able to find theproduct we want and that may be
a you know, a side effect tosend me Amazon effect, I guess
where it's kind of just doeverything through the search
and we just now conditioned tojust go straight into the search
rather than navigate.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, definitely, and we've been found with our site
as well that people who use thesearch are so much more bought
into the user journey and somuch more bought into the brand
as well, and, like you know,they kind of the presumption is
they must feel like they'vealready exerted some effort so
they're more likely to kind offollow through to the end unless
(24:28):
you really pissed them offsomewhere.
We tend to see a crazily highconversion on people, with
people that have used sitesearch, taking that into account
with the designs as well.
So on our mobile site at themoment On the header there's
(24:48):
just a magnifying glass for thesite search.
And we were talking, so we useClayVoo for site search, another
big name within the industryand they said you know well, why
don't you have a kind of a justa search bar at the top so
people can see that you knowthat's the web search straight
away?
(25:09):
And, yeah, it's a bit of ano-brainer, and so that's
something we're implementing aswell.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, and obviously they'll be well placed to kind
of give that advice becausethey'll have seen that with
different types of merchants aswell, and I think that's one of
the benefits of working kind ofwith these.
You know experts, so you know.
Gorgeous for kind of customerservice, and Clavio for email
marketing, and obviously nowthat they're moving into kind of
customer data platform and soon, so that data could
(25:36):
potentially also feed systemslike ClayVoo, based on you know
what they've ordered and so on,and gorgeous for customer
service and ticketing systems.
And so what, just touching oncustomer service and you know
customer requests and so on,today, without system like
(25:57):
gorgeous, what do you use?
Is it just traditional email?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, so yeah, just a very yeah seems to come across
a very heavy reliance onMicrosoft Office as a company.
But yeah, we just have a sharedinbox, a shared sales inbox.
That we are, you know, we'revery good at kind of flagging
emails and tagging who'sresponsible for them and just
(26:25):
really sort of managing thatinbox efficiently.
And I guess you know all thesetools.
That's kind of what they do,just on a much more complicated
level.
It's just all about kind ofmanaging that, to managing that
inbox really and yeah, and justa very good and on it customer
service team as well, which is alad called Josh, runs up and
(26:46):
he's a very good job.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think that's a secret to kind of customer
service, because you've got anopportunity there to potentially
either make a, you know, havekind of a promoter.
So customer that's just sohappy with the way that you've
responded and you know we'regoing to tell everyone or
completely detract us saying youknow this is, I'm not going to
buy a few more, ever again.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, and I think speed is a really, really
important factor in that as well, and I'm like you know, even if
we've had an email that's notbeen replied to in the sales
inbox for too long, like myselfand other senior members of the
business, will jump on it andreply back to the customer
because it's a real yes, maybenot the best use of our time,
(27:32):
but it's a real, a winningfactor to a customer.
If they're you know they'rethey're applied too quickly, and
if it turns out to be a bigquote from a, from a trade
customer, and we've replied inan hour, whereas one of our
competitors are replied in acouple of days, then you know
the business is going to go tous.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Of course, yeah, what .
As you grow your business, whatare the KPIs or the metrics
that you're using to monitoryour progress, I guess, and and
kind of your achievements?
And to understand, I guess you?
Know, what your journey islooking like, on the way to to
the success that you've, youknow, achieved so far.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I guess as a kind of the e-commerce or the website,
more of the Amazon side of thebusiness.
You know we're using a lot ofsort of tried and tested KPIs
that kind of.
Throughout my various otherroles in e-commerce businesses
that kind of always been in kindof core to reporting, you know,
(28:38):
such as your cost peracquisition for paid customers,
looking at the conversion rate,make sure nothing's dropping at
that average order value, justthings like that, to make sure
that customers are, you know,interacting with the site and
converting and spending as kindof as much as possible really
(29:01):
when they're, when they'relooking through the site.
Because I think with theaverage order value is a huge
one as well, because if you knowyou're paying so much to get
these customers on the site inthe first place, they need to be
able to find all of theproducts that are suitable for
them in that journey as easy aspossible.
Especially as our, our capitalof growth grows larger and
(29:24):
larger, we need to kind of makeit more apparent to the
customers that we've got theseproducts on the website.
Another kind of thing we'reworking on from a development
perspective is having that sortof really pulled out on the on
the PDPs.
Underneath the add to add tobasket button, here are the
(29:44):
other products that are, youknow, suitable for, suitable for
what you purchase with.
Yeah, and you know it's notreinventing the wheel either.
Really, it's just kind ofmaking sure the best practices
is kind of adhere to throughoutthe website and it really kind
of pushes those key core metrics.
(30:04):
And then another one for me isorganic visibility.
With my SEO background, SEO.
yeah, so yes, it's somethingI've kept keen eye on.
We use Cystrix to monitor thatand the kind of our organic
(30:27):
visibility is increasing in avery nice steady level and we're
kind of competing with some ofthe big boys out there.
Like you're being accused ofthe world and screw fixers now,
which is great to see.
The other day we were rankingeight for duct tape, which was
fantastic.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Brilliant, I mean if you're on the first page.
I think you know that's halfthe half the battle, because no
one's really going to go andvery unlikely to look on pages
to to onwards.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
No, that's a very old SEO joke.
Where's the best place to hidea body?
On the second page of Google.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Well, it's true, because I mean, you know, I mean
on mobile I think it's slightlydifferent because it's like an
infinite page.
You don't kind of technicallygo on to the second page and so
on.
But certainly for desktop,absolutely so.
