EP091 Crafting a Winning Ecommerce Strategy- Key Steps for 2025 Success
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[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: Good day and welcome to Commerce Today. Hey, Josh, good to have you here as always. My name is Darin Newbold and we're here to share what's happening in the world of commerce. And for today's episode, we're looking forward, like we try to every now and then, to 2025 and what those key steps are that you as e commerce merchants need to take to have the best strategy possible.

[00:00:27] DARIN NEWBOLD: So Josh, why is this important? Duh, is probably the biggest answer, right? 

[00:00:32] JOSHUA WARREN: There you go.

[00:00:34] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, no, it's important because, um, you know, it's budgeting season and I see so many, 

[00:00:40] JOSHUA WARREN: e commerce teams or especially single person e commerce leaders that are so busy that when they start thinking about their budget, they either think, how much can I get?

[00:00:48] JOSHUA WARREN: Or I'll take last year's number and add a little bit. And what they're not doing that they really need to be doing, Setting a strategy for the next year and then working backwards from there to get their budget and really connecting [00:01:00] in with the whole business with what the business wants to achieve in the next year.

[00:01:04] JOSHUA WARREN: Figuring out how you're going to do that and then figuring out the resources you need.

[00:01:08] DARIN NEWBOLD: I totally get it. Well, 

[00:01:10] DARIN NEWBOLD: great place to start and where we want to start is at that beginning, that mission, vision, and how that aligns with your overall e commerce strategy. 

[00:01:19] JOSHUA WARREN: about a lot of things So you don't have to be frantically taking notes. If it is not out at the time you're listening to this, if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, I can give you a sneak peek at the work in progress e commerce strategy guide. And yes, we do start with the mission and vision and alignment. between those with your e commerce strategy.

[00:01:44] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, again, this is where I see a lot of e commerce teams are really looking at it as, okay, our e commerce sales were this much this year. We've been told we have to increase them by that much. We've been told this is our goal, but there's not really a focus on how does e [00:02:00] commerce really serve the company's mission and how does it fit in with the vision for the overall company?

[00:02:05] JOSHUA WARREN: And that's where e commerce teams get siloed. They get kind of pushed off to the side. They're not treated as a priority. because the whole organization doesn't see that connection. And so, um, I really encourage you to start there of really examining what is the company's overall mission. And then what's e commerce's part to contribute into that.

[00:02:24] JOSHUA WARREN: That also really helps you, um, keep a very consistent customer experience. Um, otherwise you can really dilute your brand. If you're not really, if e commerce isn't following, um, The overall mission of the company, you might end up with a disjointed experience between your stores and your website.

[00:02:40] DARIN NEWBOLD: So quick question on that, Josh. thinking about that one person, or maybe it's a one or two person, and maybe they're not even the size of the company.

[00:02:48] DARIN NEWBOLD: Maybe they're not on, let's say, the leadership team, per se, that's going to be making some of that vision and mission decisions. How can they get that information or what would be, what would be some ways to [00:03:00] make sure that they're, they're part of the discussion because yeah, you're right. They could easily be, hey, this is just some extra money that we make and we'll shove them in the closet and see what happens.

[00:03:09] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, in the closet, I've even seen one that was shoved into basically a chicken coop with 

[00:03:15] DARIN NEWBOLD: Oh no.

[00:03:16] JOSHUA WARREN: um, really it goes back to something I've taught and talked about before with budgeting, where you need to, during budgeting season, and when you're working on your budgeting as an e commerce leader, whether you're on a leadership team or not, you need to get time with your CFO and you need to talk to them and you need to understand how they think and how they work.

[00:03:35] JOSHUA WARREN: And let them know you're just trying to align e commerce with their financial approach to the business. I think it's the same thing. If you're an e commerce leader, but you're not on your company's leadership team, I think it's totally appropriate to go to your CEO, your COO, whoever it is that you report up to on leadership team and just say, Hey, I'm thinking about our strategy for e commerce for the next year.

[00:03:56] JOSHUA WARREN: And I want to make sure it ties back into our mission. Can you help me [00:04:00] understand, you know, how do you see the company's mission? What's your vision for achieving that mission in the next year? And I think they're really going to appreciate that. At least good executives will appreciate that. And just asking that question, no matter what the answer is, is going to elevate e commerce's level in their opinion.

[00:04:16] JOSHUA WARREN: So

[00:04:17] DARIN NEWBOLD: I agree, especially even if they just asking the question, but even having the ability to maybe even come with a bit of an answer, because if e commerce may not be at the top of their mission and they were to come and say, well, where do you see it? And if they, well, I'm not sure we're just kind of doing this.

