Sinead Hammond:

So first of all, welcome, Jaime.

Jaime Hill:

Thank you.

Sinead Hammond:

How are you? So lovely to have you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jaime Hill:

You’re welcome.

Sinead Hammond:

And thank you to our listeners who are also joining us today. So today’s Shoppernomics event is Feminine Force in e-Commerce, unveiling strategies and innovations for digital success. So first of all, I wanted to do a quick introduction with Jaime. Would you like to say a few words about yourself, who you are, and a little bit of your experience in the industry?

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, can do. Yeah. So I’m Jaime Hill. I’ve recently just left a contract role at Monsoon, but have previously been at brand names like Shell, Barclays, Avis, Milk & More, in digital marketing and e-commerce roles over the years. Yeah, I’ve got more years of experience than I want to actually mention, but let’s just say it’s 20 plus. And yeah, just kind of everything from offline, digital, e-commerce, retention. Kind of been there, done that, really.

Sinead Hammond:

Lots of different roles. And which kind of roles, tell me about the roles that you’re working in now, some of the different kind of job roles you’ve had with some of the work you’ve been doing.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah. So most recently in the last few years, it’s been very much the e-commerce focus. So providing that really good, slick customer experience online, making sure that customers have got the right information in order to make a proper judgment on whether they want or need that product, and ensuring that checkout’s as easy as possible so that people can actually buy them. And yeah, just any kind of features and functionality to help make that purchase decision easier. So things like augmented reality, size guides, that kind of thing. And obviously, CRO programs as well, optimizing that experience. So yeah, I’ve been quite busy in recent years.

Sinead Hammond:

Very busy. There’s lots of different things that you’re doing.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

Sounds like you’ve been dipping into lots of different parts of the e-commerce journey there. And so obviously, we would love to talk to you about the millions of many things that you do. The one topic we’ve really wanted to focus on today though is about women in e-commerce, and I know you’ve been talking passionately about this. We had a great conversation a few weeks ago when we started to talk about this as well. And so I’m really, really excited to get started with this topic. So I guess, one of the first questions we’d like to ask you about is the rise of women in e-commerce. So what is the evolving role of women in the e-commerce industry?

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I think women, and rightly so, are becoming more prevalent in e-commerce. There’s been some studies that actually say that women are better leaders due to their kind of empathy and collaboration skills. Women bring a lot of skills that a lot of men, not everybody, that don’t have, due to their multiple roles in life, being a mother, an employee, a carer of sorts, so that they can juggle multiple responsibilities. And also, sometimes the flexibility around e-commerce is actually allowing more women now to start their own businesses in e-commerce, and being able to expand globally as well due to that flexibility.

So yeah, I’ve been very fortunate to have a couple of really good bosses that were female, and proper forces to be reckoned with. And I think we need more people like that in the industry. And I don’t know if the STEM program in the UK is helping to get more girls into tech, but I would love to see more people in it. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are coming up with AI and all the kind of tech around that, and there are some women leading the way with that. So it’d just be great for that to become even more prevalent really, to be honest.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely. And I think what you were saying earlier there about the different sort of skills that women have and bring into the roles that is traditionally maybe a bit different, adding slightly different perspectives onto the job role as well. I think that sounds really important.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, absolutely. I don’t have kids myself, but I am completely in awe of some of my colleagues who work full-time, they’re bringing up children. Some of them potentially are caring for elderly parents and things as well. And how they can do that and still do an amazing job at work, it’s insane. So yeah, all kudos to them, absolutely.

Sinead Hammond:

And so you sort of started touching on it there in terms of some of the challenges faced by women in e-commerce, having lots of different things, potentially outside, traditionally associated with women. I mean, we can talk forever about what that looks like, but in terms of e-commerce in particular, can you talk about maybe any of the sort of general challenges and stereotypes that you think are happening in the industry? And maybe you even have some personal experiences on that particular challenge, and maybe some ways you might have overcome that in the past.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, sure. Obviously, childcare and flexible working is a perennial challenge, and it’s not exclusive to e-commerce. And there’s a lady actually that I follow on LinkedIn from Nike, Sami Unrau. She posts about it all the time, as is mainly a US focus, but it very much applies to the UK too. It’s like if you’ve got two parents working full-time, there’s childcare costs, which are very often extortion. And actually, they’re often more than one person’s wages. So it’s like, what’s the point in going back to work, a lot of the time? So flexible working really helps, and I think COVID has helped with that. But on the flip side, we are seeing some companies forcing people back to the office, which I don’t think is going to be in favor with some employees.

