Ryan Martin, host of eCommerce Australia and founder of Remarkable Digital Embark on a journey through the dynamic world of e-commerce analytics with the wizardry of James King, the seasoned pro from Data Made Simple.
On the Ecommerce Australia Podcast, we capture the essence of data-driven transformation with James, who narrates his personal evolution from a shelf-stocker in the UK to an analytics powerhouse down under.
We navigate the challenges of combining creativity with hard data, dwelling on the essential skill of data literacy within teams—a skill paramount for e-commerce victory.
This episode is a treasure trove for marketers and business owners alike, as we dissect the complexities of e-commerce performance metrics.
The debate of Shopify analytics versus Google Analytics 4 is unraveled, with James guiding us on leveraging these tools to the fullest. We tackle the impending cookie-less future head-on, boasting strategies involving UTM parameters and post-purchase surveys that promise to keep brands ahead of the curve.
Supermetrics, Funnel, and the sheer brilliance of stitched data come to light, paving the way for strategies that resonate in a perplexing digital landscape.
The conversation culminates with the revelation of server-side tracking—our beacon in the twilight of third-party cookies.
James highlights the inevitable rise of first-party data and the burgeoning potential of SMS marketing as keys to unlock customer engagement. We unpack the methods to nurture brand loyalty through post-purchase experiences, emphasizing the early capture of first-party data and the mastery of email flows and educational content. Tune in to arm your e-commerce endeavors with the insights of a true data aficionado, ensuring your strategy doesn't just follow trends but sets them.
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Ryan Martin, host of eCommerce Australia and founder of Remarkable Digital Embark on a journey through the dynamic world of e-commerce analytics with the wizardry of James King, the seasoned pro from Data Made Simple.
On the Ecommerce Australia Podcast, we capture the essence of data-driven transformation with James, who narrates his personal evolution from a shelf-stocker in the UK to an analytics powerhouse down under.
We navigate the challenges of combining creativity with hard data, dwelling on the essential skill of data literacy within teams—a skill paramount for e-commerce victory.
This episode is a treasure trove for marketers and business owners alike, as we dissect the complexities of e-commerce performance metrics.
The debate of Shopify analytics versus Google Analytics 4 is unraveled, with James guiding us on leveraging these tools to the fullest. We tackle the impending cookie-less future head-on, boasting strategies involving UTM parameters and post-purchase surveys that promise to keep brands ahead of the curve.
Supermetrics, Funnel, and the sheer brilliance of stitched data come to light, paving the way for strategies that resonate in a perplexing digital landscape.
The conversation culminates with the revelation of server-side tracking—our beacon in the twilight of third-party cookies.
James highlights the inevitable rise of first-party data and the burgeoning potential of SMS marketing as keys to unlock customer engagement. We unpack the methods to nurture brand loyalty through post-purchase experiences, emphasizing the early capture of first-party data and the mastery of email flows and educational content. Tune in to arm your e-commerce endeavors with the insights of a true data aficionado, ensuring your strategy doesn't just follow trends but sets them.
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia Podcast. Welcome to Ecommerce Australia. I'm your host, ryan Martin, founder of Remarkable Digital. This podcast is aimed at those who have their own online business, e-commerce professionals looking to keep current on the trends, and for anyone interested in learning more about the world of Ecom. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. Welcome to another great episode, if I do say so myself, of Ecommerce Australia.
Speaker 1:We're pleased to welcome James King to the show today. Now James has been working with clients, been brand-side, assisting them with making data-driven decisions for well it looks to be the last 10 years I'm sure he'll tell us shortly, but working for Beach House Group and then Louis Vuitton. Mel Hennessey Group has had a digital for benefit cosmetics. Basically, he knows his stuff very well. So James is now running his own business at Data Made Simple, which we all need. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks, ryan. I've been really impressed with your LinkedIn post lately and you come highly recommended by a previous guest in Alarn Herwitz. So, yeah, looking forward to discussing sort of GA4, and data and I've seen one of your posts there around a cookie-less society. You're sick of hearing about it. So we can get into all of that, mate, but let's chat quickly about your background. So we're just mentioning off the top, before we press record, that you were from the UK originally. When did you move out to Australia? And then, yeah, how's it been so far?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I moved out quite early on in my career in 2013,. So I was working at a time with Denon, who do Evian water and active yogurts. Working actually started in the field team out in the UK so helping stack the shelves in some of the supermarkets, get more visibility, get those gondolorens, and then moved out here with them into category management, which is kind of this space between sales and marketing, to help retailers gain more visibility of Denon. So yeah, like I said, I think you intend to come out here for one, two years and 10 years later with a house and two kids. It's pretty settled here.