[00:04:35] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, here's how I see it. Here's the impact that. I feel we can make could be a great way to increase that. Where would the amount of the vision that, that e commerce is making for your company?

[00:04:45] JOSHUA WARREN: Definitely. And that's where this guide I'm working on. I'm so excited about it because yes, it's going to help companies with their e commerce strategy.

[00:04:52] JOSHUA WARREN: And it's going to help those companies grow, but I think it's going to help a lot of, um, e commerce managers grow. I think it's going to help them do their job more effectively [00:05:00] and really to get, um, whether it's not a promotion, hopefully it's a promotion, but at least get kind of their role and the work they do better appreciated by the rest of the company.

[00:05:09] DARIN NEWBOLD: I agree. And I love this. I love this whole topic that we're doing and especially the, the, the document and the follow up that's going to happen, but all right, moving right along, we, uh, we figure out our mission and our vision, but now we've got to know our audience and how do we optimize that and optimize those customer segments.

[00:05:26] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So you really need to, um, look at your customer segments. Hopefully you have customer segments. I think a lot of, a lot of e commerce leaders I work with, especially the smaller companies, smaller teams, they have very basic demographic segments, but I really recommend go beyond that. And look at specific behaviors, preferences.

[00:05:46] JOSHUA WARREN: There's a lot of different ways to segment out your customers. also I think every year when you're setting your strategy, you need to reevaluate your segments and don't just say, okay, these are the segments we've always had. Maybe your predecessor, Define [00:06:00] them or marketing agency to find them. So we're going to keep them no challenges them every year and say, are these still current?

[00:06:05] JOSHUA WARREN: But they still reflect, uh, the, the market and consumer preferences. Uh, do we have new competition as we'll talk later on, you know, is there something that shifted to where we need to update our customer segments?

[00:06:17] DARIN NEWBOLD: All very, very important as always. But after we've gotten that audience optimized and we know our customer segments, and maybe we even expanded them a little bit, Now we need to really look at that unique selling proposition and how do we get that refined?

[00:06:34] DARIN NEWBOLD: Tell us more about

[00:06:35] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, the, the USP. Um, so The market is saturated. There are so many e commerce sites out there. There are so many people. Chances are they're either selling the exact same products you are, or they're selling a very similar product. Um, and consumers have gotten smart. And so the only way to succeed in e commerce right now is to have a very unique selling proposition.

[00:06:58] JOSHUA WARREN: And. This really needs [00:07:00] to go beyond, you know, we're the cheapest or we're the fastest, things like that. Um, these days it's about an emotional connection with those customer segments of really looking for each segment, look and see how does your unique selling proposition create an emotional connection with them?

[00:07:16] JOSHUA WARREN: And how you, how can you have consistent messaging across e commerce and all other channels, that's basically always tying back to that USB. And again, a lot of teams, when you're in the trenches and you're thinking, you know, what's my budget for next year? What am I going to do with our e commerce site in the next year?

[00:07:32] JOSHUA WARREN: You don't stop and breathe and think, should we update our unique selling proposition? So this is a great time to stop and do that.

[00:07:39] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, and one of the ways that, that I found that has helped me when, when I've tried to look at that unique selling proposition is take even what I'm selling out of it and turn around and say, what, what do I buy? And what am I emotionally attached to that says, and why?

[00:07:56] DARIN NEWBOLD: And once you start looking at that, it can really help [00:08:00] a, uh, a company and a team really discover that their USP and maybe those really unique pieces that you might not always connect on.

[00:08:08] JOSHUA WARREN: True, true. And I want to pause for a minute here and just acknowledge that some of the e commerce leaders and e commerce managers out there, you learned all about USPs in college.

[00:08:18] JOSHUA WARREN: You maybe went to, I know here in North Texas, University of North Texas has a great e commerce program. They teach you all those things. I also know a lot of e commerce managers and leaders, though, that are a little more technical, um, maybe didn't go to college or didn't go to college for an e commerce or business degree, and you're either sitting there going, I don't know how to set a USP, or you're rolling your eyes at the thought of a USP.

[00:08:41] JOSHUA WARREN: And that's where, um, in this e commerce strategy guide I'm building, Got to mention my favorite thing, ChatGPT. Um, I've actually built out ChatGPT prompts that will help you reason through and, um, write some of these things. So if you're kind of struggling with how, what's the best unique selling [00:09:00] proposition, um, for my business, I have tweaked and experimented and found ChatGPT prompts where ChatGPT can.

