🚴 Stuart McMillan 🏃

US Tariffs appear to be back for UK and European brands. Previously there was a way to mitigate these if a brand has a US entity by moving stock wholesale between entities. MAUVAIS launched on Patchworks in just 14 days to mitigate the last set of tariffs. In fast changing global economics, a flexible, agile tech stack is a must. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eKZvecrE

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We didn’t stop at basic topics in the analysis. You get subcategories within a topic to understand what it is about ‘orders’ that is leading to support enquiries. The retailer can even set their own topics to pull out. This also serves as internal analysis for ourselves to work on the primary categories, enabling them to be fully resolved in chat and preventing escalation.

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Trying to rank for “men’s t-shirts”? Good luck competing with ASOS.com and Next. One of the biggest mistakes smaller or niche eCommerce brands make is chasing huge head terms they can never realistically own. Google knows where people want choice, and it rewards the sites that give it. If you’re a smaller, higher-quality brand, you’re not going to win “men’s t-shirts” against marketplaces with thousands of SKUs. So what should you do instead? ➡️ Find the intersections of what you sell and what your customers actually search for. Think “100% organic cotton t-shirt” or “long-line organic tee” instead of the generic head term. ➡️ Build category and subcategory pages that match those intent signals. ➡️ Use PDP content to show why your collection is different: fit, fabric, provenance. Stop chasing volume for volume’s sake. Focus on intent, relevance and the customers who actually want what you sell. Want help mapping intent to the pages you should actually be building? DM me.

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Whilst we remain agnostic and I firmly believe there are still use cases that they're now right for - I decided to do a bit of an appreciation post on how far Shopify have come both as a platform and as a business in the last couple of years. I’ve been an advocate of Shopify for a long time, but I was prompted to post this by their latest earnings report, which highlighted some big milestones: - They're massively outperforming the market - +31% YoY revenue during a very tough period for mid-market IMO - Now Canada’s biggest stock - pretty incredible given the dominance of larger organisations (Shopify at around 10% headcount and revenue of RBC) - Now said to be powering nearly 5% of total eCommerce globally - The general growth in their market cap / share price in recent weeks I still think the dominance of Shopify represents a big risk to the eCom service industry - but the economics and complexity around tech and implementation have probably been too far in the other direction for a while. Their growth and product development for their average customer over the last couple of years has been unrivalled, whilst I still see the longer-term mission for Shopify as reduced barrier-to-entry for customers and volume growth, higher margin per customer and then broader monetisation of data and ad revenue. When you consider all of the existing and potential strands to their strategy - they’re going to be very tough to compete with - with the following giving them a lot of runway: - Breadth + volume of merchants - strict reports suggesting ~2.5m live stores and 'active storefronts' closer to 6m - Further monetisation potential of primary revenue streams - licensing, payments etc. B2B is huge potential area for both areas also, should they continue to improve the product and nail GTM strategy - Potential additional revenue streams - further monetisation of the eco-system, monetisation of data, ad network revenue, professional services etc.  - Reliance on them in the eco-system - as Shopify have grown (and others have declined), so many vendors are extremely or entirely reliant on Shopify, which massively supports their value prop and reach. - The time and money already invested in AI, which we've likely seen very little of I personally want to see people competing with Shopify and challenging them in all areas for the good of the industry - I still see the best route for competitors as doubling down on specific use cases or niches (this is why Centra are the other platform we see winning a lot around fashion) and creating deeper capability that they’ll be unlikely to compete with. More platforms need public roadmaps on this stuff also to keep competition up. But, the main message here is that you have to take your hat off to what Shopify are doing as they continue to own more of the market and move into the same league as the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta etc. 

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Because I haven’t posted much recently I thought I’d share what we’ve been working on. We’ve launched a brand new digital platform for Boots Opticians, built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud by our fabulous partners at Astound Digital that completely transforms our online presence. Accessible, fast and optimised for traditional and emerging AI search, it lets us explain why we have the perfect mix of stores, products and clinical services with authority and creativity. My three top tips for delivering value fast that have helped us go from start to live in 6 months: 1. Embrace MVP and be decisive We were empowered to trade scope for pace and to pivot quickly when we needed to. This allowed us to make pragmatic decisions and focus on the features that really add value, remembering that good is usually good enough 2. Lean but effective governance We gave ourselves contingency to use flexibly, meaning that anything missed in a rapid design and discovery phase could be dealt with quickly keeping us on track, but every important decision was taken to our sponsors in a transparent way. 3. Succeed together This was a team effort across many parts of Boots and involving multiple partners, with dependencies on data, integration, testing, commercial, finance, PMO, creative, content, UX and engineering teams and it was crucial to avoid any sense of “that’s not my responsibility” creeping in. We were clear on the goal and how each person contributed to it, and when it came to today’s cutover everyone felt a mix of accountability and pride. But this is just the start - our roadmap is primed and ready to go, with more and more customer and colleague value to release now that we have the foundations laid. Thanks to everyone who has played a part - you know who you are. www.bootsopticians.com Joe Linnington Aaron Pabla Muhammad Malik Charlotte Bator Adrian Bagnall Lottie Flatman Edward Clark Lorna Henson-Smith Duncan Eatch

