eCommerce Podcast

Most ecommerce brands know everything about their customers but communicate like they know nothing. That’s the observation at the heart of this conversation with Max Beech, founder of Athenic and former product manager at Revolut and Yahoo. Max has spent years building personalisation features at scale, and he has a clear view of where ecommerce businesses consistently lose their best customers.
In this episode, Matt and Max explore why the first 14 days after a purchase are the most important — and most wasted — window in the entire customer journey. They discuss why sending a discount code on day three might be doing more harm than good, why asking your customers one simple question beats months of behavioural tracking, and how smaller brands can turn their size into a genuine competitive advantage. Max also shares a story from the Ritz Carlton that became a Harvard Business School case study, and leaves listeners with a 20-minute audit that could shift the way they think about every message they send.
Key timestamps
[03:43] The first 14 days and why silence after the sale is costing you
[09:57] Why one question beats months of data tracking
[13:02] How to be personal without needing to scale
[34:19] The Ritz Carlton giraffe and the power of being human

The First 14 Days That Most Brands Waste
[03:43]
There’s a window after someone places their first order — roughly the first 14 days — that most brands either ignore completely or fill with exactly the wrong thing.
Some treat it as dead air. The order’s been placed, the product’s on its way, and so there is nothing to do until next time. Others jump straight into selling mode (any sound familiar?) — a 10% off code on day three, a cross-sell email on day five. But the customer hasn’t even received their order yet.
“Don’t try and sell them anything. Everyone’s been in that experience where they’ve been inside a store and that salesperson is just nagging them trying to be too salesy. It’s exactly the same experience that a lot of customers feel when they’re online.” — Max BeechThe irony is that this 14-day window is the moment of highest trust. The customer has just handed over their money. They’ve made a decision. They’re open, engaged, and paying attention. And most brands respond with either silence or a sales pitch.
Matt draws a comparison with his favourite coffee shop in Liverpool. Everything is designed to get you to the counter — beautiful decor, a glass case full of pastries, a well-designed menu board, and friendly staff who take your order with a smile. Then you pay, and everything changes. You’re directed to stand in a formless queue with no sense of order, nothing to look at, and no engagement until someone shouts your name.
“Everything is geared to getting your coffee order. And then of course they want to make you a good coffee. But at the end of the day, the experience while they deliver is rubbish.” — Matt EdmundsonThe parallel with ecommerce is hard to miss. Beautiful websites. Clever ads. Everything is engineered for that first purchase. Then the order is placed and it’s crickets.
Why One Question Beats Months of Data Tracking
[09:57]
Most ecommerce segmentation is based on what customers bought, not why they bought it. Max uses a simple example to show why that matters.
Someone buys a pair of running shoes. Standard segmentation puts them in one bucket — “bought running shoes.” They’ll get emails about running shoes, probably some socks, maybe a water bottle. But why did they buy those shoes? They might be training for a marathon. Or they might have just got a new dog and need something comfortable for walks. Two completely different customers with completely different needs, buying the exact same product.
“If you’re trying to segment customers, you’re probably putting those two people into the same bucket, whilst in reality, it needs to be a very different experience.” — Max BeechThe fix isn’t complicated. A single question in a post-purchase email — “Why did you buy this?” — gives more useful information than months of behavioural tracking. And yet most brands never ask.
Matt raises a fair concern about response rates, especially for smaller stores. Max’s answer is reassuringly practical.
You don’t need statistical significance. Reaching out to about 10 customers is usually enough to spot a trend.
It doesn’t need to be a formal survey. A WhatsApp message or a phone call to your top customers can work just as well.
With tools like Claude, you can collect free-form answers and then analyse them in bulk later for patterns you’d never spot manually.

Being Personal Without Needing to Scale
[13:02]
There’s a common objection to this kind of personalisation and it’s the belief that it doesn’t scale. Max’s response is straightforward — it doesn’t need to.
“If you stick a handwritten letter in your next product delivery, then the open rate is going to be 100%.” — Max BeechMax references Stitch Fix, the personal styling company that built a billion-dollar business on the premise that your personal stylist remembers you. Every profile update, every kept item, every returned item, every note — it was all stored and used. Their algorithm wasn’t really an algorithm at all. It was just being incredibly organised with customer data so that a human could use it at the right moment.
The same principle applies at any scale. Even without investing in software, ecommerce founders can build a better understanding of each customer by being more organised with where they store data and knowing where to look when someone reaches out.