So CPA costs per acquisition,the conversion rate, the average
order value, just on thosethree I'm presuming you, like
(31:21):
everybody else, has seen the CPAgone up over the last three
years.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yes, although, having said that, we're having a lot
of success with performance maxand I'm kind of enjoying
exploring that because I thinkit seems to be.
We tested it when it first wasreleased, quite a while ago now,
and it didn't really do greatthings.
But more recently we've startedplaying more budget into that
(31:49):
and it started working a lotbetter for us and then and so
that's bringing the cost peracquisition down a little bit.
You know, it's one of thesegreat uses of AI and sort of all
the kind of machine learningand technology that goes behind
it.
Yes, it's a little bit more ofa black box than a lot of us
(32:12):
would like, but but you knowwe've seen some good results
from the back of it.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So I was actually going to ask you kind of if you
implemented any strategies orany technologies to try and
manage the increase in the costper acquisition and so
performance max will link to itin the show notes and what about
kind of average order valuekind of, except for maybe saying
a frequently bought together oryou know these products are
suitable for the product you'rebuying, what are you
(32:42):
implementing any otherstrategies to try and increase
that?
I mean, obviously I'm presumingyou run things like email
marketing campaigns that maybedo push the average order value
up, but is there something thatyou're doing aside from that?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah, I guess through email marketing we kind of try
and communicate new lines to ourexisting customers.
You know, if you bought cableties, take a look at our kind of
assorted boxes of differentsort of nuts and bolts and fixed
and fastenings and all thatsort of thing.
A lot of our customers that useone range will kind of shop the
(33:19):
other ranges and so it's a hugepart of that is kind of making
sure it's really easy tonavigate on the site.
Good internal linking, greatfor SEO as well, but also good
for helping sort of making moreof a seamless customer journey
and sort of helping customersthink you know, wasn't
(33:43):
necessarily shopping for that,but I do need some of those and
if I'm buying X product then youknow why not buy the other
products as well.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Because I guess one of the things that can confuse
merchants at the moment is, youknow, with the inflation that
we've seen over the past 12-18months, is the average order
value maybe has gone up anywaybecause prices have gone up.
So you know, do you want toturn the other thing, like you
know, the average items in thebasket Kind of how granular, I
(34:10):
guess do you go on thatparticular KPI?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
On that one.
It can be quite misleading forus because we are sort of our
average price of item differsmassively.
So you know, some of thelargest stainless steel cable
ties you're looking at about ahundred pound pack probably not
(34:36):
quite that, but quite expensive,sort of my own pack and then
your smaller cable ties, a sortof 20-pence a pack, and so you
can have loads of them in abasket and still kind of not
really touch the surfacecompared to some of the other
products.
So yeah, I think for us it'slooking at that kind of monetary
(34:57):
value of kind of the averageoverall and just trying to
optimize to that and try andgrow it.
I think the other thing for usis splitting e-commerce
customers from trade customersas well and looking at how they
interact with the site and kindof making sure that we kind of
(35:21):
cater for both markets.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Which can't be used.
Obviously, like you know, as wesaid, it's tailoring for, in
essence, two different types ofcustomers that have two
different types of needs,potentially.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, definitely, and I think that's why we kind of
settled on big commerce again aswell as the variance piece.
The B2B functionality out of bigcommerce just makes things a
lot easier to have a site thattargets both B2C and B2B.
Quite naturally, the tieredpricing is a kind of key thing
(35:58):
for us to do that and that'sreally helpful.
So you know we've got it brokendown on the product page.
You know you're buying a packcable ties you get this price,
10 packs you get this price.
And then a box you get thisprice.
And then if you want to buy apallet straight off the website,
which never happens then you'vegot this price and you know,
(36:21):
really spelling it out to thecustomer this is how much you'll
say by doing this is reallyhelpful.
And then you know otherfunctionality, like it's really
simple to have different paymentmethods on the checkout for
different types of customers.
So all of our trade customersthey can order off the website
(36:43):
just using PO's if they've got acustomer account with us To do
that.
We use a $20 a month plugin andjust Is it a BZO?
It is not.
No, I didn't have it open, butthat's you know.
I know BigCommerce pushing theB2B addition, and then that has
(37:07):
many wonderful features.
It was a bit too much for us,so we kind of moved away from
that and we use this pluginthat's literally called Payment
Groups and it lets you set acustomer group to different
payment methods, and so we, ourtrade customers customer group.
(37:28):
They have the PO payment method, which means they can check out
without paying, essentially,and it creates a, you know,
purchase order reference.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
In the old days I remember we did that for a
merchant it was about 10 yearsago, maybe slightly less, but it
wasn't recent based onJavaScript, so it was
understanding the customer groupID.
And then, just, you know,you're going to hide payment
methods too.
If that was, like you know,credit card or, for example,
offline payment, if you weren'ta trade customer for some
(37:59):
merchants and I think it is, youknow, I would agree with you
that the B2B addition is really,you know, an asset to companies
that serve B2B, not just forthe payment methods.
But yeah, obviously it comeswith an additional cost and you
have to make sure you knowyou're going to be using the
functionality you're paying for,especially as you know, like we
just said, the cost peracquisition has gone up and you
(38:22):
know it's becoming moreexpensive, so most of the costs
are yeah.
Yeah, and you know, as you said,you've plugged in with the
likes of Cleaver as well, andPerformance Act, which all have,
you know, a price tag attachedto them.
They should be ROI positive butit's becoming, you know,
expensive to run the stack, torun the website.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, 100%.
And you know people don'talways expect to pay a higher
price as well off the back of it.
