EP105 Out with the Old – 10 E-Commerce Practices to Leave Behind In 2024
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[00:00:00] JOSHUA WARREN: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Commerce Today. I'm your host, Joshua Warren, CEO of Creatuity. I'm thrilled to have you with me for this special New Year's Eve episode. Whether you're watching while wrapping up your work for the year, preparing for tonight's celebrations, or just hopefully having some time to reflect, I hope this episode really inspires you.

[00:00:23] JOSHUA WARREN: to step into 2025 with clarity and confidence in your e commerce endeavors. So today we're saying goodbye to 2024 and that's what we're actually going to do on the podcast too. We are going to say goodbye to 10 outdated e commerce habits that are holding businesses back. I want you to leave these behind and I'm actually going to jump right in, uh, because I've realized that I have way more information than our 20 minute format allows.

[00:00:45] JOSHUA WARREN: So kicking off our countdown, number 10. Ignoring mobile optimization. So this one might seem obvious, but it just still shocks me how many e commerce sites treat mobile like an afterthought. This year, 2024, mobile accounted for over [00:01:00] 60 percent of e commerce traffic. That number continues to grow, and yet there's still so many sites out there with just bad mobile navigation, slow load times, checkout processes that pretty much make you want to throw your phone.

[00:01:12] JOSHUA WARREN: It's a simple fix really though. Think mobile first. So design your e commerce site with mobile users as the primary audience, not as an afterthought. Make sure your design is responsive or is a progressive web app and make sure that navigation menus are easy to access, intuitive, doesn't require a lot of tapping or scrolling.

[00:01:30] JOSHUA WARREN: Good way to implement this is to actually test your mobile checkout process. Try checking out on a number of different mobile devices, not just the iPhone you happen to have, but, or the Android device, but the opposite brand as well, and different screen size and device sizes. Make sure you have guest checkout for first time buyers, have mobile friendly payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal.

[00:01:52] JOSHUA WARREN: I'm also optimized for speed. All users want a fast site, but mobile users especially. We have some great. older episodes of [00:02:00] commerce today about performance improvements, but the basics are compressed your images, enable caching, use a content delivery network. Use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to learn how your site is performing, and pinpoint those areas for improvement.

[00:02:15] JOSHUA WARREN: I would go beyond just PageSpeed Insights, though. Monitor performance of real users. There's tools like RumVision, R U M Vision, that can track the real user performance on your mobile site. It goes way beyond the data that you can get through tools like Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights, and it can really help you identify which devices, screen sizes, or pages are causing your most problems.

[00:02:37] JOSHUA WARREN: Make sure that you are also optimizing your site in general for mobile SEO. So if your site is mobile friendly, if it's fast, Google's gonna give you an edge up in mobile SEO anyway. But definitely, especially if you have stores, think about kind of local SEO and what people might be searching for on their phones while they're out shopping.

[00:02:56] JOSHUA WARREN: Well, that was number 10. Moving on in our countdown to the new [00:03:00] year, number 9. Please stop treating e commerce like a side hustle. Um, this one hits me really hard because I see it all the time. Uh, I work with my free e commerce consulting sessions that I do that you can find on my LinkedIn profile. All the time I basically hear from people that their company is treating e commerce as a secondary priority.

[00:03:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Maybe it started out as a small experiment or a side project, but the reality is e commerce Really should be a major revenue driver for most industries. And if you're not fully committed to that idea, your competitors will leave you behind. I've worked with multiple brands in the same industry and the ones that still kind of view e commerce as a lower priority.

[00:03:40] JOSHUA WARREN: They are leaving literally in some cases, tens of millions of dollars in e commerce revenue on the table. That's why in 2025, you need to go all in on e commerce. A few things that, uh, you can do to go all in on e commerce, invest in the right team. You cannot run a professional e commerce operation without a dedicated team.[00:04:00] 

[00:04:00] JOSHUA WARREN: And this doesn't just mean hiring an e commerce manager and calling it a day. Although for a lot of brands out there, that would be a good first step. You would not believe the number of companies I've talked with this year where e commerce is being run by a director of IT, a director of marketing. They have so many other responsibilities.

[00:04:16] JOSHUA WARREN: They can't give e commerce their full time attention like it deserves. So make sure you have that person. But then you need. UX and UI designers. You need digital marketers. You need people that understand analytics and data driven decision making. You need someone to manage your e commerce platform to keep it running smooth and scalable.

[00:04:35] JOSHUA WARREN: It's a lot of people. If a full team isn't feasible in house, consider outsourcing those functions. There's a lot of agencies and even freelancers that can provide support in those roles. Make sure also that you commit to platform excellence. If you're on an old outdated, unreliable, inflexible platform.