Max also shares his own experience at Yahoo, where the finance app sat at 3.5 stars on the Android Play Store. He spent at least an hour every single day replying to every review — reading them, responding personally, feeding the insights into the product roadmap, and even going back to update reviewers when a fix had been deployed. It wasn’t scalable. He managed it for about a year. But it transformed his understanding of what customers actually wanted.
“It’s where ecom businesses have such an opportunity to be more personal and to try to find those opportunities that the bigger brands aren’t able to fulfill.” — Max BeechThe Ritz Carlton Giraffe and Why Being Human Goes Viral
[34:19]
A family stayed at the Ritz Carlton. Their child left behind a beloved stuffed giraffe called Joshi. The parents told the boy that Joshi had stayed behind for a holiday. The hotel staff found Joshi and ran with it. They photographed him by the pool, in a spa robe, driving a golf buggy, lounging with sunglasses. They created a full photo album of Joshi’s extended vacation and returned him to the family with the album.
It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t in any brand guidelines document. But it went viral and became a Harvard Business School case study — because it was human.
“There are lots of examples where a company just allows either themselves or their customer service team to be human and to break the rules. And that’s where you can really change it.” — Max BeechThis connects directly to the advantage that smaller ecommerce businesses hold over the giants. Amazon can sell on convenience, but they don’t know their customers. Large brands with centralised customer service teams and templated responses can’t do what a founder who picks up the phone can do.
Max’s parting challenge is disarmingly simple. Go into your email platform and look at the last five messages you sent to customers. For each one, ask yourself whether it’s about what the brand wants or about what the customer needs right now.
“If the answer is mostly what I want — and it probably is — then you’ve got a really clear brief of what to fix first. It takes probably 20 minutes. Most brands will never do it.” — Max BeechThat 20 minutes might be the most valuable thing an ecommerce founder does this week.
Today’s Guest
Today’s guest: Max Beech
Company: Athenic
Website: getathenic.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Max on LinkedIn
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/why-your-best-customers-leave-after-the-first-order

Mobile shoppers decide to buy or leave after seeing less than a third of your product page. Adam Pearce from Blend Commerce has seen it happen across hundreds of Shopify stores and shares the fixes that consistently lift conversion rates by 30 to 50 percent.
Episode Summary
In this episode, we dig into the gap between how ecommerce sites are designed (on desktop, in boardrooms) and how they are actually experienced (on a phone, in three scrolls). Adam Pearce, co-founder of Blend Commerce and organiser of eCom Collab Club in London, shares the data-backed changes that move the needle most on mobile from a single search bar tweak to trust signals that boosted one client's average order value by 34 percent. He also covers mobile apps, on-site quizzes, heat mapping, and why knowing your North Star number matters more than any individual tactic.
Key Point Timestamps:
05:06 - The mobile experience problem
06:00 - The exposed search bar (30-50% conversion lift)
10:22 - Three thumb scrolls and mobile decision-making
19:54 - Accordion menus, sticky CTAs and product page structure
22:46 - Trust signals: the car parts example
34:43 - What consistently works across sites
43:51 - Data tracking and your North Star number
The Exposed Search Bar (06:00)
Most mobile sites bury search behind a small magnifying glass icon. Blend Commerce has spent the past couple of years running one simple test: make the search bar visible. Always. The result is a conversion rate increase of 30 to 50 percent, consistently, across sites of all sizes.
It even works for small catalogues. Working with a US crisp brand that had just eight SKUs, the team discovered that customers were searching for ingredients which told them the information existed but was not easy to find. One change opened the door to understanding how customers were actually navigating the site.
The broader principle is that people are lazy. Not in a negative sense but in the way that every one of us, given the option between effort and ease, chooses ease. Making search visible is making it easy. Making it easy makes people buy.
Three Thumb Scrolls (10:22)
Using heat-mapping tools like Microsoft Clarity, Adam's team can see how far down a mobile product page visitors actually get before they act. The number is consistent and striking: between 23 and 30 percent of the page. That is less than a third and after that point, the visitor has either bought or gone.
As Adam explains: "People will agonise about all these wonderful sections. But a lot of the time, they have kind of made their mind up already."
The practical takeaway is simple: the top 30 percent of every mobile product page is where the focus needs to go. Every element competing for space in those three scrolls has to earn its place. Everything else, style suggestions, lengthy brand story, people-also-bought, is largely unseen.
Trust Signals Below the Button (22:46)
Blend Commerce worked with a car parts brand whose About page was full of compelling reasons to buy. Their product pages had none of it. Surveying their top LTV customers revealed two things customers valued most: a 90-day returns policy and a one-year warranty. Neither was on the product page.
