Paul Stephen: 0:00
Hello and welcome to episode 5 of season 2 of Shopponomics, the ecommerce podcast for change-makers and trailblazers. My name is Paul Stephen and I’m your host today, and today’s episode is called Managing Multiple Brands and Localisation at Scale. Joining me today we have Anuradha Dee, currently e-commerce product lead at Whitbread. Welcome, Anu, it’s great to have you. Thank you, you’ve had some pretty interesting roles over your career, so there’s loads to talk about here. So, but first would you, I’d like you to sort of just introduce yourself, really, rather than me do it and tell us a little bit about your e-commerce journey.

Anuradha De: 0:35
Absolutely. Thank you, paul. So I started my career in IT and then moved to e-commerce in 2005, whilst I was still working with Fig leaves. So in all my roles across travel, hospitality, retail my role has always been split into two. So one part is managing e-commerce and digital marketing. Because of my IT career, I’ve also been working as a product manager, creating and managing the digital development roadmap and working with multiple stakeholders, both internal and external. I am very passionate about growing brands organically and, as we know, in today’s day and age, you know, the paid media budgets can be quite tight, so I’m always looking for opportunities to work with lean paid budgets and how I can maximize the ROI. So that’s my sort of experience working across multiple sectors my sort of experience working across multiple sectors.

Paul Stephen: 1:49
Brilliant. So I mean, where you are now, you’re managing actually sort of multiple brands within the Whitebread group and multiple websites supporting you know multiple locations, different r estaurants. Actually. But before I dive in, sorry, this is an interactive event, so what that means is anybody who’s joining or listening in can sort of dive in, ask a question. So if you have a question for Anu, please do raise your hand and click the button at the bottom of the screen and I can either do them for you or we can let you join in as well. And don’t forget to use emojis and whatever as well. You can do that as we go. So let’s get started. So, like I say, you’ve got lots of restaurants, lots of brands within the group, so just sort of I don’t know. Maybe set that out paint us a picture how many brands, how many locations, what are you dealing with? What’s the challenge?

Anuradha De: 2:38
Yeah, so I am responsible for everything online from a restaurant’s perspective. So we’ve got six restaurant brands. You may have heard of a few of them, but I’ll still give you the names. So it’s Beefe ater, which is one of our steak restaurants. We’ve got Bar + Block, which is also one of our steak restaurants, bar and Block. Then we’ve got some value pub brands, which are basically Brewers’ Fayre, Table Table an d Cookhouse and Pub. And then we’ve got Whitford Inns, which is pretty much your local pub down the road. So between all of these brands, as you can imagine, there are very different demographics of customers as well. From a location perspective, we’ve got you know it’s basically up and down the country. So you know, Midlands, Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, East Anglia, Essex, you name it all, we’ve got a restaurant, or maybe more than one restaurant and maybe more than one of these brands in the locations that you know our audiences are listening in from.

Paul Stephen: 3:49
So how many restaurants is that across the six brands?

Anuradha De: 3:52
So that is over 430 restaurants across the six brands.

Paul Stephen: 3:58
Wow, and there’s gotta, like you said, there’s quite a difference between between the types of restaurant that are there. Some are sort of what I’d call sort of foodie pubs really, and others are more kind of posh restaurants. So how are those from your perspective, maybe? How different are those kind of different types of customers and users ?

Anuradha De: 4:31
Yes, so basically, if I just start with something like the Bar + Block restaurants, we have just over 20 of them and they are mostly in city centre locations. So what that basically means is that you know the audience for that type of restaurant is going to be very different to a value-pub restaurant where, of course, the importance of value for money, it’s family-friendly. So those are all the examples of Brewers’ Fayre Cookhouse and Pub and Table Table and then with your Beefeater it’s again a steak restaurant where you know you’ve got. It’s again a family restaurant with slightly older children, families with older children, And you know when we are looking at many creation etc. we also try and differentiate, you know the food, the dishes that we offer and of course, the price points are also very, very different.