[00:09:07] JOSHUA WARREN: Analyze your site. Analyze your products. Analyze your competitors and actually help you fine tune your unique selling 

[00:09:14] DARIN NEWBOLD: What a fantastic tool for people to have. We're moving on and keeping our progress here because otherwise this could be a two part episode. So keeping it going. we've gotten our, uh, our USP.

[00:09:25] DARIN NEWBOLD: Now we got to look at performance and we talk about this virtually every episode, but performance, sales, conversion, customer metrics. What do we need to do?

[00:09:35] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So people, again, lots of times are just told increase sales 10 percent or maybe they say we want to increase sales 10 percent and that's the extent of their strategy.

[00:09:46] JOSHUA WARREN: And what I really recommend is start before you commit to anything like that. Actually map out. All of your performance metrics. So your average order value, your conversion rates, your traffic, customer attention, metrics, [00:10:00] map out what those currently are, because you can use that as a foundation to then map out what they could be in the future.

[00:10:06] JOSHUA WARREN: And as you look at that, you can decide, okay, if we think we can increase conversion rates by 2%, Average order value by 10%, you know, maybe we play a little bit with traffic levels by this much that you can work through the math and then say, Okay, actually, our revenue increase for next year will be this much.

[00:10:25] JOSHUA WARREN: And especially if you then go to your executive team or your leadership team, do you say, Hey, Yes, we're going to increase e commerce sales by 10 percent next year, but here's exactly how we're going to do it. Here's the improvements we're going to make in these different metrics. That's going to get a lot more buy in into your abilities as an e commerce manager and into the strategy that you're building out.

[00:10:44] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, such great information that the leadership team would need. And this, this goes back to them being able to sell your vision. You know, the first thing we talked about your vision of where e commerce plays overall in the company. Well, all right. Well, next up and kind of the, the last of [00:11:00] the key pieces of all of this market trends and competitive analysis analysis.

[00:11:05] DARIN NEWBOLD: Now I have to admit that I did take marketing in college and, uh, Wow, this sounds cool. And at first I thought it was cool. It is one of my least favorite of all things to have to do, but I know it's important. Josh, tell us all about

[00:11:17] JOSHUA WARREN: It really is. So again, this is where you separate out kind of the average e commerce businesses from those that are really thriving. And that's by looking and seeing, okay, what's changing in the market. What are our competitors doing? Um, and it's, it goes beyond just, you know, who are our competitors, but it's really looking at, okay, this competitor, what do they do better than us?

[00:11:38] JOSHUA WARREN: What do they do worse than us? How do we win when consumers are comparing us against them? Okay. Now what can e commerce do in the next year to make us win a little bit more and to stay a little bit further ahead of them? And so really looking at what their strengths and weaknesses are can help you carve out a larger competitive niche for yourself.

[00:11:58] DARIN NEWBOLD: this market trends, [00:12:00] Where would you see, I was just thinking about, thinking about the person that sells t shirts online.

[00:12:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: There's, there's a lot of them. You can find them all over. Some of them are very niche, very specific. Some of them are broad and all over the place. But I'm thinking about we're in a, we're in an election year, which is always fun. And just think you're making t shirts, you're making them obviously both sides of the fence, maybe even some sides of the fence that we don't even know about, but that doesn't matter.

[00:12:25] DARIN NEWBOLD: Being aware of those, because you know that come whatever, November. Those sales are going to drop off dramatically. And that's an easy one. But thinking about those that follow sports and sporting events and knowing when the, the championships are and being on top of those. And it's, it's all of those types of things that can really play into what you're selling as well.

[00:12:49] JOSHUA WARREN: and so true. And even beyond that, um, something that in the guide, we dive into deeper under market trends is also being aware of changes in the law and changes in compliance [00:13:00] requirements.

[00:13:00] JOSHUA WARREN: And the big thing in the news right now, of course, is maybe. Congress is going to close some of the loopholes that make it easy for, um, Timu to ship cheap duty free products straight into the U S from China. Um, if that changes and you are currently using that loophole, then all your products could suddenly get a lot more expensive.

[00:13:22] JOSHUA WARREN: I've actually heard that Timu is already getting a step ahead of that, doing almost like what Amazon did whenever Amazon realized they were going to start charging sales tax as far as saying, okay, now maybe we're going to make some of this stuff in the U S or maybe we're going to use warehouses in the U S and finding different ways to stay ahead of those shifts.

[00:13:39] JOSHUA WARREN: So definitely you don't want to have a big shift come about in the market and you be left behind. Um, could, could be a bad time.

[00:13:48] DARIN NEWBOLD: That would be very, it'd be very detrimental.