They added both directly below the add-to-cart button. The result was a 15 percent increase in conversion rate and a 34 percent increase in average order value from that single change.
In a three-scroll window where decisions are made fast, trust signals do the heavy lifting. The question for any brand is: what are your best customers actually worried about and is that visible in the moment they need it most?
What Consistently Works (34:43)
Beyond the headline changes, Adam shares several fixes that recur across sites. Instagram-style navigation circles, four or five top collections shown as visual thumbnails at the top of the page rather than a hamburger menu, give immediate visual signposting and work on desktop as well as mobile. Replacing swipe-indicator dots beneath product images with actual thumbnails means customers can see more content at a glance without swiping to discover it. And for categories where customers feel uncertain, supplements, beauty, food, an on-site quiz not only guides them to the right product but feeds data directly into segmented email flows.
Sticky add-to-cart buttons are non-negotiable. As Adam puts it: "Yes, needs to be visible at all times." The data does not argue with itself on that one.
Today's Guest
Today's guest: Adam Pearce
Company: Blend Commerce
Website: blendcommerce.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Adam on LinkedIn
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/you-get-three-thumb-scrolls-before-they-buy-or-leave

Could a simple pre-approved loan quietly destroy your ecommerce business? Fractional CFO Rob te Braake from Insight Matters reveals how platform loans from Shopify and Stripe are creating a death spiral for seven and eight-figure brands — and one of his clients might not survive the year because of it.
Episode Summary
In this episode, we explore the financial blind spots that catch ecommerce founders off guard. Rob te Braake, who works with seven and eight-figure online brands as a fractional CFO, breaks down the three numbers every ecommerce owner should know in their sleep: gross margin (and why he walks away from anything below 60%), CAC to LTV ratio, and working capital cycle. We dig into the dangerous convenience of platform loans, why the repayment structure can quietly eat your margins alive, and how to build a simple sales forecast that gives you the confidence to make bigger decisions. Matt also shares his own £38 million lesson from when a supplier pricing change halved his business overnight.
Key Point Timestamps:
05:53 - Why Finance Is an Expensive Afterthought
08:54 - The Three Numbers You Need to Know
31:25 - The Death Spiral of Platform Loans
48:48 - The Sales Forecast That Changes Everything
Why Finance Is an Expensive Afterthought (05:53)
Most ecommerce founders are brilliant at marketing or product. Finance tends to come last. Rob explains why this is such a costly mistake.
"It's perceived as less sexy. And I think that's not justified," Rob admits. "Marketing is more sexy. It's the nice images. It's selling the dream." But he quickly reframes the conversation: "You run the business to make a living, to build up personal wealth, to build up family wealth. So money should be much more central to the decisions on how you run the business."
The episode draws a useful comparison to stepping on the weighing scales — most of us avoid it because the number might be uncomfortable. But that discomfort is precisely why we need to look. What gets measured gets managed, and the same applies to your business finances.
The Three Numbers You Should Know in Your Sleep (08:54)
Rob boils the financial health of an ecommerce business down to three critical numbers:
Gross Margin (Per Product Group) — Your net revenue minus cost of goods sold. Rob's threshold is clear: "If the gross margin is less than 60%, I'm out." His target breakdown is 40% COGS, 30% overhead and marketing, 30% profit. If you're running B2C on paid traffic with a 20% margin, "I think you're in a very tough spot."
CAC to LTV Ratio — Customer acquisition cost versus lifetime value. The conventional wisdom says 3:1 is good. Rob prefers 4:1. But the real insight is that this ratio depends entirely on your gross margin and product type.
Working Capital Cycle — How long from buying inventory to becoming cash-flow positive on that batch? Rob shares a client example where a seasonal Australian business must order from a European supplier six months before selling season, making it extraordinarily capital intensive. Sometimes the solution isn't better margins — it's renegotiating when you pay.
The Death Spiral of Platform Loans (31:25)
This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Shopify, Stripe, and QuickBooks all offer pre-approved loans with seductive simplicity.
"If anybody offers you money with such convenience, just click here and you get it," Rob warns, "you know there is a catch." The catch is interest rates around 20%, combined with repayment structures that take a percentage of all future sales.
Rob describes seeing businesses take a $20K loan one year, need $40K the next because they haven't recovered, then $80K the year after. "That's why I call it the death spiral, because you get stuck into taking out ever bigger loans. The more the company grows, the more you have to borrow. And the less you're going to end up with yourself."
