Jonny Longden

Speero

I spearhead and evangelise a global experimentation-led-growth movement, building a thriving community around associated media platforms with the Speero brand/agency as the driving force.

Chief Growth Officer

Boohoo Group PLC

Led the product management, strategy, development, and execution for the front-end websites and apps of four major fashion retail brands (Boohoo, Boohoo Man, Pretty Little Thing, Karen Millen), overseeing a team of 180+ product owners, delivery managers, UX designers, engineers, and analysts.

> Transformation from a traditional IT model to an Agile product operating model fueled by product discovery and experimentation, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making.

> Complex re-platforming project to a unified headless architecture, enhancing scalability and performance.

Group Digital Product Director

Journey Further

Built and led a high-performing team of 20+ product managers, digital experience/UX, experimentation  and front-end development professionals, delivering over £1.6m in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Provided strategic consulting and hands-on execution for a diverse portfolio of clients, including eCommerce, technology, travel, B2B, SAAS and others

> Developed and implemented product, experimentation and ideation programs for leading brands such as GHD, La Mesa RV, Bookshop.org, ECCO Shoes, Intuit (Quickbooks), and BigChange.

> Advised C-level executives at major companies like Intuit, O2, Flutter/Sky Bet, Zalora, and Trainline on product operating model transformation, product discovery methodologies, and experimentation strategies.

Digital Experience Product Director

Principal Hotel Company

Owned the P&L and product leadership for the website and all digital marketing activities, with a focus on driving direct bookings and reducing reliance on online travel agents (OTAs). Led the digital transformation of the company, championing a data-driven and experimentation-led approach.

> Achieved a 60% increase in direct booking revenue within two years and a 26% improvement in loyalty member bookings, through digital experience innovation and improvement. 

> Instigated full re-platforming of the website and booking engine, enhancing user experience and conversion rates, including new development agency resources.

> Pioneered new methods for measuring and optimizing media spend, maximizing return on investment (ROI).

Head of Ecommerce, Digital Product & Analytics

Built and led a team responsible for product discovery, analytics, and experimentation within a newly established technology center of excellence, supporting all aspects of Sky's commercial operations, including Sky Sport and Sky News. Overseeing product strategy and discovery for a team of over 600 software engineers. 

> Developed and implemented a pioneering methodology for embedding product discovery and experimentation within Agile development processes.

> Transformed the optimization and eCommerce capabilities to support a 100% ReactJS technology policy across Sky.com.

> Designed innovative methods for optimizing digital transformation objectives, leveraging data and experimentation to drive customer self-service and reduce assisted interactions.

Head of Digital Product Experimentation

Visa Europe

Led the development and implementation of the commercial product planning, analytics and experimentation strategy for the V.me digital wallet (now Visa Checkout) across 22 European markets. Built and managed a multi-disciplinary team responsible for measuring product performance, identifying opportunities for improvement, and driving adoption among merchants and consumers.

> Developed a comprehensive performance framework, KPIs, and operating model to track and optimize the product's commercial success.

> Defined the roadmap for the evolution of the data technology infrastructure, including the integration of online and offline data sources and the use of big data technologies.

> Collaborated with merchant clients to implement experimentation programs and optimize their integration with the digital wallet.

Head of Digital Product Analytics & Experimentation (Visa Checkout)

R/GA

Led digital transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 clients across diverse sectors, including telecommunications, retail, FMCG, and financial services. Provided strategic consulting services, leveraging data and analytics to drive business growth and improve customer experience.

> Developed and implemented digital product strategies for key clients, including O2, Mastercard, and eBay, focusing on customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.

> Led the development of a £2 million ecommerce and optimization technology stack for Manchester United, enabling data-driven decision-making and personalized customer experiences.

> Defined and executed data-driven product strategies for clients like MVideo, resulting in significant improvements in online conversion rates and revenue generation.

> Grew from scratch and led a team of digital analysts and CRO experts delivering against all digital and creative clients.

Group Director - Strategy, Analytics & Optimisation

Syzygy

Syzygy is a full-service digital agency and web-design company. I built and grew the analytics and optimisation capability, offering a range of services to all agency clients. My team were responsible for: measurement strategy and consulting; customer and behavioural insights feeding into development work; measurement and analysis of delivered work; A/B testing and continuous optimisation of live content; digital marketing and SEO.

