Jonny Longden

Digital Experience Director | Helping you put experimentation at the heart of your business | Top Experimentation Influencer

My career has been driven by a singular obsession: fundamentally changing the way the business world makes growth and innovation decisions. For nearly two decades, I've forged a unique path using data and experimentation to ignite digital innovation and elevate customer experience.

While the term 'experimentation' has gained traction, I've observed a profound disconnect in its application. Too often, it's relegated to superficial A/B testing or seen as a tactical tweak, failing to deliver its true potential as a strategic driver of growth. This narrow focus leads to siloed learning, unquantifiable investment, and continued reliance on opinion and guesswork for critical business decisions.

This is why I champion Experimentation-Led Growth (ELG). At its core, ELG is about moving beyond mere 'optimisation' to build robust, evidence-driven operating systems for sustained business impact. It's about empowering organisations to de-risk ambitious innovation, accelerate learning velocity, and generate compounding commercial outcomes. My work focuses on integrating Growth Experimentation Systems & Engineering – connecting the strategic vision, the operational infrastructure, and the customer insights to ensure every investment drives tangible, measurable progress.

My unique blend of agency, client-side, and management consultancy experience at senior levels has equipped me with a holistic view of the digital landscape. From leading product analytics for Visa Checkout and building high-impact product discovery teams at Sky, to owning the P&L for front-end Digital Product at Boohoo Group, as well as scaling a digital experience consultancy from scratch, I've consistently applied an experimentation mindset to unlock significant commercial value.

I partner with visionary leaders – VPs of Growth, Product Directors, Digital Directors, and C-suite executives – who are determined to move past the limitations of traditional approaches. If you're looking to transform how your teams learn, ship, and grow; if you're seeking to embed genuine evidence-based decision-making across your organisation; or if you want to unlock step-change velocity and impact from your digital investments, let's connect. I'm keen to share insights and explore how a Growth Experimentation approach can redefine your trajectory.

Contact me at jonny@speero.com or +44 777 909 6222 to find out how we can help you grow.

Director, Digital Experience Services

90% of all changes made to websites are based on opinion and are a waste of time and money because…

It is impossible to know 1000s of customers
Your opinion is deeply biased
You can’t rationalise the irrational

Regardless of the size of your business, the answer is to put data and experimentation at the heart of your development operations. 

We help you do that. 

We take the guesswork out of decision making and provide consultancy and training, systems and frameworks, and experimentation agency services to help you reach your full growth potential.

Email me to learn how to put experimentation at the heart of your business: jonny@journeyfurther.com
Subscribe to my newsletter: jonnylongden.com/newsletter

The hot topic in our industry right now is Agentic Synthetic Testing.

Imagine this: You upload two designs. The system spins up 100,000 AI agents. It gives each one a backstory: "You are a 54-year-old from France, low digital literacy, poor eyesight, looking for a bargain." It runs the simulation. It tells you Version B won. It takes 5 minutes.

No traffic needed. No waiting. Instant statistical significance.

This technology is incredible. It is coming. And it will be valuable 𝗮𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘀.

If you treat this as "proof," you are making a mistake.

An AI model is a probability engine trained on what has already happened. It aggregates the "average" of the entire internet. When you test with synthetic users, you aren't testing reality - you are testing against a massive database of heuristics and best practices on steroids.

You are optimizing for the average. You are engineering mediocrity.

Use it for speed: Use it to squash bugs, check accessibility, or filter out terrible ideas before they launch. Use it if you don't have the volume of traffic to do real tests. 

Don't use it for truth: It cannot predict the irrational, messy, emotional behavior of a real human being reacting to a new market condition or a brand new innovation.

Synthetic testing is a map. It is not the territory. By all means, use the map. But don't forget to look out the window at the real world occasionally.

#experimentation #growth #experimentationledgrowth #growthexperimentation #ai #generativeai #productivity

Chief Growth Officer @ Speero | Growth Experimentation Systems & Engineering | Product & Digital Innovation Leader

Host @ nohacks.show podcast | Chief Growth Officer @ FOSH

I help brands see what's actually broken on their site - and what to fix first.

Most sites are built for sighted humans only. But your site has three audiences: humans, assistive technologies, and AI systems. They all read your site through code. If it's broken for one, it's usually broken for all three. That's costing you traffic, conversions, and visibility.

I run technical audits covering performance, accessibility, and AI readiness. I also host a podcast about optimizing the web for AI agents. If your site is slow, inaccessible, or invisible to the next generation of search - let's talk.

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Fifteen years in web development, web performance, technical SEO and CRO have shown me which levers move the metrics that matter. I work side by side with design, development and marketing teams to ship improvements instead of reports.

I’ve helped teams at Instacart, Klarna and Search Engine Journal launch products, increase conversions and speed up their websites. I'm also a keynote speaker, CXL-certified CRO (conversion rate optimisation) specialist, WordPress Core Contributor and WordCamp Porto 2024 and Future of eXperimentation 2025 organiser.

Slobodan Manić

Is your website actually working for you? Here's how to find out (for free).

