Most eCommerce stores with large product catalogues share a common problem that quietly kills growth. It's not their products, pricing, or marketing budget—it's their site structure. Sam Wright, founder of Blink SEO and creator of Macalytics, reveals why taxonomy is the biggest drag on growth for stores doing £3-5 million annually, and exactly how to fix it using Search Console data.

We explore why collection pages represent 35% of all search impressions (more than products and blogs combined), how to determine the right level of granularity for your categorisation, and why most stores aren't deep enough with their subcategories. Sam shares his framework for using Search Console impression data to identify exactly where to create new collection pages, and explains the critical difference between what works for user experience versus what search engines can actually index.

Key Point Timestamps:

06:30 - The Large Catalogue Challenge

11:45 - Why Collection Pages Are Your Biggest SEO Opportunity

16:20 - The Granularity Problem Most Stores Face

22:15 - Using Search Console Data to Guide Taxonomy

27:40 - Real-World Example: Redesigning for Better Structure

35:10 - Future-Proofing for AI Search with Persona Data

42:30 - The AI Shortcut and Critical Warning

Sam defines large catalogue stores as those where the buying journey tips into a different mode—one based around comparison and filtering rather than simple browsing. This typically happens around 250 products, though it varies by category.

"With large catalogue stores, the buying journey is based around comparison and filtering," Sam explains. "A lot of the time these stores have grown up organically over a period of time and no one's taken ownership about how the store's organised."

This organic growth creates a drag on everything—SEO, user experience, conversion rates, even email segmentation. Stores reach £3-5 million in annual revenue, so things are fundamentally working. But growth isn't happening as fast as it should because nobody stepped back to think strategically about organisation and purpose.

Sam shared compelling data from across all the Shopify stores his agency works with: "It's about 35% of all impressions come on collections, which is much more than products and blogs. It's basically the entry point for most people when they're doing actual new product discovery."

More than a third of search visibility comes from collection pages—the pages where new customers first encounter the store. Yet most stores aren't categorised in a way that aligns with how people actually search for their products.

This represents a massive untapped opportunity. If collection pages are already driving 35% of impressions without optimisation, imagine the potential when they're properly structured and aligned with search behaviour.

The real opportunity for most stores lies in going deeper with categorisation. Much deeper.

"Most people are not granular enough with their categorisation," Sam emphasises. "A lot of stores will just have a t-shirts category. They won't subcategorise those t-shirts to the level that matches how people are actually searching."

Sam uses sofas as an example: "So sofas as the parent category, like blue sofas, blue four seat sofas, blue four seat corduroy sofas. That filtering process, that is how people do search."

The challenge on Shopify is that these filters aren't indexable for search engines. Google ads can't effectively target filters either. The solution is breaking out popular subcategories into actual collection pages.

"The real opportunity for a lot of stores is how deep you go in that categorisation because you've got products that other people...

What if one video per week could generate referral-quality leads for your eCommerce business? Nate Woodbury reveals how to leverage YouTube's search algorithm instead of chasing viral views, creating educational content that brings dream customers directly to you.

We explore how eCommerce businesses can generate consistent, high-quality leads through strategic YouTube content. Nate Woodbury, who has produced over 60 YouTube channels, shares his Leaf Strategy—focusing on answering specific 8+ word questions with low search volume (as few as 10 searches per month) to build authority systematically. Rather than competing for viral views, this approach prioritises educational content that ranks quickly on YouTube and Google, attracting customers who are actively searching for solutions.

We discuss why 10-12 minute videos create the optimal trust-building window, how to research golden questions using keyword tools, and why wrong audience growth from viral videos can actually damage your channel. Nate reveals his testing results showing YouTube Shorts only drove 0.1% increase in long-form views, and shares the entrance point strategy that guides viewers from YouTube to your email list without feeling sold to.