So I think you know you've gotpressures of price competition
and then rising costs ofeverywhere else and it really
kind of squeezes the margin.
So trying to find costeffective ways of looking at it
(39:04):
kind of you know, do you reallyneed that and is there something
that can do it, and what youneed a better way is really
helpful sometimes.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Tom, it's been really .
I've been really excited tohave you on the podcast, because
one thing that I really likeabout your business is you
started off as, like we said atthe beginning, a really niche
player and you've you achievesuccess and growth with that and
then you've expanded your.
You know your catalog and Ithink you're a really good case
study for merchants that may be,you know, kind of a face in the
challenges that you had at thebeginning and just wanted to,
(39:34):
you know, kind of see the growththat you have.
If anyone wants to kind of getin touch with you to maybe pick
a brain or just discuss, youknow how can they reach out.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, drop me a message on LinkedIn or even drop
me an email.
My email is just tomatgtsccouk.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Excellent, and we asked all our guests if they've
read a book recently or listenedto a book, or what podcast
they're listening to.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Podcast.
I'm going to plug anothere-commerce podcast.
I'm a big fan of theReplatforming Podcast, which is
Paul Rogers and James Goode.
They've been doing it for quitea while now and I would second
that.
They, yeah, they've had somegreat guests on there throughout
the years and some reallyinteresting stuff.
Another thing that I'll plugwhile I'm here is I also have
(40:24):
run a big commerce Slackcommunity as well, which is just
sort of people who run bigcommerce websites Just talking
about big commerce really andthings that can do with it, and
so, yeah, if you're interestedin joining that, please drop me
an email.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Yeah, well, we'll put the link to that as well in the
show notes.
And yeah, I mean, I think Idon't know where you've been in
e-commerce if you haven't heardof the Replatform.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I can see it.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
In case you haven't or you don't know, Paul and
James, then again we'll link tothat podcast.
But, Tom, thank you very muchfor your time.
I know you're extremely busy,but I think there's been a lot
of value and thank you very muchfor sharing your story and
hopefully have you back on oneday.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
No, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Brilliant.
Thank you very much, cheersRight.
Thank you for listening to theBigCommerce podcast.
If you've enjoyed today'sepisode, please leave us a
review on your favorite podcastplatform and make sure you're
following us on social media, onInstagram and on LinkedIn.
If you've got ideas orsuggestions for future episodes,
(41:33):
please send us an email, infoat thebigcommercepodcastcom or
on our social media platform.
Careful with nature.
Hi, welcome to the Big Commerce Podcast.
Hello, welcome to a brand newepisode of the Big Commerce
Podcast.
I'm your co-host, luigi.
I'm really excited to have thisguest on the show today.
Tom is a co-founder of GTSCcoukand I've been wanting to get
Tom on the podcast for some timeso he can share some insights
on his journey and the successof his e-commerce business.
(00:22):
We cover the how and why Tomand his business partners set up
the business, the importance ofoffering a high level of
customer service, how GTSCmanages products, product data
and inventory, and how itcontinues to increase its search
engine rankings and websiteconversion rate.
I really hope you find valuingthe episode and enjoy it as much
as I did recording.
Hi, tom, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hi Luigi, I'm not too bad, Thanks yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Not too bad, thank you.
How's Chesterfield today?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I frankly don't live in Chesterfield anymore.
It's a town I grew up in andwent to school my business
partner there, but now I live inLeeds.
Now or office is basicallyManchester, so we're in two of
the biggest cities in the north.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So I should have said how's the north today?
Good, well, so we've known eachother for some time, but why
don't you introduce yourself toour listeners and then your
business?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, sure.
So I'm Tom, I'm an anti.
I'm the e-commerce director andco-founder at GTSE.
We are a trade suppliesbusiness that specializes in
consumable products and cableties, tape, drill bits, solder,
(01:38):
all sorts of more smaller thingsthat businesses tend to use
repeatedly to get jobs done, andhome users as well.
We started out quite a fewyears ago now, back to 2014, 15
as go cable ties.
So quite a niche entry to themarket as a bit of a hobby
(02:00):
between myself and a friend Iwent to school with and his
parents and, yeah, the businessjust grew from there.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So how did you identify to start off working
with cable ties?
What was it that sparked thatidea?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So, yeah, it was not my idea, it was my business
partner's parents' idea.
They found them a usefulproduct really and thought that
they'd be a good thing to sell.
There's lots and lots ofapplications for them.
The niche is a lot moredigitally savvy now.
(02:46):
There's a lot better websites,but when we back, when we
started, the competition was abit behind the curve, to say the
least, and I think to a certainextent it's still for trade and
B2B in general.
It's still not quite there yetand I think big commerce, more
than anyone, is doing a massivepush to try and take advantage
(03:07):
of that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It works better with the American pronunciation when
they say niches bring riches.
And obviously us as an agency,we specialize as well.
But I can't disagree with thatthat you just choose something,
you choose a vertical and justgo all in and it does eventually
bring riches.
So what are the pros, from yourperspective, of just focusing
(03:33):
on a vertical?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So, yeah, I think there's pros and cons to start
with, I guess, but the pros forus.
We really kind of developedthat kind of product knowledge
and expertise in the area.
My background is digitalmarketing.
I know a lot of people in theSEO world and the e-commerce
(03:56):
world and my business partner'sbackground was in finance.
We didn't know that much aboutcable ties when we started out
and it's not the mostcomplicated products in the
world, but they do have theirniche requirements, and just
learning and being thatspecifically focused on a
(04:16):
product area gave us anadvantage over people that sold
a lot broader range at the time.
And then a kind of similar thingwith tape as well.
