In this episode of Statements of Intent, host David Mannheim talks to Johnny Longden, Group Digital Director at Boohoo, about the pressures faced by eCommerce companies and how a myopic focus on metrics can undermine the customer experience. They discuss the need to balance short-term business goals with long-term customer needs and nurturing loyalty beyond just conversion rates.

Jonny has years of experience building and scaling experimentation strategies from scratch for large businesses like Visa Europe, Sky, and Journey Further. He has practiced innovation in analytics and testing/experimentation, and knows all about how to marry this with KPI performance.

Topics Covered:

• The difference in pressures between agency and client-side roles
• Short-term business pressures vs building long-term customer loyalty
• The pitfalls of over-relying on metrics like conversion rates
• Understanding and optimising for the customer's intent and experience
• Moving beyond metrics to a more holistic view of customer behaviour

Key Quotes:

• “I’m not a toilet seat addict.”
• "Conversion rate is a good example where you can do something to increase conversion rate and you would successfully increase conversion rate, but that would have a detrimental impact on your entire business and you would never know."
• "We need to move to understanding more of the total systems that govern how people behave and interact.”
• "Imagine if you try to sort of optimise your friendship with one of your friends through metrics, you know, you wouldn't do it, would you? It just would be really, really weird."

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:49 Guest Intro: Johnny Longden
03:23 The Pressure In Retail vs. Agency
05:55 Short-Term Pressures vs. Long-Term Customer Needs
08:54 Stop Over-Relying on Metrics
17:18 Customer Intent and Experience
21:35 Jonny's Statement of Intent: Data and Tech vs Customers
22:43 Outro

Social Media

• Jonny's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnylongden/
• Made With Intent LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/madewithintent/?viewAsMember=true
• YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@madewithintent