In 2026 your website needs to work for three audiences:

- Human visitors who expect it to be fast and accessible
- Search engines that decide if you get found
- AI systems that are becoming how people discover businesses

The problem? Checking all of this has been complicated. Existing tools either:

- Drown you in technical jargon
- Cost you money
- Require a developer to interpret

Or all of the above. I built Glimpse to change that.

You enter one URL. You click. You get easy to understand results.

Glimpse audits your website for SEO, performance, accessibility, AND how AI systems understand your content. No technical background needed. And it's free.

Not "free trial." Not "freemium with paywalls." Free by design.

Why? Because every business deserves to know how their website is performing, without needing a consultant to tell them. 

What you'll learn:

- How search engines and AI interpret your content
- What's slowing down your site
- Accessibility issues that exclude visitors
- What your pages look like with vs without JavaScript
- Quick wins you can fix today

Ready to see what's really going on?

Check out the link in the first comment.

P.S. The screenshot shows the welcome email, not the audit!

P.P.S. Fixing a bug on Cloudflare - has to do with Puppeteer page crawling and the initial audit. Should be fixed later today, everything else works.

We haven’t quite figured out how AI understand and uses the web we built for ourselves. I’m trying to do that. | Keynote speaker | Host of the No Hacks podcast (200+ eps)

Hot take: By 2027, your "Brand Values" page will be more important than your product page.

Why? Because AI agents can easily compare product specs. They know your competitor is 10% cheaper and has better battery life. You can't hide that anymore. 

"12 people are looking at this product right now" won't cut it. "Add $20 more to cart to get a free gift" won't cut it.

The only differentiator left is the one thing the machine can't commoditize:
Your reputation. Your logistics. Your return policy. Your actual behavior as a company.

Jono Alderson calls this "Upstream Engineering." Stop optimizing the meta tags. Start optimizing the quality of the cardboard you use for shipping.

Do you agree or disagree with this take?

New No Hacks episode with the one and only Jono Alderson is dropping tomorrow. Not sure if everyone will like what they hear, but you need to hear it.

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Subscribe to the podcast (https://lnkd.in/eGFerCui) and the Substack (https://lnkd.in/dtDRRsYR) there's a lot of content there you will not see on LinkedIn.

Making humans happier by making websites fast, semantic, and accessible. AI seems to like it, too | Keynote speaker | Host of the No Hacks podcast (200+ eps)

For 100 years, marketing followed one simple law: The Threshold.

It didn’t matter if you ran a physical store in 1925 or a website in 2005. The goal was always the same: Drag a human across your threshold.

As long as they were "out there" (on the street, on Google), they were distracted. But once they crossed into your environment, you controlled the messaging. You could "sell the pen" and you could to it on your own terms.

In 2026, that era is effectively over.

I just interviewed Jono Alderson, and he laid out a brutal reality for anyone relying on website traffic: The threshold hasn't just moved. It has been deleted.

We have transitioned from "marketing to humans" to "marketing to machines." We no longer speak directly to the customer. We speak to an AI agent that decides whether or not to pass our message along. And most of the time it decides not to.

The data proves it. As Rand Fishkin (who I would LOVE to have on the podcast in 2026) and the team at SparkToro found, more than half of Google searches now result in "Zero Clicks". That is more than half of all intent vanishing into the machine without ever crossing a website’s threshold.

Jono’s conclusion is uncomfortable: If the machine extracts your value without sending a human, your website becomes a "Husk."

It’s a hollow shell. Technically online, but functionally dead because it offers no unique value that the AI hasn't already memorized.

So, what do you do when you can't optimize for clicks?

You move upstream. You stop optimizing your title tags and false urgency triggers and start optimizing your return policy, your logistics, and your real-world reputation.

Because the machine sees through the marketing fluff. It punishes incoherence.
The threshold is gone. You are no longer inviting people into your store. You are submitting evidence to a judge who may or may not rule in your favour.

Listen to the episode at https://lnkd.in/ePGwAtXN

You used to be able to "greenwash" your brand.

You could claim "We prioritize sustainability" on your homepage, while customers on Reddit complained about your wasteful packaging.

Humans rarely checked both. Machines read both simultaneously.

In the latest No Hacks podcast episode, Jono Alderson calls this the "Incoherence Penalty."

LLMs flatten the web. They vectorize your sales copy and cross-reference it against forum discussions, reviews, and news articles.

If there is a gap between what you say and what the internet knows, the machine spots the incoherence. It treats your marketing as a hallucination or a lie.

As Jono told me: "The cost of that incoherence and failure is far higher. All of that gets encoded and remembered... All of that haunts you."

You can no longer fix a bad reputation with good SEO. You have to fix the reality.
We discuss how to survive this shift in the full episode, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

How do you do that? You find the search box and type "No Hacks: Optimising the Web for AI Agents". Then subscribe to the podcast. Or if you prefer reading, find the No Hacks Substack, and if that doesn't roll off the tongue I don't know what does.

CTA #2: Follow Jono. Read his blog. Listen to what he has to say. It is important.

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Slobodan Manić

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The Battle

Jonny Longden

Slobodan Manić

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jonny Longden's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJonny Longden's LinkedIn Performance