Web Analytics & Optimisation Director

Marketing Metrix

Lead analytics consultant and data planner for both Marketing Metrix Ltd (data analysis consultancy) and sister company WPN (direct marketing agency). Responsible for all DM forecasting, testing and performance analytics as well as customer segmentation; propensity modelling; and database development. Key clients include Direct Wines, Which?, NCH, Direct Line Insurance

Senior Analytics Consultant & Data Planner

CACI Ltd

Consulting both new and existing financial services clients in data and analytics. Project management and delivery of large projects covering customer insight analysis & profiling; propensity modelling; data tagging; cluster analysis; prospect pool building; and spatial analysis.

Senior Analytics Consultant, Financial Services

Digital Experience Director | Helping you put experimentation at the heart of your business | Top Experimentation Influencer

Grow your business with data, not opinions

I've been pioneering and leading the field of experimentation-led-growth since the dawn of A/B testing. I've helped companies like Sky, Boohoo, Intuit, O2, GHD, Zalora and many more achieve remarkable growth through data- and experiment-driven digital experience development.

Speero is the world's most progressive and cutting-edge experimentation agency & consultancy. We empower eCommerce and SaaS businesses, at all stages of maturity, to drive game-changing growth and innovation through experimentation and evidence-based product strategy.

Our clients include Decathlon, Gympass, RS Group, ADP, Charles Tyrwhitt, Nasdaq, Miro, Codeacadaemy & Cisco.

We are the experts in experimentation and can help with everything from assisting with components such as research, design and development, through to full-service programme management and transformation consultancy.

Contact me at jonny@speero.com or +44 777 909 6222 to find out how we can help you grow.

Director, Digital Experience Services

90% of all changes made to websites are based on opinion and are a waste of time and money because…

It is impossible to know 1000s of customers
Your opinion is deeply biased
You can’t rationalise the irrational

Regardless of the size of your business, the answer is to put data and experimentation at the heart of your development operations. 

We help you do that. 

We take the guesswork out of decision making and provide consultancy and training, systems and frameworks, and experimentation agency services to help you reach your full growth potential.

Email me to learn how to put experimentation at the heart of your business: jonny@journeyfurther.com
Subscribe to my newsletter: jonnylongden.com/newsletter

The CRO world has been so obsessed with "winning" experiments that we've completely missed the point of experimentation.

For years, I've argued that this binary thinking - win or lose - is a direct and now irelevant artefact of how consultants have had to package and sell their services. It has nothing to do with how innovative businesses actually operate.

The real value of an experiment is in the learning, not the outcome. It's about using evidence to de-risk decisions, whether that evidence tells you to ship a change, kill an idea, or simply learn more.

Spotify's new "Experiments with Learning" framework is a brilliant example of a company moving past the tactical fluff and focusing on what truly matters. It’s a powerful validation of the shift our industry needs to make.

https://lnkd.in/eiGtiRR8

See also: 

https://lnkd.in/e4nSN8cZ

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

Chief Growth Officer @ Speero | Growth Experimentation Systems & Engineering | Product & Digital Innovation Leader

Open article: Beyond Winning: Spotify’s Experiments with Learning Framework | Spotify Engineering by engineering.atspotify.com

Beyond Winning: Spotify’s Experiments with Learning Framework | Spotify Engineering

After several years I am delighted to be returning to the Experiment Nation stage! 

This time I am talkin about why EXPERIMENTATION IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM, not a piece of software, team or tactic. 

I'll be joined by Miguel Curiel,  Ishan Goel, Kevin Anderson, Rhys Mohun, Deborah O'Malley,  Jason G., Namrata A. and Ellie Hughes. 

Thanks as always Rommil Santiago 

➡️ Register here to check it out: https://lnkd.in/eYM7AM-i

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

Very highly recommend this book if you want to understand just how flawed human decision making is and the case for a critical scientific attitude towards business change. 

Whilst the book has nothing to do with the business world, the errors of judgement outlined are rife in every single organisation that exists today. 

Some examples inspired by the book:

Confirmation bias: The tendency to seek out information that confirms one's existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.

Self-interest: Making decisions based on personal gain rather than what is best for the business as a whole.

Overconfidence: Being overly confident in one's abilities or the accuracy of one's predictions, leading to poor decision making.

Anchoring bias: Relying too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making a decision, rather than considering all available information.

Groupthink: The phenomenon where the desire for consensus within a group overrides the ability to make objective and critical decisions.

Hindsight bias: The tendency to believe, after an event has occurred, that one would have predicted or expected the outcome.

Sunk cost fallacy: The belief that because a significant amount of resources has been invested into a project, it must continue, even if it is no longer viable.