[00:04:54] JOSHUA WARREN: It's time to either fix it up, shore it up, or re platform. Uh, platforms like Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, [00:05:00] Medusa, uh, there's so many platforms that have the flexibility and scalability and integration layers that you need that if you're still struggling with a bad platform, 2025 is the year to ditch it.

[00:05:12] JOSHUA WARREN: Uh, make sure you prioritize customer experiences. We'll talk about that in a little bit. And then make sure that your e commerce operations are being, tracked with really good KPIs and really good data. next up, cause I could talk all day about e commerce operations being treated as a second class citizen, but moving along in our countdown next up, uh, number eight, One size fits all marketing.

[00:05:36] JOSHUA WARREN: Uh, we've all been there. You've gotten, especially this holiday season, you might've gotten a promotional email for a product that you already bought or that you would never consider buying. And your customers are tired of that. They're tired of irrelevant messaging. In 2025, they're going to expect every interaction to feel tailored to them specifically.

[00:05:54] JOSHUA WARREN: The days of generic batch and blast campaigns are over. So you need to segment your audience [00:06:00] effectively. Start by dividing your customer base into meaningful groups. This can be based on purchase history, browsing behavior, demographics, engagement levels, and then once you've created those segments, tailor your messaging for each group.

[00:06:13] JOSHUA WARREN: For instance, you could use or send out loyalty rewards to your top customers and then re engage lapsed buyers with special discounts. Don't hesitate to use tools like DotDigital for this. They're one of my favorite tools for personalized marketing. It can really help you automate your email and text messaging campaigns based on consumer behavior, can create dynamic content tailored to individual preferences, and personalize the product recommendations on site and in emails.

[00:06:41] JOSHUA WARREN: Make sure you're also focusing on data driven campaigns for your marketing. I love how much data we get in the e commerce world. Use tools like Google Analytics or even your platform's own analytics to see what products are trending with specific customer segments, what customers are more likely, um, or when customers are more likely.

[00:06:59] JOSHUA WARREN: [00:07:00] To open emails or engage with ads and which of your marketing channels are driving the most conversions and then use that to tune the personalization of your, uh, e commerce marketing. Also make sure you're embracing AI. There's platforms like Dynamic Yield or Nosto that can analyze customer data in real time and create highly individualized experiences.

[00:07:21] JOSHUA WARREN: So next up. Number seven, uh, please stop skimping on customer experience. There's a ton here. I think I'm going to make this a whole separate podcast episode in the future, but customer experience is the backbone of e commerce. It's what keeps customers coming back, turns them into loyal advocates for your brand.

[00:07:40] JOSHUA WARREN: But too many businesses overlook customer experience. They focus on acquiring customers and neglect what happens after they land on your site. And a lot of this, you know, people think, Oh, this is design work. This is designers. This is having a really pretty site that people really like to use. And that's a piece of it.

[00:07:56] JOSHUA WARREN: Performance is a piece of it as well. But even things like unclear [00:08:00] return policies can have a negative effect on your customer experience. These are all. Customer experience failures that will cost you sales, loyalty, and even in some cases, your reputation. So in 2025, prioritize customer experience. So optimize your site's navigation.

[00:08:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Think about it from the customer's perspective. Can they easily find what they're looking for? If your navigation is kind of clunky or overwhelming, customers are going to leave. They're not going to try to browse through all of your products. Make sure you prioritize page, page speed and performance. We talked about that a bit already, but it's a huge killer of conversions on mobile and off mobile.

[00:08:35] JOSHUA WARREN: And so if you have a slow site, it doesn't matter how great that customer experience is. If it's through a lens of a very slow site, people are going to leave your site. Streamline your checkout process. Make sure you're offering those mobile payment options. Make sure you're offering guest checkout.

[00:08:50] JOSHUA WARREN: Minimize the number of steps required to complete a purchase. I still see so many sites. Um, I actually saw Volusion's site the other day, which, man, we used to hear their name a [00:09:00] lot more than we do now. And, uh, their, the checkout on this site, like I had to select my shipping options two or three different times, and some of the options were repeating themselves.

[00:09:10] JOSHUA WARREN: It was just a weird kind of clunky checkout that made me stop and say, do I really want to buy from this company? And then I mentioned your return policy. If your policies are hard to find or unclear, that's going to create hesitation. Customers want to know what to expect regarding their privacy, their, if they need to return something and shipping.

[00:09:28] JOSHUA WARREN: So keep these policies very visible, write them in plain customer friendly language, and really just make things transparent and accessible. lot of brands forget that customer support is part of the customer experience. Make sure that you have a solid approach to customer support. There's so much you can do with AI now with this for chatbots and supporting your customer service agents.

[00:09:51] JOSHUA WARREN: There's really no excuse in 2025 to provide bad customer service. also make sure you're thinking about all this and the customer experience through an omni channel [00:10:00] lens. Customers are interacting with your brand across multiple touch points, mobile, desktop, social media, physical stores. Make sure that they get a consistent experience throughout so they know and can connect with your specific brand.