Key Point Timestamps:

05:11 - Entertainment vs Educational YouTube Strategy

12:17 - The Leaf Strategy: Starting with Low Search Volume

13:41 - Finding Questions with 8+ Words

28:02 - The 10-12 Minute Sweet Spot

36:20 - The Entrance Point Strategy

40:22 - YouTube Shorts Testing Results

42:23 - When Viral Videos Hurt Your Channel

Nate distinguishes between two fundamentally different approaches to YouTube. Most advice focuses on entertainment—creating content that appeals to the broadest audience to generate ad revenue through viral views. But there's a completely different algorithm at play for businesses.

"There's multiple algorithms on YouTube," Nate explains. "Most of the advice we hear is geared towards having our videos go viral so we can get as many views as possible. But we can actually focus instead on search."

This distinction changes everything. Entertainment content interrupts people and requires breaking through resistance. Educational content serves people who are actively seeking answers, meeting them exactly where they are. For eCommerce businesses with educational components—supplements, complex products, or anything requiring customer education—this search-focused strategy generates referral-quality leads rather than just views.

Nate uses a tree analogy to explain his approach. The trunk represents broad topics like "nutrition." Branches are categories like "nutrition for weight loss." And leaves are the specific questions people type into search engines.

Most businesses chase the trunk and big branches—terms with thousands of monthly searches and massive competition. Nate's approach flips this entirely: start with questions that only get 10 searches per month.

"I consider that gold," Nate shares. "That's probably going to turn into lead generation every single month, even if there's just 10 searches a month."

The beauty is speed and certainty. With minimal competition for highly specific questions, videos rank at the top of YouTube and Google within a day or two. As you dominate more specific questions on a particular branch, the algorithms recognise your authority on that entire topic, eventually allowing you to rank for bigger terms—but you've built authority from the ground up.

The key to this strategy is finding the right questions. Nate recommends Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool (with a free trial at herokeywordtool.com), but uses it differently than traditional SEO.

Rather than looking for...

On Thanksgiving Day, whilst American families gather to express gratitude, eCommerce businesses gear up for the most transactional weekend of the year. Matt Edmundson explores why businesses that win long-term aren't those with the best Black Friday discounts, but those that genuinely appreciate the humans behind the transactions.

Matt shares the Gratitude Audit - a three-level framework distinguishing between no appreciation, automated appreciation, and personal gratitude. Through the story of transforming a beauty business that achieved 40% repeat purchase rates and 20% revenue growth, he demonstrates how culturally embedding thankfulness creates customers who become brand evangelists. The episode reveals why automated loyalty schemes create entitlement whilst personal touches compound loyalty, supported by research showing grateful customers are 23% more profitable.

Key Point Timestamps:

03:00 - The Problem with Automated Gratitude

06:00 - Have We Missed the Simplicity of Gratitude?

08:00 - The Gratitude Audit Framework

14:00 - What Makes Gratitude Actually Work

18:00 - Implementing Gratitude Without It Feeling Fake

26:00 - Why This Actually Matters During Black Friday

31:00 - Your Thanksgiving Challenge

Matt compares two experiences of receiving something free: getting his tenth burrito automatically at Barburrito versus Emirates unexpectedly upgrading him to first class. Both were technically free, but elicited completely different emotional responses.

"I get my tenth burrito free at Barburrito. It's automatic and completely predictable. I just scan my app and it's done. I know it's coming because that's how loyalty schemes work. And you know what I feel when I get it? Nothing much. Well, that's not quite true. If I'm honest, I kinda feel entitled to it."

The Emirates upgrade, five years later, still gets mentioned. The difference? Automated appreciation has diminishing returns whilst personal gratitude compounds over time. Research shows gratitude is heightened when customers perceive actions as discretionary rather than obligatory.

Matt introduces three levels of customer appreciation that most businesses move through:

Level 1: No Appreciation - Where most eCommerce businesses live during busy periods. Functional and transactional: "Your order #827364 has been shipped." It's not rude, but it's nothing.

Level 2: Automated Appreciation - Loyalty schemes, automated thank you emails, points systems. Better than nothing, but automation removes the perception of free will, creating contractual obligation rather than gift.