Short-term thinking: Focusing too heavily on short-term gains at the expense of long-term success.

Herding behavior: Following the crowd or the actions of others, rather than making independent, informed decisions. 

cro experimentation ecommerce digitalmarketing ux userexperience

The true product operating model, as I see it, is a way of working that puts customer problems and outcomes in the hands of teams with the means to realise solutions.

Instead of an organisation being a "feature factory" that simply builds whatever the loudest voice demands, a product operating model empowers small, autonomous teams to own a specific customer problem. They are given clear, measurable objectives and/or strategic goals (outcomes) to solve for and are trusted to use an evidence-based approach—like experimentation—to figure out the best way to achieve them.

However, in my experience, this model is very rare. What is far more common—and I believe especially in Europe—is that the trend for 'product' has been adopted by simply renaming traditional IT project people as product managers.

In many businesses, product managers exist, but they still take feature requests from wider business stakeholders and build them into roadmaps. In other words, they are still project managers.

The biggest issue with this is the mismatched existential and mental models:

Stakeholders are still under the impression that IT 'does what it's told' and they need to provide features and projects to them.

Meanwhile, the new 'product managers' read Marty Cagan books and see the light about what they should be doing.

The product managers try to adopt product ways of working, but this is futile without a corporate or CEO directive for the business to work in this way. Nobody really understands what they are supposed to be doing.

The product operating model is not necessarily better than the IT model for all businesses, but whatever your model is, it needs to be clear and understood by everyone.

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

I fully believe that there are almost no businesses in the world today truly doing experimentation, and that the business world doesn't really even understand what the word means.

It doesn't matter how much A/B testing they do or how much of a 'culture of experimentation' they think they have; the word 'experimentation' is being used to designate the wrong thing entirely.

It's used to mean 'experiments' and not the 'the state of being experimental'.

Experiments, and the techniques and technology required to conduct them, are irrelevant unless they are employed in pursuit of something bigger. 

EXPERIMENTATION IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM

Read on:  https://lnkd.in/eY_C3BKw

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

You can't GUESS your way to disruptive innovation and growth, you need to experiment and learn. But have you really thought about what 'experimentatio

Open article: What is 'growth experimentation'? by Jonny Longden • 4 min read

When people say they don't trust the results of A/B tests, what they often really mean (even if they don't articulate it) is that the metric on which the test is measured is only one way of looking at things.

Leaders love to give people simple metrics as objectives, and yet they also are acutely aware that business is just not that simple. 

If you present the outcome of an experiment to senior leaders and are talking about conversion rate increases, there are often, even for simple tests, a lot more intangible things for them to consider:

• What is the impact on the brand?
• Does it fit with the XYZ transformation/change project that nobody else in the business knows about yet but which is coming?
• What will the new VC who might be about to invest in us think of this direction?
• Will it have any effect on customer service or operational costs?
• What will it do to tech debt?
• Is it as important as these other roadmap projects that don't have tangible revenue/conversion percentages and yet nevertheless feel very important?
  
'Experimentation' ought to invest its time and energy in helping people to make decisions by synthesizing a variety of evidence types and perspectives, and to recognise that decisions are not made on the basis of single, simple metrics.

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #decisionmaking #growthexperimentation

Here's a short video about how systems thinking can provide a far more superior and holistic view of the decisions you make than metrics. 

𝗧𝗟;𝗗𝗥:

1. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽: Businesses love simple metrics, but they're myopic. Optimising for a single metric (e.g., short-term revenue) often causes unseen, long-term damage elsewhere in the system.
   
2. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲-𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: My core example: reducing prices might win an A/B test by boosting immediate sales, but it simultaneously erodes brand perception and customer loyalty. A short-term "win" can become a long-term disaster.
   
3. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹: We must move from letting experiments 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 decisions to empowering humans to make better decisions 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘥 by them. Experiments are just one input, not the final verdict.
   
4. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗘𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗿: This sounds complex, but this is where Generative AI is a game-changer. It can help us synthesize multiple inputs (test data, brand values, customer experience, competitive landscape) to see the whole picture and make smarter, systemic choices.

Check it out: https://lnkd.in/e8wJfrwC

More on my Apollo analogy: https://lnkd.in/eyDMXEDa

#experimentation #cro #productmanagement #growth #digitalexperience #experimentationledgrowth #elg #growthexperimentation

Open video: Harnessing Systems Thinking for Effective Decision Making in Business on loom.com

Harnessing Systems Thinking for Effective Decision Making in Business

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