We were very excited to sponsor and attend our partner Klevu’s Discovered London event. Klevu announced that it would be the first-ever product discovery community gathering and the day was full of innovative sessions that took a closer look at where the ecommerce industry is headed and what retailers need to prepare for. We sat down with our CEO, Mark, and COO, John who attended the event to find out what they enjoyed most about Discovered London and what their main takeaways were.
Our main takeaways from Discovered London by Klevu:
Mark Slocock - CEO
The event was top notch, very well organised with interesting talks and a good mix of retailers, agencies and tech providers. I really enjoyed it.
My main takeaways range from search related topics to the bigger picture questions facing the ecommerce industry:
Enhancing the search function onsite to drive conversions
- The positioning of your search box on a web page can dramatically impact your conversions. There’s a standard place where most companies place this element and if you choose to put the search box somewhere else, placement should be carefully considered as it can affect the bottom line. The number of people who use search may change, which will impact revenue because people who use search have a much clearer intent to buy. SeaSalt had a very nice case study illustrating this.
- You should include review ratings in your search suggestions next to the products. Although this seems like a very straight forward insight, a lot of retailers still find this hard to implement. It is, however, well worth doing.
The implications of AI like ChatGPT on the ecommerce industry
- The third takeaway is less actionable and really tied to the future of ecommerce and how AI like ChatGPT is being used and what the implications are. Klevu’s event showed us some interesting ways in which ChatGPT is being used; for example querying developer documentation to find answers faster or marketers using it to write blog and social media posts. People are leveraging the technology in many different ways and it was fascinating to hear more about this.
At the same time, the discussion was not just about the positives, Patrick Friday had some thought provoking points concerning the impact of AI on society and the world economy. Are our governments ready for this? It’s going to be an interesting few years!
John Brolly - COO
It was great to be at an event like this and it just shows why it’s worth it to attend physical events with our peers as we all benefit from them. Stepping out of our own bubble allows us to progress and have conversations and feedback loops with other agencies and partners in the industry.
The importance of relevance
My main takeaways are a larger topic and tie everything together and it’s been something I have thought about a lot as a concept, which is the importance of “Less is More” as a way of thinking and the second part is that the key factor is relevance and it has to be a crucial part of everything we do.
It’s an overarching topic for ecommerce - applies to search, personalisation, content to name a few and the main question is who decides whether something is relevant or not? This question becomes even more pertinent in relation to AI and what we feed into it, how it learns and how this all relates back to efficiencies and most importantly relevance.
What we’re seeing is there’s a schism between what smart platforms and AI think customers want and actually understanding what it is customers want and that understanding needs to happen during the customer journey. This is where the less is more approach applies and I’ll give you an example, e. g. provide less content, but make that content very relevant with a lot of data, which would also mean changing the way ecommerce sites and structures are built. For instance, rather than having thousands of categories on an ecommerce website because you think it’s what works best for the clients, review how many are actually used and which ones the customers are actually searching for.
Using the “less is more” approach to redesign the customer journey
So the idea is to change how sites are designed, structured and implemented. “Less is more” thinking is applied to each part of the site, not just onsite content, but looking at changes like reducing Javascript or page load times for instance. Additionally, understanding on how a “less is more” approach to component and atom level behaviour enhances the entire CX.
The talk on the “Importance of Relevance in Search and Recommendations Usability” by Vitaly Friedman really resonated with me and aside from the enhanced customer experience, also discussed how the reduction (of “noise” essentially) on ecommerce sites additionally has a positive environmental impact.
To summarise, the conversation we need to be having is around bringing relevant products to a customer on a platform and tying it back to the overall “less is more” thinking (please see below for more information on this). For me, it’s a very important idea and something I have been and want to keep exploring further…perhaps in the form of a whitepaper at a later stage?
Additional Information on Less is More
Source: Academic Masters
"The guiding principles behind this concept are that what is presented in a way that lack complexity appeals more to the public because they understand and relate to it easily. To avoid complexities, one has to master how to appropriately utilize minimal resources to achieve maximum results. When using this model to build structures, buildings should be ridden of all the unnecessary detail to maximize visual acuity as well as expanding the working space allocated to such a construction. Less is more requires one only to utilize the vital materials necessary for development. For Ludwig, his needed resources were only the steel frames and the cladding which were the essentials for the physical integrity of his structures.
All the secondary components of buildings revolve around the aesthetic appeal of the building. The more one elaborates on this, the more the building’s original design seems to be congested. By removing the additional secondary factors to a structure, the plan is projected more clearly making even the basic of architectural design seem elegant. There is also the preference for more open spaces and free space from the heightened visual appeal of this model. This design by Ludwig was motivated by the great works of architects like Karl Friedrich who utilized the application of lintel and posts to simplify architectural designs. Another significant influence was from Dutch De Stijl proponents which stipulated architecture based on simplified designs. The less is more model greatly influenced modern architecture which is currently taking, even more, simpler forms by utilizing less bulky structural frames to articulate a desirable balance between spaces that need to be empty and those that have to be filled when maintaining the integrity of the structure."