I mean, there is still a lack of representation at senior level of women. I did find some stats, actually. So in the UK, the percentage of women in C-suite roles was around 30% in 2021. Now in 2015, that was only 19%, so we’ve made good progress, but there’s still a way to go. And it was even worse in the US. In fact, they’re further behind than we are. They’ve gone from 17% to 21. And globally, it’s stayed around the same at about 24%. Well, considering women do make up a big chunk of the workforce, for me, that’s not good enough. And like I say, it is changing, but I’d like to see it change much faster. And so I think that lack of representation can be a bit of a hindrance to some people.

Some industries, there’s a lack of female role models. And also sometimes, there can be that tech skills gap, because there’s barriers due to lack of access or even encouragement. Finding someone that will back you if you say, “I want to learn programming,” and you’re not in a technical role, sometimes you just won’t get the encouragement to do that. And some of the networking opportunities can be restricted. And obviously, we’ve still got that wage gap issue as well, which again, I think is starting to be addressed and it’s being taken seriously, but it’s still slow progress. So yeah, a lot of these challenges are not exclusive to e-commerce, but yeah, they need to change. They need to change.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah, absolutely. I think we can agree there. And I think just looking at those statistics or listening to their statistics, it feels to me, I think maybe because as a woman, I feel like there is work going on and I feel that there is progress. But then I’m looking at these statistics, I’m thinking, “Wow, is it as slow as that in some places?”

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

So it’s really important that we’re still driving this message home. And that you’ve got leadership ensuring that they’re pushing for more gender equality and making sure that wage gap minimizes. And also, making those additional sort of allowances, I guess, so that women are able to work effectively whilst also balancing home life.

Would you be able to tell me … I don’t know if you have any specific experiences or ways that might have happened. You don’t have to obviously talk about any specific names or anything. But any times that, maybe, you’ve been able to overcome that within your work history?

Jaime Hill:

I can give you an example of a good environment that I’ve been in. So back in 2013, I think it was, or maybe actually 2012, I worked at Shell for a while in their recruitment marketing team. And they basically gave you every piece of tech you needed to work essentially wherever you were. And to an extent, they kind of didn’t care where you were, as long as you got your job done. So I worked on a virtual recruitment fair for them with one of their partners Rigzone, and I basically spent six weeks working from home, just trying to get everything prepared because it was a global event.

So I was kind of doing a follow the sun approach, starting with Singapore, Australia, and kind of going right through Europe, et cetera, right to the US. So because I was talking to colleagues from all those different locations, I was working strange hours. So they were happy for me to be at home to do that, because I live on the south coast of the UK, and the office was in London. And my colleagues would just check in on me occasionally, they’d ping me on chat and say, “Hadn’t seen you for a while. How are you doing? I know you’re working on this project. How’s it going? When are you back in the office? We’d love to catch up and have lunch.” And obviously, they can see that you’re doing work, so there’s no issues. My manager, she was based out in Bangalore as well, anyway, so she was in a completely different time zone as well.

So they enabled you to work flexibly. And as long as you pretty much did your hours and your work was done, there was no questions asked. Whereas I’ve worked at other companies where you had to be in the office five days a week. And even if you wanted to work from home for half a day or a day to accommodate a doctor’s appointment or something, you had to ask for permission, and it was kind of frowned upon, which these days is just … I don’t get it. I’ve always managed my teams the way I like to be managed, which is, as long as your work gets done and I know where you are, so that if anyone’s asking for you, I can say, “Oh, you’ll be back at whatever time,” I don’t care when you do your work.

I appreciate people have got families. And if kids are at home over half-term, you might have to duck off for an hour to make them lunch and spend some time with them. But as long as you let me know, it’s fine, there’s no problem. So yeah, I’ve never really had too much of an issue, not in recent times. Obviously, since COVID, everything’s changed a lot anyways. I think I’ve probably been quite fortunate, but I do know friends and relatives who have been … I don’t know what the word is, inconvenienced, held back, or whatever, by that lack of flexibility.