[00:13:50] JOSHUA WARREN: And this is where, um, I have found especially newer versions of ChatGPT and you don't have to use ChatGPT. This episode is not sponsored by OpenAI. [00:14:00] Um, I'm a fan of Perplexity. I do some local, uh, open source AI work as well, but this is where ChatGPT has made a lot of progress and is almost on par with Perplexity as far as being able to do web research and go out there and say, okay, these are the products I sell.

[00:14:16] JOSHUA WARREN: These are a few of my competitors. What's three other competitors that maybe I'm not even aware of, or what are these competitors doing right now? Um, and even on the free version of chat GPT, um, you can get some decent analysis, but then that 20 bucks a month for, uh, the, the plus plan or for perplexity pro it's amazing what it can uncover.

[00:14:36] JOSHUA WARREN: And it's, it's where, again, if you're a single person, e commerce manager or a small e commerce team, it can really be a force multiplier and you can really, you can plan more. and plan more effectively for your e commerce strategy for the next year than you've ever been able to do before.

[00:14:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: That is awesome. Well, Josh, we've, uh, we've gone over five of just 15 of the [00:15:00] ultimate sections of the guide that you've spoken about.

[00:15:02] DARIN NEWBOLD: And the five that we did today, we talked about mission vision and align and aligning that with your e commerce strategy, knowing your audience, optimizing the segments, customer segments. We needed to refine that unique selling proposition, performance analysis, sales conversion, all those metrics that we got to keep track of.

[00:15:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: And then finally market trends. and competitive analysis. So with that, we've teased it several times. We've talked about it. I am so excited about this full guide that you put together. You know my thoughts. We were just talking about it. And, um, I know there's people that are really going to benefit from having this.

[00:15:37] DARIN NEWBOLD: I know it's kind of in a, it's called a beta phase at the moment, and we obviously want to continue to refine it, but tell us all about it, Josh.

[00:15:45] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So the guide, um, we talked about some of the first few sections that actually then walks you through, um, your current customer satisfaction, customer reviews through operational efficiencies, your technology, really through everything.

[00:15:59] JOSHUA WARREN: And it's all [00:16:00] about getting you in the right mindset to then say, okay, uh, These are really are the most impactful things we can do as an e commerce team in the next year. Um, and then I pull in even some of the leadership work and some of the project management work we've done here at Creatuity to walk you through.

[00:16:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Okay, now what are, what, how do you set your KPIs? How do you manage the risk of reaching these goals and reaching these KPIs? And so I'm really excited about it. Um, there's a B2C version and there's a B2B version. and if you are interested, if you want to sneak peek at kind of this rough beta version, If you reach out to me on LinkedIn, um, I have my profile set to where anyone can message me.

[00:16:37] JOSHUA WARREN: So you can just drop me a message on LinkedIn. I will share kind of the rough version with you once the final version, or at least the 1. 0 is done. I will also post that publicly on my LinkedIn. And then also I'm still doing those free 30 minute e commerce problem solving sessions. And what those have become lately is really, you know, Using that as an opportunity to beta test this guide and to really walk people [00:17:00] through thinking about their strategy for the next year.

[00:17:02] JOSHUA WARREN: other things with it. in addition to some of that KPI setting and all, there's going to be a few other, um, like worksheets with it, a tech stack evaluation checklist, KPI monitoring framework, really trying to go all out and build. Really the tool that, you know, anytime I've been working with a e commerce manager, that seems a little overworked, a little under resourced, the tool that I feel like could really help them in their job.

[00:17:27] DARIN NEWBOLD: This is awesome. This is awesome. It's just the start. And what a value for E commerce professionals and leaders with merchants that just need a little bit of help. And I know, hey, yes, it's one more thing to read. Yes, it's multiple pages. but it's so valuable. And, Often when things are frantic, things are crazy, being able to pause long enough to read, to start answering questions, you're going to find that the value is really, really there.

[00:17:55] DARIN NEWBOLD: So as always, hey, we want to hear your comments. Please, uh, reach out to us. [00:18:00] Joshua Warren on LinkedIn is, uh, is the connection. Any last other quick connections or follow ups that, that you're thinking of, Josh?

[00:18:08] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, it is a lengthy guide, like you mentioned, but that is also one of the reasons why I built those chat GPT prompts into it.

[00:18:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Because if you don't have a lot of time, or if you're just not used to thinking in this way, I've really designed some prompts that will help you use chat GPT as a thinking partner to help you work through it pretty quickly.

[00:18:26] DARIN NEWBOLD: Great, great resource for you. We hope you take advantage of it. Definitely reach out. As always, we appreciate you listening. Thanks a bunch for connecting with us here at Commerce today. See ya.

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