[00:10:12] JOSHUA WARREN: Number six. This is a favorite of mine in 2025. Please leave behind your old habits back in 2024 of ignoring technical debt. So we've mentioned this so many times on commerce today, but Technical debt truly is the silent killer of e commerce growth. Whether it's an outdated platform, spaghetti code customizations, aging integrations, tech debt slows you down.

[00:10:34] JOSHUA WARREN: It makes adapting to new opportunities or customer demands feel like pushing a boulder uphill. It's not just draining your time and budget. It's making it harder to innovate, harder to scale, harder to deliver those great customer experiences. So 2025, let's stop ignoring tech debt, start addressing it head on.

[00:10:51] JOSHUA WARREN: You can do that by auditing your systems, doing regular audits of your tech stack, your platform, your integrations, your customizations. Also look at [00:11:00] outdated systems, inefficient processes, anything that has unnecessary complexity. A tool like New Relic where you can monitor the performance of your site and then other tools that can monitor the logs and the error reporting on your site can be so useful for this as well.

[00:11:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Go back and listen to, if you haven't yet, episode 82 from quick fix to long term success. We actually explored how short term Band Aid solutions build tech debt that leads to long term challenges and how to resolve that. I'll put a link in the show notes to that episode, so you can really dive in. Also just reevaluate your current platform, make sure it's helping you and not hindering your growth.

[00:11:37] JOSHUA WARREN: for businesses with more complex requirements, such as integrating ERPs, OMSs, and other systems, Composable Commerce solutions can really help. And we actually explored this in depth back in episode 100, fixing performance pain, Magento and Adobe Commerce, B2B Composable Commerce. and that's where we talked about moving past this monolithic mindset that I'm going to mention a few more times in this [00:12:00] episode.

[00:12:00] JOSHUA WARREN: into a composable commerce approach was really just a modular approach. And that's one of the best ways to address technical debt is to start slowly moving into that composable approach, breaking your tech stack into smaller interchangeable components, making sure you have solid APIs for all those components, and then replacing or upgrading individual components that have the most tech debt.

[00:12:22] JOSHUA WARREN: Also, we focus a lot on the, the code when we talk about tech debt, but Tech debt can come from your processes as well. Make sure you document and standardize your processes. A lot of tech debt actually comes from inconsistent workflows and poor documentation. Next up, number five, overlooking B2B opportunities.

[00:12:42] JOSHUA WARREN: B2B e commerce is evolving fast. And in 2024, I saw more B2B brands add on B2C and B2C add on B2B. So it's becoming B2B2C, um, or B2C2B in some cases. and really all that means is these days, people want to [00:13:00] have a relationship with your brand and buy from it. They want a modern buying experience, and that doesn't really matter.

[00:13:05] JOSHUA WARREN: If you're selling B2B products or B2C products used to, you can launch kind of a clunky ordering portal on the B2B side and people would buy from it. Cause Hey, it's better than faxing in your orders, but the bar has been raised and now basically the old clunky ordering portal is kind of seen by the current B2B buyers like we saw fax machines maybe 10 years ago.

[00:13:26] JOSHUA WARREN: So make sure that you have a very simple, streamlined ordering process. Offer features like saved orders, bulk ordering, dynamic reordering, tools like Adobe Commerce's B2B module make it so easy to offer all of that and more so that customers can easily manage their orders, track their shipments, access exclusive pricing tiers.

[00:13:47] JOSHUA WARREN: And on pricing, make sure you're offering dynamic pricing and custom catalogs. B2B customers expect that same level of personalization now. They don't want to see products that either they don't have special pricing for from you or that [00:14:00] don't relate to their business. So make sure you're customizing the catalogs.

[00:14:03] JOSHUA WARREN: Also, if you adopt that composable commerce approach I mentioned, It is so much easier to integrate directly into your buyer's procurement systems or even into their ERP and really simplify the buying process. Um, so definitely look at offering something like that in 2025. So number four, we're, we're kind of getting down to the last few ones here.

[00:14:23] JOSHUA WARREN: number four, please leave behind in 2024 and over reliance on third party marketplaces. So don't get me wrong. I saw some amazing posts on LinkedIn, especially from D to C brands, brands that made so much money selling on Amazon or Walmart this holiday season. And that's cool. They can be great sales channels.

[00:14:41] JOSHUA WARREN: Even target is making a big push with their third party marketplace. They offer huge audiences. They can streamline your fulfillment, but if you rely on one of those marketplaces too much, you're putting all your eggs in one basket and then. As we've seen repeatedly this year with Amazon, when they change their fees, when they change their processes, when they, like Amazon recently [00:15:00] did, announced that you no longer get to tell them how much the inventory of yours that Amazon lost was worth, Amazon's now going to tell you how much they think it cost you and only refund you that money.