So yeah, I don’t think people appreciate how much work it is raising a family and working in a full-time job. I mean, I’ve got no idea. I don’t have children. But I can appreciate what my parents went through bringing me and my sisters up, and the amount of time they had to kind of flex around work. My mum worked part-time for a while when we were first at school, so that she was around if needed to come and get us if we were sick, sort of thing. But yeah, it is a tough job.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely. Do you think these things may hold women back from going for big roles? You talked about, you got some great management there where you’re able to take those flexible times off. But do you feel that women will sort of decide, “Maybe I actually won’t go for a job,” if they’re not able to balance? And say, maybe they won’t go for a high level job or a high paid job or whatever it is. Do you think that’s a problem?

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I think traditionally, it probably has done. Now, obviously, things can be and are more flexible, I think it’s probably less of a hindrance, but there is a barrier still there. I was talking to a former boss of mine and she said, “Women typically won’t apply for a job if they don’t have at least 60% of the skills and the responsibilities met.” Whereas men, if they meet kind of … No, I’m sorry. It’s the other way around, actually. Women, if they don’t meet 90% of the kind of-

Sinead Hammond:

Wow.

Jaime Hill:

… they won’t apply for the job. Whereas men will be like 50, 60%, they’re like, “Oh, I’ll just apply for it anyway.”

Sinead Hammond:

Okay.

Jaime Hill:

And I don’t think a lot of women will appreciate the fact that they do have transferable skills, from either job or personal life, whatever. A lot of parents help out with, I don’t know, things like PTA events or scouts or whatever, and that’s a job. You’ve got skills that you can transfer into a role, so back yourself. Why not? What are you going to lose by applying? You might get a no, but if you didn’t apply, you’re going to get nothing. Are you? You get nothing at all. So even by applying, you’re just giving yourself that chance. Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely, absolutely. That’s such a mad stat. I’ve never heard that one before, that men apply if they’ve got 60%, and women apply if they’ve got 90% of the role. That is incredible.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I’m not sure how accurate those numbers are, but it was that kind of bigger difference in terms of what people will check for before they apply for something, which is scary. It’s scary.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah, it is, definitely. Because there’s a lot of talent there, it’s really important.

Especially the e-commerce market. E-commerce is for both men and women, so we need to have representation from both sides for brands to, I guess, run successfully. You want to make sure that you’ve got those perspectives, so that’s very important.

So in terms of that, actually, I’m just moving forward from that. Do you have any other strategies for success? Like sort of tips and advice for aspiring female entrepreneurs that maybe are being held back by some of these things, any advice that you can give? I know you gave one or two tips there about using those transferable skills from volunteer jobs they might have done, or things outside of work. What else would you suggest from your experience that could be great for females in commerce? Sorry, I’m stumbling in my words.

Jaime Hill:

I’ve got tons. I mean, as I say, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a couple of very, very good female bosses, and some male ones as well. But actually, one of those gave me the opportunity to train as a business coach. So not only did she facilitate me having a business coach to kind of improve my skills and communication, how I approach things, she actually enabled me to train as a business coach as well, which has been really, really valuable. So that’s one of the things, consider getting a mentor or a coach. It could be someone within your business, it could be someone in your network. Just reach out and say, “Look, you have some great experience. Would you consider spending a couple of hours with me, or an hour every few weeks, just so I can learn from you and kind of get some tips?” Because there’s a lot of people with some great experience out there, so tap into it.

The behaviors that other people senior to you, or even your peers, that are the right behaviors, try to start modeling those. That will go a long way to getting you noticed. Constantly be learning, go to webinars, exhibitions, courses, even free ones. Maybe try and get some additional qualifications, if your company will support you in that, and many will, bring it up in your annual review, your PDP, get it documented. You may have to sign some documentation to say that you’ll stay with that business for an extra year or so. But if you’re happy there and they’re willing to support you on your education, take that opportunity.

Ask for feedback. So many people just don’t do this. So you’ll stand out straight away for doing that. And it’s an opportunity for you to make changes and improvements, because if you don’t get that feedback, how do you know what you’re not doing quite right or could be improving on? So obviously, a lot of companies that are more senior level, they’ll send around 360 emails about their peers and things. But they don’t necessarily do it at a junior level, so that’s a way you can really put yourself forward straight away.

And we talked about job applications earlier, highlight your transferable skills, don’t undersell yourself. Even if you have to get a friend or a colleague who knows you well to preview it before you send it, because a lot of them will pimp you up. You’ll have a network of people who really value you and will help you to become better. So absolutely, ask for help there and don’t undersell yourself. Apply for these jobs anyway, because you never know. By applying, you give yourself a chance. We talk about the lottery, if you don’t play, you’ve got no chance of winning. It’s the same with a job.