Speaker 1:Nice and your Sydney base, what part of Sydney?
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the Northern beaches many Brits started in Manly and kind of worked their way up to get a little bit more space. But yeah, it's a great part of the world.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I've had way too many Sydney people on. I think I've got to get back to my Melbourne roots. How old are the kids?
Speaker 2:Two and four. So, yeah, definitely fun, but a handful. It's one of those things where you're trying to squeeze in time wherever you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and you just thought that you weren't busy enough, so you thought you'd start your own business as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things I think you know it's come from, sometimes from a need as well. You know, I think you know living in Australia it's, you know, with kids in the house and this kind of thing, it's kind of a natural progression. Obviously, you know my experience as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic mate. And how did you get into the data? Like what? Did you just find a passion for numbers?
Speaker 2:or analytical. I actually started I mean qualified as a civil engineer, so I'm actually my first couple of years in the UK. I was working on London Underground reviewing site plans. You know calculations etc. So it's as fun as you'd imagine being underground but actually you know, having that ground work of you know using data to drive decisions and everything was really beneficial.
Speaker 2:When I moved across to the Narnan and started in the field team there I kind of thought it was normal that you know everyone would use kind of data to drive decisions. So I realized that over time, like in every role, like my standout has been using data to inform the decisions and I think that's really kind of led to you know, really to fast forward to now where you know I've been in digital roles within bigger companies and then realize that actually you know there's this huge gap in both the, I guess, the data literacy side, so the skill set within the team to kind of know where to start, but also the actual technical side as well of actually getting the right setup so you can have a really clear, unified, you know view of your reporting, your insights, to make decisions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. And what does a conversation go like? Like, I can imagine there's two types of people. There's the data-driven ones, and then there's the gut feel entrepreneurs Is that, do you have to keep them bringing back?
Speaker 2:to the data Right, exactly, and it's so topical at the moment.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously, in the last year we've had this transition to Google, unless it's four.
Speaker 2:And you see, you know the style of different people, of course, those who are, you know, always keen to see the next thing, like you know, understand how it works, et cetera.
Speaker 2:And then others who you know obviously look at a new interface and a new measurement model and go, oh, where did I start? So, yeah, there's definitely that split, but I kind of see that as the opportunity and certainly, like most recently working at benefit cosmetics, I think there's over index of people who are amazing, creative people within a business, but they don't necessarily have those analytical skills and I just see that as the opportunity that you can actually help teams to make a difference, and I think that's the best way to start. And I think that's the best way to start, like let's, you know, simplify a bit and then guide them in the right place. So the whole business is themed around helping teams become more data driven, so making it easier for them to make decisions, but then also like having that kind of technical backing of like the systems and the tools you're using are really easy to use as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. And before one last question on your business to make those data driven decisions, how do you work with data made simple? Is it a project basis or is it a monthly kind of retain model, or what's the way you work with clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually a little bit of both.
Speaker 2:So with some clients it's on a monthly retainer where it's basically, you know, setting up, initially setting up with a reporting, unifying it, and then every week or every month giving a report summary, and then the kind of more valuable part of that is what are the actionable insights from this report, you know, what are the marketing insights that's going to help you in that next week, in that next month, to drive decisions.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of like almost a fully done for you service. And then there's this other side, which is more on helping all the teams become more data driven so they can take control of a bit of that. So most recently, one of the clients I'm working with, we've set up basically the first stages in the discovery, like understanding not only how data literate, how driven they are as a team, but then like how's their setup in terms of you know, they're working from this Excel sheet here, that's Excel sheet here, to run their e-commerce and retail business, and then at least you've got this layer of the land and then you can start to make this kind of like this is the you know six, eight, 10 week plan or beyond, to at least get to a place where they're comfortable using data and using a single source of truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, fantastic. Let's get into some hard-hitting questions. So GA4 was obviously rolled out last year. How many clients still don't have this set up correctly? In your experience, what are you finding, I think, actually to get the basics in technically.
