Ecommerce Experimenters Johann van Tonder

What does it look like inside an award-winning experimentation team? 

As Stewart Ehoff reflects on that, you hear familiar aspects: people, vision, team spirit, rituals and ceremonies. But he also talks about challenges, the battle to convince others, experimentation being "a lonely place" and imposter syndrome. 

Stewart is the Head of Experimentation at RS Components. They recently won the Experimentation Team Of The Year award at Experimentation Elite in London. 

It's an inspirational story about their journey from an "optimisation" team to a Centre of Excellence, from client-side to server-side testing. The 5-year journey started with a clear vision and a focused campaign to get buy-in from leadership.

Some highlights are:
Creating a culture of experimentationROI of experimentation, a "contentious" topicPersonalization, a "spicy" topicTransformation into a Centre of ExcellenceThe significant shift from client-side to server-side testing... and of course Generative AI

Joel Klettke is a conversion copywriter and the founder of Case Study Buddy. He recently wrote on LinkedIn that it was a "wonky" year in business, asking for help from his network. We talk about what triggered that post, the reality on the ground, the response from his network - and the value of a social network.

Other highlights:
The CRO industry has exploded in the last few years, with many more people and tools available but also more complexity and noise. It's become more difficult to find someone marketing themselves as a CRO expert or copywriter who actually knows what they're doing.How he uses GPT in his business and how ChatGPT saved him a week's work in a recent engagement.Joel's top tip for dealing with AI hallucinations with practical examples of prompts he uses to guide it towards accuracy.Earned knowledge vs accessed knowledge, why learning by doing is more valuable. His approach to social audience building and how he gathered 40k followers by solving problems in public and helping others. This network has led to many opportunities over the years.The story behind Case Study Buddy, how he discovered the gap for it and grew from a side project to a business.The reality of running a business in a tough economic climate, how Joel asked for help on LinkedIn and the response to that post.

I desperately want to read Bert Bassett's book. 

Alas, he hasn't published one (yet?) so I downloaded as much information from his brain as was possible in this 30-minute episode.

While working at eBay, Bert built a successful side hustle selling cat toys online. 15 years later, that gig is still earning him a handsome profit. All it takes is an hour per day.

A few highlights from our conversation:


One of the best explanations of Jobs To Be Done (he never used that term or any other jargon) and how he applied it in practice.His unique business philosophy and how he set up a profitable online store to suit his lifestyle.Hard-won practical tips for winning on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon FBH.Bert's website: cat-mat.store/

As CRO Manager at Verifone, Gabriela and her team specialise in optimising checkout flows. They do this for e-commerce merchants who use Verifone's Hosted Checkout product. Those insights are then used internally by the Product team to constantly improve and innovate the product itself. 

In this episode, Gabriela talks about team structure, competitor research, iterating on negative A/B tests and tips for checkout optimisation.

A former athlete, Chad Price made a (very) successful business out of his passion for sport. In an inspiring story, he shares how he aligned the team around his personal vision and drive, and how they relied on community and content to grow and scale.  

Oliver Spark grew The White Company from £6m to £50m in six years. It all started with building a growth model - the "magic spreadsheet" - which he now uses to help other entrepreneurs grow their businesses. 

More recently, Oliver founded Sweet Analytics, a platform inspired by that same magic spreadsheet. He explains why retention is not the growth lever you may think it is, the metrics that really matter in e-commerce and how it all comes together in a growth model.