Previous Judges

Alastair Barlow is founder and Chief Dreamer at flinder. He leads a team that helps e-commerce businesses to scale business operations, improve performance and prepare for investment. Alastair is also interim CFO at Wolf & Badger, an award-winning digital marketplace that provides a route to market for independent fashion, home, beauty and lifestyle brands from all over the world. Alastair has overseen system transformations, process improvements, cashflow forecasting and scenario modelling, KPI dashboards and designed management information reporting for e-commerce businesses. Outside of work, his passions include spending time with his daughter, fitness, cycling, snowboarding, skiing, reading, self-development, business, motorsports, rugby, international travel and the arts. flinder works with fast-growth businesses using technology to simplify complex data and deliver relevant insight.

Al has worked closely with leading brands such as Reader’s Digest, Rapha, eBay, Graham & Green, Weird Fish, Cass Art, and Trekwear to name a few. By partnering with his clients he has planned, implemented and redeveloped their online marketing strategies to make them work smarter, propelling their overall online revenue and ROI. Through Al’s digital leadership, Infinity Nation has received a number of awards. Most recently, Infinity Nation won the Digital Performance Award at the DIRECT COMMERCE INNOVATOR AWARDS 2019 But it’s not all work and no play. Al also regularly contributes to the community. He has raised over £14K for Winston’s Wish, Parkinson’s UK, United Foundation, and a local primary school by participating in charity cycles. Al is also a regular sailor − competing whenever he can in between time with his son and daughter.

Ayesha Sethi comes with 15 years of strong multi-industry global experience with robust exposure to European, Asia Pacific & South African markets. Her core strengths are in business management, brand marketing, digital media & business development. In the past, she has worked extensively on brand & digital assignments across the Asia Pacific region with renowned brands like Yum! Brands (Taco Bell & Pizza Hut), Goodyear Tires, Vodafone and Zapak (Online gaming giant in India). Currently she leads Social Media Marketing & SEO globally for Vodafone Group Services spanning over multiple countries including European markets, India & South Africa. Ayesha was the winner of the prestigious CMO Asia Young Marketing Star Award for her work in Yum Brands.

Cecilia Svane has been in the travel industry for nearly 30 years, after studying hotel management she specialized in distribution and when internet became part of the game, she found her passion. How to get more website visitors? How to make them convert? While marketing in general was a beloved topic, traffic and UX soon became her absolute favourites and during many years she developed online strategies for several well know travel companies. Now she is using her experience and expertise to provide consultancy services mainly to hoteliers.

Chris Simmance is the Chairman and Founder of Optus Digital and Ambassador to Under2. The companies provide both SEO and PPC services as well as wicked fast loading web builds that get users hearts pumping. Based in London he spends a great deal of time getting cranky at the state of the web and plans to fix it, one site at a time. He and his team are the people behind the BrightonSEO ticketing platform, you know, the one that hasn’t gone down on every ticket release day since we changed it. Love the ballot or hate it, it doesn’t fall apart anymore. He’s a big fan of Bill Gates’ quote “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” as it’s a really good way of getting away with finding a shortcut. Perhaps that’s where the obsession with site speed comes in? Chris is pretty much self taught and started working in SEO from a small local agency through to a multinational before deciding to “go it alone” and set up for himself. 5 years later and 2 regional offices and he’s winning work from some well known established high street.

Dan has worked in ecommerce for around 20 years. He has worked within companies in ecommerce functions, up to CMO level, has worked on projects for more than 100 ecommerce businesses as a consultant, and has co-owned a couple of ecommerce businesses with millions of visitors and hundreds of millions of turnover between them over the years. He enjoys the opportunity that ecommerce has brought and can bring to people all over the world.

David has worked in eCommerce for 15 years, across a range of industries but specialising in retail businesses going through digital transformation. He is currently Head of eCommerce at Music Magpie Plc and has previously driven eCommerce growth with Very Group, Slater Menswear and DW Fitness First. He has a passion for driving eCommerce growth through improving the user experience and is a firm believer in constant user testing, feedback and experimentation

Diego Fria leads the eCommerce team at luxury fashion house Totême, helping create the overall digital strategy and product vision. Having recently re-platformed to Shopify Pus and launched a Tmall store in China, Totême is going through rapid change to support and fuel their hyper-growth phase. Diego is passionate about creating value for customers and fans of the brand leveraging the right tech to achieve this. He’s originally from Buenos Aires and loves tech as much as he loves tango.