Speaker 2:I think generally it's good, we're not in a bad place. I think everyone knew the deadline. They implemented the GA4. But then there's been this period now where it's like and there probably was about three or four months period where people were still using Universal Analytics because it was still there and like, oh, we could just carry on as usual. But now we're in this place where we've only got GA4 and that's GA360, which they've got a bit more time. But now we're in this place where it's actually the challenge is more that human element of, like I mentioned, knowing where to start, so looking at the interface and knowing which reports to look at. And then two is like that, with a different model. So we've moved from cookie-based to event-based tracking, like understanding that and trusting the data generally. Like just yesterday I got a question like okay, how do I compare year on year? Because we've got Universal Analytics here. We didn't have a full year of GA4 data. So it's really that part which is the challenge now for teams, like trusting that data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and how do you compare?
Speaker 2:You know it is a challenge for those who don't have that full year of previous year data, and that's obviously ticking around now. But I'll let you know the results soon. But I think my view is actually well, let's start at least with Shopify Analytics, because you've got that consistent measurement between the years. But, yeah, I'll let you know, because I'm digging into it at the moment, because it is, yeah, like and I think there's this expectation that, like you know, I think we're all on this journey, some of us a little bit further on and then others, like, there are new questions that come up every day that we're still, you know, still discovering, and that's, yeah, kind of the stuff you see on the LinkedIn. That's kind of my discoveries on that journey as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect and that's a great segue into another question I had Google Analytics or GA4 versus Shopify For a lot of our listening audience. We've got a really wide range of, you know, big enterprise level listeners, but also the smaller end. If you're looking like, what's the best source of truth in your opinion, Is it Shopify, Analytics or GA4?
Speaker 2:I mean it really depends on the purpose, on the goal. So, obviously, shopify being you know the sales platform, you know if it's Shopify or whichever platform you know is always the strongest for looking at the understanding, that repeat customer view and the cohort and the HERSES etc. To understand what's bringing customers back. I still think Google Analytics is the best when it's set up well and people know how to approach it. For in terms of behavior, also on website behavior tracking and then beyond that, like like I said, one angle is really how do you unify all the data?
Speaker 2:My view is, like, as a really lean place to start with this stuff, is there are tools that help to send all this, the two sources of data, into a spreadsheet. So the likes of you might have heard of Supermetrics and Funnel and Power my Analytics. Those are all tools that basically help you send all that combined marketing data, sales and marketing data into one place. Yes, I mean it really depends. Also, like you know, if they've got multiple channels, retail, you know, other marketplaces, that's, you know you need something like that as a first step.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, fair enough. And like, attribution gets thrown around a lot in terms of how do you attribute and you know what levels and how to know what channels are working is essentially what I'm trying to get at. What's your thoughts on that? Obviously, we're moving away from. You know cookies, for what do you call it the cookie apocalypse? How do we start to attribute and know what's working from a data point of view?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I touched upon the cookie bit in a bit, but I think, as far as, like you know, attribution, let's get back to the basics there. What are we trying to understand? We're trying to understand where our customers are coming from, ultimately. So, and ultimately adjust to that right so you can make better marketing decisions going. You know this channel isn't working as well as the other, or this has a lot more potential. So, like taking that view as the goal, I think the first step is, again, it comes back to getting the basics right.
Speaker 2:So Google Analytics come back to, because, as a way to you know, as a single source of truth, at least for your website, analytics is a great place to start. So, when we're talking about sources of truth here as well, we've got obviously Facebook ads and meta ads and TikTok ads. When you're trying to understand which ad platform is working that you're not going to rely on each of those customers, they've got their own story to tell, so that's why it's really good to kind of send in that data as much as you can to Google Analytics. How you do that is really about having really good campaign tracking. So UTM parameters, so that's the at the end of your URLs that you're sending your traffic from to your website. You got the medium source campaign. Having that set up correctly is really key because actually you know it feeds everything else. So even if you use, if you're on Shopify and you like to use a third party tool you know Triple Whirl or one of those it's still based around having good campaign tracking there. So my tip there is really that when you talk about attribution, you know getting looking for UTM tracking spreadsheet or builder and having all your campaigns set up properly there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the other side of that which I think is really important with attribution is like attribution through Google Analytics is click-based right, so we're never going to.
