Ribble Cycles: From bug fixes to high-performance ecommerce

[00:00:00] Matthew Lawson: The only constant in ecommerce is change. You still can't lose sight of the errors. You can't lose sight of your site performance because once it's done, it's never just done. Things change, and things evolve. And like I said, lots of things happen to you, not by you, and therefore, you need to have that visibility. That said, you will always have the pressures to look forward.

[00:00:22] Kailin Noivo: Hey, folks. Super excited for another episode with Matt Lawson from Noibu. For those that have been following Noibu for a long time, Matt's one of our earliest customers and advocates. And on this show, we're talking all about how Noibu has executed the perfect evolution—from a point solution in error monitoring to an ecommerce analytics and monitoring platform. We'll talk about what that means and how, as our customers' use cases expanded, so did our product. Super excited for you folks to listen to the podcast today.

[00:00:51] Kailin Noivo: Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives. We have a very different episode today—we have a returning guest, Mr. Matt Lawson. So Matt, why don't you give yourself a brief intro?

[00:01:03] Matthew Lawson: Hello. Great to be here again. Love Chime. So, I'm Matthew. I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Ribble Cycles. My responsibility is everything technology-related for Ribble—from performance marketing right down to development, tech, and pretty much anything with a computer, including the printers. I'm responsible for both the creation of demand and the fulfillment of that demand. So, quite a broad remit.

[00:01:32] Kailin Noivo: Very cool. This episode is part of our customer series. Matt knows one of our top initiatives this year is to reframe Noibu in the market. Many customers originally bought us for one specific reason, but that reason evolves as the product evolves. So Matt, I’ll flip it to you—why did you initially purchase Noibu, and how have your needs changed over time?

[00:02:11] Matthew Lawson: Let’s take a time machine back. We've been using Noibu for over five years now. Originally, we were on a replatforming journey—new frontend, new architecture. I remember a conversation with you, Kailin—you said you could give me a prioritized list of issues to fix based on revenue impact. That was huge.

We already had Google Analytics, Logz.io, session replay tools, and customer service feedback—but nothing gave us prioritization. Noibu did.

During the proof of concept, you called me and said, “You need to fix this today.” A payment gateway change broke conversions on Safari. That moment proved to me the value—detecting real-time behavioral issues tied to revenue.

We fixed it, rolled the tool out, and got a prioritized list of bugs. We bundled fixes into a release—and saw a 4% conversion lift overnight.

[continued] What I didn’t fully appreciate back then was how much third parties impact your site. Payment gateways, A/B testing tools, live chat—all introducing errors without us doing anything.

Without visibility, I would’ve assumed everything was fine because we hadn’t released code. But things were breaking anyway.

Noibu allowed us to share issues directly with vendors. Instead of blame games, we got fast resolutions. That transparency was game-changing.

Then came our new site launch. It was catastrophic—conversion dropped 10% on day one. But we used Noibu like a whack-a-mole tool—fixing issues as they appeared. Within three weeks, conversion surpassed the old site.

Without that visibility, I’d still be wondering if something was broken in checkout.

[00:08:55] Midroll: If you're listening to The Ecommerce Toolbox, you're entitled to a podcast exclusive website audit. Go to noibu.com/podcast-audit.

[00:09:10] Matthew Lawson: As we matured, the focus shifted. It’s no longer just errors—it’s performance. Speed, UX, product discovery, trading—all define performance.

I was tasked with building the fastest cycling website. Noibu gave me benchmarks—what’s good, what’s best. That gave me a target.

We optimized everything: Largest Contentful Paint, CLS, time to first byte. Page by page, we improved until we surpassed benchmarks.

But performance isn’t static. We introduced larger images, and suddenly performance dropped. Noibu flagged it immediately, and we fixed it.

Then we moved into customer journey optimization—heatmaps, scroll depth, click paths. We saw users landing on pages but not progressing. So we added navigation blocks, improved flow, and reduced drop-offs.

We could show the trading team exactly what changed and the impact it had.

That’s performance—not just speed, but outcomes.

[00:13:01] Kailin Noivo: That’s an incredible evolution—from bugs to performance to journeys.

[00:15:00] Matthew Lawson: Exactly. But you can’t skip steps. You need solid foundations—errors and performance—before moving into advanced optimization.

And the next phase is segmentation—not just journeys, but different journeys for different customer intents.

But again, without a stable foundation, everything falls apart.

[00:16:24] Kailin Noivo: That’s exactly what we’re seeing—teams that innovate too quickly often fall back into stabilization.

[00:16:50] Matthew Lawson: Not a problem. Very good.

[00:16:53] Outro: The Ecommerce Toolbox Expert’s Perspectives is brought to you by Noibu. Visit noibu.com to learn more.