Your Ecommerce Strategy Probably Needs an Upgrade
A modern ecommerce strategy enhances operational efficiency, improves the customer experience, and strengthens your brand’s market presence. How do you know if your ecommerce strategy is working? Here’s how.
Consider your ecommerce strategy: Is it working? If not, you’re likely relying on an outdated playbook that depends on a website redesign every 3-5 years and undergoing a painful migration to a new platform, with centralised data and analytics often being low priority.
The digital landscape has evolved, and so should your approach. Being a successful ecommerce brand is less about completing big splashy overhauls and more about prioritising ongoing site iteration, optimisation and partnerships.
So, is your strategy outdated? Let’s get into it.
Outdated Ecommerce Strategies (And Why They Do Not Work)
Large Website Overhauls: Every five years or more, businesses pour resources into a massive redesign or relaunch. This often means shifting to a new ecommerce platform entirely. While it seems like a necessary refresh, it’s actually a time-consuming, disruptive process that can stall momentum.
Reactive Site Management: Websites are only maintained and optimised leading up to key selling periods or when something breaks. This reactive approach leaves you vulnerable to downtime during critical moments and results in a site that feels stale and out of touch with customer needs.
Inconsistent Branding: In the rush to make updates, brand assets get used inconsistently, leading to a fractured brand story. The result? A website that doesn’t accurately represent your brand’s values or vision, leaving customers confused or disengaged. More importantly, the website doesn’t feel consistent with what the brand is doing across external mid-lower funnel marketing channels.
Isolated Operations: A website operates in a silo, with web analytics being the only driving force for what’s working. While this stream of data is important, relying on it solely limits your ability to see the bigger picture—how customers interact with your brand across all touchpoints.
These old strategies may have worked in the past, but today’s competitive market requires a dynamic, integrated, and customer-focused approach.
It’s Time to Adopt a New Ecommerce Strategy
Establish Long-term Strategic Partnerships: Your ecommerce platform is seen as a critical component of your long-term business strategy. Establishing a strong partnership with an account representative at the platform provider is key as it will allow you to gain a deep understanding of the platform’s strengths, weaknesses, and product roadmap. By providing ongoing feedback, you ensure the platform evolves in a way that aligns with your business goals. Modern brands now value and champion their ecommerce partners for the value they provide.
Build a Robust Business Stack: Create a “business stack” with best-in-class partners for customer success, fulfilment, CRM, business intelligence, and more. These partners should complement each other, allowing you to stay agile and responsive to market changes. This approach will empower you to add and subtract responsibly, maintaining a sense of control and adaptability in your strategy. Additionally, it fosters a collaborative environment where each partner’s insights contribute to growth and efficiency. You will have more control over your day-to-day decisions.
View Your Site as a Living Product: Your ecommerce site should be treated as a living, breathing product that requires ongoing attention and optimisation. Regularly investing in front-end refreshes focused on branding updates every 24-36 months ensures that your site remains aligned with your brand’s evolving story. This continuous improvement strategy will motivate your team to strive for better results. Frequent updates also signal to customers that your brand is engaged and responsive, reinforcing trust and loyalty.
Focus on Content-driven Marketing: Ensure your site has a consistent flow of product, lifestyle, and brand content across every aspect of your site and all entry points (such as social media and search). This will assure the site reflects the most up-to-date brand story and drive customer engagement and loyalty.
Make Holistic and Informed Decisions: Business decisions should be informed by a mix of data sources. As different stakeholders provide feedback, patterns emerge that guide where to adjust or invest further. This holistic approach ensures that your decisions are grounded in a comprehensive understanding of what’s actually working in your business.
Be a Student of Emerging Trends: Be a student of emerging trends and their impact on your business, such as the shift from SEO to LLMO and the influence of large language models on organic search. Structuring your branded content for the new internet will yield short-term benefits and, more importantly, shape how marketing teams develop blog posts and product detail pages (PDPs) in the future.
Why This New Approach Works
If you fall into the old category, it’s time to augment your approach. Transitioning to a new ecommerce strategy can be smooth and impactful with the right partner, and the cost difference is minimal compared to the benefits.
A modern ecommerce strategy enhances operational efficiency, improves the customer experience, and strengthens your brand’s market presence. The difference comes down to the small things—consistent updates, strategic partnerships, and content-driven marketing. When these elements come together, the results are anything but small.