One of his eight-figure clients is now in serious trouble because of exactly this pattern — strong gross margins, but financing costs so high the business may not survive the year.
The Sales Forecast That Changes Everything (48:48)
Rob's top tip is deceptively simple: build a sales forecast in a spreadsheet — not with AI.
"The thinking behind it is critical," he explains. "Thinking about what you plan to sell, in what period of the year and why, and how that cascades down to your purchasing and your cash flow. It is an eye opener. You're going to be wrong and that's fine, but just the thought process and ideally iterating that every month."
The value isn't in the accuracy — it's in the thinking. The "what if" questions that emerge when you manually work through the numbers are where the real insights live. If you hand that process to AI, you get numbers without understanding.
Today's Guest
Today's guest: Rob te Braake
Company: Insight Matters
Website: https://financeinsightmatters.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-te-braake/
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-20k-loan-that-turned-into-an-ecommerce-death-spiral

Most businesses build their brand messaging around themselves. Their logo, their history, their awards. But what if the only place your marketing actually works is the tiny sliver where your story and your customer's story overlap?
Episode Summary
In this solo episode, Matt Edmundson introduces the Story Overlap — a simple Venn diagram concept that reveals why most eCommerce messaging misses the mark. Through a live homepage audit of an accountant's website (with a we-to-you ratio of 2.6 to 1), Apple's iconic '1,000 songs in your pocket' line, and the Netflix headline formula, Matt shows how established brands have learned to shrink their logo and grow the customer's story. He then shares the transformation of Jersey Beauty Company, where understanding that customers were buying a gift for themselves — not just moisturiser — changed everything from packaging to salon imagery. The episode wraps with a practical three-step process for finding your own Story Overlap, supported by a free downloadable workbook.
Key Point Timestamps:
02:30 - The Story Overlap Concept
06:15 - The Accountant Homepage Audit
11:00 - Apple, Netflix and the Verb Formula
15:30 - The Jersey Beauty Company Transformation
22:00 - Three Steps to Find Your Overlap
The Story Overlap Concept (02:30)
Matt introduces the Venn diagram at the heart of this episode: one circle is your brand story, the other is your customer's story, and the overlap is the only place your marketing actually works.
"Our customers care profoundly about their own story. But they care very little about your story," Matt explains. Company history, awards, founding year — that's all sitting in the brand's circle, not the customer's.
To illustrate the point, Matt walks through a live audit of an accountant's homepage, counting every instance of 'we', 'our' and 'us' versus 'you' and 'your'. The result? A ratio of 2.6 to 1 in favour of brand language. For every time the site mentioned the customer, it mentioned itself two and a half times. And Matt's challenge to listeners is simple: go and count the ratio on your own homepage.
The Netflix Headline Formula (11:00)
Matt breaks down a formula he's observed from studying Netflix's landing pages over the years: Verb + Object + Sexiness. For Netflix, that's Watch (verb) + Movies and TV Shows (object) + Unlimited, Anywhere, Anytime (sexiness). Not a single 'we' in sight.
The Apple iPod launch in 2001 follows the same principle. While competitors talked specs — 5GB hard drive, FireWire connectivity — Apple said '1,000 songs in your pocket.' Both statements describe the same product, but only one operates in the story overlap.
"The more established the brand, the smaller their logo gets," Matt observes, noting that Apple's website logo is tiny. Meanwhile, his own first website featured a spinning Flash logo animation that took up the entire screen. The lesson: as brands mature, they learn to shrink their logo and grow the customer's story.
The Jersey Beauty Company Transformation (15:30)
Matt shares the story of how Jersey Beauty Company went from shipping in jiffy bags to creating a remarkable unboxing experience — all driven by understanding the customer's story.
When customers complained about damaged outer packaging, Matt initially dismissed it. But the marketing psychology concept of 'sensation transference' — where people transfer their feelings about packaging onto the product itself — changed his thinking. Research shows customers with a positive unboxing experience are 50% more likely to make a repeat purchase.
The deeper insight came from understanding what customers were actually buying. They weren't purchasing 200ml of moisturiser. They were buying a gift for themselves, a treat. That shifted everything — tissue paper wrapping, biodegradable popcorn packaging, and 'Happy. Remarkable. You.' messaging inside every box. The company even replaced all digitally manipulated beauty images in their salon with Time's photo books showing real people — and customer feedback was immediate.