We really kind of drilled downon tape to where a kind of huge
seller of duct tape andelectrical tape and the sort of
(04:40):
the nuances in these productranges are quite surprising
sometimes.
And then also kind of if youare more focused on one specific
niche, it does let you sort ofoptimize from an SEO point of
view or a web usability point ofperspective a lot more than
(05:02):
kind of the compasses can, whoare kind of targeting a lot
broader array of products, andwe really took advantage of this
and things on our website, likecable tie selector that's got
drop down sizes and colors andjust how we sort of kind of laid
the products out for someonewho would be sort of browsing a
huge range of cable ties.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And there's the rebrand that you said.
You changed the main some timeback.
Was that part of the kind ofexpansion of the product catalog
?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and that's kind of on the negatives of being
targeting too much of a smallniche.
We kind of felt that from abranding perspective we'd kind
of backed ourselves into acorner and having cable ties in
the domain it's helpful from anold school SEO perspective, but
(05:52):
I think from a more brandingpoint of view it really kind of
limited what we a customer'sperspective of what we could do
as a brand.
And we searched how in low fora new brand name, a new domain,
and I think GTSE really stoodout for us as something that
(06:14):
kind of rolled off the tongueand also it's a good domain.
It's four letters as well,which is it kind of adds the
usability of it and it's easyfor people to find.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
So you started off with cable ties and
predominantly, or you alsosupplied a trade, so the trade
market traditionally needs a lotmore data to make an informed
decision.
So I'm guessing kind of the waythat you also manage a product
data is a bit more complex.
There may be a DTC brand thatsells apparel or a beta brand
that sells, maybe, a supplement.
(06:51):
So how, what challenges haveyou faced?
I'm presuming you've faced somechallenges in terms of managing
that product data, because itcan't be, because how many
products have you got in yourcatalog?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So now we've got about 5000 SKUs in total
products, parent products evenprobably about sort of two,
three thousand.
We've got one of our issues andcomplexities and the reason
that we ended up on big commercewhen we migrated off our
initial platform, which wasMagento, was the complexity with
(07:25):
those variants.
Shopify at the time just didn'tlend itself to a product that
had black cable ties, have like65 plus variants and it was
really kind of made it overlycomplex to use that platform.
And so big commerce isfunctionality and kind of
(07:48):
features really Really sort ofhelp to sort of more easily
accommodate the sort of how wewanted to display the range.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And cause is it more flexible in terms of how you can
manage a product data yeah,exactly, and then you could you
know each, each size.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Each size of cable tie is very different and so you
know, if you're looking at ahundred mil cable tie compared
to a you know a meter long one,then it's it's, it's gonna be
massively different in weight,price, how many can fit in a box
, which are all kind ofimportant aspects.
We need to store, store on thecommerce platform.
(08:32):
I think in terms of managingthat product data we as a
company haven't done anything togroundbreaking with.
There's been a lot of excel useand lots of different
spreadsheets.
We kind of how big commerce nowthat kind of stores.
You know all of thedescriptions and all the main
(08:56):
bits of information and if weneed any of that for anything
else, we can just export it fromthere and use it that way.
Probably not the best way ofdoing it, but finally, you know,
pins are very expensive pieceof kit, obviously have Huge
advantages, but I think just theway that we do it in terms of
storing the majority of the coreinformation in just Various
(09:19):
different spreadsheets kind ofworks in a fashion and we kind
of utilize one drive within thebusiness and so everyone can
kind of edit spreadsheets live,which we find quite valuable.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, I think that collaborative element there,
because one of the risks you runwith kind of having excel
spreadsheets been emailed around, this kind of like you know,
trying to manage diversioncontrol by having a centralized
kind of tool that's online tosomething, you've got a you know
I guess a semi Form of a youknow pin within your excel
spreadsheet and that's got theaudit trail as well.
(09:54):
So if anything works for youknow again, you know you said
that pins can be quite expensiveand they do hold value nothing
gets Is when you start having abroad range of products that
maybe Share different types ofattributes, where you know maybe
you're managing digital assetsas well, maybe you're also multi
regional, so you gotta havedifferent languages and so on.
(10:18):
That's, I think, where you canstart seeing those complexities
and where maybe a pin starts tocome into it's you know it into
its own.
But I think you know whatyou're doing for the time being,
if it works for you and it'skind of refreshing in some
respects Whilst we've had youknow pin providers on on the
podcast before you know kind ofsaying the dangers around excel
spreadsheets, does it.
(10:38):
You've got that process kind ofnailed and everyone knows what
they, what they need to do, howit works.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
yeah, and that was localization, was one one hour
really consider the pin, becausewe we've got the pretty big
presence on Amazon as well andwe have with selling sort of
Amazon, the ESI, t, etc.
So all mostly European marketsand managing the content, while
(11:06):
Amazon translates Some of itautomatically to a certain
degree.
With with we've kind ofimproved the content of the long
and, yeah, managing that hasbeen quite complex and, yeah,
having a kind of a collaborativeshare, a version of excel, has
been really helpful for peopleto sort of jump in and out and
(11:26):
kind of add it things together.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So got 5000 skews give or take, and I'm guessing
inventory management can be abit challenging as well.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, I mean it's just we hold a lot more of our
core lines and we kind ofthrough trial and error and sort
of consolidating the supplychain.
We've kind of learned that whatworks and what doesn't really,
and we are merchandising teamdoes a sort of a fantastic job
(12:02):
in making sure we've got enoughstock of the right product,
especially in Amazon as well.
So we kind of fly through stockin Amazon.