Level 3: Personal Gratitude - Where Emirates upgrades and handwritten notes live. Where real human connection happens. Personal gratitude compounds over time rather than diminishing, and it doesn't have to be expensive - it has to be genuine.

Matt shares how transforming a beauty business around customer service - which really means finding ways to say thank you more genuinely - led to remarkable results. The team implemented handwritten notes, reached out when customers purchased multiple times, and allocated £50 SMOCs budgets (Sexy Moments of Customer Service) to warehouse and customer service staff.

"We allocated a budget of £50 to our warehouse and customer service teams. They could spend that money on a customer without prior authorisation. Just creating moments that mattered."

Matt would randomly pick orders and include personal notes with his direct email. Rather than creating entitled customers, it created reverent appreciation. Over 18 months, overall turnover increased by 20% from repeat customers, with repeat purchase rates shooting above 40%.

After building over 200 Shopify stores, Ben Sharf has discovered that nearly every e-commerce brand—whether doing $1 million or $50 million annually—describes their website as a source of frustration rather than growth. In this episode, we explore why complexity has become the norm and exactly how to fix it.

Ben, co-founder of Platter, shares insights from working with brands that have accumulated technical debt through widget overload, deleted apps that leave code behind, and convoluted customer journeys that kill conversions. We dig into his three-part simplification framework, the power of cart drawers over cart pages, and why revenue per visitor matters more than you think.

Key Point Timestamps:

05:00 - Why e-commerce websites frustrate every brand

09:30 - The widget overload problem destroying your site speed

14:20 - Deleted apps leave code behind (and slow you down)

17:40 - The three-part simplification framework

22:30 - Revenue per visitor: the metric you're not tracking

31:00 - How to optimize clicks to purchase

35:40 - Mobile simplification mistakes killing conversions

Ben's journey into e-commerce infrastructure began at GoPuff, where he built an instant delivery business unit. Whilst partnering with brands of all sizes, he encountered the same pattern repeatedly: every single brand had a horror story about their website.

"E-commerce is literally selling a product on the internet," Ben reflects. "Why is the main thing the most frustrating thing for every brand out there?"

The answer lies in how traditional development agencies operate. When agencies get paid for their time, they're incentivised to make things expensive and complicated. This creates an industry-wide problem where brands pay enormous sums for solutions that should be straightforward, resulting in websites burdened by excessive code, countless third-party apps, and convoluted customer journeys.

One of the biggest contributors to website complexity is what Ben calls "widget overload"—the tendency to add small applications for every specific functionality.

"A lot of these apps are features, not products," Ben explains. "If you piece a million together, you end up having a lot of different single points of failure within your storefront."

The Shopify app ecosystem, whilst brilliant for getting started, creates a temptation to solve every problem by installing another app. Before long, brands find themselves managing dozens of applications, each adding code to their storefront, each creating potential conflicts.

Ben shares a typical scenario: "We'll talk to a brand doing $20 million on their storefront. Over the last seven years, they've had five different agencies, seven different freelancers, and 150 apps installed and deleted—all on the same storefront. What do you think happens when the next person tries to go in and touch that? It's just a spider web."

Here's something most brand owners don't know: when you delete a Shopify app, the code it injected into your storefront doesn't disappear. It stays there, silently slowing down your site and creating technical debt that compounds over time.

This revelation shocked many listeners, but it explains why sites become progressively slower even when brands think they're cleaning up by removing unused apps. The orphaned code remains, affecting page speed and creating a tangled web of potential conflicts.

Ben's approach to escaping the complexity trap centres on three core principles: consolidation, clarity, and customer-centricity.

Consolidation Over Accumulation: Rather than adding another app for every need, Ben advocates for consolidating functionality. Platter's solution was to...

Email marketing delivers 30 to 40 times the return of any other marketing channel, yet most Black Friday campaigns vanish into spam folders before customers even see them. Robby Bryant from Campaign Monitor reveals why the big three mailbox providers—Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft—now act as sheriffs, policing email deliverability like never before.