Speaker 2:It's always going to under index on organic, social and well, social generally, because you know TikTok, because people aren't looking at TikTok and so I'm going to got to click through right now. So I think the other aspect of that and a really simple, actionable thing you can do here is post-purchase surveys, and I noticed I would listen to Daniel from WorldCo talk about this as well and it's from a slightly different angle because from my perspective, like adding a post-purchase survey and ask and having one question where did you hear about first? Where did you first hear about this product? That is the most powerful question because that's your first touch point for the customer. So what you'll notice there is when you you know, if you do have post-purchase surveys implemented, that you have likely a real over index on that social side, if you are doing stuff on social and that results in finding like quite a good balance between your, I guess, your last click or you know, the click-related attribution from Google Analytics and then the more awareness-based attribution from post-purchase surveys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant. And with those post-purchase surveys, like, do you know, is there a best number of questions to ask or would you just keep it really simple and ask a couple?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. They're quite clever because you is more a case of priority, so obviously it will register that first one. So if you don't, if you haven't answered all of them, it will still register. So, as far as like a priority of questions, I'll definitely say one first one is where did you first hear about the product? And two, which I you know, actually there's some really interesting insights around, like around this question which is like how long have you known about this product before you purchased?
Speaker 2:Because there's this assumption that you know maybe it will be a few days or this kind of thing. You know, sometimes it's up to a year before when someone's aware of the brand and they're actually purchasing, which is it's huge. And and actually a survey that like a report came out from one of these providers last week, which I'll just summarize and over 60% took longer than a week between, you know, discovering the brand and purchasing 45 took over a month, 45%. So it really shows like that opportunity of like actually are you marketing to your potential customers for that duration of that period? Like how can you extend that? And you know, so you're really capturing all of those across the whole, you know, consideration journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually I read the the, your content or LinkedIn around that. It just it was fascinating because myself, as an SEO and PPC agency owner, we're always trying to claim as much attribution as we can, and then you work with different people and they're trying to claim attribution, but the actual reality is that it all helps. So, to read what you were saying, with that report, I think 61% took over a week from discovering the brand to making their first purchase, which is kind of what I've known to be true. What I found fascinating. You mentioned there that that 23% were impulse buyers. So 23% discovering the brand and buying in the same day. So that was surprisingly high.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that of course we don't know. You know, as a broad, you don't know which industry, et cetera. You know, and some of this, particularly if they're just advertising on Google ads and using that very high search intent, you know, that seems, seems possible, but yeah, maybe it's. Of course those bigger purchases are going to take a lot longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, and so you know, I guess when you're trying to get, get your e-com brand up and scaling to a point it's probably it's fairly easy to just target, or not easy it's, you know. I guess it's more likely you want to target those intent-based people from the get-go. But there is good money to be made in terms of you know nurturing them, from you know social and from you know doing the like that whole purchase journey, because it's obviously cheaper to get in front of those more top of the funnel.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and that's the kind of classic strategy of advertising in the lead up to Q4, you know, you really want to build top of funnel awareness in those months prior to then. When it comes to the peak, expensive Q4 period. You can focus on that bottom of funnel because you've already, you know, engaged the top of funnel, you built up that audience. But yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a you know a lot of I don't know I find a lot of data driven founders and owners of businesses. They very much did it work. You know, is it working and some of that top of the funnel stuff you like, yeah, it is, but it like it's job isn't to convert tomorrow. Right, there is always interesting conversations and and adding in some of the context that you gave there with those numbers, right? What do you think the biggest areas for improvement are for Econ businesses when we're talking about data? Are there any metrics that are getting often overlooked?
Speaker 1:Or is there a set of data or a set of numbers that you look at and you identify this Econ most brands going to be successful? Yeah, it's a big question. Yeah, look what's the solution for 2020?
Speaker 2:Well, I think this year like to pull it back a bit.
Speaker 2:I think the e-commerce businesses that are going to win in 2024 are going to be the ones that actually do the boring stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, right, like, analytics isn't the sexiest part of the business, you know, like operations, all that kind of things like finding efficiencies and improvements there.