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How to Optimise Sitemaps for Large eCommerce Sites When working on large eCommerce sites with over 1 million pages, optimising your sitemap structure can significantly improve how many pages Google indexes. Here's how I increased submitted indexable pages by 72.5% (+120,000 pages) simply by reducing the size of each sitemap. The Problem Although Google allows up to 50,000 URLs per sitemap, a small percentage of pages get lost during processing. If you have more than five sitemaps containing 50,000 URLs each, these losses become noticeable. The Solution Split your sitemaps into smaller files of 10,000 URLs each. For example, if you have 250,000 pages to include in your sitemaps, instead of creating five sitemaps with 50,000 URLs each, create 25 sitemaps with 10,000 URLs each. Within a few weeks, you'll notice the number of indexable pages increasing. Automating the Process This task can be fiddly and time-consuming, especially if you update your sitemap frequently. Here are some recommendations for automation: If you have Python skills: This is an ideal use case for Python (almost essential when working with enterprise-scale brands that have extensive page volumes). Pull your data via API if possible, or export as CSV. Split the data into 10,000-row chunks and save in XML format. You can find templates online or use AI to generate them. If you don't use Python: The process is more manual, but still manageable. I recommend using Easy Data Transform (a fantastic, user-friendly tool for data manipulation) to prepare your data, then create XML sitemaps using Screaming Frog or an online sitemap generator. Alternatively, you can crawl your website using Lumar and export directly as an XML sitemap (other crawlers may not offer this export option).

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📈 UK ecommerce is a massive economic engine; online retail sales hit about £127 billion in 2024, marking record growth outside pandemic spikes. 💻 It’s projected to become even bigger, with the market expected to reach roughly £286 billion by 2025 as digital channels take nearly a third of all retail spend. 💷 That scale shows just how central ecommerce has become to the UK economy and how much consumer spending has shifted online. An interesting comprehensive webinar designed to demystify product experience management to truly master your product information and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Definitely one to check out, you can watch it on-demand here: https://lnkd.in/ejxvpemH #ecommerce #commerce #digitalmarketing

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#London ecom did not disappoint... What can only be described as the UK's most influential event... eCom Collab Club® #London and talking all things ummm eCom? With ecom's version of Ant & Dec.... Adam Pearce - CRO for Shopify Brands & Rich Evans.... and Adam was actually wearing socks! 🚀 Caitlin Moss kept calm with a few hickups (out of everyone's control) and nobody gave a damn! My takeaways..."Routes to scaling in 2026"... and overall, I got the feeling that scale won’t come from shiny hacks, it’ll come from nailing fundamentals. Differentiate acquisition with real value in-hand offers, warm domains and omni-channel CRM, build resilience with organic and technical SEO, clean your data with a single KPI view, then make logistics your moat so you can scale across markets while keeping brand and CX front and centre. 🎤 Miriam J. – Intuit Mailchimp 🎤 Stefan Loncar – Loncom Consulting 🎤 Andrew Kemp – Bare Kind Socks | B Corp 🎤 Michael Bates – Herd 🎤 Cameron Reardon-Davies – Grenade For international expansion.... think global, act local. The US is huge but volatile, while the Middle East and Northern Europe are flying if you localise product, payments and delivery options; test from one hub before you split stock, keep a single KPI view with ruthless data hygiene, and hire true market insiders so messaging, CX, and ops actually fit the country you’re entering. Speakers were Fab here too!!!; 🎤 Karine Gazarian – Bigblue 🎤 Luke Plane – Fulfilled Talent 🎤 Ryan Murray – Mimi Holliday 🎤 George Bland – Airwallex All in all jam packed and full of ideas and meaningful takeaways. #growthandscaling #ecommerce #internationalexpansion #london #retail #Marketing

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Argos is launching a marketplace within the next 12 months, powered by Mirakl and owned by Sainsbury's, representing a strategic shift for one of the UK's major retailers. The focus on "complimentary and existing categories" with a curated group of partners suggests a selective onboarding process that prioritises quality over quantity. This controlled approach protects sellers from race-to-the-bottom pricing while providing access to over one billion annual website visits. The real opportunity lies in Argos's existing infrastructure and potential for click and collect across 600 Sainsbury's supermarkets and 850+ convenience stores nationwide. We've already seen this model work brilliantly for B&Q's Mirakl-powered marketplace, and Argos's physical footprint makes this a natural evolution that combines digital reach with unparalleled physical touchpoints. Smart brands should apply now through Argos's early access programme, as this curated marketplace positions itself as a premium opportunity for established sellers looking to expand UK sales. Source: ChannelX https://lnkd.in/eNNUd9fs

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We’re bringing B2B eCommerce World event to the UK and Europe for one simple reason. Demand from the community. Across manufacturing and distribution, digital is no longer a future conversation. It’s happening now. Leaders are being asked to modernise buying experiences, connect systems, and drive growth in increasingly complex environments. What’s been missing is a space built specifically for B2B operators. The B2B eCommerce Association is bringing this to life. Not retail. Not theory. Real conversations between people doing the work. B2B is the engine behind the global economy. Europe is ready for a community built around it.

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If you want to force your customers to login (which I do not recommend), then make it user-friendly. ❌ TESCO fails at this, because: - The page header states: "Sign in to your account". It thus looks as tough this is the only option - If you want to become a customer, you have to look for a "Register for an account" link. ✅ TESCO can do this better by: Making the "Sign in" and "Register" options obvious, both based on clear headers and supportive radio buttons. (However; never force customers to create a login into your E-commerce store unless it makes sense, business wise). -o0o- #ux #usability #cro #design #ecommerce

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