The microphone was live, Richard Shotton was ready on Vimeo, and I was settling into what would become the first proper Browse Basket Buy recording.

Welcome to podcasting!

But here’s the thing about first episodes—they’re supposed to be messy. What they’re not supposed to be is revelatory conversations with one of the sharpest minds in behavioural psychology.

Yet that’s exactly what happened when Richard Shotton agreed to christen the very first Browse Basket Buy with a deep dive into the psychology of ecommerce decisions.

Why Richard, why now

Getting Richard for episode one wasn’t just good fortune. If you’re going to launch a podcast about the intersection of human psychology and online shopping, you need someone who’s spent years proving that what we think we know about consumer behaviour is often spectacularly wrong.

Richard’s built his reputation on taking academic research and showing how it actually works in the wild. His book The Choice Factory doesn’t just explain why people make irrational decisions—it shows you how to design for those decisions.

Which, if you’re in eCommerce, is basically a manual for not going insane.

The conversation we had reinforced something I’ve suspected for years: most of us are designing shopping experiences based on what we think people should do, not what they actually do. Richard brought three decades of evidence suggesting we’ve got it backwards.

The decoy effect

One moment that particularly stuck with me was Richard’s explanation of the decoy effect in eCommerce contexts. It’s the classic behavioural economics principle where adding a deliberately inferior option makes your preferred choice look more attractive.

We’ve all seen this with cinema popcorn: small (£3.50), medium (£6.50), large (£7). Nobody’s supposed to buy the medium—it’s there to make the large look like incredible value.

But Richard showed how this applies to subscription models, delivery options, even product bundling. The key insight isn’t that customers are being manipulated—it’s that choice architecture always exists.

The question is whether you’re designing it thoughtfully or accidentally.

What struck me was how this connects to any ecommerce decision. When we’re testing different options, we’re essentially running real-time experiments in choice architecture.

The difference between a 5% discount and a 10% discount isn’t just mathematical—it’s psychological.

First episodes

Let me be completely honest: I was nervous. Not about talking to Richard—he’s genuinely one of the most generous, thoughtful people you could hope to interview.

I was nervous about whether it would all come together well, whether I’d get better at this with practice.

The beauty of working with Vimeo as LinkedIn’s Live partner meant the technical side ran smoothly. Richard brought his usual blend of expertise and warmth, and by the end, we’d settled into a rhythm that felt natural, conversational, and—dare I say it—actually insightful.

The recording itself went better than I had any right to expect. Richard brought stories, data, and that rare ability to make complex psychological concepts feel obvious in retrospect.

We covered everything from social proof on product pages to the psychology of free shipping thresholds.

What matters

Here’s what I learned from episode one, both from Richard’s insights and from the process itself:

People optimise for feelings, not outcomes. Richard shared research showing how customers will choose longer delivery times if they’re presented as “eco-friendly,” even when faster options cost the same. It’s not about the logic—it’s about how the choice makes them feel about themselves.

Friction isn’t always the enemy. Sometimes a little bit of effort in the buying process actually increases perceived value. The key is knowing when friction helps and when it hurts.

Context shapes everything. The same offer presented in different ways can drive completely different responses. Richard talked about how simply reframing a discount from “save £10” to “save £10 compared to our usual price” dramatically changed uptake.

Cohesion achieved?

What surprised me most was how cohesive the whole thing felt across all platforms. The website, YouTube channel, Spotify and Apple Podcast listings, LinkedIn presence—everything looked professional and felt like parts of the same thing. It’s one thing to plan a consistent brand experience; it’s another to see it actually work when you go live.

The conversation itself had a natural flow too. Richard’s expertise in behavioural psychology fitted perfectly with the practical challenges that anyone running an ecommerce business faces daily.

It felt like the start of something genuinely useful—a space where academic rigour meets checkout optimisation, where theory gets tested against conversion rates.

What’s next

The plan is to get better at this with practice. But more importantly, I want to keep finding guests who bring this combination of deep knowledge and practical application.

Browse Basket Buy exists because I believe the gap between what we know about human psychology and how we design shopping experiences is both enormous and entirely fixable. Richard proved that in forty-five minutes of conversation.

This article was written with the assistance of AI.