Roy Rosinnes co-founded Shoppimon with other APM veterans, who realized that modern technology and software are not enough to deliver website insights quickly and easily to e-commerce stores. If you want to use existing monitoring solutions, you’ll have to spend precious time and resources to set up the whole infrastructure, and to do regular manual maintenance. You’ll also end up with mountains of data that you can’t even understand, unless you have a crack team of IT guys.
So, where does that leave the usual e-commerce store? Roy Rosinnes and Shoppimon recognize that every member of an e-commerce shop has to know and understand every e-commerce issue that could affect their operations. They have to know how to answer things like, “What’s wrong?”, “What’s the impact on revenues?”, and “How can this be fixed?”
With Shoppimon, Roy Rosinnes and his team have developed advanced solutions for e-commerce stores struggling to cope with technical issues. The company uses artificial intelligence to answer all the pressing issues that face an e-commerce brands, and to deliver practical solutions to these problems. This AI-powered tech will submit website insights that show you the health of your online business, which every member of your company can understand.
Roy Rosinnes and Shoppimon have also created the system that needs zero setup and maintenance time, so you can focus on actually running your business. By acting like a 24/7 secret shopper, Shoppimon can help you understand why your business is having problems, what is causing those problems, and what you need to do to fix them.
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Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Roy Rosinnes: I believe Shoppimon is delivering on its message — it truly is a system built for commerce and it understands it. Shoppimon is the fastest system I know of in delivering value — from launch to insight. The way it’s built, the automations we put in place and how we bring data into the hands of both business owners and IT professionals is not something that’s easily done. Shoppimon is making it easy and this is exactly what it was built for.
We have many stories that demonstrate this where Shoppimon managed to uncover information that was not prevalent to our customers, sometimes even at the POC stage. One that stands out is of a major global brand that, while updating their product database, accidently deleted 80% of their product listing. Everything was working fine but 80% of the products were suddenly out of stock. Shoppimon alerted to the missing stock and our customer managed to identify and fix the issue quickly and efficiently.
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Roy Rosinnes: I don’t have a magic tip or a method. In the end it’s simple — do what you love. Make sure you hire people that are good at what they do (of course) but are also fun to work with — you’re going to spent a lot of time together and the people around you will have a major effect on your quality of life and stress levels. And remember, you’re doing this because you want to, you believe in it and it’s fun (ok, not ALL the time but as a whole). If one of these things stop being true — stop. Change direction. Make sure you get back on the “Want to, Believe in and Having Fun” track.
Jerome Knyszewski: None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Roy Rosinnes: Oh, there are many along the way, from Arik — my first manager that first hired me fresh out of university, through Gadi that showed me Japan, Avi that taught me how to manage and navigate larger organizations and of course my current team at Shoppimon — Shahar, who I already mentioned and Eldad and Ran my co-founders. I am grateful to all of them for what they taught me and for sticking with me through the ups & downs of our journeys!
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that eCommerce businesses are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?
Roy Rosinnes: Indeed, these are challenging times to say the least … Consumers are changing habits, in-store traffic is low to non-existent and people are becoming more frugal and thinking twice before spending. There is an opportunity here nonetheless and, as times & social distancing suggest, e-commerce capable businesses are well positioned to grab it.
As businesses around the world struggle to survive the crisis, the first thing any responsible brand should do is talk to their suppliers, partners and sellers. You need to make sure you and your partners are well prepared to take on these challenging times together without dropping the ball. Make sure you are all on the same page, you need to know if anyone along the chain of production, supply & distribution is struggling (maybe you can help them, maybe you need to find alternatives or backups). Cover your basic bases.
As far as your online business is concerned, this is a great time to make sure things are ticking nicely and that you have no glitches in your offering. Traffic tend to increase due to the accelerated shift to online sales and businesses need to make sure that they are capable of handling it and, in case something brakes, are able to respond quickly and efficiently. So …
Make sure you implement the right monitoring and alerting tools. True, I am biased and think Shoppimon is one tool you need to have :), but seriously, whatever system you are currently using or implementing — make sure you’re continuously in the know in terms of how your site is performing and alerted on issues that requires your immediate attention. This is no time to lose precious traffic or reputation.
I’ve also seen online stores rethink their marketing and purchasing funnel and trying new channels to bring in new traffic. Some vendors are “upping their game” by revamping leading product pages and either expanding to new products (cleaning, sanitation, sports clothing & equipment) and dropping some product to focus on what’s necessary right now.