We explore the seismic shift in email deliverability over the past five years, as consolidated mailbox providers transformed from passive gatekeepers into active sheriffs. Robby breaks down the authentication trinity (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) that determines whether your emails even make it past the front gate, the non-negotiable metric thresholds that separate inbox placement from spam (0.1% spam complaints, 1% unsubscribes, 2% bounces), and why establishing cadence matters more than clever subject lines. From list hygiene strategies to the 60-40 text-to-image ratio, this episode provides the practical checklist for ensuring your Black Friday campaigns actually reach the customers who want to hear from you.

Key Point Timestamps:

07:29 - The cadence mistake that kills Black Friday campaigns

09:47 - Understanding sender reputation and deliverability governance

16:37 - List hygiene practices that protect deliverability

21:42 - The authentication trinity: DKIM, SPF, DMARC explained

27:31 - Content formatting rules and the 60-40 ratio

40:06 - The metrics that actually matter for inbox placement

Four or five years ago, the email landscape looked completely different. Robby explains how fragmentation amongst mailbox service providers meant brands could send mediocre emails with very little negative consequence. Those days are gone.

"They're acting now as the sheriffs," Robby describes, referring to how Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft now police sender behaviour. "They're looking at opens, clicks, replies, forwards, and then on the negative side, they're looking at deletions without reading, spam complaints, and people marking it as junk."

The result? Brands attempting email marketing for the first time during Black Friday get slapped down before they start. Poor authentication, bad text-to-image ratios, and zero segmentation lead to lackluster results, convincing them email doesn't work. Meanwhile, brands understanding the new rules capture those 30-40X returns.

If Robby could solve one issue plaguing Black Friday email campaigns, it would be what he calls "advanced engagement." The typical pattern? Brands decide it's time for an email send, perhaps even segment their list, put together something beautiful, then do "one really loud blast."

"That is the exact opposite of what you should do," Robby emphasises. "You really want to have an established cadence leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and keep that cadence going on after the holiday."

The walk-up engagement practice warms customers up, builds brand recognition, and establishes sender reputation with mailbox providers before the critical moment arrives. At minimum, Robby recommends sending at least one email per week during this period—enough to keep subscribers aware and set expectations with mailbox service providers.

Here's what caught Robby off guard when entering email marketing after years in paid search and social: the misconception that nothing you do in email matters.

"I too was kind of under this misconception that nothing you do in email matters. It's kind of ephemeral," Robby admits. "It's not true."

Mailbox providers track something called "deliverability governance"—whether your email lands in the inbox. Just like Google Ads has quality scores and social platforms track engagement, email sheriffs watch every move. Every email accrues...

What if scaling your eCommerce business isn't about better ads, but about understanding why customers buy from you? Louise Doyle shares how she built Needi from a struggling DTC gifting site into a £2 million corporate gifting business by refusing to treat gifts like commodities.

Louise and her co-founder Steph launched Needi in 2021 with ambitious DTC plans, only to discover the brutal reality of customer acquisition costs and overwhelming competition. Within months, they pivoted to B2B corporate gifting, where they found desperate demand for their psychology-driven approach. By asking why clients want to give gifts rather than just what they need, Needi scaled from £500k to £2 million in revenue whilst supporting local independent businesses. Lou shares the unconventional journey of building a concierge service that's now projecting £5 million revenue, all whilst balancing motherhood and creating a team where over half the employees are mums.

Key Point Timestamps:

05:10 - The DTC Reality: Why Direct-to-Consumer Failed

10:15 - The Pivot: Finding Corporate Clients Who Were Desperate

16:25 - Understanding the Psychology Behind Every Gift

24:30 - Your Client Isn't Actually Your Client

32:05 - The Amazon Problem: Connection Beats Efficiency

37:14 - Scaling from £500k to £5M Projected Revenue

45:07 - The Mum Factor: Building a Family-First Business

Lou and Steph thought they had it figured out. The research was solid: one in five gifts end up in landfill, 80% of people hate finding the right gift, and everyone's received a terrible present. Simple problem, simple solution—build a website, run Facebook ads, watch orders roll in.