Donna begun her career in media ten years ago where she started out within the New Business team at OMD UK. Since then, she has worked across a variety of fields within the industry including at Affilinet, where she specialised in Affiliate Marketing and planning and account management at Omnicom Media Group within their B2B Lead Generation and Affiliates team. Following this, she made the transition from agency to sales where she has been specialising in Programmatic advertising ever since starting out as a Sales Manager at Trinity Mirror to currently overseeing Expedia's programmatic division across EMEA and APAC

Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and content director of marketing and e-commerce learning platform Smart Insights. Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on Ecommerce including Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice and Digital Business and E-commerce Management. He has been recognised as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have shaped the future of Marketing by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

His podcast is What's New's in Marketing.

Emma is an independent eCommerce consultant with 10 years' experience in eCommerce. She worked in-house heading up eCommerce at Royal Academy of Arts prior to setting up her consultancy. Since becoming an independent consultant, she's project managed a number of migrations and re-builds across a variety of different verticals and retailers, including fashion, luxury, lifestyle, media and heritage sectors. She works to increase profitability online through eCommerce strategy, conversion rate optimisation and site auditing. She's delighted to be joining the judging panel of the UK eCommerce Awards for the second time.

Hannah lives and breathes engaging, data-led content. For over a decade she has championed content that has a purpose – with user intent, relevancy and the full organic experience at the heart of everything that’s created or improved. An eCommerce specialist, Hannah’s expertise lies in making sure content performs; by showing up in the right places, aiding user journeys and providing real tangible credibility, often in the form of data and statistics – all of which has led to vastly improved conversions for companies within the homeware, health and legal industries. Both at work and in her own time, Hannah loves to test ‘what happens if’ with digital content. From testing whether adding intent-led schema to product description pages in order to see if capturing researchers on a high conversion page is effective, to giving inanimate objects personalities, Hannah uses her breadth of knowledge across technical SEO, love of data and creativity with words to test what works best and then to test what can improve it further. Outside of work Hannah creates and amplifies content for her own eCommerce store, its social media channels and email campaigns. She has featured on several digital marketing panels and podcasts and was also the co-host of the ‘SEO SAS podcast’ from 2018 to 2021.

Luke is a well-seasoned eCommerce consultant and international speaker delivering double/triple-digit growth for eCommerce brands. Luke parks himself right in the centre of CRO, growth and SEO disciplines. Having worked with brands spanning both D2C and B2B verticals including CAT, Renault and Mayflex, Luke knows a thing or two when it comes to getting C-suite buy-in and delivering smart, scalable eCommerce growth.

As Head of Commerce Experience Design at Space 48 Holli leads the team of UI Designers, UX Designers and UX Researchers. Her 14 years of eCommerce experience covers a spectrum of industries, from Home and Garden and Gifting to Builders Merchants and Fashion; where she has helped deliver optimised experiences for renowned brands across B2B and B2C. Holli is passionate about customer centricity, data and cultivating a continual improvement and testing strategy with her customers.

As Head of Digital at Leeds Building Society, Keith is responsible for transforming the online experience for members, partners and colleagues alike. For 145 years, the Society has delivered on its commitment to mutuality, helping members save and own the home they want. Under Keith’s stewardship, this core promise is still the guiding principle driving digital change. With 20 years’ experience as a Digital Solutions Director before joining the Society, Keith has a wealth of know-how to draw upon. This includes delivering a number of high profile UK and European digital transformation and customer experience programmes. Sectors include automotive, airlines, customer electronics, train operating companies, public sector, healthcare, retail banking and insurance. A Fellow of the British Computer Society, Keith has been delivering ecommerce and digital transformation initiatives since 1999. In his role at Leeds Building Society, he’s well placed to share valuable learnings gained along the way.