Jerome Knyszewski: Amazon, and even Walmart are going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?
Roy Rosinnes: This is very true, online stores are abundant and the big boys — Amazon, Walmart and AliExpress — have set very high entry standards for online retailers.
To be successful in this competitive landscape, you need to know your offering and why you think people should buy from you. If you’re in the e-commerce business — you probably know that already. It can be any number of things that set you apart — special brand, pricing, exquisite service, quick delivery or location. Whatever it is, this is your ‘Raison D’être’ (reason for existence) and this is your most potent weapon in competing. Put this forward, advertise it and make sure people are aware of it. Amazon & Walmart have endless offerings and are great at many things, but retailers and products, much like people, come in all different shapes and sizes and your audience is probably looking for something only you can deliver or, at least, do it better than the big boys. Find that and double down on it.
Jerome Knyszewski: What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start an eCommerce business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Roy Rosinnes: Often times you see entrepreneurs and new business owners alike dive in head-first without fully thinking about what they need to put in place before opening their (virtual) store doors. Don’t get me wrong — there’s a lot to be said for diving in head-first and many of the greatest inventions or businesses would probably not exist if their founders stopped to think about all that can go wrong. But that’s not what I’m talking about; I’m talking about what you need to know when you start bringing in traffic — that stats, tracking mechanisms, monitoring of your stores and customer behavior etc. Make sure you have the data you need to make decision and that you are collecting it from the get go — this is one of the most common reoccurring regrets I see in new businesses. And trust me, I’m no exception… I’ve probably done this multiple times when launching new products to features. I’d like to thin though that, slowly but surely, I am learning … 🙂
Jerome Knyszewski: In your experience, which aspect of running an eCommerce brand tends to be most underestimated? Can you explain or give an example?
Roy Rosinnes: I would say the in-store experience and store quality. Again — I may be biased as this is what I see on a daily basis with Shoppimon. But I do believe that a LOT of thought and budget goes into bringing traffic into the store and, often times it seems that the store itself, both the in-store conversion funnel & the overall quality of the online experience, is somewhat of an afterthought. This is a real shame and we’ve seen it happen over and over again. Say for example you launch a huge campaign with a nice investment of $50k and drive good traffic into your store. The ads and landing pages are a great success and traffic is directed to your leading products. Maybe you’re even getting some nice results in terms of sales. However, if your product page is not up to par and ready for the traffic, you may well be missing high percentages of this traffic you’ve worked so hard to bring in. Maybe 20% of potential buyers are dropping off because your leading product page “has the hiccups” and is not loading or loading extremely slow for 1 in 5 shoppers. This means you just overpaid for your campaign by 20% …
As I said, we’ve this happen. The bottom line is that you need to care about the bottom line and for this to work you must pay as much attention to quality and health of your store itself as you do to the campaigns and traffic you’re bringing into it.
Jerome Knyszewski: One of the main benefits of shopping online is the ability to read reviews. Consumers love it! While good reviews are of course positive for a brand, poor reviews can be very damaging. In your experience what are a few things a brand should do to properly and effectively respond to poor reviews? How about other unfair things said online about a brand?
Roy Rosinnes: This is always a tricky one as it hits close to home and it’s very hard to keep your cool when someone is saying negative, sometimes unfair or outright wrong things about the business you spent so much time & effort growing.
Once you bang your head twice or thrice on the table and calm down a bit, try and understand where the review is coming from. There is usually a reason a reviewer is giving a bad review and, even if wrong or unfair, it is worthwhile to try and understand that. Be fair and transparent, if you can do something to fix it — do it and write a public response that you did so. If you did something wrong or missed the mark — apologize and fix things. Let people know that you take them seriously and their concerns are your concerns. If you think the reviewer is off the mark, gently say so and be firm about it. Not everyone will be a fan but everyone reading will see where you are coming from and why you think this is fair.
In short — be attentive, sensitive, caring but firm. You have a business to run, you want your customers to be happy and they should want you to be successful as well.
Jerome Knyszewski: You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Roy Rosinnes: I actually really like Initiatives of Change. I’d start on their “Effective Leadership in Times of Crisis” seminar but really, anything they offer or inspire you to do is great.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Roy Rosinnes: You can find me on LinkedIn and visit the Shoppimon website.
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