[00:15:12] JOSHUA WARREN: Stuff like that happens. If you're totally dependent on Amazon, you just got to accept it. So you can't be overly reliant on those third party marketplaces. In 2025, you have to build your own channels. First step for that, make sure you've invested in an amazing website. Your website is your most important online sales channel.

[00:15:29] JOSHUA WARREN: It needs to deliver a better experience than any marketplace. It needs to have faster load times, better product discovery tools. It needs to basically live and breathe your brand and the things that your customers of your brand care about the most. Also leverage your own data. So when customers shop on marketplaces, you lose access to most of that valuable customer data.

[00:15:50] JOSHUA WARREN: So focus on building your own email and text message marketing lists so you can nurture those relationships directly. Once you've done all that, make sure you're driving traffic to your own store. There's a [00:16:00] lot of people that'll tell me, Oh, we like Amazon because Amazon already has the traffic. We don't have to spend money on ads to drive traffic to our website because Amazon has that website or has that traffic to their website.

[00:16:13] JOSHUA WARREN: They do, but they're charging you a fee for that. And lots of times the only difference is, are you paying a fee to Amazon? Are you paying a fee through ads to Google or Meta to drive traffic to your website instead of paying for traffic that's already on Amazon? And even if it's an equal match between those two, what a lot of brands don't think about is when the transaction takes place on your website, You're capturing that data.

[00:16:37] JOSHUA WARREN: You're capturing that customer. It's much easier to nurture them and offer them that customized omni channel experience they want. Those customers are worth a lot more than your Amazon customers. Also, you can really control your margins so much better when they go to your website. so next up, uh, number three.

[00:16:56] JOSHUA WARREN: Treating data as an afterthought. Too many people are [00:17:00] failing to leverage their e commerce data. So make sure you're collecting meaningful data. Um, go back and listen to our episodes on customer data platforms to learn more about how to do that. Make sure you're monitoring and applying AI to that data.

[00:17:14] JOSHUA WARREN: And I'm going to speed through our last few, uh, my time is almost up. The new year is almost here, but, uh, the next item up for number two in our countdown is sticking to a monolithic e commerce platform. So traditional platforms worked well in the past, but you have to be more agile and scalable. Now you need to transition to a composable commerce mindset and a composable commerce platform.

[00:17:37] JOSHUA WARREN: Doesn't mean you have to switch platforms. There are a lot of the older platforms or some that are adopting this more modular composable commerce approach. And so it's really a mindset and a review that you need to take around your e commerce platform and tech stack. The number one thing though, we made it all the way through is playing it safe.

[00:17:58] JOSHUA WARREN: The biggest risk in e commerce in [00:18:00] 2025 isn't trying something bold. It's doing nothing at all. Businesses that are resisting change or avoiding investment in innovation are being left behind. Make sure you're doing pilots with things like AI driven personalization, AR for product visualization, or new payment methods.

[00:18:17] JOSHUA WARREN: Adopt an agile mindset. Test, learn, and iterate quickly. failures as learning opportunities rather than setbacks. And really invest in growth in 2025. Now I mentioned there'd be a bonus. So the bonus, now that you made it through the whole countdown is please let's leave behind misusing AI. And this applies both to e commerce practitioners at merchants, but especially to those that are selling things to e commerce practitioners at merchants, 2024, every tool out there and every platform slapped AI on their feature list as a buzzword, a bunch of businesses rushed to adopt those and then realize.

[00:18:53] JOSHUA WARREN: There's not really anything to it. It's not anything new. So that caused backlash where many leaders now are avoiding AI [00:19:00] entirely. They're worrying it's too complex. It's not worth the effort. And I just want to tell you that AI is not a silver bullet, but it's also not something you can ignore. The real opportunity for you in 2025 is to learn how to use AI strategically and effectively without falling for the hype.

[00:19:16] JOSHUA WARREN: And I am pretty much out of time, so I think that's going to be a whole separate episode because I think that people focus so much on buying AI tools, but not enough on realizing how AI can make them more effective in their role. The things AI can do to help you with research, with planning, even with strategic decision making are amazing.

[00:19:35] JOSHUA WARREN: It can be this thinking partner for you that really helps you understand and plot out the future of your e commerce business. So look for a new episode specifically on that topic coming soon. And I hope you have a wonderful. New Year's Eve and a great 2025. please find me on LinkedIn. My name is Joshua Warren.

[00:19:55] JOSHUA WARREN: You'll see a gold background behind me. You can click a link in my bio and request [00:20:00] one of those e commerce problem solving sessions with me for free. Um, also please drop a comment and let me know which of these habits resonated with you the most that you want to drop in 2024 as you move more strongly into 2025.

[00:20:14] JOSHUA WARREN: Thanks and I hope you have a great new year. 

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