Retail & E-commerce
Work for retailers and online sellers, where margin is thin, seasonality is severe, and a conversion improvement is worth more than another channel.
Overview
Retail runs on thin margins and heavy seasonality, which changes what good work looks like. A percentage point of conversion is worth more than most acquisition improvements, and a peak trading period handled badly can undo a year of steady progress.
The other structural issue is that customers no longer move along a single channel. They find a product in one place, check it in another and buy in a third, which makes attribution unreliable and stock accuracy a marketing problem as much as an operational one.
Who this is for
- Retailers with both physical and online sales
- Online sellers whose acquisition cost is approaching first-order margin
- Businesses with severe seasonal peaks and troughs
What actually makes Retail & E-commerce different
Not general business problems. The things that change how the work has to be done in this sector.
Margin that limits acquisition
When first-order margin is thin, acquisition only works if repeat purchase is strong. Most retail growth problems are retention problems presented as acquisition ones.
Peak trading as a single point of failure
A large share of annual revenue arriving in weeks means capacity, stock accuracy and site performance all have to hold under conditions the rest of the year never tests.
Checkout losses that compound
Unexpected delivery cost and forced account creation lose customers who had already decided. At retail volumes those percentage points are substantial money.
Attribution across channels
Researching online and buying in store, or the reverse, is normal behaviour and largely invisible to standard measurement, which systematically undervalues whichever channel does not close.
Stock accuracy as a conversion issue
Showing something as available when it is not costs the sale and the customer. Integration between store and inventory is a commercial concern, not just a technical one.
The services that matter most in Retail & E-commerce
The parts of what we do that address the constraints above. Everything else is available too.
Checkout Optimisation
The highest-value surface in any store: removing steps, showing costs early, and offering the payment methods people in each market expect.
Read moreConversion Rate Optimisation
Improving what your existing traffic does: research to find the real friction, tests run properly, and honesty about when you do not have the volume to test.
Read moreE-commerce Strategy
The commercial decisions behind an online store: what you sell, at what margin, through which channels, and where growth is actually going to come from.
Read morePaid Social Advertising
Paid social where the creative does the targeting: Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok run with enough creative volume to keep learning, and measurement that survives the loss of the pixel.
Read moreCRM & Customer Lifecycle Strategy
Designing what you say to a customer after they buy, so retention and expansion get the same attention as acquisition normally does.
Read moreE-commerce Development
Building and extending online stores: platform choice made honestly, checkout treated as the priority, and integrations to the systems that actually fulfil the orders.
Read more
Common questions about Retail & E-commerce
The things people ask before they get in touch. If yours is not here, ask us directly.
Where should a retailer spend first?
Checkout, in most cases. It affects every customer who has already decided to buy, the causes of abandonment are well understood, and the gain applies to traffic you are already paying for. Acquisition improvements rarely match that return.
How do we prepare for peak trading?
Load test well before, freeze significant changes in the weeks preceding, verify stock integration, and have a rollback rehearsed. Most peak failures are caused by a change made too close to the period rather than by traffic alone.
How do we measure online marketing that drives store visits?
Through geographic holdout tests and, where you have a loyalty scheme, matching transactions to customers. Standard attribution cannot see this journey, which is why store-driving activity is chronically undervalued.
Our acquisition cost has passed our first-order margin. What now?
Work on repeat purchase and basket size rather than looking for cheaper traffic. Raising what a customer is worth is usually more achievable than lowering what they cost, and it lets you outbid competitors sustainably.
Thinking about Retail & E-commerce?
Tell us what you are trying to change. If we are not the right fit we will say so, and point you somewhere better.