"We went into it fairly naively," Lou admits. "We thought everybody is rubbish at gifting and doesn't enjoy it. So we'll set up an e-comm site where we make people really good at gifting. And it was really hard."

The cost of customer acquisition was brutal. But worse, they faced double jeopardy: they needed to attract customers whilst simultaneously onboarding local independent businesses to supply the gifts. Chicken and egg doesn't begin to describe the challenge.

Rather than flogging a dead horse, Lou and Steph started LinkedIn outreach to corporate clients. They walked into head offices with suitcases filled with gifts. The response was immediate and overwhelming.

"These people were literally saying, my gosh, where have you been? We need what you're doing," Lou explains. Executive assistants and marketing managers were being dumped with last-minute orders for thousands of gifts with tight budgets and no time to find quality suppliers.

The word "concierge" isn't accidental in Needi's description. It represents doing absolutely everything for clients whilst they figured out how to scale the service.

Lou and Steph didn't just pivot to B2B—they transformed how they approached gifting entirely. They spent hundreds of hours studying the psychology of gifting, working with a professor of altruism, researching relationship dynamics.

"A gift is cementing what your relationship means to that person," Lou says. "You would not buy somebody a gift if you weren't looking for a particular connection."

This insight changed everything. Instead of asking what gift clients wanted or how many they needed, Needi asks why. Why are you buying this gift? What relationship are you trying to cement? What message are you trying to send?

When a company orders 10,000 gifts for employees, the purchaser is the corporate decision-maker. But the person who determines whether that company orders again next year? That's the employee who receives the

Customer acquisition costs have surged 222% since 2013, with Google and Facebook CPCs climbing relentlessly. But what if the solution isn't just doubling down on retention or throwing more money at ads?

Matt Edmundson introduces the FUEL Framework—a systematic approach to customer growth that doesn't rely on a single channel, doesn't assume yesterday's tactics will work tomorrow, and doesn't leave you vulnerable when platforms change their algorithms. Through Foundation, Unlock, Elevate, and Leapfrog strategies, this framework addresses all three levers of business growth: acquiring customers, increasing purchase frequency, and raising average order value.

Key Point Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction: The Challenge of Rising CAC

01:00 - The iOS 14 Impact on Facebook Ads

02:00 - The CAC Crisis in eCommerce

03:00 - The Bathtub Principle

04:34 - Introducing the FUEL Framework

09:00 - Foundation: Email Beyond Templates

13:00 - Foundation: Building Referral Engines

15:00 - Foundation: Customer Experience Post-Purchase

19:00 - Unlock: Strategic Partnerships

22:00 - Unlock: Content Amplification

26:00 - Unlock: Community Seeding

28:00 - Elevate: Advanced Segmentation

32:00 - Elevate: AI-Powered Personalisation

38:00 - Leapfrog: Experimenting Without Fear

Matt challenges the common assumption that having Shopify and Google Analytics means your foundations are sorted. Real foundations aren't about having tools—they're about having systems that work even when paid ads don't.

Email marketing generates 30-40% of revenue for most eCommerce businesses, yet many brands still rely on generic templates. Matt references Ken Rapp from BluStream's brilliant rule: don't send any coupons or review requests in the first five messages. "Just deliver value. Help customers succeed with their purchase. Build trust," Matt explains. Over 90% of customers stay engaged with these journeys months—sometimes years—later.

The referral engine sits in foundations because referred customers are 16-24% more loyal than customers acquired through other channels, have 16% higher lifetime value, and cost £17 less to acquire. But standard refer-a-friend programmes don't work because they assume everyone just wants £10 off. "Maybe a complementary product has higher perceived value than cash. Maybe inviting them to a VIP board meeting matters more," Matt suggests.