Speaker 2:It's not as citing as, like, the big campaign launches, but those are the ones, you know, the businesses that are really going to win, because and this comes at a time, of course, every other conversation is about AI, right, so it's really hard to not get distracted by that shiny object and just really focus on getting the basics right. Of course, ai is around the corner, but, like, let's focus on your business getting the basics right to make better decisions, because it doesn't matter how good AI is, if you haven't got the kind of baseline of good quality data, it's useless, right? Yeah, exactly, so I think you know the opportunity is in that, like keeping in your lane and getting the basics right. But then also the other side to that is like really kind of trying to encourage, you know, the businesses and teams to you know, look at data and kind of help to build that data literally, because, like across every part of the business, you still need to be very like, at least understand the numbers and make decisions with those.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, and so just diving a little bit deeper there. When you say the basics, what do you mean by the basics? So getting your tracking codes accurate at a campaign level? Just understanding, like putting in a bit of a consistent plan of looking at the data and then making assumptions based on that data and trying a few different things. Is that what you mean by basic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it initially starts with just the data trust and integrity right, because if you can't make any decisions without knowing that the information is, you know, correct, so you know a couple of things I touched on already getting good UTM tracking in your campaigns, installing post-surveys that really helps with a lot of the attribution side. And then there's another side which you know. We're kind of touching upon some of the cookie things and the changes there. Service-side tracking is. You know, I think people don't many people don't really understand the term service-side tracking, but effectively that is a really important aspect to focus on because this is about. You know, when we're talking about cookies going away, third-party cookies what's also happening at the same time is people are using more ad blockers.
Speaker 2:We've got browsers Apple browsers sorry, safari browser blocking third-party cookies, but also restricting the first-party cookies, which is cookies that are coming from your own site. So all of this combined is important to use service-side tracking. I've actually put a post, a webinar, about this, like how service-side tracking works and it's really going directly to your e-commerce site and actually tracking directly, rather than relying on Google Analytics to send that or Clavio to send that. Information is actually going via your own platform.
Speaker 1:Okay, how do they set that up then? Is that what your webinar shows them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually let's take a step back, because I've kind of jumped ahead to cookies. I think this is really the kind of core part which is misunderstood here, which is when we're talking about what's happening in this bigger landscape, and I think the key is one we've got third-party cookies being depreciated and certainly with Google Chrome towards the end of the year, completely. So third-party cookies are gone. So these third-party cookies just as Bane briefly, is from a consumer point of view those are the ads that track you around the web with your retargeting ads, so you're seeing the ads across the web. Now, first-party cookies are cookies that go through your own site. So in other words, there's no restriction on that and that's how now Facebook ads work through that.
Speaker 2:Google Analytics uses first-party cookies, but there is a restriction on how long that cookie is saved in, for instance, the Safari browser. So if you visit on day one to buy some mascara as I'm sure you're a big mascara fan you visit, you browse the product, you go away. That cookie is stored for up to seven days on Safari. So if you visit after seven days and you look at that product again, you're apt as a new user, so it will look like you're completely new, which means that Google Analytics will see you as new, klavia will see you as new, so they won't be able to send those retargeting emails Same with Facebook, et cetera. So server-side tracking helps to counter that by storing all that information so you don't lose the ability to retarget. So it's kind of a double benefit in that you're getting better tracking and then you're getting better retargeting abilities and email retargeting as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and then so how do they set that up? What's?
Speaker 2:the. It sounds full on because I think because it is a relatively new concept, but actually there have been a lot of apps around for a few years as service providers that do this. My topics, like I know this Shopify space really well. My favorite is Elevah, e-l-e-v-a-r. And then there's Little Data, which is also very good, and these are basically out of the box solutions which you installed and that will do all that track. It will connect the dots effectively for you and like the stuff that comes from that. Generally you're seeing a 20 to 30% uplift in your retargeting and your abandoned cart emails in terms of revenue uplift, and obviously then you're also matching that kind of 100% match to the purchases in Google Analytics as well. So it's a big win, I think. Just to kind of go through, say, one more option which is a free option, which is called Slide Rules Analytics, and that's also a good option, I think. Overall, my recommendation would be the likes of Elevah, if it is worth checking that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant, thank you for that. That's a great little takeaway. Is there any like? You're obviously looking at a lot of data from a lot of e-commerce stores? Are there two or three of those sort of points that you've mentioned on LinkedIn, that you've been posting about, that have really surprised you or have drastically changed from 2023 to 2024 in terms of user behavior and shopping behavior across e-commerce?
Speaker 2:I mean lesser on the user behavior. I think the ones that are kind of winning are the ones that are focusing more on their list, which again links back to this kind of third party cookies, moving away the ones that are collecting good first party data. So that's both your interactions on the web but also what you're providing as a customer or through email. Those brands are doing that really well and really getting involved with SMS a lot more posting a lot of SMS. And then it's, like I mentioned, going back to basics, just being consistent when you've got new campaigns, using every touch point you can to effectively run that campaign. And then actually, when we're talking campaigns because we tend to talk, if you look at time periods on Google Analytics, you're actually generally wanting to see it more on a campaign period, which are obviously quite custom, sometimes based on what your launch has.