Paul Stephen: 5:33
So, in terms of the sort of challenge you have, which is a, I guess, driving traffic to any of those restaurants and to make a booking, how are you, how are you, uh, what? Yeah, talk to us a little bit about that journey, I suppose. What’s your, what’s your first goal?

Anuradha De: 5:51
Yeah, so we, we use, um, of course you know, local marketing, uh, techniques. We’ve, of course, got the website, you know which, where customers can book a table via the restaurant booking page. We’ve got all of the digital marketing channels that we are using, so paid media, crm, paid social, display advertising, so all of the digital marketing channels. We are using all of them. And, of course, people walk into our restaurants as well to dine in. So a lot of traffic, which is offline traffic, not web traffic or digital traffic which comes.

Anuradha De: 6:41
So, yeah, a variety of online and offline ways that customers actually find us, many. For for those, you know, people, where the restaurants are very local to them, of course they, they just, you know, come in. And the interesting thing is, whilst we call the restaurants as Beefe ater or by the brand name, local people refer to their local restaurants just by the name of the restaurants. For example, the Halfway House, which is quite close to us in Dunstable. So, yeah, so a variety of ways. And we do a lot of sort of local advertising as well, via leaflet drops and all of that kind of thing, you know, print media etc. And, yeah, customers find us. We also find that a lot of people, because these brands have been around for quite a while. People also find us like directly, so they they know the brand, so they will just come uh to to our restaurants, you know, either via online or or offline.

Paul Stephen: 7:59
So you’ve got 430 different restaurants there and I think you are only a very small team, so you’ve got national campaigns, sort of a brand level, and then effectively you’ve got local things going on and I guess a lot of those individual restaurants, pubs, have got their own sort of individual campaigns. So how are you, how are you dealing with that? Tell us about that yeah.

Anuradha De: 8:16
So the most important thing I’m just going to quote a couple of stats from HubSpot which is basically 97% of people learn more about a local company or brand online and 88% of mobile online searches for local brands or businesses result in either a call or a visit within one day. So, for us, whilst we do all of the national campaigns, so we create or we have been creating a lot of content on the website, so we’ve got landing pages at a national level and, with our SEO techniques or tactics, we have also started creating local level pages, because it’s really important to localize the website, adding location-based terms, so location-based pages, and these make it easier for customers to find information like the name of the restaurant, the address, the phone number and also events etc., that are happening in those restaurants. So for us, it’s really important that we are constantly optimising the local pages of the website. The other very important thing that we do is we use a platform called Yext to create and syndicate all of our local restaurant listings. So what happens is through that particular platform, you know, you can syndicate all of that information to you know other third party websites, to other directories, and customers, of course, you know, are able to leave reviews via those platforms, able to leave reviews via those platforms, and these help to drive both, you know, digital and traffic, which is offline as well. But the most important thing that we need to do is to claim all of our local listings. That’s really important. So the more we optimize the listings, either on the Yext platform or the restaurant pages, you know it really helps Google. You know, rank all of our restaurants Reviews is a really really important area as well, because, of course, when people search on Google, the most important thing that Google wants to present to customers is, you know, restaurants with good reviews. So what I would say is for me, as a part of the overall strategy that I’m working on it, is investing in local SEO to rank locally for relevant terms and keywords, and one of the tools which I use quite a lot is Google Trends.

Anuradha De: 11:06
Of course, we do paid advertising, you know, which also helps, you know, to send traffic to those local pages that I’ve already spoken about. And one of the other important things is, with paid advertising, you can also add relevant local information to the ads. You can also add relevant local information to the ads. So, for example, you know, I’ll just state, not a restaurant example, but for example you’re looking for a local locksmith in X area, or what is their phone number. You can add that to your ads. Or this particular brand serves a particular area, so you can add and optimize all of those information to the ads.

Anuradha De: 11:49
And of course, last but not least, you know social media, from setting a location in the profile to tagging the location for each of the posts. So we do a lot of social media, both organic and paid social media. So those are mainly the ones from an e-commerce sort of perspective, that that we look at From a local perspective. As I mentioned about local advertising, you know being active in the local community, local sponsorships, you know print marketing materials all of those you know we use both at our restaurants and at strategic sort of out of home areas. You know bus stops and things like that.