Standing in his favourite Liverpool coffee shop, Matt had an epiphany about customer experience. The journey was brilliant until he paid—then he stood awkwardly with others, unable to listen to music in case they called his name, no bench to sit on, no system.

"I started thinking, well actually, am I doing the same thing in my own eCommerce businesses?" Matt reflects. "We obsess over the journey to checkout. We A/B test button colours, we track every click. Then someone buys, and we forget about them. Or worse—we immediately hit them with a review request before they've even opened the box."

The gap between acquisition and loyalty is where most brands lose the game. Customer experience—particularly post-purchase—directly impacts whether customers buy again.

Once foundations are solid, Matt recommends devoting 5-10% of marketing resources to unlocking other channels. Strategic partnerships work because 72% of companies report lower CAC through partnerships than direct acquisition.

Matt shares his experience with Through Doc, the clothing company he frequently purchases from. When they partnered with Elliot Brown watches, he'd never heard of the...

Most entrepreneurs dream of building from scratch, but Michael Simpson took a different path. After running an Amazon arbitrage side hustle, he spent 18 months searching for an established eCommerce business to buy rather than building one from the ground up.

Four years after purchasing an 18-year-old business selling Catholic products, Michael candidly shares what most buyers won't: the reality behind the broker presentations, the challenges of inherited technical debt, and the daily cashflow discipline that kept him in the game during survival mode.

We explore the SBA loan process that made 90% financing possible, why he spent £30,000 on a Shopify migration that never happened, and the mastermind group advice that stopped him from making costly mistakes. Michael reveals his daily cashflow forecasting system, why demand capture businesses hit growth ceilings differently than demand generation models, and what he wishes he'd negotiated harder on during the purchase.

Key Point Timestamps:

04:34 - The Buy Then Build Philosophy

09:10 - Finding the Right Business After 40 Evaluations

11:06 - How SBA Loans Work for Business Acquisitions

16:56 - The 3X Multiple Valuation Reality

20:05 - Why Growth Proved Harder Than Expected

29:52 - The £30,000 Migration That Never Happened

43:09 - When Sales Dropped and Survival Mode Began

49:57 - Daily Cashflow Forecasting That Saved the Business

Michael's acquisition journey began with Walker Deibold's book Buy Then Build, which challenges the conventional startup path. After running a small Amazon arbitrage business selling New Mexico green chillies, he realised he wanted something larger but wasn't passionate about scaling what he had.

"When you buy a business, that's what you're buying," Michael explains. "You're buying the existing customers and that goodwill and those supplier relationships. If it's a new business that doesn't have a lot of existing customers, there's not really a whole lot of value there."

The appeal is straightforward: an established business has already solved product-market fit, built supplier relationships, and proven people will pay for what you're selling. But as Michael discovered, you're also inheriting someone else's platform choices, brand positioning, and technical debt.

Michael spent 18 months evaluating 30 to 40 businesses before finding the right fit. His criteria were non-negotiable:

No Chinese suppliers. As a National Guard member with security clearance for 22 years, the China arbitrage model raised both practical and security concerns. "I just felt like eventually that wasn't sustainable. Like at some point that arbitrage opportunity is going to disappear."

Own website, not Amazon-dependent. Having experienced Amazon's unpredictability firsthand, Michael knew he didn't want a business that could collapse from one complaint or account suspension.

Strong customer base and email list. This represents the real value in an acquisition—the relationships and proven demand.

Genuinely interesting products. Michael didn't want to sell women's clothing or supplements he didn't believe in, even though the margins were attractive.

When Discount Catholic Products appeared—an 18-year-old business selling medals, prayer cards, and crucifixes made in Italy and the US—it ticked every box.

The Small Business Administration loan programme gave Michael access to 90% financing—he only needed 10% down on a half-million-pound sale. During COVID, the government sweetened the deal further: they waived the typical 2% fee and covered the first three months of payments.

"Between those two things, that was like £30,000 that we saved just by getting...