The key to E-commerce success – Interview with Rasmus Frølund Thomsen

Hi Rasmus, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m a seasoned e-commerce data, search, and conversion expert - with a deep, and sometimes nerdy approach to building customer journeys and with a deep interest in helping e-commerce brands improve their business through better use of data.

On a personal level, I live in Copenhagen - bike to work every day - have a wonderful girlfriend, 4 kids, and a dog - and enjoy spending time with friends and family.

You have just launched your latest agency, Fact. Please tell us why you are doing this and what the vision behind the company is.

Having worked in the marketing industry for 15 years, I've been involved with a long range of clients and projects, and in the process have seen more brands being interested in taking a bigger control of their own data, how they communicate with their customers and using that data to inform decisions and improvements of their marketing.

We’re entering an era where 3’rd party marketing platforms get even more closed in how they target audiences, and the information that you can get out about your audience get even more limited - Fact will work with brands and e-commerce businesses that want to capture all their existing and future customer data and transform that into roadmaps and tactics to improve the customer journey. Paid marketing might work, but lack the transparency of what audience and communication are actually moving the needle.

The future (in Facts perspective) lies in knowing and improving the customer journey, both before and after purchase - so you can get the most out of your existing customer data. Owning the customer journey on all owned and earned media platforms, and expanding your customer data to improve paid advertising platforms, is where we see brands improving their presence in an economically viable manner.

Fact optimizes the customer journey and sets a growth model with CRO, tech, data, and more. Do you use a particular methodology, and how can a setup with a client with this work?

We work with our own developed customer journey mapping framework, that will inform the brand both on a C Level and down to manager level about where the customer journey is failing & performing, and where the opportunities are, in terms of optimizing revenue streams across all touch points.

Grebban believes e-commerce design is one of the most underrated ways to grow an e-commerce business, particularly DTC brands. Do you agree?

I agree and believe it will only get even more important in the future, but the design should be built on both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, so you don’t end up with an e-commerce design that looks good, but doesn’t help the customer journey, or is constructed in a way that doesn’t give the flexibility to adjust how it supports the customer in making informed decisions in their purchase journey. In the end, increase brand loyalty and conversions

NN07 is one of the projects where Grebban and Fact teamed up.

What is your experience in how e-commerce design can improve SEO, CRO, and Customer Journey?

Using best practices to build wireframes and customer journey mapping before actually doing the e-commerce design, will create a situation where 1+1=3, great e-commerce design shouldn’t be at the expense of good SEO or landing page setup for campaigns, but take all aspects of the customer journey into consideration - that's how you both create something that is beautiful for the eye and for Google and all touch points outside the e-commerce experience.

Why should companies work with the combination of Fact and Grebban? What use cases and needs can we solve together?

You should work with Fact and Grebban if you’re a lifestyle brand with a desire to take a customer-centric approach to map and design the customer experience across all customer journey touchpoints. And want to unlock customer insight and turn these findings into business growth, journeys, and design-wise. This is for brands that are ambitious in how they will grow both in existing markets and scale globally.

Just like Grebban, you like the Centra e-commerce platform. Why do you think it’s so great, and which brands should re-platform and choose Centra?

Centra is a fashion and lifestyle-first e-commerce platform, for brands with a global ambition. The Centra platform combines all the touchpoints, both online wholesale showroom, online DTC, and retail - the combination of this and the built-in functionalities for scaling and managing global e-commerce, makes it a great choice for ambitious brands in fashion and lifestyle.

You have been working with SEO for a long time. What are some of the latest trends within SEO, and how do you advise your clients to take advantage of them?

Understanding the customer journey, and that search engines still don't understand images as well as text is still an issue when designing and implementing e-commerce, especially for image-driven brands in fashion and luxury goods.

Expanding the reach to non-product-specific searches, like styling, seasonality, and usage terms like sizing and fit, will expand reach on search terms that aren't brand related.

With the upcoming AI search revolution, this will only get more important since tracking and the unlocking of insights will get even more blurry. Understanding how to provide even more contextual information, will be one of the areas that will be important in the future when search engines let the AI functionality loos in the search results.

We have collaborated for a few years, especially around DTC / direct-to-consumer brands and SEO/tracking. How should DTC brands approach the topic of SEO?

Own your media, story, and content, through all touchpoints – not limited only to the e-commerce experience but all the customer touchpoints before, during, and after the e-commerce experience. Customers don’t only search for brands when they are actively looking for a specific product, but want to learn about the brand, the thoughts behind products, and what services they provide. Only optimizing for high-volume search terms is a losing strategy, the true value is in knowing your customers and presenting them with content that supports their journey.

You also work a lot with tracking, feeds, and setting the data layer. We think this is something e-commerce companies and DTC brands often underinvest in. Do you agree?

Well, I’ll have to agree - in a world where touchpoints get deluded across multiple platforms, tracking your performance and user interactions across platforms will become increasingly important, but also increasingly difficult.

Working with product data, especially for global brands will have a huge impact on overall performance, and being in control of brand compliance is key to scaling.

How should this be approached in a re-platforming project and post-launch in the ongoing optimisation?

Getting your data and customer journey agency involved as early as possible, will make the biggest difference. Even though we appreciate and understand the value of great e-commerce design, all that has to come together in a setup that is scalable and doesn’t have anything stopping the optimization after launch. Involving your performance agency early will help inform the design process.

What (non-fiction) book or article do you recommend Grebban's followers to read?

Something newly published you should definitely read the new book about personalization and customer centricity by Rasmus Houlind from Agillic “Hello $FirstName”, and I always come back to the good old classic “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug, even though the book is more than 20 years old, it’s a great book about building an intuitive navigation and user interface.