We do all of that through FBAand it's just about, you know,
then, making sure there's enoughstock in each sort of region of
Amazon to sort of mean that wedon't sell out because we know
(12:28):
if it's on our website, we canmanage it a little bit better by
saying to the customer you know, this is an estate when we're
getting new products in and justmanage expectations a lot
better.
If it's Amazon, you know you'llstart losing rankings pretty
quickly if you don't have thestock of that product.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And kind of in terms of the Excel spreadsheet and the
systems and so on.
I'm presuming that over theyears you've kind of developed
them and iterated and put insome Whether they're formulas or
processes, to kind of make surethat you've got the data you
know.
Just talk us briefly throughkind of what kind of information
(13:06):
you manage within those Excelspreadsheets and you know what
are maybe the things that you'veyou've done to make them work
for your business.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, so we've.
We have kind of moved a littlebit on from the Excel
spreadsheet to a certain extent.
We now have an ERP system calledNetSuite, which is pretty
common in the industry, is oneof the big names, and that does
(13:35):
a sort of a much better job ofkind of handling stock in
multiple locations as well andgives us, gives us, that
traceability and visibility thatwe need.
So it's not quite PIM, it's kindof a different job, but it kind
of helps us, especially interms of kind of finance side.
(13:56):
So we originally bought itbecause we were just outgrowing
zero that we were using beforefrom a finance perspective, and
you know when you've got itemsthe same item all over the all
over the world that we bought atdifferent times you know you
need to have a kind of a blendedcost price or a piece of
software that will hold thatinformation and so.
(14:17):
So for that finance as much asfor the stock management it was,
it was kind of a smart move forus.
We probably could have lasted abit longer, but I think going
through that initial pain ofonboarding to a massive piece of
kit like that was was kind ofworth it now.
Now all the dust has settled.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Short term pain for long term gain.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yes, very much, so there was lots of pain.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And so you've.
You know, obviously a bit ofyourself and each got a name in
the market for what you do.
You've been successful over theyears.
So let's talk a bit aboutmarketing and you've obviously
got your history from a digitalmarketing perspective.
You supply different segmentstrade, btc and marketing is all
(15:06):
about segmentation.
You have to tailor the messageto the customer.
So what kind of strategies haveyou implemented or what kind of
things have you done to try andtailor your message to your
different customer segments?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's a really good question and I think it's it's a
massive thing for us becauseour website, you know, we've
heard the B2B customers becausethey kind of stay with us for a
long period of time and theythey tend to do bigger orders
because of the bigger jobs thatthey're working on the.
(15:43):
The issue is there's no real way, especially with AdWords, which
is our biggest kind ofadvertising spend, as it is, I
imagine, with everybody or mostpeople there's no real way to
differentiate if you're, youknow, you're kind of bidding on
that keyword level If one personsearches for cable ties and
he's looking for a cable, a packof cable ties, versus the next
(16:05):
person who's looking for a boxor even a pallet.
And so, yeah, we had to be sortof quite smart about looking at
the lifetime value of thesecustomers and kind of what we
need to do to kind of bring inthe bigger customers that will
fill those B2B gaps and then,once we've got that data in just
(16:30):
keeping in contact with thosecustomers and kind of keeping a
communication strategy with themvia email marketing or via our
sales team that is suitable foreach different type of customer.
Really, and you know some ofthe bigger trade customers.
(16:51):
They require a lot more commswith different members of their
team than some of the middlesize customers.
You know tradesmen who justwant a box tape or a box cable
ties every so often, where youknow an email to them from sort
of our email marketing platformwill kind of be enough to yeah,
(17:14):
be enough to do the job.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So do you have any email kind of automations in
place in your?
What do you and marketingsystems use?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Clavier.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And have you got that set up with kind of automations
and flows?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, got all the fancy, fancy mod cons and
features in it.
Yeah, and I think it'sfantastic and the ease of it as
well is just, you know,phenomenal like to be able to
kind of target a customersegment and sort of, you know
these customers who are thisproduct contact them again in X
(17:47):
months time to see if they needto need it to be topped.
Up or something like that.
We do a lot of that Because youknow the nature of our products
is they're usually things thatpeople will need again when
they're kind of when they'veused them up the first time.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And kind of you spoken about kind of
communication strategy and Ithink also your level of service
clearly very high as well.
How does that fall into, Iguess, the marketing?
So how much emphasis do youplace on on the level of service
?
You know, does it, do you, Iguess, discriminate through a
word, but you know, betweendifferent types of customers?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
No, not at all.
I think you know the smallercustomers are as valuable as the
bigger customers, that theythey kind of.
And actually the other thing wefound as well is a lot of big
companies will go and do a smallorder just to test the product,
and so you know, if you're notbeing sort of as courteous and
(18:44):
as good with every customer, youmight end up sort of annoying a
bigger fish that you kind ofdidn't realize was a big
customer in the first place.
And I think you know we kind ofneed every, every customer.
We try and get as many peopleto convert on the website as all
(19:05):
e-commerce businesses do, I'dimagine, to, as possible.
So I think just that consistentlevel of customer service is a
huge thing for us, and I thinkthat can be seen across our
reviews as well.
Like, we use reviews, the IOand the solid 4.9 out of five
sort of thing.
And then we're you know we'revery keen about making sure that
(19:25):
we maintain that level ofservice, especially as we grow
in scale as well.
We've not yet brought a kind ofticketing system on board, but
we're looking at a gorgeous ornot?
Yeah, that that seemed like areally good piece of kit, and
they have a integration into bigcommerce now as well, which is
(19:46):
which is very handy and clave.