Speaker 2:So I think one kind of actionable tip here is really starting to set up campaign reports, so like. So mapping your Google Analytics, sending your Google Analytics data into the likes of a you know just, it can even be in Google Sheets and actually mapping out a unified campaign report by channel, so you can kind of see the effectiveness versus previous years and previous launches, because I think that's the thing that's always missed is you know we're looking at, for instance, launches? How did that launch perform in the first six to eight weeks compared to the other one? Like seeing a plotting on the chart, light for light. I think that's a really kind of effective way that some of these brands are improving on last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so more so. What you're saying is don't judge by channel, but more so, get a bit more granular than that and judge by campaign.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because that's how we, you know, that's how we think and really you know, I think that's also the one that we in businesses generally have to report back on. I mean, we have those monthly reviews, you have them, but you know, to have a report which kind of summarizes by campaign and it's a replicable form, I think is key and that's, yeah, you can do that quite simply through the likes of I mentioned about super metrics and power, my analytics, which can send data into Excel or into Google sheets. Or you can move to, you know, like some client I'm working with now, where you're actually sending all that data into Power BI and then you're creating, or even, you know, look, a studio and you're sending all that unified data in and looking at and setting up on a campaign level. So you're just purely changing product, you know product selected and time periods, and then you kind of got that report ready to go for for whoever needs to see it, including yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, perfect, brilliant mate. So more things. I've got a lot of questions for you, so just throw them at you. But one of your I noticed on some of the content you posted around, I think it was. It was a 2024 global overview report from Meltwater. We are social and data report all around the e-com drivers and you mentioned there that free delivery remains the top driver to encourage completing a purchase Very interesting. So are you saying that you know to help conversion rate or to help people finishing that free delivery means more to them than that? You know, perhaps some other gift with purchases, that sort of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was from, like you said, mentioned that you know, like a big global report on customer, on consumer behaviors online and across all age groups, free delivery was the number one driver of what would help them to complete their purchase and I think what I kind of highlighted within as a takeaway from that was obviously where you can always free delivery, but certainly it's some brands I know that, particularly in Australia, can be challenging to always hit that. So you know, constantly tweaking and reviewing that tier of free delivery to help incentivize hitting some average order by barriers. I think is a really effective way. I think what I found interesting in that as well, in that report in that same slide, was that return policy was key. You know. So that's become more important over time, that you know people want to be able to return quicker and I think that's probably a bit of the Amazon effects. I don't know what your thoughts are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. We had a lot on last week and we've had a few people and even to your point around doing the basics. Well, I was advising to an e-commerce founder or group last week around. You know, get to your point doing the basics well, but your kind of touch points, your jobs just started. When someone's actually purchased and as we get a lot like, as you know, the rising cost per acquisition and CACs are rising it's more important than ever then to do a good job. Once they purchase a product, that's when the real game starts. And if you can, to that point, have a really good returns policy, they're going to think so much more of your brand, they're going to be so much more brand loyal because it was so easy, they'll purchase again. And doing the basics right, I guess, is you know where that refunded sort of thing comes in, right? Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, just, I mean talking about you know the basics, working at benefit cause mess.
Speaker 2:It's like I mentioned that there super switched on with all their top of funnel like awareness.
Speaker 2:You know, check out their TikTok channels and, and I think the opportunity for many brands is like okay, great, you've got great awareness at the top of funnel, like how do we then, you know, help to move them down the funnel and actually put system in place? So just as much post purchase but pre purchase, like making sure that we've got like good, you know email flows across. Like we talked about the consideration journey right, like so how can we extend that consideration journey as much as possible? So you're really kind of helping to educate towards before they purchase. And the other part of that, when we're talking about first party data, how can you capture, you know, lead information from the prospect sooner in the journey? So that's why you see a lot of the, the, you know the offers of discount and straight away, because it's a way to capture the customer lead and then continue to educate until they're ready to purchase. I think those are kind of core, just really getting those. You know the always on activity right as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, spot on, exactly and you know I do like that for 2024, if you're doing the basics right, treating the customer with respect, respecting their privacy, not sending them things that isn't isn't for them. So having well segmented lists as well is highly important and, just you know, I think the biggest takeaway is just to continue to build your list at all costs, so you know because, yeah, they can't take that away from you.
