EP079 E-commerce in 2024 - Challenges, Changes, and Creatuity’s Approach
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[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, good day and welcome to Commerce Today. I'm Darin Newbold, your host, as well as Josh Warren here with me, as always, and we've got a real special one here, kind of going a little off the off the normal that we would do. I'm going to take an opportunity to interview you, Josh, and we're going to go through and really look at what are the Challenges, the changes and what's Creatuity's approach to handling e commerce in 2024?

[00:00:35] JOSHUA WARREN: I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it's been, uh, It's been something I've getting a lot of feedback, um, on LinkedIn about, and a lot of questions and comments just about how different this year has been. So I'm definitely excited for this episode.

[00:00:47] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, let's, uh, let's kick it off. Let's go into the economy. I know it's exciting and everything. So hang on tight.

[00:00:53] But, uh, starting with kind of the big picture, how are the current high interest rates and the economic fluctuations that, uh, that you're seeing or how are these impacting e commerce businesses?

[00:01:06] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So like, like a lot of business and a lot of what we'll talk about today, I think it depends.

[00:01:10] Um, and I think a lot of it depends on companies that were Really used to zero interest rate policies. So all that wonderful time where the federal reserve kept the interest rate at 0%. Um, there's a lot of cheap debt. It was really easy to get a lot of cheap debt. So you saw these, um, especially the direct to consumer companies, the younger ones going out there and just getting a ton of debt and being able to try things iterate and not necessarily worry as much about being profitable.

[00:01:38] Well, That's gone. Um, and who knows if or when it will ever come back, but then also, um, you know, we have gone through such a roller coaster economically the past couple of years. And when you look at it, the actual fundamentals of the economy haven't really changed, but like, I always like to say, it's everyone's perceptions of the economy.

[00:01:57] And so we have people trying to predict is the Fed going to raise rates, lower rates. I think we went into this year hoping that they were going to lower rates a lot and early. They haven't lowered them yet. They've said we're going to, but just wait. Um,

[00:02:11] DARIN NEWBOLD: just teasing us.

[00:02:12] JOSHUA WARREN: they are. And I think, you know, not to put on my tinfoil hat, I think some of this has to do with, it's an election year and that always plays into it also always makes things a little bit more unpredictable.

[00:02:23] So overall, what I'm seeing, the practical takeaway for e commerce directors is. Your CFO is maybe not nervous, but your CFO is probably applying a higher standard to how money is being spent than they were, uh, just a few years ago,

[00:02:37] DARIN NEWBOLD: A lot more questions and scrutiny for sure.

[00:02:39] Well, with the potential cooling of the inflation and the record breaking stock market moments, are there some unique opportunities that, that can be taken advantage of?

[00:02:52] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, and this again, it depends on what kind of company you are. Um, I think that there is an opportunity here for companies that are sitting on a lot of cash or we're just already profitable, um, as things turn around, or maybe they're not even turning around, but as they.

[00:03:09] Continue to improve, um, the people that have the cash to make the smart investments into improving their product line, improving their marketing reach, proving their customer experience on the web. Um, there is an opportunity to get way ahead of your competition, especially those competitors that had done everything through debt financing and were really dependent on those zero interest rate policies.

[00:03:31] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, good. Well, that kind of. Takes us to now beyond the economy. Let's talk about the people out there, the consumers that are actually in this. we know that people are shopping so differently and there's a huge amount of influence from social media and this crazy TikTok dominance that's going on. how are these things really affecting e commerce?

[00:03:54] JOSHUA WARREN: man, TikTok, I could do another whole episode on TikTok again. We should. We

[00:03:58] DARIN NEWBOLD: did. But we can do another one.

[00:04:00] JOSHUA WARREN: Well, and especially, you know, as we record this and as we live stream this in a couple of weeks is Amazon's big summer event of Prime Days. Well, TikTok has thrown down the gauntlet and they are running their own competing sale against Prime Days on Prime Days.

[00:04:15] And I don't know, I think they might actually capture more business than Amazon. And I think this is a big, A big potential turning point. And I know like, look, I get it. I hear from people all the time that they're scared or nervous or not sure about going all in on TikTok right now because of the potential ban.

[00:04:34] but your competitors that are out there on TikTok are making a lot of money. And, um, consumers, whether politically we like Tik TOK or not, wherever you fall on that debate and who owns it and how it's run, um, consumers are voting with their attention and they're voting with their wallets and they're voting for Tik TOK and they are spending a lot of time consuming information.

[00:04:56] They're consuming videos there. So, definitely seeing a lot more interest in producing and distributing videos like that. And again, it could be a whole episode for sure.

[00:05:07] DARIN NEWBOLD: and it's crazy and it's, they've really captured that young market, which then that leads the parents. And so it's kind of taken a while, but after a while, the parents get beat down and sooner or later, they start looking at Tik TOK.

[00:05:18] Well, they start opening up their wallets. Craziness begins. Well, we have that piece, but what about. The fact that consumers are increasingly looking for greater value and the influencer recommendations that go on a lot of focus around those influencers

[00:05:37] and what they can

[00:05:37] do.