And clave yeah different systems.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, Kind of no big secret.
I'm a massive fan of gorgeousand I think you know the fact
that they're built free commerceas well helps.
They're not like a ticket, likea generic ticketing system that
you know.
They've just got everything setup for different channels.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
You've done a demo, but I just think it's a
phenomenal product.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, I was incredibly impressed when I had
it demoed to me recently, Ithink, the fact that you could
even the extent of when acustomer rings up, it could
bring up their all their recentorders in the side panel of the
platform and you could justclick a button to reorder the
last order and integratestraight into big commerce.
Like that functionality isn'teven big commerce, so it's
(20:31):
always, yeah, very impressed.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So you spoke about kind of conversion rates,
because obviously thateveryone's working towards
trying to increase theconversion rate.
So what other strategies do youutilize to try and make sure
that you're constantlyincreasing that or at least
maintaining your conversion rate?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
So we do a lot of testing and sort of making sure
that we we're with, you know,traveling the user journey of
the website ourselves and kindof try to pick up everything
that a customer would find as afrustration.
And then on top of that we usewe use Microsoft clarity, which
(21:20):
is kind of like your hot jarsort of thing, which cause the
sessions, and then we can seethe direct frustrations that the
customers have had themselvesand then and then that really
helps us to kind of narrow downonto specific sort of obstacles
(21:41):
and issues with the sites thatneed that need addressing.
I think the other thing as wellis like internal meetings with
it, even within the business,and just you know people that
are not kind of directly,directly associated with the
website and the usability of itand saying you know, what do you
(22:02):
think of the website when you,when you sort of navigate it?
There is someone from ourfinance team, I think the other
day said you know they had alook on the mobile site and they
found it really hard to findthe phone number and kind of.
We are, we already have a kindof project in place to redo our
whole mega nav and have on themobile version.
(22:25):
When you click on the menu, themobile number will be at the
bottom there and yeah, I think,yeah, you kind of everyone kind
of looks at it a slightlydifferent way.
So kind of the more opinionsyou can get, the better is
usually a good thing.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, I mean nothing wrong with kind of getting the
feedback, because obviously somethings you can kind of say well
, you know, we disagree.
Maybe it's just for thatindividual, you know, for that
individual person frustration.
But just going back to yourpoint about not every idea is a
good one.
Yeah, always you know where'sthe value in that could be that
you know that that individualmaybe had a bad experience
somewhere else and and obviouslythey're using that as a
(23:04):
reference point.
But with Microsoft Clarity Ithink it's still underutilized
tool.
I mean I, you know I getimplemented on on merchant sites
when, when, when we're speakingto them, especially, you know,
even before we start redesigning, because the amount of
merchants I've spoken to thatjust have the website in a way,
because they think the customerjourney is and that's the thing
(23:28):
that they feel, or they believethat the customers should be
doing, should be navigating andso on, and it's not to get
systems like hot jar or clarityin place that you actually say
well, the data is sayingsomething completely different.
You know the data is saying thatpeople are not clicking there
or maybe they're using search alot more than you think.
We see that quite often.
Actually, in a lot of websitesthat we now launch have like an
(23:50):
enhanced search solution,because you know we'll be coming
a lot more impatient.
We want to be able to find theproduct we want and that may be
a you know, a side effect tosend me Amazon effect, I guess
where it's kind of just doeverything through the search
and we just now conditioned tojust go straight into the search
rather than navigate.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, definitely, and we've been found with our site
as well that people who use thesearch are so much more bought
into the user journey and somuch more bought into the brand
as well, and, like you know,they kind of the presumption is
they must feel like they'vealready exerted some effort so
they're more likely to kind offollow through to the end unless
(24:28):
you really pissed them offsomewhere.
We tend to see a crazily highconversion on people, with
people that have used sitesearch, taking that into account
with the designs as well.
So on our mobile site at themoment On the header there's
(24:48):
just a magnifying glass for thesite search.
And we were talking, so we useClayVoo for site search, another
big name within the industryand they said you know well, why
don't you have a kind of a justa search bar at the top so
people can see that you knowthat's the web search straight
away?
(25:09):
And, yeah, it's a bit of ano-brainer, and so that's
something we're implementing aswell.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, and obviously they'll be well placed to kind
of give that advice becausethey'll have seen that with
different types of merchants aswell, and I think that's one of
the benefits of working kind ofwith these.
You know experts, so you know.
Gorgeous for kind of customerservice, and Clavio for email
marketing, and obviously nowthat they're moving into kind of
customer data platform and soon, so that data could
(25:36):
potentially also feed systemslike ClayVoo, based on you know
what they've ordered and so on,and gorgeous for customer
service and ticketing systems.
And so what, just touching oncustomer service and you know
customer requests and so on,today, without system like
(25:57):
gorgeous, what do you use?
Is it just traditional email?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, so yeah, just a very yeah seems to come across
a very heavy reliance onMicrosoft Office as a company.
But yeah, we just have a sharedinbox, a shared sales inbox.
That we are, you know, we'revery good at kind of flagging
emails and tagging who'sresponsible for them and just
(26:25):
really sort of managing thatinbox efficiently.
And I guess you know all thesetools.
That's kind of what they do,just on a much more complicated
level.
It's just all about kind ofmanaging that, to managing that
inbox really and yeah, and justa very good and on it customer
service team as well, which is alad called Josh, runs up and
(26:46):
he's a very good job.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think that's a secret to kind of customer
service, because you've got anopportunity there to potentially
either make a, you know, havekind of a promoter.