Volunteer to join projects. If there’s something you’re really keen to get in on or you want to learn about, ask if you can join. Obviously, you’ll have to balance that with your day job and make sure that you can still do that effectively. But it’s an opportunity to learn new skills, work with different team members, all that kind of stuff. You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and a lot of people won’t do that, but particularly women, unfortunately. You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to learn new skills and experiences, and often, to gain those opportunities.

I mean, I’m doing it today. I very much like to fly under the radar and let my work speak for itself, but I’m kind of at the position now where I have to start putting myself out there a little bit more. So for me, this is one of those things. I could go on and on. Building your resilience. You’re going to get knocked back, but how you deal with it is the important thing. You learn your lessons, you move on, you embrace change, and you seize those opportunities. Not everything is going to be a success. So it’s the same with CRO testing. A lot of the tests that you do will fail, but you’ve still learned something. You’ve learned that, actually, your customers don’t like that. So if you fail on a particular piece of work or whatever, you learn those lessons. And chances are, you probably won’t make those mistakes again. So yeah, don’t be afraid to fail, is probably one of the things I would say.

Building your communication skills, again, is huge. Active listening. Don’t be afraid to ask those, what you consider to be stupid questions, because you’ll often find that others in the room wanted to ask them, but they didn’t, because they didn’t want to seem stupid. So ask them, ask them.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah.

Jaime Hill:

Otherwise, you’re kind of putting yourself a step back by not clarifying something straight away. Being able to relay back something in your own words to clarify your understanding, that’s huge. Get used to doing that. And make sure you confirm deadlines. If they start shifting, then that’s a whole separate conversation. But yeah, problem solving skills, again, is huge. I like to kind of flip it. Everyone says, “Think outside the box.” I like to think inside the box, because often those constraints, they force you to be more creative, and think, “What if, how can we,” all those kinds of different conversations, really.

You might want to look at, there’s a really good TED Talk by a lady called Amy Cuddy. She’s quite famous. There’s a phrase she has, is, “Fake it till you become it,” so not, “Fake it till you make it.” She changes it. And it’s a really, really good eyeopening talk. I think it’s about six or seven minutes. And she talks very much about the body language and power poses. If you’re kind of sat down slouched, as opposed to standing up with your hands on your hips, it’s a whole different dynamic of energy. So kind of just really simple little things that you don’t necessarily think about.

I know people always talk about emotions, but again, they can be hugely powerful. You just need to control them and use them properly. They can be a very valuable tool, particularly if you can connect with colleagues on that human level, then you’ll build much stronger relationships. What else? I could go on forever.

The phrase that I actually came across recently, which is really cool, it’s called, “Swallow the Frog.” And it’s absolutely nothing to do with what it talks about, but it’s about identifying those tasks and work that your boss hates, and then you pick it up and offer to do it for them. So not only are you learning new skills, you’re also freeing up your boss to be doing the kind of more strategic things, potentially, and you’ll become known as someone who is helpful. And if you do it well, then you’re reliable, hardworking, that kind of stuff. So it’s kind of simple things to start building your reputation within the team and the business that you work in.

And kind of underpinning it all really, is be really clear on what you want to achieve, and then work out how you can get there. So if you want to become the CEO of a business, how do you think you could get there? Because there’s multiple ways to do it. You could start your own business and become a CEO, and become hugely successful. But you could then work your way up through a business to become the CEO, or even work in multiple businesses and climb the ladder in different ways, you could be learning different skills. Because essentially, a CEO has to kind of know how the whole company works, at a basic level. So building your skills and experience in different departments, if you’re able to, could be really, really useful.

And I guess the final one, I suppose is … which has really, really helped me, is kind of reframing your mindset. Instead of, “I can’t,” or, “It can’t be done,” it’s, “What if I could?” Or, “How could we?” And really start to be a bit more open-minded, have that growth mindset. And I know some of them sound really simple, but actually, putting them into practice, it can be really, really powerful. It’s kind of that incremental gains they talk very much about in terms of business, and if we do these three or four things really well, what can we get incrementally? So it’s almost taking that, sort of, how do you run a business, to how do you run yourself?

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely. The 1% rule. I really like that one. I think that’s brilliant.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

And I think it links into a lot of the things that you said. Each one of these adding together creates a big kind of change, which is brilliant. God, you’ve got so many tips. That was really insightful. I’m definitely going to take a couple of those myself, including the power poses, and the fake it till you become it. I really like that.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, that’s a really good TED Talk, actually. I go back to it fairly often, just because I really enjoy listening to her. She’s really good.