[00:05:38] JOSHUA WARREN: not only are people, some people are struggling in this economy, some people are worried they might struggle in this economy and all that translates into people want to spend less but get more.

[00:05:49] They want to use buy now pay it later. And they want to buy things where they're not really, they're not having to guess if it's a good product or not. So all that comes together to mean you need to have really high value products, but low cost, and you need to leverage influencers. And this is probably actually, this is the Biggest area that I've seen interest in this year from e commerce brands, but also the area where I feel like brands are maybe not struggling, but are unsure like they are.

[00:06:18] There is not yet a playbook and best practice for this is how you apply influencer marketing your e commerce brand.

[00:06:25] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, it is a, is a tough one and I recognize every time I'm going out looking, I'm finding that I'm doing that same thing, at least looking at reviews more and more as I make my decisions to make sure, hey, is this exactly the right thing I want? Well, this all comes down to or all kind of culminates in how does a.

[00:06:44] Merchant like ourselves. How do, how do you secure that e commerce budget? So we know it's tough with the economic climate. How do we do it? And I know that ROI is very important in this, but tell us kind of your approach, Josh.

[00:07:00] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, so Whether your company is struggling or not, even if your company is successful, how every single dollar is being spent is being scrutinized.

[00:07:09] And that is why it is so important. Um, you know, years ago, especially back in zero interest rate times, you could say, we want to try this awesome new experimental e commerce platform. We're going to do a pilot project with it and maybe it's going to be a big hit. Maybe it's not. And people were a little more open to that.

[00:07:28] Now you need to show a return on investment. You need to show it faster. Your projects aren't going to be approved. And it's really all about how do you use the money you currently have to make more money to then do it again and again and again, versus more of those long term big projects. And, you know, within the industry, We've joked, even on this podcast before about how just a couple of years ago, the analysts are saying it's going to be the year they replatform.

[00:07:53] Everyone's going to replatform. And then a year later, those same analysts said, no one's replatforming. Who would ever suggest there's going to be a wave of replatforming?

[00:08:01] DARIN NEWBOLD: platforming

[00:08:02] JOSHUA WARREN: And they've never really said why they change their opinions. Um, but I think it comes back to this, that a replatforming project is long, it's time consuming, it's cash consuming.

[00:08:13] If you do it right, you could see a great ROI on it, but it could take you 6 to 12 months versus if you have an existing site that you can go in and you can apply some low hanging fruit type optimizations to get a payback within a few weeks while people are going to pick the quick payback over the big replatform.

[00:08:32] DARIN NEWBOLD: yeah, it's that whole fear, uncertainty and doubt and worrying about that. Well, how, when it comes to, um, these e commerce budgets and, and working through this, how's, how has creativity helping clients justify their e commerce investments?

[00:08:49] JOSHUA WARREN: So we have been getting a little bit more in the trenches, um, with the e commerce directors that we work with. And we really used to, it'd be enough to basically say, here's the estimate. Here's what this project's going to take. Here's kind of what we think the ROI is going to be. And now it's much more.

[00:09:05] Okay. Let us help you talk to your CFO. Let us help you kind of do the type of analysis you need to do to show them that you've done kind of this deep dive into the numbers and really back up those numbers. But then also, I mean, from the very beginning of creativity, I've always said launch early launch often.

[00:09:24] So do MVP, do small phases. And that has been a huge focus this year of Let's not do the big waterfall, you know, 12 month long, amazing redesign of your site. Let's do the 30 day version of that and then just iterate on it constantly. And that helps so much when people can see, okay, not only can I look into the site and see the experiences better, but I can look at our analytics.

[00:09:49] I can look at the money coming into our account and see the sites performing better. That just instantly as an e commerce director gives you so much more credibility to go back to your CFO and say, okay. We did phase 1. Here are the results. Here's what we project for phase 2. Here's why we believe this.

[00:10:05] Can we get the okay to move forward?

[00:10:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: move forward? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, as we're doing all of this, I know you've spent some time and, and we've really revamped some things here in a really exciting way and they're out on our site now.

[00:10:19] So, so Josh, why don't you talk us through the new solutions and kind of the. The approach that we're, that we're using to tackle some of these challenges.

[00:10:30] JOSHUA WARREN: So I, I noticed kind of two trends that came together and the first is all this fun stuff with the economy and changes in consumer behavior we just talked about, but then also, um, the As the decision makers get younger or have different experiences, um, sales is changing too. And people don't like big, long, complicated sales processes.

[00:10:50] So I use this as an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and say, what can we do as an agency to be more agile, to meet people where they are? And so that's accelerators onto our website. You can go on our website, you can buy these, even if you're working with another agency, we can come in alongside them.