So customer that's just sohappy with the way that you've
responded and you know we'regoing to tell everyone or
completely detract us saying youknow this is, I'm not going to
buy a few more, ever again.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, and I think speed is a really, really
important factor in that as well, and I'm like you know, even if
we've had an email that's notbeen replied to in the sales
inbox for too long, like myselfand other senior members of the
business, will jump on it andreply back to the customer
because it's a real yes, maybenot the best use of our time,
(27:32):
but it's a real, a winningfactor to a customer.
If they're you know they'rethey're applied too quickly, and
if it turns out to be a bigquote from a, from a trade
customer, and we've replied inan hour, whereas one of our
competitors are replied in acouple of days, then you know
the business is going to go tous.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Of course, yeah, what .
As you grow your business, whatare the KPIs or the metrics
that you're using to monitoryour progress, I guess, and and
kind of your achievements?
And to understand, I guess you?
Know, what your journey islooking like, on the way to to
the success that you've, youknow, achieved so far.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I guess as a kind of the e-commerce or the website,
more of the Amazon side of thebusiness.
You know we're using a lot ofsort of tried and tested KPIs
that kind of.
Throughout my various otherroles in e-commerce businesses
that kind of always been in kindof core to reporting, you know,
(28:38):
such as your cost peracquisition for paid customers,
looking at the conversion rate,make sure nothing's dropping at
that average order value, justthings like that, to make sure
that customers are, you know,interacting with the site and
converting and spending as kindof as much as possible really
(29:01):
when they're, when they'relooking through the site.
Because I think with theaverage order value is a huge
one as well, because if you knowyou're paying so much to get
these customers on the site inthe first place, they need to be
able to find all of theproducts that are suitable for
them in that journey as easy aspossible.
Especially as our, our capitalof growth grows larger and
(29:24):
larger, we need to kind of makeit more apparent to the
customers that we've got theseproducts on the website.
Another kind of thing we'reworking on from a development
perspective is having that sortof really pulled out on the on
the PDPs.
Underneath the add to add tobasket button, here are the
(29:44):
other products that are, youknow, suitable for, suitable for
what you purchase with.
Yeah, and you know it's notreinventing the wheel either.
Really, it's just kind ofmaking sure the best practices
is kind of adhere to throughoutthe website and it really kind
of pushes those key core metrics.
(30:04):
And then another one for me isorganic visibility.
With my SEO background, SEO.
yeah, so yes, it's somethingI've kept keen eye on.
We use Cystrix to monitor thatand the kind of our organic
(30:27):
visibility is increasing in avery nice steady level and we're
kind of competing with some ofthe big boys out there.
Like you're being accused ofthe world and screw fixers now,
which is great to see.
The other day we were rankingeight for duct tape, which was
fantastic.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Brilliant, I mean if you're on the first page.
I think you know that's halfthe half the battle, because no
one's really going to go andvery unlikely to look on pages
to to onwards.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
No, that's a very old SEO joke.
Where's the best place to hidea body?
On the second page of Google.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Well, it's true, because I mean, you know, I mean
on mobile I think it's slightlydifferent because it's like an
infinite page.
You don't kind of technicallygo on to the second page and so
on.
But certainly for desktop,absolutely so.
So CPA costs per acquisition,the conversion rate, the average
order value, just on thosethree I'm presuming you, like
(31:21):
everybody else, has seen the CPAgone up over the last three
years.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yes, although, having said that, we're having a lot
of success with performance maxand I'm kind of enjoying
exploring that because I thinkit seems to be.
We tested it when it first wasreleased, quite a while ago now,
and it didn't really do greatthings.
But more recently we've startedplaying more budget into that
(31:49):
and it started working a lotbetter for us and then and so
that's bringing the cost peracquisition down a little bit.
You know, it's one of thesegreat uses of AI and sort of all
the kind of machine learningand technology that goes behind
it.
Yes, it's a little bit more ofa black box than a lot of us
(32:12):
would like, but but you knowwe've seen some good results
from the back of it.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So I was actually going to ask you kind of if you
implemented any strategies orany technologies to try and
manage the increase in the costper acquisition and so
performance max will link to itin the show notes and what about
kind of average order valuekind of, except for maybe saying
a frequently bought together oryou know these products are
suitable for the product you'rebuying, what are you
(32:42):
implementing any otherstrategies to try and increase
that?
I mean, obviously I'm presumingyou run things like email
marketing campaigns that maybedo push the average order value
up, but is there something thatyou're doing aside from that?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah, I guess through email marketing we kind of try
and communicate new lines to ourexisting customers.
You know, if you bought cableties, take a look at our kind of
assorted boxes of differentsort of nuts and bolts and fixed
and fastenings and all thatsort of thing.
A lot of our customers that useone range will kind of shop the
(33:19):
other ranges and so it's a hugepart of that is kind of making
sure it's really easy tonavigate on the site.
Good internal linking, greatfor SEO as well, but also good
for helping sort of making moreof a seamless customer journey
and sort of helping customersthink you know, wasn't
(33:43):
necessarily shopping for that,but I do need some of those and
if I'm buying X product then youknow why not buy the other
products as well.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Because I guess one of the things that can confuse
merchants at the moment is, youknow, with the inflation that
we've seen over the past 12-18months, is the average order
value maybe has gone up anywaybecause prices have gone up.
So you know, do you want toturn the other thing, like you
know, the average items in thebasket Kind of how granular, I
(34:10):
guess do you go on thatparticular KPI?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
On that one.
It can be quite misleading forus because we are sort of our
average price of item differsmassively.