Speaker 1:And one of the interesting things I'm not sure if you heard of, if you heard, the episode I had with Nick Morgan from Voodoo, but he was very bullish on the fact that all these social enterprise, these social platforms building pretty awesome checkouts now as well. So it's going to cost you more, probably, to advertise because they're taking that whole checkout process.
Speaker 2:So I think the biggest thing you could do, yeah, is that TikTok Is it? Yeah, well, tiktok shops is really really picking up. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking a bit in the US clients there as well, but, yeah, definitely definitely gaining traction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, you can build out that list and I just say, get that data. It's going to be super important. What do you think is going to be the biggest talking point for e-commerce in 2024?
Speaker 2:Talking point.
Speaker 1:AI probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know, like I think you know, without a doubt, the talk is all about AI, right, and I think and I get it I think that's important to you know. Look at every or every other service out there every provider has got some kind of AI implementation in there. So I think that's going to be, you know, I think it's the key is going to be not getting too distracted by the noise of that and actually it's looking at the true value of that, Because of course, there is a lot of value in it, but it's trying to find that balance. So I think that's going to be a lot of the talk. That said, like, when we're talking about, you know, there will also be talk around, and particularly this year in Australia, I think there'll be a lot more talk around privacy. So, of course, in Europe we've got GDPR, et cetera.
Speaker 2:In Australia we've got the Privacy Act, which hasn't you know, which has hasn't really been updated for a long time. There is the suggestions on that. There's been feedback on changes very recently and then last few months. That will, I think, become a lot more prominent in the coming months and follow quite closely to what we see in GDPR. So I think the key there will be just making sure you're collecting data in the right way and also, even though smallest business is a likely to not be immune, there's currently this kind of $3 million exclusion. If you're under $3 million in revenue, I think that applies. You can't just throw your data around everywhere there as well. So I think, yeah, there'll be talk around AI, the potential. There'll be talk about the privacy, the restrictions. So just keeping an eye on that will be key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, brilliant. All right, I guess, in summary or takeaway actionable tips for I know it's hard because we've got such a broad range of audience, but are there any kind of takeaway points that someone listening to this who runs their own e-commerce store can go and implement or look at or take a little bit more notice of?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've touched upon a couple of these. But just to make it really simple, is it a small actionable step? I mean, one is to install post-purchase survey app if you haven't already. I think that's a really easy way to better understand your customer at scale, because you do get 20 to 30% at least of those responding and giving you those insights.
Speaker 2:Secondly, like I mentioned, doing good UTM tracking. So there are spreadsheets out there. I've got one I think that's one of my LinkedIn feed as well that just helps you systematically map out your campaigns so you can better review those in Google Analytics. And then, thirdly is that your plug for someone else there's a free app called GA4 Builder, which is basically it said, but basically builds you out the reports within Google Analytics so you don't have to build on yourselves. So the default report in Google Analytics is pretty basic. So it actually is called GA4Buildercom and it's just this free service that helps you to integrate all these quite good e-commerce reports into Google Analytics. For those three things, I think would be my top kind of ways to just progress a little bit towards that data-driven journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really appreciate those tips. If you've got a link there to that spreadsheet, I'll put that in the show notes or I'll find out a way to get that to the audience. And GA4Builder. So does that have a list of sort of templates that you can kind of go yeah, I want this, I want that, I want that, yeah a bit like that and what he's actually done is kind of how all those reports are built is basically in the URL.
Speaker 2:So he's kind of hacked that, reverse engineered it and gone right. Well, here's the URL to load in your property and you can save it. So it's pretty intuitive. It's just you know, if you're getting fed up with building out those reports, certainly I wish I had found it before. I kind of worked with my clients on building all of each of those reports out manually. Yeah, I recommend that because there's a lot of metrics default out of GA4, which just aren't needed, like event count et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I did notice that as well. The more you get into it, you're more like I don't want. Like I want two or three out of that, but I don't want the rest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know events per session. What's that you know like? So just strip out anything that you can't take action on. I think is the biggest thing with Google Analytics there.
Speaker 1:Right, that's how you saved your best, your best point for last. I like that. Yeah, look, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for giving us your insights, and they're nice and you're on and maybe have you got some bandwidth if people want to work with you more closely, if you want some room available.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so just get in touch with me at data made simplecomau is my domain, or you can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Perfect, give him an add on LinkedIn. I'm sure you won't be won't be disappointed by the content that James puts out. So thanks again for your time, mate. Thanks, ryan.