[00:11:08] Um, doesn't need a big long negotiation or contract process, and we can come in, we can audit your performance, we can audit your accessibility, your, um, user experience, your e commerce strategy, a lot of different kind of to allow brands to figure out, okay, our in house team plus our current agency are really strong in these three areas, but maybe not as strong in this fourth, but maybe not Let's bring creativity and as the experts to help in that fourth area and that, while it's not as large of an engagement as our engagements have been historically, um, I feel like it's also just a service back to the e commerce community because trying to get the budget approved for that big engagement is so hard right now.

[00:11:48] The same time, e commerce directors are still expected to show growth, to show improvement, to drive more profitability. So I figured this is a good way to help without having to really go up against all those challenges with getting a really big budget allocated.

[00:12:03] DARIN NEWBOLD: Absolutely. Kind of those bite sized pieces that you kind of need to do.

[00:12:07] Well, along that, what

[00:12:09] about doing more of the doing more platform agnostic work? And you talked about kind of maybe some accelerators, but also audits or headless projects. What does that look like for 2024?

[00:12:22] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, so, um, one of the, the posts that got a lot of feedback this week was one where I talked about, um, our headless accelerator and how we have built out this approach to headless that we can really apply to a number of different e commerce platforms to boost your site performance, um, and say boost, Make it amazing.

[00:12:41] And that again was an answer to people saying, Hey, we can't get the budget approval in this economy to replatform our entire site, especially to a enterprise level platform. So we said, Okay, here's a way we can offer a service where you don't have to change platforms. We're not going to move you on to one of the platforms that we historically were doing all of our work on.

[00:13:03] Instead, we're just going to kind of decouple this and look at it almost through the eyes of how the mock alliance looks at it with all the technology. Okay. Composable stuff. And, uh, we're going to find a way to help you boost your site performance through a new headless solution that doesn't require you to switch platforms.

[00:13:19] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's awesome. That sounds fantastic. Well, ultimately, at the end of the day, how do all of these services, whether it's an accelerator, an audit, or a headless type of project, how do all of these services help our clients stay competitive and agile in today's market?

[00:13:36] JOSHUA WARREN: they really all tie back to my ethos that I have had in this business as far as we want to partner with our clients and whether they are, you know, huge fortune 500s with very large budgets or they're a small startup, kind of one person, two person startup.

[00:13:51] Um, we want to be able to come alongside you and we want to help you grow your business. I've always said, you know, when you win, we win. Because if we're delivering things that drive e commerce profitability, you're probably going to get approval for more budget to drive even more profitability. So that's really, it's while they're new services and new names for them and things like that, it's really continuing to do business the way we always have.

[00:14:16] just trying to find a way to adapt it, um, so that your CFO, your CEO, your executive sponsors, um, can get on board and understand it and maybe make your job a little bit easier as an e commerce director.

[00:14:29] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, great. So when, um, As we kind of conclude and put this all together, you know, what's kind of the last kind of your key advice to your e commerce businesses looking to thrive in 2024?

[00:14:41] JOSHUA WARREN: Uh, first of all, keep your head up. I know that It's funny the people I talk to the ones that aren't hitting their numbers of where their company wants them to be with e commerce Growth, they're stressed out the ones that are hitting their numbers. They're stressed out like either way Everyone's a little stressed out right now.

[00:14:56] So if you feel stressed out you are not alone Um, there's definitely a lot of that going around right now. Um, don't believe all the You The people selling e commerce courses out there that tell you that everything's wonderful and easy. Um, it's work. and that would probably be my, my biggest thing to the e commerce directors, um, specifically, but then overall, performance and accessibility.

[00:15:20] We've been talking about those a lot this year, but those are, probably the biggest things, you know, influencer marketing can drive a lot of traffic to your site. But if your site is slow, if you're providing a poor experience, it's not going to convert. And so go back to kind of the basics of looking at your site's performance and accessibility.

[00:15:37] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, and that's the difference between a kind of a complex problem of the influencer side where there's not a real known answer. It's kind of a bit of a cauldron. Whereas it's a complicated problem of performance and accessibility, but it is solvable. There are ways to really make that make that a hit.

[00:15:54] Well, last but not least, Josh, just to kind of as a, as our parting question, hey, any final thoughts and recommendations for our listeners?

[00:16:02] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, get plugged into a community. There's a lot of good e commerce communities out there. I'm working to build one kind of through LinkedIn as well. So, uh, whether it's with me or with someone else, get connected, don't go at this alone.

[00:16:13] Um, if you do want to connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a message, let me know where you're struggling or where you're succeeding. And either, um, I can talk about it on Commerce Today, or I'd love to have you come on as a guest here on

[00:16:25] DARIN NEWBOLD: we would love that. We would love that. Well, you can find Josh on LinkedIn.

[00:16:28] Joshua Warren is what you would look for, and you can definitely find him, find him there. Definitely connect. Well, as always, we appreciate you being here and Connecting to us at all times, definitely ask us some questions. We want to, uh, we want to bring those here onto the show so that we get your questions and comments and feedback.

[00:16:47] So with that, as always, take care, have a great rest of your day, and we'll see you next time here at Commerce Today. 

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