So you know, some of thelargest stainless steel cable
ties you're looking at about ahundred pound pack probably not
(34:36):
quite that, but quite expensive,sort of my own pack and then
your smaller cable ties, a sortof 20-pence a pack, and so you
can have loads of them in abasket and still kind of not
really touch the surfacecompared to some of the other
products.
So yeah, I think for us it'slooking at that kind of monetary
(34:57):
value of kind of the averageoverall and just trying to
optimize to that and try andgrow it.
I think the other thing for usis splitting e-commerce
customers from trade customersas well and looking at how they
interact with the site and kindof making sure that we kind of
(35:21):
cater for both markets.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Which can't be used.
Obviously, like you know, as wesaid, it's tailoring for, in
essence, two different types ofcustomers that have two
different types of needs,potentially.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, definitely, and I think that's why we kind of
settled on big commerce again aswell as the variance piece.
The B2B functionality out of bigcommerce just makes things a
lot easier to have a site thattargets both B2C and B2B.
Quite naturally, the tieredpricing is a kind of key thing
(35:58):
for us to do that and that'sreally helpful.
So you know we've got it brokendown on the product page.
You know you're buying a packcable ties you get this price,
10 packs you get this price.
And then a box you get thisprice.
And then if you want to buy apallet straight off the website,
which never happens then you'vegot this price and you know,
(36:21):
really spelling it out to thecustomer this is how much you'll
say by doing this is reallyhelpful.
And then you know otherfunctionality, like it's really
simple to have different paymentmethods on the checkout for
different types of customers.
So all of our trade customersthey can order off the website
(36:43):
just using PO's if they've got acustomer account with us To do
that.
We use a $20 a month plugin andjust Is it a BZO?
It is not.
No, I didn't have it open, butthat's you know.
I know BigCommerce pushing theB2B addition, and then that has
(37:07):
many wonderful features.
It was a bit too much for us,so we kind of moved away from
that and we use this pluginthat's literally called Payment
Groups and it lets you set acustomer group to different
payment methods, and so we, ourtrade customers customer group.
(37:28):
They have the PO payment method, which means they can check out
without paying, essentially,and it creates a, you know,
purchase order reference.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
In the old days I remember we did that for a
merchant it was about 10 yearsago, maybe slightly less, but it
wasn't recent based onJavaScript, so it was
understanding the customer groupID.
And then, just, you know,you're going to hide payment
methods too.
If that was, like you know,credit card or, for example,
offline payment, if you weren'ta trade customer for some
(37:59):
merchants and I think it is, youknow, I would agree with you
that the B2B addition is really,you know, an asset to companies
that serve B2B, not just forthe payment methods.
But yeah, obviously it comeswith an additional cost and you
have to make sure you knowyou're going to be using the
functionality you're paying for,especially as you know, like we
just said, the cost peracquisition has gone up and you
(38:22):
know it's becoming moreexpensive, so most of the costs
are yeah.
Yeah, and you know, as you said,you've plugged in with the
likes of Cleaver as well, andPerformance Act, which all have,
you know, a price tag attachedto them.
They should be ROI positive butit's becoming, you know,
expensive to run the stack, torun the website.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, 100%.
And you know people don'talways expect to pay a higher
price as well off the back of it.
So I think you know you've gotpressures of price competition
and then rising costs ofeverywhere else and it really
kind of squeezes the margin.
So trying to find costeffective ways of looking at it
(39:04):
kind of you know, do you reallyneed that and is there something
that can do it, and what youneed a better way is really
helpful sometimes.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Tom, it's been really .
I've been really excited tohave you on the podcast, because
one thing that I really likeabout your business is you
started off as, like we said atthe beginning, a really niche
player and you've you achievesuccess and growth with that and
then you've expanded your.
You know your catalog and Ithink you're a really good case
study for merchants that may be,you know, kind of a face in the
challenges that you had at thebeginning and just wanted to,
(39:34):
you know, kind of see the growththat you have.
If anyone wants to kind of getin touch with you to maybe pick
a brain or just discuss, youknow how can they reach out.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, drop me a message on LinkedIn or even drop
me an email.
My email is just tomatgtsccouk.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Excellent, and we asked all our guests if they've
read a book recently or listenedto a book, or what podcast
they're listening to.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Podcast.
I'm going to plug anothere-commerce podcast.
I'm a big fan of theReplatforming Podcast, which is
Paul Rogers and James Goode.
They've been doing it for quitea while now and I would second
that.
They, yeah, they've had somegreat guests on there throughout
the years and some reallyinteresting stuff.
Another thing that I'll plugwhile I'm here is I also have
(40:24):
run a big commerce Slackcommunity as well, which is just
sort of people who run bigcommerce websites Just talking
about big commerce really andthings that can do with it, and
so, yeah, if you're interestedin joining that, please drop me
an email.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Yeah, well, we'll put the link to that as well in the
show notes.
And yeah, I mean, I think Idon't know where you've been in
e-commerce if you haven't heardof the Replatform.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I can see it.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
In case you haven't or you don't know, Paul and
James, then again we'll link tothat podcast.
But, Tom, thank you very muchfor your time.
I know you're extremely busy,but I think there's been a lot
of value and thank you very muchfor sharing your story and
hopefully have you back on oneday.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
No, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Brilliant.
Thank you very much, cheersRight.
Thank you for listening to theBigCommerce podcast.
If you've enjoyed today'sepisode, please leave us a
review on your favorite podcastplatform and make sure you're
following us on social media, onInstagram and on LinkedIn.
If you've got ideas orsuggestions for future episodes,
(41:33):
please send us an email, infoat thebigcommercepodcastcom or
on our social media platform.
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