Sinead Hammond:

Sure.

Jaime Hill:

There’s a few more other ones that she’s done. And she’s actually written a book as well, which I forget what it’s called, but I’ve got a copy. Yeah, she’s so good. So good. I think, actually, you can follow her on LinkedIn as well. So she posts up regularly on there of interesting info and stuff, so yeah, definitely worth a follow.

Sinead Hammond:

Great. Whilst you were talking, actually, we did actually have a question from Astrid. And just for everybody else that’s listening as well, please do feel free to ask questions. We do normally have a little bit of an open time for questions at the very end. But if you’ve got them as we’re going along, why not? We may as well answer them while you’re here. So Astrid says, “Applying for roles is getting more difficult due to AI screening. You need to hit all the right keywords, and resumes don’t even get seen by the right people. Do you have any advice?”

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I’ve been coming up against this myself. Speak to some of your valued recruiters and see what tips they’ve got, because obviously, they’re on the inside, so they’ll be able to help you. A lot of the tips that I’ve been given is if you can see who is actually hiring for the job, which is difficult, because sometimes they just have a company name or whatever, then reach out to the recruiter directly. Or if you can track down who the hiring manager is, again, send them a note and just kind of iterate your interest in the role, and you might be able to get around that way. It is tricky. And I’m not necessarily sure I’d recommend this, sort of writing your job in ChatGPT and rewriting it. You could use that as a draft and customize it to fit your personality.

But yeah, actually, what Kathy’s mentioned about get rid of some of the white text on your CV, that could help. But it is tricky, unless you can do what they used to do in SEO in the old days and kind of keyword stuff your CV, which again, I don’t recommend because it doesn’t read well. Yeah, I’m still trying to work that out myself. It is tricky and kind of annoying, especially if you apply for a job, which you know you can do blindfolded, and you don’t even get a chat or an interview. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. So yeah, the only thing I could suggest is reaching out to either the recruiter directly, if there’s a name, or try and track down the hiring manager.

Sinead Hammond:

It’s back to old-fashioned relationship building, it sounds to me.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, a bit of investigation and relationship building. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it can’t hurt, but yeah, it is tricky.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah. Interesting.

Jaime Hill:

Just the market’s tricky, full stop, right now anyway. It’s not really a good market to be looking for a job in, unfortunately.

Sinead Hammond:

I guess, as well, we’ve got a lot of new innovations, I suppose, in technology all over the place, with things like AI.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

All the different things that are coming in, augmented reality. All the different ways that people are changing, jobs are changing a little bit as well as the actual job, the contents of the job, the role of the job are changing slightly, because there’s so much going on in technology at the moment. So yeah, I guess it’s just going back to some of the things that you were saying there about building those relationships and making sure that you know who those people are beforehand.

Great, thank you so much. That was really, really helpful stuff. And thank you for answering Astrid’s question there as well. And we’re going to move on slightly to some innovations in e-commerce. And interestingly, you were talking about AI, because this is something that is obviously a big thing in e-commerce at the moment. But can we talk about some of the latest trends and innovations in the e-commerce industry, and how females, women are feeding into this?

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, it’s funny. It’s funny. I mean, AI is huge. It’s the big subject at the moment, and it is worrying a lot of people. Obviously, you probably have seen the statements from Bill Gates and Elon Musk about having some kind of control over it, and I do get that. I think there’s a long way to go in terms of the governance, because it is such a complex area. But I think we do need it. A bit like we had GDPR, I think we do need something similar because it could be used irresponsibly. But you’ll probably find that a lot of the tools and things that you use already in your day job already have some kind of AI built in. There’s a number of the CRO tools that are out there that already use it. A lot of the search and merchandising, again, already have some kind of AI or machine learning built in. So probably, a lot of people are already using it without even knowing it.

It’s probably more the generative AI that people are talking about, the kind of more clever stuff that is not being used as yet. I’ve been to a few events recently, one with Google, which was based around the cloud and how you can interrogate your own data. There’s some kind really basic, but clever stuff. So you could use your own ChatGPT layer to sort of write your reports for you, or run queries super quick to say, “What was the trend of X over this period?” And ChatGPT will just tell you all that information in seconds. Obviously, the thing is you have to have the quality of data. Because it’s that kind of age-old saying, “Crap in, crap out.” So if your data’s not clean and usable, then what you get out could actually be detrimental to your business.