Paul Stephen: 12:36
So I mean, I think each of those individual items you discussed feel normal to me, but I just I’m intrigued to know how you manage, 430 versions of Google Local or Google Business, sorry as it’s now called, Yext may help you with that, I don’t know, but there seems a lot to do and a lot volume t hat, I think, is a challenge for you.

Anuradha De: 13:00
Yes, of course, none of these can be done sort of overnight or even sort of within a week. It is a very, very long drawn out process. So we are constantly optimizing the locations. We use various tools, you know, because SEO is quite important for us. So we use a variety of tools. We use a tool called Botify to actually help us with um understanding. You know, what do we need to do more from an seo perspective? Um, especially at a local level. So we we are putting a lot of emphasis on our local pages. Um, yes, it takes time. Um, it’s, it’s hard graft, .

Paul Stephen: 13:45
Do you have any challenges around s ort of just managing, because each of these places has got its own team and manager or whatever who would have an opinion on what you’re doing?

Anuradha De: 13:57
Yeah, so we work very closely with the managers, you know, as as required. So when we started sort of creating content for the local restaurants, I sort of created a Microsoft form and I sent it out to the managers so this is about a couple of years ago and they fed back all the information and then I used that information to share it with our copywriters, you know, because it has come from the general managers or the people who work in the restaurant. So they know the local area, they know about the restaurant really well. So we sort of, you know, incorporate, you know they are a key stakeholder within the work that we do. You know they are a key stakeholder within, within the work that we do and we sort of liaise with the managers, you know, as often and as necessary.

Paul Stephen: 14:53
So yeah, it’s um, it’s like it’s, it’s a little group, because I’m sure you know I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them yeah, yeah, I mean, like you say, they’re the only ones who knows what the local audience knows their pub as, even if it’s not what’s on the sign outside, um, so that’s great and in terms of once you’ve gotten to the site, obviously that’s now like you say it’s gonna. You’re trying to get them to either book one way or another, or or pick up the phone. I guess. Tell it, tell us how, how, how you do that and what you’ve tried.

Anuradha De: 15:32
Yeah, so basically the landing pages that we create are sort of those pages which provide us or provide customers with the most information about any campaign or anything that we are running. So all of the local pages as well, you know they have information about the events that are running. So, for example, if we have a campaign like breakfast with santa, on the local page there will be information that this particular location is supporting breakfast with santa, or it has an outdoor, you know, garden for dining, or it has a soft play area. So we are doing a lot of work on the local pages. So the idea is, what we have seen is over 75% of our traffic that hits the website is actually going to the local pages, and that is primarily due to the localization that we are talking about.

Anuradha De: 16:23
When people search for something, they are searching for restaurants near me or restaurants in, I don’t know, bedfordshire, for example. So because of which, you know, it’s really important that we have all the correct and relevant information, both on our listings, which is on Yext, as well as on the local pages on the website. So once a customer lands there, the customer journey is pretty simple. They can either choose to call the restaurant and book, or there is a very clear call to action, which is the book button, so customers can actually click there and then go to the booking form. Fill the booking form in, which is pretty straightforward you need to choose either breakfast, lunch or dinner, and off you go, fill in some very basic information about yourself and they can book. Now, one of the things that we do find since we launched Reserve with Google on our meta listings, meta search listings. You know people who perhaps have already visited our restaurants. They don’t necessarily always have to come to the website to book. They can actually book via the reserve with Google.

Paul Stephen: 17:37
So they’ll just Google the name and then it comes up and they’re already there. They haven’t got to go into the landing page. They can book directly.

Anuradha De: 17:42
They can book directly from there. It’s a much quicker option. But, of course, if they want to find more information about anything else, any of the campaigns and things like that, you know they, they, they’re more than welcome to you know come to the website and find out all of that. But we’re also doing a lot of event posts on our google listings, so customers will not miss out because we are putting that information as well onto our google listings, so whereby you know any events like father’s day, mother’s day, etc, easter, whatever that might be. You know we are constantly posting on on there as well, so localization is really important. So I think the local pages and the listings on um, the google listings, are really important for us.

