Old e-commerce site strategy
- Invest in a new website every 5+ years.
- Migrate your entire business stack to the new trendy e-commerce platform or approach.
- Maintain and optimize the site around only leading up to key selling periods or when something breaks.
- Leverage inconsistent brand assets that don’t tell an accurate or up-to-date brand story and feel detached from your marketing.
- Settle for a site operating in isolation with web analytics as your only driving force for what is working.
New e-commerce site strategy
- Consider your e-commerce platform a critical aspect of your long-term business strategy. Have your team (or agency) develop a partnership with an account rep at the platform and truly understand the strengths, weaknesses, and product roadmap. Be honest and share feedback as it comes up.
- Create a “business stack” with best-in-class partners for customer success, fulfillment, CRM, BI, etc. These partners should complement each other, and you should stay updated on new and exciting apps and businesses. This approach will empower you to add and subtract responsibly, maintaining a sense of control and adaptability in your strategy. You will have way more control over your day-to-day decisions.
- View your e-commerce site as a living and breathing product. When managed effectively, this approach can be cost-effective and ensure your experience is constantly optimized for conversion. Invest in a larger refresh (front-end) that is primarily focused on branding updates every 24-36 months. This continuous improvement strategy will inspire and motivate your team to strive for better results.
- Build a marketing focus that creates content. Both product, lifestyle, and beyond to ensure all aspects of your site and entry points (social, search, etc.) constantly reflect the most up-to-date brand story.
- Make business decisions that are holistic and informed by multiple data sources. These should become increasingly obvious over time as multiple parties tell you the same things that need adjustment or more investment because they’re working!
If you fall into the first category, it’s time to augment your approach. The good news is that making these changes is usually pretty straightforward with the right partner, and we have found that the cost difference between doing it the old way and the new way is minimal, while the impact is anything but.
It's the little things that separate how businesses operate day-to-day.
When you stack them all up, these actions and decisions lead to results that are not so little…