But yeah, there was an agency they’ve built … it’s a huge database. I feel like there’s about at least five years’ worth of every single TV advert that’s been on British TV. And what they’ve done is they’ve run through certain criteria, like, how long is the advert, when does the music kick in, how many people are in there, when do you see the people’s faces, when does the brand logo show up? And they’ve run on all these criteria. They’ve also somehow managed to get things like how many times it’s been on TV, what times it was shown, how much was spent on it. I believe they must also somehow have got some sales data from it as well.

And it literally will pop up for, say, what’s the best format for a car advert? So as a car manufacturer, you can then take all those top tips, best practices, and then essentially create a better TV ad. And that’s all done with AI. The possibilities are kind of endless with it. It’s exciting, but kind of scary at the same time.

But yeah, women are contributing to this all the time. There’s a lot of women now in data and analytics, also moving into AI and user experience, and really helping to drive the innovation. So yeah, it’s huge. It’s huge. They’ve often got a very unique perspective on consumer behavior as well. So those insights are really valuable to shape e-commerce strategies, and really helping companies better understand and cater to the needs of a diverse customer base.

So yeah, you need women in your team, basically. Yeah. Particularly if you’re marketing to a female customer base, then you need someone female that has those kind of insights and can relate to the problems of the base that you’re marketing to. And obviously, it’s easier if you can relate personally to those troubles, rather than a man trying to work out how to, I don’t know, sell TENA Lady or something. I don’t know. I couldn’t think of anything else that was specific to women at that point. Or a breast pump, the kind of stuff that only women use.

Yeah, there’s just so many things that people can get involved in and really bring themselves to the fore, by getting involved in things like augmented reality, virtual reality, AI, mobile commerce. Everybody’s on their phone all the time now, so if your customers can buy stuff quickly and easily on the go, then you’re a step ahead. So yeah, just find ways to push yourself forward. And get involved, because some of this stuff is …

And you don’t necessarily need to be hugely technical for a lot of this. With ChatGPT, for example, as long as you can write decent prompt, then the information you get out the other end is pretty much what you need. And it’s the same for AI and things, as long as you can write the right prompts, you’ll get what you need. So yeah, you don’t necessarily have to be hugely technical for it.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely not. I think there’s a lot of those. It’s not just ChatGPT. I think that’s just one of the many that people are using.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

I’m certainly utilizing it far more with my work. I think when I first started using it, I was like, “Gosh, I’m cheating. I feel like I’m cheating a little bit here. Should I really be using this?” But actually, I think the more we get involved, the more kind of space we have to be able to innovate in other things as well, which I think is really cool.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

And obviously, there’s a lot of people that are using these time saving integrations to support better work-life balance as well.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah. A former colleague of mine, she uses ChatGPT to check her queries for running data reports.

Sinead Hammond:

Awesome.

Jaime Hill:

So she doesn’t just use it for writing a LinkedIn article, she actually uses it to double check or fix her queries. So it’s not cheating at all. It’s like you say, it’s time-saving.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely.

Jaime Hill:

If you can use it to draft your article or post or whatever, and then you customize it to fit your tone of voice or your brand … I have seen examples, where actually, you can feed it your brand guidelines, so actually, what comes out is much more ready to go. But why spend hours writing something, when there’s a tool that can help you do it, when you could be focusing on actually the right targeting, or building something that’s really going to help your customers? It is, it’s time-saving, if you use it in the right way.

Sinead Hammond:

Of course.

Jaime Hill:

But yeah, I’m not saying you should rewrite it to take over the world, because that’s just insane, but yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

So you’ve obviously been in lots of different companies in your time in your career. I’d love to hear if you’ve got any success stories of other women in the industry. And just before you answer that question, just a quick reminder to the audience as well, we’ll be taking questions in a few minutes. So definitely get those written down into the chat, and we will be able to answer those for you in a minute.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I think this is kind of an opportunity for me to shout out a couple of my former bosses, actually, who I have huge respect for. So there’s Sandrine Lloyd. I worked with her at Avis. She then moved on to Samsung, and she’s now at Meta. So yeah, she was senior vice president of digital for Europe or something, I think, at Samsung. Hugely successful. And she’s a really great leader. Physically, she’s glamorous as hell. I mean, she’s French, so you would kind of expect that. But she’s a strong character, she’s very knowledgeable. So she would know pretty much everything that’s going on in the team. She’s very empathetic, and is happy to give you time and listen to you, and see how she can help. She’s a very supportive leader.

