Sam Whitfield
Runs experiments with pre-registered kill criteria. Has ended more of his own ideas than anyone else’s.
- Role
- Growth Strategist
- Based
- London
- In the journal
- 30 articles · 1 case study
First-party data without the surveillance
First-party data foundations for the cookieless era: consent-mode analytics, an honest take on server-side tagging, what to stop measuring, and labelling estimates.
Referral loops that fit the product — not the pitch deck
Referral mechanics that match the product: incentive design, double-sided rewards, fraud resistance, timing, and why most referral programs launch a year too early.
Programmatic SEO without producing landfill
The workshop version of programmatic SEO: dataset maturity gates, the four page archetypes that work, editorial review thresholds, and the build sequence we trust.
Make them search your name: growing branded search demand
Branded search is the closest thing marketing has to a census of memory. Here's how to grow it deliberately — and measure it without flattering yourself.
A/B testing statistics for people who ship
Reading A/B tests honestly: minimum detectable effects, the peeking problem, novelty effects, segment traps, and the decision log that ends the arguments.
Share of search: a brand metric a CFO will accept
Brand health is usually measured with slow, soft surveys. Share of search turns branded query volume into a leading indicator finance teams actually trust.
Calculators and checkers: interactive tools as content
Calculators, graders and generators as content: why tools earn links articles can't, how to scope one that ships in a sprint, and measuring assisted conversions.
Loyalty programs that don't treat customers like lab rats
The line between a loyalty program and a manipulation engine is design, not intent. An audit of the dark patterns, plus the honest maths that make one worth it.
Local SEO for venues: filling tables search by search
How restaurants and venues win the local pack: profile hygiene, menu schema, review rituals and location pages that earn their place in the index.
Test the words before you test the pixels
Copy-first testing: mine the message from reviews and sales calls, test value props on plain pages, stay honest with small samples. Button colours come last.
Alternative-to pages that don't smear anyone
Building a comparison-page programme that ranks and keeps trust: intent research, fair-comparison editorial rules, freshness ops, and killing fake objectivity.
Exit interviews for products: learning from the people who left
Churn interviews and exit surveys done properly: a five-question exit flow, recruiting churned users honestly, and separating squeaky wheels from signal.
Write the measurement plan before you build
Analytics bolted on after the build answers yesterday's questions badly. The measurement plan: events, naming, consent, dashboards — before the first sprint.
Experimenting on pricing pages without lying
You can test framing, proof and order on a pricing page. You can't charge different visitors different prices and keep their trust. Where the line sits.
The ninety-minute heuristic review
A scored rubric for marketing pages — clarity, proof, friction, trust — and the ninety-minute format that turns an expert review into a prioritised fix list.
Reviews you earn: a third-party review strategy without the sleaze
Earning reviews where buyers actually look: timing the ask to delivered value, easy-but-unscripted asks, responding to negatives, and feeding it to positioning.
Funnel metrics: measure the movement, not the moment
Snapshots lie; cohorts and velocity tell the truth. How to define funnel stages across teams, pick the metrics that find the constraint, and run the weekly review.
Attribution is 90% noise: making decisions anyway
Last-click lies, multi-touch dreams, and what actually works for teams without a data science department: a decision framework for acting on noisy attribution.
Audit first, test second: heuristic CRO that finds the free wins
Before your next A/B test, walk the funnel as a stranger. Our heuristic CRO audit method: the friction walkthrough, severity scoring, and fixes that don't need stats.
Designing CRO experiments you can believe
Hypothesis quality, sample-size honesty, the peeking problem, change isolation versus big-bang redesigns, and documenting learnings so your programme compounds.
Bundles and kits: merchandising beyond the single SKU
Bundles and kits done properly: curated vs build-your-own, pricing psychology, inventory implications, PDP architecture, and subscription bundle design.
CRO experiments worth running: a field guide to honest testing
Most test backlogs are junk drawers. How we triage CRO ideas by evidence, opportunity and traffic tier — and sequence experiments so the learnings compound.
Campaign naming conventions: boring is the feature
UTM and campaign names are infrastructure, not admin. A grammar that survives staff turnover, separators, tooling that enforces it, and cleaning old messes.
Cart cross-sells that don't read as desperation
Cross-sells pay when they answer one complementary question and shut up. Placement ranked by distraction cost, price-band logic, and measuring incrementality.
Schema markup that actually moves the needle
Structured data, done pragmatically: which schema types still earn rich results, how to keep JSON-LD honest, and the default set we ship on every build.
Lifecycle email: the six flows every product needs
Welcome, activation, usage, renewal, winback, referral — the core lifecycle email system with trigger logic, copy principles and measurement that survives audits.
The webinar repurposing engine: one event, twelve assets
One webinar is a quarter of content wearing a trench coat. The slicing taxonomy, SEO mapping, lightweight tooling and honest measurement behind our repurposing engine.
Landing page testing: velocity over genius
A landing page experiment programme that compounds: message-match first, structural swings second, a backlog scoring model that survives meetings, and kill criteria.
Navigation that survives the 375px test
Hamburger alternatives for content-heavy sites: visible-priority nav, hybrid patterns, light mega menus, breadcrumbs as wayfinding, and measuring findability properly.
Feature flags without the graveyard
Flag discipline for product squads: lifecycle stages, a naming grammar, expiry automation, analytics hooks, and the monthly flag funeral that keeps codebases young.