Stuart McMillan

Stuart first started in ecommerce 17 years ago, selling tents and other outdoor equipment, before properly getting his geek on and moving in to a senior development role. Moving back in to a more general role, he worked for Schuh for seven years; his job description included responsibility for site performance, analytics and the quality of the conversion across all devices and being the champion for the multichannel, connected customer. He’s big advocate of web standards and appreciates a job well done. He brings a detailed technical appreciation to ecommerce, combined with a truly awful sense of humour.

He recently moved on from Schuh and is now Head of Multichannel for the outdoor retailer, Tiso, part of the JD Sports family. This is a real return to his retailing routes, again selling outdoor equipment. A broader role than in Schuh, his responsibilities are everything from Digital Marketing through User Experience to fulfillment.

7 Years of Never Shutting Up About Site Speed (Schuh case study)

Stuart will be presenting a case study of his seven years at Schuh, where they moved from having a “site speed problem” to “fastest in the UK”. What’s extraordinary about Schuh’s performance journey is how ordinary it is. They had (and in some cases continue to have) many of the same issues in common with most websites, and there is nothing revolutionary about the solutions. In many ways, this is a case study of hard work and persistence. But along the way there have been a few interesting problems to solve, from challenges with third parties, to challenges with third parties!

Stuart will cover a bit of theory and plenty of application, from measurement through to implementation, from processes to people.