Paul Stephen: 18:25
So you mentioned earlier using reviews as well. Particularly for restaurants, things like TripAdvisor I’d expect to be quite sort of important to you.

Anuradha De: 18:36
Yes, so TripAdvisor reviews, Google reviews, and we’ve got our internal review system as well, so we are using sort of all of those. One of the bits that we want to really start working on is, um, you know, monitoring and using all of that feedback a lot more, uh, from an seo perspective. So you know, because there are lots of questions that are asked through the reviews.

Paul Stephen: 19:13
Yeah, I mean, eh, there’s usually loads of interesting data in search and reviews that should help example. develop your product its fair to say. And what other routes, have you tried any sort of things like TikTok or Instagram? How do they work for you?

Anuradha De: 19:25
Yeah, so from a social media perspective, you know we do Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. So we really started, you know, facebook as one of the sort of the key channels and we do do TikTok, but it is not for all brands. So we started testing TikTok for Bar + Block. That currently has, you know, worked quite well for us. So we are, you know, sort of trying to scope out you know which other brands that we want to do.

Paul Stephen: 19:57
I think that’s a younger audience, as opposed to a family audience, if you like. So I’m intrigued to know what sort of content are you creating that works for that audience?

Anuradha De: 20:16
Um, when it comes to kind of organic, social, it’s very fluid. Um, you know, uh, we, we don’t want to bombard people with lots of pricing, prices, and you know that kind of information. It’s more, you know, generally, what are our offerings. You know that we offer breakfast. You know kids can come. You know two kids can eat free with an adult. You know, so, some of those key messages you know we are promoting and it’s mainly the sort of the business’s usual messages when it comes to promoting, whether it’s on Instagram or on TikTok, because it’s basically for Bar and Block. So, of course, anything that we’re doing so say like bottomless brunch that we have in all of our bar and block locations. You know we take some really good imagery and we use influencers as well. Um, for, for, for, from a social media perspective. So, yeah, so we’re trying. I think it’s it’s one of those channels which we use it more as an awareness driving channel rather than a booking driving channel.

Paul Stephen: 21:23
It sounds like it to me anyway, uh, to to keep up with that, and particularly something like TikTok, where it needs to be sort of moving imagery rather than just so. So how do you do that? Talk a little bit about your team or maybe some of the tools you use to kind of cope with that.

Anuradha De: 21:45
We’ve got you know sort of three people internally. On our side, we work very closely with our brand team. So there is quite a rigorous process in terms of making sure that we’ve got the right imagery, but it’s also fun. So, of course, you know photo shoots and all of that kind of things and, yeah, yeah, we prepare content. So our plans are put together in advance, signed off by all of the relevant stakeholders, and then, yeah, it’s, it’s straight into production and then you know the we do all the postings on on all the relevant social media channels. Yes, there is a lot of content, as you mentioned yeah.

Paul Stephen: 22:28
Yeah, it sounds like it, I just sort of intrigued to know kind of how you, what sort of, what sort of roles, because it’s so complex.

Anuradha De: 22:41
Yeah, working very, very closely with the agency um, you know our digital marketing agency making sure. You know that there are lots of communications that sort of need to happen. I think communication is key and making sure because there are a number of stakeholders, as I mentioned. You know if you’re doing a photo shoot, you know which food imagery do we want to do. You know influencers going out. You know making sure that the restaurants are aware that influencers are coming. You know all of those little logistical points all have to sort of work quite cohesively in order to be able to produce the final output.

Paul Stephen: 23:19
Are there any particular sort of tools you use. You’ve mentioned a couple so far from a sort of listings and search optimisation point of view, but are you using any sort of.

