Hookflash event: The Conversion Formula

Our goal? To emphasise the importance of a holistic approach to website optimisation—not just to increase revenue but to deliver a genuinely sophisticated customer experience. The Conversion Formula event was the second event hosted by us, where we focused on our core services: Analytics, CRO, and SEO and how they support digital optimisation.

To enhance business performance, we pinpointed three key opportunities:

1. Making the post-click experience impactful to improve media ROI.
2. Future-proofing your tracking setup by incorporating data modelling.
3. Adopting appropriate SEO (or SGO) approaches to embrace innovative ways of measuring results.

We collaborated closely with key partners AB Tasty and ObservePoint to deliver an insightful and memorable event. Together, we discussed strategies to future-proof businesses in an ever-changing digital world, ensuring continuous growth and success.

Setting the scene with a bingo game!

Oliver Walker, Managing Director, set the tone of the event with an interactive bingo session! By creatively turning key industry statistics—like the notable 55% website data loss due to modern tracking prevention tools—into a fun and engaging bingo game, attendees were exposed to practical challenges marketers face today while enjoying the opportunity to win prizes.

Over to Analytics: The challenge of data visibility and tracking

Our Head of Analytics (or Analytics Jedi), Dan Jennings, initiated the analytics talk by addressing core measurement challenges faced by marketers today.



In short, tracking accurate data from your website has become increasingly challenging due to factors such as Adblockers, Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), cookie banners, and consent-conscious tracking. Even when data is successfully captured, it often ends up siloed in different locations, making meaningful analysis difficult.

We then had an insightful demonstration by Mike Fong, Senior Manager from ObservePoint. Mike shared practical ways ObservePoint helps our clients navigate compliance challenges and adhere to the ICO’s guidelines. He addressed common pitfalls in compliance, highlighted the importance of durable measurement strategies, and emphasised that interpreting ICO guidance correctly is critical. He also provided valuable insights into assessing compliance proactively, clarifying why having less data due to privacy measures doesn't necessarily mean reduced effectiveness in your analytics strategy.

Our technical minds, Yikai Wang, Analytics Director, and Will Woods, Technical Analyst at Hookflash,  hared their practical solutions, highlighting that web-observable data is shrinking due to stricter privacy measures. 

They emphasised the growing importance of data modelling due to limited observable data, recommending the use of a robust data warehouse, such as Google BigQuery.

By combining web data, paid ads platform data, and other business data in one centralised warehouse, businesses can effectively model and process data, producing intelligent and, for most businesses, relevant insights.

Dan concluded this segment by outlining actionable steps for navigating these challenges:

• Using Google Gateway to mitigate the impact of ITP and certain adblockers
• Staying updated with ICO guidelines to ensure compliance in your tracking setup
• Move analytics tracking onto server side
• Implement advanced consent mode if you are using google stack
• Design measurement structure with modelling in mind
• Build a data pipeline that brings online and office sources into the same data warehouse
• Establish data engineering and data science teams and bring online data into the modelling process

Need help with Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics? Our analytics team can help! 

How is SEO evolving in 2025?

Mollie Ellerton, our Head of SEO, tackled the ever-popular question: “Is SEO dead?” by examining the evolving search landscape, including the rise of AI Overviews and LLM-generated traffic. Mollie emphasised the importance of adapting your SEO strategy to accommodate new search behaviours, rather than declaring traditional SEO dead.

In essence, search today includes emerging features such as AI Mode and AI Overviews. Ensuring strong technical SEO foundations is vital to give your site the best chance to be featured prominently in these new formats. Elements like internal linking, navigation, and structured data significantly influence your site's visibility. We even published a case study demonstrating the positive correlation between structured data implementation and increased visibility within AI Overviews!



Once these foundational elements are secure, content should be crafted with LLM behaviours in mind, producing high-quality, relevant material. For a deeper dive into this discussion, check out our dedicated blog post: Is SEO Dead in 2025?.

We then moved on to an engaging panel discussion featuring Michael Holloway (SEO Manager at Hookflash), Laura Reid (The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association), and James Brown (Comtec Translations). The panel explored the tangible impact AI is having on search visibility and user experience, highlighting the necessity of adapting SEO strategies to emerging trends. A key takeaway was the importance of proactively embracing AI, remaining transparent about evolving search behaviours, and clearly communicating how agencies effectively integrate AI into their SEO strategies.

The SEO section concluded with a talk by Ellie Connor, SEO & PPC Manager at Danone UK, who was a recent speaker at BrightonSEO in April 2025. Ellie discussed leveraging collaboration between PPC and SEO to create winning search strategies. She highlighted that siloing datasets creates inefficiencies and stressed the benefits of adopting a unified total search strategy. By integrating PPC and SEO, businesses can maximise visibility, drive traffic, reduce costs, and enhance overall performance.

CRO and the importance of testing

Nicole Storey, our Head of CRO, guided attendees through an insightful journey into experimentation. Nicole began her segment with an engaging “guess which variation won” game, challenging clients to predict successful website tests. She highlighted a crucial statistic—around 70% of website changes fail to improve conversions—emphasising why structured experimentation is essential for maximising your marketing investments and avoiding unnecessary expenditure. Our Lovat park case study is an excellent example with a +£117k in revenue saved through experimentation!

Following Nicole’s session, Robert Hawthorne- Marketing Director for Clarion Events, shared Clarion’s path to experimentation maturity. Robert provided practical advice on establishing a successful testing programme, including securing stakeholder buy-in, clearly setting expectations, simplifying processes for your team, and initially focusing on quick wins to demonstrate the wider business impact.

We wrapped up the event with Ryan O'Sullivan, Partner Manager at AB Tasty, who provided valuable insights into AB Tasty’s approach to the future of AI-driven personalisation. Ryan demonstrated how businesses can significantly enhance user experiences by leveraging AI tools, tailoring shopping journeys to individual preferences, and consequently driving higher ROI. The introduction of AI Copilot and Ideas Copilot by AB Tasty underscored how AI technologies are rapidly transforming personalised marketing, enabling businesses to stay competitive and increase customer satisfaction.

And that’s a wrap on another successful Hookflash event!