Blog
Why does the IQOS UK subscription service make you want to unsubscribe?
2026-04-08
This is a textbook example of a service designed around the operational convenience of the business, not around actual customer behaviour.
- Ecommerce
- Subscription
- Case Study
- UX
Why digital marketing is not ecommerce, and what it costs when businesses confuse the two
2026-04-23
Handing ecommerce to the marketing team is one of the most persistent structural errors in companies with an online channel.
- Ecommerce
- Marketing
- Leadership
- Digital Transformation
What happens after “Order confirmed” is where lifetime value is actually built
2026-06-02
Most ecommerce teams focus almost exclusively on the pre-sale journey. This is one of the most costly habits in ecommerce. The payment is not the end of the funnel, but the beginning of the customer relationship.
Cookie consent banner is a critical UX decision that affects customer perception
2026-06-08
Many retailers view the consent banner as a legal obligation, implementing it once and then ignoring it. This approach is flawed, as the banner sets the mood for first impressions, determines the amount of marketing data retained, and influences regulatory risk.
- Ecommerce
- UX
- Data Privacy
- CRO
Selling where the customer already is: TikTok Shop, marketplaces and the build-or-rent decision
2026-06-15
TikTok Shop isn’t just something your social team is testing anymore. In the UK, it’s now a real sales channel with its own economics, and it should be managed that way.
- Ecommerce
- Social Commerce
- TikTok
- Strategy
The cheap platform is the expensive one: technical debt as a board decision
2026-06-25
You don’t see the real cost right away. It builds up over time. Engineers call this technical debt, and it works like real debt: every shortcut adds up and comes with a price.
- Ecommerce
- Replatforming
- Strategy
- Platform
Common mistakes when making a product description and why it costs sales
2026-06-29
Most online product descriptions could be switched between products without anyone realising. Read the article for tips on structuring product descriptions that drive sales.
- Ecommerce
- PDP
- Copywriting
- CRO
A record sales day tells you almost nothing about whether you made money
2026-07-01
Big sales events bring in big revenue, and those numbers often get celebrated. But we should look at them more carefully. A record day built on deep discounts and smaller orders can actually lose money on many sales.
- Ecommerce
- Pricing
- Margin
- Strategy
Should you bid on your own brand name in paid search?
2026-07-06
The real answer is that it depends on whether the traffic is truly incremental. It can quietly waste money on clicks you would have gotten for free.
- Ecommerce
- Digital marketing
- PPC
- Paid search
In-house, agency or hybrid: what should an ecommerce team actually own?
2026-07-08
The in-house versus agency debate isn't about the cost. In reality, it’s about control, and making the wrong choice can be costly in ways that don’t appear on your invoice.
- Ecommerce
- Digital Marketing
- StrategyLeadership
Your product images do the selling. Are they shown in the right order?
2026-07-13
56% of users check the product images before even reading the title. Many galleries are arranged in the wrong order, which hurts your conversion rate unless you know what to look for.
- Ecommerce
- CRO
- UX
- Merchandising
Which AI shopping features actually worked in 2026
2026-07-16
Major retailers have invested a lot of time and money in bringing AI assistants to shoppers.
Let’s look at a number that should make any board think twice.
- Ecommerce
- AI
- Retail Strategy
The attribute layer: why good products lose to worse ones
2026-08-02
Customers could not find a group of products we sold perfectly well. Live, in stock, sensibly priced, decent photography. The problem was that the thing which made them a coherent group in a customer's mind was not something our catalogue recognised.
- Ecommerce
- Product Data
- Merchandising
- Strategy
BNPL became regulated credit on 15 July in the UK
2026-08-06
Buy now pay later stopped being an unregulated product in the UK. Deferred payment credit is now inside the FCA perimeter, and the Consumer Duty applies to it. Here is why it is a trading story.
- Ecommerce
- Payments
- Checkout
- Ecommerc Strategy
Why a perfect rating sells less, and what your review block is actually doing to conversion
2026-08-10
A five-star average sells worse than a 4.5. Negative information has greater diagnostic value since it separates good products from bad ones more effectively than praise does, simply because praise is something that is expected by everyone.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the PPWR, applies from 12 August 2026
2026-08-12
The EU packaging regulation started applying yesterday, and the thing worth understanding about it is not environmental. It is that the cost of selling into Europe has stopped scaling with volume.
- Ecommerce
- Cross Border
- Regulation
- EU
Paid returns: what the fee actually changes, and why the same policy behaves differently in every market
2026-08-18
A return fee does not reduce returns. It moves who pays for them, and it changes what your policy signals.
- Ecommerce
- Customer Expereince
- Returns
- Retail
Retail media on your own site: where the ad pound starts eating the merchandise margin
2026-08-20
Retail media is the most profitable thing most retailers have ever sold, and the mechanism that makes it profitable is the same mechanism that makes it dangerous. It monetises attention the retailer has already paid to acquire. Nothing new is manufactured, warehoused, picked or delivered.
- Ecommerce
- Retail Media
- Strategy
- Merchandising
Your default sort order is a trading decision. Most sites have never made it
2026-08-24
When I opened the sort dropdown for a client's biggest category, I saw that it was set to price, low to high. This had been the case since the site went live. No one had changed it; it was the platform's default setting and had therefore been silently determining which products were sold for four years.
- Ecommerce
- Merchandising
- CRO
- Strategy
The low stock badge is a promise. Breaking it costs more than never making it
2026-08-26
The low stock message is one of the few things in ecommerce that reliably produces a number in the right direction on the first test. Add "only 2 left" to a product page, watch add-to-cart rise, ship it to 100% of traffic, move on. I have done this. Most people reading this have done this.
- Ecommerce
- Customer Experience
- UX
- Retail