Anuradha De: 23:31
Like you know, sprout social things like that. So we’re constantly, you know, sort of monitoring the sentiments and, um, you know what customers are saying. And of course, you know you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got reviews as well, you know. So we try and sort of monitor all of them in tandem.

Paul Stephen: 23:49
But how do you sort of in terms of managing your campaigns and the stuff you use to publish on your website? What are your kind of go-to tools that you’re using?

Anuradha De: 24:01
So, within Whitbread, we use the full Adobe stack. So of course, we are using the CMS, the content management system, which is Adobe Experience Manager. That’s what we’re using currently to publish all of the content on the website. So we’ve done quite a bit of development work to help our internal teams be able to do things quickly, and there is quite a lot within our pipeline as well in terms of developing, you know, the systems, also for our internal sort of teams. Of course, you know analytics. We again, like I said, because we use the full Adobe stack, so we use Adobe Analytics. We do, you know, A/B testing using Adobe Target. Then, of course, from a CRM perspective, we use the Adobe Campaign Manager. So yeah, so lots of tools for different channels.

Paul Stephen: 25:12
So, in terms of, I can’t really ever do an interview now without talking about AI in one way or another. I don’t know if you’re using it or using it at all, and dare I say, there’s probably loads of it built into the Adobe stack anyway already. But how do you see, how are you maybe using AI in terms of all the work that you’re doing? Or maybe do you see you being using it in the future?

Anuradha De: 25:33
Yeah, so I think the AI piece currently you know I use it personally, but I think from an internal perspective we haven’t sort of started using AI to you know the potential right now, but I think definitely from a you know understanding of content and demographics and you know writing the content, you know more for the audience. So I think those are definitely areas that you know that we will sort of be using, you know going forward. Is there any reason why you’ve not used it?

Anuradha De: 26:14
No, not for any particular particular reason, because currently we’ve got copywriters uh, you know in place who are helping us write the content of the copy, for you know all of our channels, so it’s, it’s just one of those things that you know. It’s, it’s in the pipeline to use, but we haven’t started using it straight away.

Paul Stephen: 26:40
Okay, Okay. So I think every good business is based on people, process and tools. So I wanted to ask you sort of finish maybe on that in that kind of area. You’ve talked about some of it already, but what are the top skills, if you would say, really needed for you to be able to perform in your role? What would you advise someone to go and learn right now? What’s the thing that everyone should know?

Anuradha De: 27:04
For me, uh, you know the sort of the top skills. Of course, it all depends on the. You know people’s interests, career goals, you know market demands and all of that kind of things. However, for me, I think data is really, really important. You know to be able to have, you know analysts or even within teams. You know to analyse and derive the insights is definitely really important. The other thing which is quite important for me, you know, as I’ve mentioned, you know all of of this that the work that we do, from actually starting from a concept to actually making it live, you know project management, is another really, really important. And I think the other important thing is you know emotional intelligence. On the soft skills side of things, you know being very empathetic. You know being self-aware. You know managing relationships within wider teams and businesses. I think that’s really important for fostering healthy dynamic. You know managing relationships within, within wider teams and businesses. I think that’s really important for fostering healthy dynamic. Um, you know .

Paul Stephen: 28:27
I think it’s great advice. I think it’s great. But what? I have a 23 year old daughter and a son who’s at university and I, I sort of look at that there and I go what degree would I do to get to that point? You know it’s, it’s an interesting place we are now where the range of skills you need and the jobs that exist, if you like, now don’t sort of necessarily sit into nice neat boxes anymore. All those three things you’ve just are not necessarily. You know there’s a bit of uh. You know there’s the, the data piece, then the project management kind of piece and the emotional sort of the people piece, if you like. They’re not necessarily. It’s not many people excel at all of those at the same time shall I say.

Anuradha De: 29:06
Yeah, no 100%, but I think you build those experiences as you sort of you know, go through your career. But to be a marketer in any role, you do need all of those right? Yeah, right now, and it’s all around people management and project management and you know data management. You know it’s really important.