And the same goes for Storm Tussey-Haverly, who I worked for her at Hurtigruten. Again, she’s hugely knowledgeable. I think she’s just finished a PhD or something and is having it published. If you follow her on LinkedIn, she is constantly pumping out stats and really valuable information from the industry. And again, she’s very open, she will be very honest with you, and she gives regular feedback to people as individuals, and the team as well. We had regular weekly fortnightly meetings, and she would always say thank you to the team, “I appreciate you.” And many people don’t do that, and it’s nice-

Sinead Hammond:

It’s little things.

Jaime Hill:

No, and it’s nice. Especially in the occasions then as a team, we’ve been having a tough week, to get that from someone senior … I mean, she’s the senior vice president of marketing ops, so she’s high up in the business. But to get that personal touch, that appreciation, genuine appreciation, it goes a long way. It goes a long, long way. Yeah, I’ve learned a lot from both those women. And in fact, actually, Sandrine was the manager that gave me my opportunity to get into business coaching. So yeah, I’ve got a lot to thank them both for. Absolutely.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah, definitely. That’s women supporting women.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

[inaudible 00:41:46] very cool leadership roles that need to be taken. And even now when I think about it, there’s certain stereotypes that I allow myself to fall into. And it’s really good to have people like that, to really break those and to say, “We can deal with the things,” that yeah, you can break those stereotypes. And you can improve, and you can get into lots of different areas that you maybe didn’t think of before. I’m sure you didn’t, or maybe you did, but maybe didn’t envision yourself ever getting into business coaching long term.

Jaime Hill:

No, no.

Sinead Hammond:

So lots of opportunities and doors open there, which is fantastic and it’s really, really good to [inaudible 00:42:24].

Jaime Hill:

Yeah. Yeah, I’m very appreciative to my parents. They brought me and my sisters up to be very strong, independent individuals. So if someone tells me no, then I kind of just chuck it to the side and I go, “Right. Well, you’ve told me no, but how can I still do this?” So I’ve been very lucky to have been brought up with that kind of stubborn, determined nature. But I know other people haven’t, so that’s often why some people do come up against those difficulties, because they’re not used to pushing back. And I think when you do, that’s when the opportunities open up for you, because people start to see you differently.

Sinead Hammond:

Absolutely, absolutely. So I guess the last thing we really want to talk about is what’s the vision for the industry? And do you have any personal upcoming projects in terms of e-commerce generally, or women in e-commerce, anything that is coming up? And then we’ll take it over to the audience.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah. Well, I am on the job market myself, so if anyone wants to offer me an interesting challenge, please feel free to reach out. But yeah, I’m kind of taking the time to learn more about things like AI, and see, catch up on what’s going on in terms of latest developments. Personalization, I know it’s been chucked around as a phrase for a long time. I think the way the market is now, I think that’s going to be really, really important, to get the experience right for your customers. Because it’s very easy now for a customer to jump ship and go to another brand. Particularly if they’re offering a better experience, people will still pay a little bit more for an excellent experience or customer service.

So ASOS used to be very good at this. I don’t think they are so much anymore, because the emails they’re sending me, they’re clearly not even looking at my wishlist, because they’re sending me dresses that probably are designed for older teenage girls, girls in their twenties. And even then, I probably wouldn’t have worn them. So yeah, I don’t buy from ASOS so much anymore, or I just buy stuff that I’ve put on my wishlist. Half the time, I don’t even read their emails now, unless it’s got something about a discount, for example.

But there are some brands that are doing it really well. For example, ME+EM, in fashion, they do one drop a month, I believe it is, of their new clothing. They are very strict in their brand. I went to an event recently where they talked about their CRO program and how they stick to their plan for the year. They don’t panic, so they kind of go with the peaks and troughs of trade. And they’ve run tests that actually did show a slight improvement in the customer experience, but they didn’t implement those changes because it was detrimental to the brand identity. So they’re very strict.

They’re using features and functionality … There’s a service called Harper. Unfortunately, it’s only available in the London area, where essentially, you could order a whole ton of stuff, multiple sizes. It’s delivered by concierge to your location. It could be home, business, whatever. They wait while you try it all on. They take away what you don’t want, and you only get charged for what you keep. It takes away the whole, “I don’t really know what size I am, but there’s the one, and I’ve ordered six,” and then I have to return it.

