James Gurd
Background in marketing & business development, working in both IT services & consumer retail. Expertise is in developing & implementing eCommerce strategies for SME's within retail - Robert Dyas & Betterware.
Following nearly 2 years as an Ecommerce Consultant at EIBDigital, a UK ecommerce agency, I now run Digital Juggler, an ecommerce and digital marketing consultancy. I specialise in planning, implementing and managing commercially sustainable ecommerce programmes. I am also experienced in people management, both teams I have directly managed and business partners/agencies.
I am a guest blogger for Econsultancy and Postcode Anywhere and Expert Editor for Smart Insights. I'm also the co-host of #ecomchat - a weekly industry Twitter chat for ecommerce professionals that takes place every Monday.
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From the list of 2012 shameless buzzwords, attribution analysis is the one that really interests me and is a hot topic amongst most senior ecommerce professionals I know.
Why?
Because there isn’t a right answer for how use attribution analysis. During the attribution modelling sessions I moderated on for Econsultancy’s Digital Cream event, a constant theme was uncertainty about how to start using attribution and how to apply it to the business.
For many there was scepticism about the reliability and validity of the data.
I'm hoping this blog kick starts a discussion......
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by James Gurd
23 April 2013 09:53am
4 comments
I had the pleasure (or dubious honour?) of moderating on Econsultancy’s attribution analysis and modelling table at this year’s Digital Cream event at the Emirates stadium in London.
It was an intriguing insight in to what ecommerce teams are doing and what is holding them back. The common theme was a slight unease about how best to use attribution modelling to help the business grow.
There was variety in the type of company represented, from membership organisations to high street retailers, as well as the job roles of the people attending, from ecommerce managers to business analysts.
Here’s a summary of the six key issues that were discussed and the challenges that businesses are facing.
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by James Gurd
27 March 2013 10:53am
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Back in September 2012, myself and fellow Ecommerce Consultant Dan Barker decided that there was a gap in the market for an ecommerce centric industry chat.
Why? You may ask.
Well, we both regularly get asked ecommerce questions via social media channels (Twitter, Google+ & LinkedIn being the most common) and we also tap into the fountain of knowledge that is our followers.
There is a constant flow of, and demand for, knowledge sharing. This blog takes a look at what we have learned launching a Twitter chat and the mistakes we've made along the way.
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by James Gurd
07 January 2013 10:52am
5 comments
As someone who believes we all have a responsibility to contribute to society (not just in our home country but also to important global issues), I’m receptive to initiatives that marry consumerism with philanthropy.
When the industry I work in contributes to good causes, it puts a smile on my face.
That’s why I’m interested in how e-commerce facilitates socially responsible actions, such as enabling donations to Charities and not-for-profit organisations, without placing the burden on the individual to part with cash.
The latter is particularly important given the continued economic woes and financial pressures.
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by James Gurd
21 November 2012 10:36am
0 comments
Econsultancy's Digital Marketing Template Files are designed to provide practical tools for managing digital marketing, either by giving you reference material to sense check against or files that you can simply plug your own data/information in to.
In short, they help you look smart and save time, and since they were launched, over 38,000 people have downloaded them from the site.
I recently updated the template files for Econsultancy, introducing some new ones to the collection, including a whole new section on content marketing.
As these are some of the most downloaded content assets on Econsultancy, I thought it would be useful to give some insight into how these files can be used to benefit your business (and no this isn’t an egomania drive for self-publicity!).
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by James Gurd
31 October 2012 12:00pm
1 comment
For this month’s post I thought I’d share a practical example of how you can use testing to validate the impact of your paid search campaigns.
This is aimed at client-side digital marketing teams and agency staff who are learning the paid search ropes and might not fully understand the interaction between SEO and PPC.
The example I’m using is a test plan that seeks to answer the question “Does investment in brand keywords cannibalise or deliver incremental sales?”
This is based on the most common form of paid search, Google Adwords.
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by James Gurd
17 September 2012 10:17am
23 comments
I’ve often been asked the question, “What keywords should I target for paid search?”. I don’t think this is the right way to approach paid search investment.
Focusing on keywords first risks making your paid search program untargeted and alienating it from your overall business goals.
I prefer the question: “How can paid search support my business goals?”.
When I first looked at PPC (probably back in 2002), I thought in terms of keywords because I didn’t appreciate where paid search fitted in to the direct channel. Now I think in terms of goals. How can paid search support e-commerce goals and what do we want to achieve?
This blog is my explanation for why you should start your paid search project by defining goals and KPIs, and then let the keywords follow.
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by James Gurd
07 August 2012 11:43am
15 comments
Pinterest is the current darling of social media, and for good reason. According to Experian Hitwise, it is the third most popular social network in the US in terms of total visits (21.5m visits in one week in January 2012, 30 fold increase vs. July 2011).
Pinterest is primarily considered part of an overall social media strategy, but whilst doing some SEO planning for a Client the other day I realised how well it could also fit within the SEO framework.
This blog gives my approach to using Pinterest to identify potential domains for link building and find relevant bloggers/influencers to build relationships with.
It’s deliberately simple because simple ideas are quicker to implement.
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by James Gurd
25 June 2012 10:26am
25 comments
Why is it that so much effort goes into selecting a platform vendor for an e-commerce website, yet often so little into maintaining the partnership and ensuring service delivery is to the highest standards?
This blog looks at five common errors that I've seen made frequently by e-commerce teams, usually down to lack of commercial experience in managing complex partnerships.
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't made similar mistakes back in my client-side days, and I'm sure I've been guilty of some account management indiscretions when agency side.
The wonderful thing is you learn more from your mistakes. I'm hoping that by sharing this insight I can help you avoid or at least mitigate the risk of making such mistakes.
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by James Gurd
24 May 2012 11:30am
6 comments
An interesting recent blog from Joost de Valk set out an ‘ethical’ stance for SEOs, arguing that ‘outing’ bad practice is healthy and an important way of preserving the reputation of the industry.
The basic thread is that SEO should be built on foundations of quality and integrity, not just an obsessive drive for short-term results.
It’s clear that the SEO industry is still drawn on the whole black hat vs. white hat issue. What is ethical to one person can be unethical to the next.
Despite this internal dilemma, with still more than 80% global market share, it is what Google thinks that dictates a lot of SEO strategy.
This blog is a reasoned view based on my own opinion and learning from various reports, blogs and Twitter conversations...
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by James Gurd
23 April 2012 11:09am
3 comments