Paul Stephen: 29:27
So the next thing I would talk about is sort of like what would be your weekly, monthly sort of KPIs that you kind of measure yourself by, or what are the sort of you know the things you would have on your dashboard if you like to tell you that things are going well or not going well. Um, how do you deal with that?

Anuradha De: 29:46
Yeah. So I’m very, very data driven. So I think for it’s it’s not just only for myself, I also look at it from my team’s perspective. Um so for us of course you know the very, very hard kpis, of course you know the very, very hard KPIs is, of course, driving. You know bookings and covers for the restaurants, but also you know all of the sort of the.

Anuradha De: 30:11
If you were to ask me, those would obviously be sort of the top ones that we are constantly looking at, constantly looking at but of course, in order to be able to drive those bookings and covers you’ve got to look at, you know, all of the other sort of e-commerce KPIs that you know any e-com business would sort of monitor. You know visits, conversion rate, you know time on site bounce rate. To a certain extent, I’d always take it with a pinch of salt.

Paul Stephen: 30:43
Yes, I was going to say how do you do bounce rate?

Paul Stephen: 30:48
It’s not necessarily a fail is it?

Anuradha De: 30:50
Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. That’s why I said you know you just take it with a pinch of salt, because that’s what you know people do. You know they might come to a local page and they may just look at the address or the phone number and off they go. But of course, there are lots of other tools that you can use in terms of really understanding the user experience and the customer journey on the website, like tools like Glassbox, as I mentioned, we do A/B testing , et.

Anuradha De: 31:16
So there are various ways in which you can monitor. You know what exactly is happening on the website, how are customers behaving on the website? So yeah, so I think it’s not just the very hard KPIs, it’s also, you know, some of the software KPIs the spend, um, you know the click-throughs in with relation to, to all of the ads, the impressions, and then, from a crm perspective, it’s all about, you know, the health of the database, etc. So we’ve got quite a neat little dashboard in terms of making sure that, um, you know um sort of the key stakeholders within the business have that, you know that pulse constantly in terms of what’s really happening?

Paul Stephen: 32:08
Do you do that weekly? Is that a weekly thing for you?

Anuradha De: 32:11
Yes, I mean very much. There are other things that we look at more so, even from a daily perspective. Say, a campaign has gone live, so we monitor that quite meticulously for a period of time, and yeah, so I think it’s daily, but overall, when we’re looking at how have we been performing, then it’s, of course, weekly when you create all the reports, but I like to catch things quickly as possible. So, yeah, I look at all my data and analytics on a daily basis.

Paul Stephen: 32:50
So you mentioned quite a few of them before and obviously you use the Adobe Suite quite a bit. But what are your go-to channels? You’ve got a you know a new, new role tomorrow, a new task. What would be your sort of go-to channels and platforms that you would, uh, would, be your, your friend?

Anuradha De: 33:13
Uh, I think, of course you know the bread and butter would be. Of course you know the. The brand or the company would, of course, need to have its website. Yeah, apart from that, of course, what other channels you know? It’s really important that we are, you know, finding the customers where they are, rather than you know wanting them to sort of switch channels, rather than wanting them to sort of switch channels. So in some other companies where I’ve worked, we’ve always used chatbots and virtual assistants and personalised recommendations and things like that. So I think those would be sort of the key areas that I would be looking to so that I can, via the brand, serve the customer to the best possible way.

Paul Stephen: 34:07
So we’re coming to the end of the time now, so I’m just going to ask if anybody’s got any questions out there, and we’d love to hear. So one of the last things that I’d like to ask you, Anu, is, you know, we’d like to hear about the good and the bad on the show, so I’d be interested to find out if you’ve got any advice or stories or from your experience, which you you know, which you would do different. Is there anything that you are very proud of, that you achieved, or things that you would do differently, would do differently?