Because that’s another thing that the companies are doing, they’re charging people for returns now. They have to soak up not only the fact that they probably didn’t send it out to you at cost. It cost them money to send it. It’ll cost them money to get it as a return. It’ll cost them money to process it, maybe have to clean it. They might not even be able to resell that item. So yeah, they’re obviously having to recoup some of that money somehow. So yeah, I think you’re going to have to adapt with what your customer’s needs are, and that means talking to them. There’s many, many companies that don’t talk to their customers.

Sinead Hammond:

Yeah. Especially now more than ever, when everything’s changing all the time. I kind of talk about it in sections where we had the pre-COVID years, which was very normal, and then COVID years, which was very different. And then the two years after COVID has been another different period, and then we’re kind of emerging out of this pseudo post-COVID situation at the moment, and things are changing all the time. We’re seeing in the industry constantly. We had somebody else on, Josh Whitten, a couple of weeks ago who was talking about the amount of changes that have happened in such a short space of time.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah.

Sinead Hammond:

And how businesses really can’t rely on data and information and analytics and conversations they had even two, three years ago because things have changed so much. So I think it’s a really good point there, a really important thing.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah. You have to not only use your current data. By all means, look at previous data for trends, but don’t rely on it. Look at your current data and talk to your customers. If that’s through usability testing, it might be your NPS, it might be feedback emails, it might be whatever’s coming through your customer services team, use that and close that loop. So take that feedback, make those changes.

Sinead Hammond:

Brilliant.

Jaime Hill:

That’s something we should do, actually, at Oak Furnitureland. We would look at what the top, say, four or five problems were that month, make those changes, if they were kind of just do its, or we’d feed it into our CRO program to find out what the best solution to that problem is. And then the next month, you would very often see those problems really dropping down the rankings, and then other problems coming up.

Sinead Hammond:

Interesting.

Jaime Hill:

The information that your customers are giving you is hugely powerful. So you need to listen to it. Otherwise you will get caught out. And people are being very, very careful with the money that they do have, so if you can capture that money by giving a better experience and listening to your customers, then why not do it? Because there’s a lot of companies out there challenging for a customer’s business.

Sinead Hammond:

Definitely. Definitely. Okay, so we have two minutes left. So in that time, Christine has asked a question, so if we can get your quick answer to this, and then we’ll wrap up. So Christine says, “Are there any specific financing or investment challenges that women face in e-commerce?”

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, I did find a little bit of data about this when I was doing a couple of bits last night. So women entrepreneurs do struggle to secure funding and very often receive less venture capital compared to their male counterparts. But on the flip side, more women are starting their own businesses. So it is difficult, some of it is still changing attitudes. But if you’ve got a business case that is strong, sensible … Almost, work with all the support that you can get. Your bank manager will help you. Or there are business support organizations out there, that they probably will be local to your area, but tap into them. The help and information out there is free, so use it.

But yeah, if you can’t get the venture capital or whatever, then don’t let that stop you. Find other ways to do it. There’s a lot of people that … and obviously, it depends on what you are creating and selling, but there’s marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, et cetera, that you can start a small shop, sell your goods, and then invest that money back into the business. Obviously, it will be slower, but you’ll have done the hard work yourself.

So yeah, there’s lots of ways to get financial support, and you just have to seek them out. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot of them because I’ve never had to do it myself, but it’s just things that I’ve come across in reading and articles, and things on the news. There are different funding opportunities and some of them will be local to you, rather than government grants, for example. But yeah, there’s stuff out there.

Sinead Hammond:

Lots available, by the sounds of things. Thank you very much for answering that one. So we’re right on time, which is great. Oh, we’ve just gone over by one minute, but we’re just about on time, which is great. So thank you so, so much for everything today. You’ve been really interesting, you’ve given me loads and loads of tips myself as well, which is always a plus, to come away from these things. And thank you very much as well to the audience for bearing with us with our little tech problems at the beginning, and also for sticking out until the end as well.

So just as a quick reminder, there is going to be a series of Shoppernomics events. So there’ll be another one in two weeks’ time with James Gurd, who will be talking with us then. So make sure you tune into that. And then, the transcript and audio for this particular event will be available on Shoppernomics.co.uk in the coming week. So just one more time, thank you very, very much, Jaime, for spending an hour chatting to us and giving us so many insightful tips.

Jaime Hill:

Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Sinead Hammond:

Thank you very much. And we’ll hope to see you all again at the next event.

Jaime Hill:

Thanks very much.

Sinead Hammond:

Thanks.