Three Steps to Find Your Overlap (22:00)
Matt outlines a practical process for finding the Story Overlap in any eCommerce business:
Step 1: Define your brand story in one paragraph. Not your history or awards — your why. Why does your company exist? What do you believe? If this feels hard, skip to Step 2 first. Your customer reviews will tell you more about your brand story than any brainstorming session.
Step 2: Map your customer's story through two exercises. Review mining — pulling a mix of five-star, three-star and one-star reviews to uncover why people buy, what words they use, and what emotions come through. And image buckets — gathering 15-20 images representing your ideal customer's world to reveal visual insights that demographics miss.
Step 3: Find and articulate the overlap. Draw the Venn diagram. Brand story on one side, customer story on the other. Where they intersect becomes the foundation of all your messaging. Write it in a single sentence.
A free Story Overlap Finder workbook accompanies this episode with templates, AI prompts for review mining, and worked examples from real businesses.
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/your-customers-dont-care-about-your-brand

Selena Knight has spent 20 years in retail and knows exactly why most e-commerce businesses are undercharging. One of her favourite examples? An Australian party supplies company that charges $6 for $3 paper plates — and their customers keep coming back.
In this conversation, we get into price anchoring, why the businesses that survived 2025 were the ones charging more, not less, the three questions that close every in-store sale, and what she learned from Gary V's organisational psychologist about hiring people who actually think for themselves.
If you're competing on price, this one might change your mind.
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Key Point Timestamps:
06:45 - The Three Questions That Close Every Sale
11:52 - What a £12,000 Cocktail Teaches About Pricing
15:34 - Why Premium Brands Won 2025
25:22 - Hiring for Culture Over Skills
The Three Questions That Close Every Sale (06:45)
In her eco baby product stores, Salena developed a framework built on one principle: if you give someone more than three choices, they probably won't buy anything.
When a customer walked in looking for a gift, the team asked three questions: What type of person are they? What pain point do you want to solve? What's the budget? From there, they'd present three options — high, mid, and low. "And inevitably, I tend to find that they buy the high price thing, which is great."
The e-commerce application is straightforward. Most online stores dump customers onto a category page with dozens of options. But you control the canonical structure of that page. You choose what appears first, second, and third — and you can guide decisions just as deliberately as a knowledgeable shop assistant would.
What a £12,000 Cocktail Teaches About Pricing (11:52)
Price anchoring is behaviourally proven — our brains benchmark against the first number we see. At the Savoy, a £16 gin and tonic feels outrageous until you see cocktails for £300–400. Then a £12,000 flagship cocktail makes the £300 ones look almost sensible.
Salena applies this directly to e-commerce category pages. Most stores sort products lowest-to-highest. Her advice: "When somebody comes to a category section, I will always have at least two really high-priced products. And then I'll have the product that you really want to sell."
If your sweet spot is £200 jeans, put the £300 pair first. Some people will bounce, but as Salena notes, "They probably weren't gonna buy anyway." Everyone else now sees £200 as a bargain.
Why Premium Brands Won 2025 (15:34)
In a year where consumer spending tightened noticeably, Salena shares what she saw across her client base: the businesses that did well were charging above the average, not below it.
"Where I saw the people who did well were brands that I would call premium. Not luxury, not your Louis Vuittons, but they're charging above the average."
Premium brands had already built their point of difference. They weren't competing on price, so price pressure didn't destroy them. Meanwhile, the discount-driven businesses were stuck in a brutal race to the bottom. The Party People could charge $6 for $3 plates because convenience was worth paying for. Premium doesn't mean expensive for the sake of it — it means giving people a reason to pay more and making that reason obvious.
Hiring for Culture Over Skills (25:22)
Premium pricing only works if the team understands the vision. Salena distinguishes between "donkeys" (reliable doers) and "unicorns" (thinkers who solve problems independently). Both are essential, but growing beyond a certain point requires people smarter than the founder.
"You can't be as smart as me. You have to be smarter than me. Because if this whole business is only as smart as me, we're screwed."
Working with Gary Vaynerchuk's organisational psychologist, Salena learned a simple hiring exercise: write down everything that annoys you. The insight? "When you ask people what they want, they can't usually tell you. But they can tell you what they don't want." From that list, she identifies which frustrations are genuine business needs — and which are just personal irritations she needs to make peace with.
Today's Guest
Today's guest: Salena Knight
Company: Salena Knight — Retail Growth Strategist
Website: salenaknight.com
LinkedIn: Connect with Salena on LinkedIn
Instagram: @thesalenaknight
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-charge-double-for-paper-plates-and-have-customers-thank-you