Previously voted as one of the UK's Top 30 Women in Digital Under 30, Kristal Ireland is a specialist in digital transformation and digital brand strategy. An award winning, strategic and experienced digital marketing expert, Kristal is the Director of Digital for the national charity UK Coaching. A regular digital conference speaker and industry commentator Kristal has worked in digital for over a fifteen years developing digital solutions for some of the UK’s biggest brands.

Luis is Head of Global Search Marketing at The LEGO Group, and defines the strategy for search marketing activity globally for the iconic toy company. On these years in the company, Luis has managed to create a global organization that reaches both children and parents with engaging content in more than 140 markets. He is a regular writer and speaker about Search Marketing and business leadership and plays an active role in the search community. He is a member of the board of directors of SEMPO, the largest nonprofit trade organization in the world serving the search and digital marketing industry. He is also a fellow member of the Marketing Society, member of the advisory board of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and participates actively at conferences and specilized publications. He is also member of the judging panels of industry leading awards, as the DMA Awards, the UK and US Search Awards, The Drum and The Biddable Media awards. Luis has a technical background on computer science and has more than 14 years' experience in Search Marketing with cross-functional expertise in technology and business management and leadership.

Mark is the Founder of Growth Shop and a driving force behind one of the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce businesses. He has more than a decade of experience building lean growth teams to rapidly scale businesses - with over $1B in revenue-driven to date. He has worked across 250+ companies from hyper-growth startups through to global brands like The BBC, The Economist, Channel 4 and Qantas. Mark has managed over $150m in advertising spend across almost every channel out there. He has spent 1,000s of hours in UX, customer, competitor and market research, launched and scaled his own businesses, built training programs and much, much more.

Karl is a leading expert in eCommerce globalization and growth strategies and has been working with some of the top brands around the world. Karl is a sought after professional Mentor, Global speaker, and two times TEDx talks speaker, as well as being a bestselling author of multiple books where his latest book is called "Hacking your destiny" Learn more about Karl Lillrud on www.karllillrud.com

Michael founded Nublue in 2005 with his brother Tom to create and host exceptional ecommerce websites. Today he leads a team of 45, focussing on running a business which people enjoy doing business with. Michael is an expert in Magento, Shopware, Shopify and ecommerce strategy, brand promotion and management. His strengths lie in facilitating growth and delivering big impact ecommerce platforms for ambitious brands. Out of work, Michael’s keen on snowboarding, sailing and scuba diving to avoid getting square eyes.

Natalie is a CRM and Loyalty specialist, having built her 20 year career delivering strategic transformation for customer centric brands such as T-Mobile, Tesco Clubcard, easyJet and most recently as Head of Customer at Notonthehighstreet. Her experience in developing communication and data strategies, together with multi-channel personalised customer experiences has helped her deliver impressive results. Her passion is to connect together data, tech and customer insight to help brands build rewarding relationships with their customers.

Neil is Business Development Director at Beehive Research and has worked in the research industry for 30 years. During that time, he has worked across CX, VoC, CEM, Employee Engagement, continuous EPoS data solutions, SaaS and Mystery Shopping. He has worked with many client companies helping to hone their requirements and develop solutions with them to meet their needs by designing practical programmes, collecting rich feedback and delivering actionable insight into their businesses. Neil now works with Beehive who provide truly bespoke and customised research solutions that enable their clients to engage with customers, prospects, stakeholders or employees. Beehive help global businesses understand the customer experience and drivers of customer satisfaction and listen to the 'voice of the customer' to understand and serve their customers better. Neil is a strong advocate of new technologies in research and helping clients achieve customer centricity.

Nina Mack is the MD and founder of Worship.agency, an award-winning conversion optimisation (CRO) and user experience (UX) agency. The agency helps financial services and ecommerce businesses improve their websites so more people buy. Nina has worked with hundreds of businesses from early stage startups to large multinationals over the past 15 years. She is particularly interested in uncovering users’ conscious and unconscious needs to understand what truly drives and influences behaviour in order to create a more persuasive experience and increase sales.