Anuradha De: 34:40
Yeah, I think it’s really important for us to be able to do a lot of testing, you know, for whichever channel. Initially it was quite hard for us to get any resource to sort of do a lot of testing on the website. But because I come from a, you know, cro background myself, so I always had it sort of within me that, you know, I just need to keep that drumbeat and, yeah, now we are able to. So all I would say is, you know, don’t sort of give up if you currently don’t have resource or you don’t have. You know, think creatively, and that’s what I did. You know I had no copywriter. That’s how I use the general managers to get information. And then I worked with the premiering teams to, you know, support us with writing copy. So it’s just all about, you know, sort of thinking outside the box, because you know, most times it’s you know you don’t get a ready-made sort of resource and lots of resource. So it’s all about how you are using, you know, the capacity creatively to get the best outcome possible.

Paul Stephen: 35:52
Yeah, I’ve always found that testing as I always say this to clients is testing never goes wrong. Right, because even if you test A versus B and you work out that a what you originally had was the best answer, that’s a brilliant test because you’ve identified that you’re already in a good place. But equally, I’ve seen, uh, and it’s the same, by, I don’t know, just adding an s to a search term or or moving, you know, a box from being on the right to the left, you can get a sort of 40 percent difference change. Have you had any experiences like that, where you just kind of have made them what you consider a very small change, but a quite a marked difference?

Anuradha De: 36:29
Yeah. So one of the things that we did and this is about another brand where I worked, a travel brand so one of the things we did was we basically on on mobile this was one of the tests that we did we just added the search option like literally as the first thing that when people landed on the website, that’s what they would see. Previously, the search button was quite sort of hidden. So you know we made that change and instantly, you would know that, you know people do when they come to a holiday company, you know they are looking for, you know, especially on mobile, they are looking for sort of search. So that was one of the changes we did and it instantly, you know, helped us to, you know, improve our conversion rates overall in terms of, you know, the customer experience and the number of bookings, sort of going through sort of search rather than putting pressure on the call center, where you know people can call to book. So that was an instant hit.

Paul Stephen: 37:43
Great. Yeah, I just find it bizarre that sometimes the smallest thing can make such a. And that’s what I mean. You have to test that because you look at it and go, well, it looks fine, or surely moving that isn’t going to make a difference, and it’s crazy. So yeah, testing is absolutely essential and it’s incremental as well.

Anuradha De: 38:02
You test something, you get an output, especially if you’re working in Agile. You try and push that live and then do the next bit, and so it’s always incremental.

Paul Stephen: 38:15
And you mentioned earlier some of the other brands that you were at. Are there any other sort of things? Did you do that? Were you able to do sort of testing in those sorts of things, or was that very different? Um sort of role, maybe when you were there?

Anuradha De: 38:29
No, so I have done. I have worked as a CRO, as a conversion rate optimisation specialist, so, yeah, I have actually built, created tests and done it. It Tools can be quite different, so in one of my previous roles I’ve used and actually in quite a few I’ve used Visual Web Optimizer as a tool. Currently here we use Adobe Target. So we work with more specialists when we are using Adobe Target because of the nature of the platform. But generally, you know, a-b testing tools are meant to be used by marketers, so it’s getting, you know, the platforms are getting really user friendly in terms of, you know, being able to use them. You don’t need to know an awful lot of coding to be able to do an A/B test.

Paul Stephen: 39:25
Well, look, we’ve sort of uh, coming to the end of our normal sort of 45 minute slot. I suppose all it remains for me to say is thank you very much. Thanks, it’s been, it’s been lovely to talk to you, hear your insight into how you, how you do things, certainly at Whitbread.

Paul Stephen: 39:38
Um, thank you for everybody who has either tuned in and or is listening on sort of catch-up or as a podcast. I just want to say thank you to you for coming as well, and obviously this audio recording will also be available on shoppernomics. co. uk, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts or any other podcast channel you choose to use. And and this is actually the last in our series two, we plan to start up series three again early May, so look out for that. If you are not a subscriber, please head over to the website or on to LinkedIn and subscribe to us there. So that’s that’s it from me, really, and so one last thank you to you, and I thank you for joining us.

Anuradha De: 40:24
Thank you, paul, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.

Paul Stephen: 40:26
It’s been great to have you. Goodbye.

Anuradha De: 40:28
Cheers, bye-bye.