Nick Andrews is the Senior Digital Marketing Strategy Search Manager for the UK's largest department store, Marks and Spencer (M&S). Nick currently manages all SEO and PPC activity at M&S and has previously held positions as both SEO Manager and PPC Manager at Debenhams and Head of SEO at 2 UK digital marketing agencies. With over a decade's experience in search marketing, Nick brings a wealth of experience to the European Search Awards. Nick is a long-time supporter of the industry awards having sat on the European Search Awards judging panel for several years, along with the UK Search Awards.

Together with her team she has built one of the strongest international communities in the online marketing industry. Olga has expanded SEMrush brand visibility worldwide, bringing >90% YoY average revenue growth from top 10 new markets and growing SEMrush presence in the main markets such as USA, Europe and Australia. Olga is a sought-after speaker at leading marketing conferences such as SMX, Pubcon and BrightonSEO.

As Head of Data and Insight, Ollie is responsible for the ecommerce data science arm at Space 48. He leads a team of acquisition strategists and data scientists to deliver growth to our clients. He is a passionate ecommerce focused digital marketing enthusiast with 18 years of experience and a lover of all things spreadsheets.

Paul Rogers is an eCommerce Consultant and the Founder of Vervaunt (a London-based eCommerce consultancy and paid media agency). Paul mostly works on replatforming projects and recent clients include The Conran Shop, Heal's, David Austin Roses, The Science Museum, Bulletproof and lots of others.

Pete Robertshaw is Head of Commerce Consultancy at Space 48 and has been in the eCommerce industry for over 17 years, with 14 years client side as a head of eCommerce at a large multi-channel retailer. Pete provides consultancy to his clients on their entire commerce experience and commerce strategy, helping them identify the best technology solutions and platforms to grow their online businesses.

As a Director of Key Accounts at global programmatic media company MiQ, Rob oversees the operational and commercial teams in the Northern UK business. Starting out as a media trader in 2013, Rob now leads agency relationships and advises brands across multiple sectors, including travel, retail and direct to consumer, on programmatic strategy and execution. An expert in digital, and a key industry player, Rob is a champion of North England’s vibrant digital community. He educates brands on digital marketing, providing tutorship and workshops specifically for businesses undergoing transformation. A seasoned speaker, and MiQ representative at Manchester India Partnership events, a Digital City Festival speaker and awards judge, Rob is also ‘Digital Futures’ Ambassador with Manchester Digital.

Rumyana is an experienced digital marketer with a great passion for the Travel industry. As Head of Performance & Revenue, she is leading a team of Paid Search, SEO and Social Media specialists. Prior to joining Secret Escapes, she has helped several other Ecommerce & Travel brands grow their online presence. Rumyana is a regular conference speaker on topics such as Machine Learning, Automation and Performance Marketing Best Practices.

Russ has been with Klarna for 4 and a half years as is a key member of the management team behind Klarna's meteoric UK growth. Focussed primarily on partnerships with some of the world's leading e-commerce brands. Prior to that Russ held senior commercial positions at Rakuten, eBay and Experian and started his professional career in the Ad Agency world.

Stephen is co-founder and Technical Director of Rise at Seven, a creative SEO agency made in Sheffield. He founded SearchLeeds and TechSEO Summat. He mentors communications students at Sheffield Hallam University.

With over 12 years in ecommerce Thomas has a long record of delivering growth for many of the largest names online. During over six years at Amazon, he led strategic seller acquisitions; executed new category launches; and delivered cutting-edge merchant services. After moving to Tesco, he tripled their marketplace business in twelve months. He founded online marketplace Aisle3 in March 2020. Thomas has a detailed insight on strategy, performance marketing and operations across thousands of eCommerce sites, high street stores, and digital marketing agencies

Yohan has extensive experience in eCommerce in a variety of fields, ranging from business intelligence/CRM, business development and driving online sales, to consulting on the agency side. Over the past decade he has worked as Marketing analyst, CRM manager, Strategy consultant and more recently as Head of eCommerce at Superfront. He has a proven track record of successfully advancing high-potential eCommerce organisations with great focus on building the right Marketing/Tech “MarTech” infrastructure supporting impactful business processes.