The Commerce Club Podcast
Starting and running an e-commerce or product based business can be a very challenging and lonely place.
As founders we tend to wear all the hats (product development, marketing, customer service, sales, operations etc etc...) and sometimes it can be a minefield trying to figure out the solutions to all your business problems alone, so this is where me & The Commerce Club podcast comes in.
The Commerce Club podcast is all about helping you confront the big challenges you are facing in your product based business right now!
You might be an entrepreneur with a great idea for a product, but no idea where to start to bring that business to life.
You might run a fashion brand that has up until now had consistent sales, but whatever you do, you just don't seem to grow.
You might be a jewelry brand founder struggling to find time to juggle your business alongside your full time job.
Whatever your challenge in your product business right now, I want to help you find a solution!
Every week I’ll be chatting exploring topics in the world of e-commerce to help debunk myths, solve your problems and delve in to current industry affairs, as well as chatting directly to founders of small product based businesses, just like yours, helping them unpack and find solutions to their challenges to help them move forward and thrive in the current times.
About your host... In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Sophie Biggerstaff an ex-fashion buyer turned e-commerce business mentor & consultant and I’ve spent the past 12 years working for brands such as Ralph Lauren, Diesel, Kate Spade and Burberry.
Back in 2020 I left the corporate world behind and began help e-commerce business founders generate more sales without investing hundreds of dollars in to ads by getting really strategic with their organic sales strategy, which in turn helps them convert more browsers in to buyers.
So, with that in mind if you are a ecommerce business founder looking to grow their brand, or an e-commerce entreprneur seeking inspiration to start a new business venture, be sure to subscribe, and follow me on socials.
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The Commerce Club Podcast
S205: The Ecommerce Industry Is Changing - Here's How To Keep Up!
Feeling like you’re ecommerce business if failing? Here’s why 👇
Back in 2020, e-commerce was booming - so many of your businesses were probably born in this time, and thrived… for a while...
Fast forward to 2024, and the market we are in is VERY different. Customer shopping behavior has shifted, the ecomony has changes and getting your business seen is much harder…
This means what you were doing back then, is NOT going to continue working now - you can't keep running your business the way you did the past few years.
If you want to survive and thrive in this new market, TRUST ME it’s time to pivot!
Out with the old (things that are no longer working for you) and in with the new (getting really clear on your strategy and how to optimize your customer experience to ensure conversions)
I share my take on this and give advice on you can pivot your business in this episode.
If you've enjoyed this episode please make sure to hit that subscribe button :)
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Sophie (00:00) Welcome back to the Commerce Club podcast. Today I want to talk about something that's been on my mind over the past few weeks and that is the instability of the market and the current times that we are living in. Now, I've got so much to say on this, but I think it impacts so many different things, our day -to -day lives, our businesses, particularly if you are product or a service business, I think that we are being hit quite hard. There's a lot of instability in the market and
conversations that I've been having with e -commerce business founders in particular is that they really do just feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like it's that you you want to be invested in your business, you want to be spending money on things that you know are going to help you grow but then you're stuck there because the climate is not bringing you in the sales that you need to feel comfortable enough to do that. So there's a lot happening, there's a lot of shifts happening, I can definitely feel
shifting energy of like how people are feeling about their businesses and it almost feels like quite a lot of people are having to kind of not start again, I don't want to say start again because obviously you've laid the foundation of your business but they're definitely having to pivot quite heavily more so than they ever have done before. So I just kind of want to talk about this and deep drive into it about what's happened, why are we in this position and what do do about it, how do we get unstuck, how do we pivot, how do we make sure our businesses continue to be a success because
I think it's a really terrifying case to be when you have spent X amount of years building up a business and then suddenly it feels like that business isn't working anymore because what you have been doing over the past few years was working and you were kind of maintaining or maybe growing or maybe it was a little bit up and down but you were still on the trajectory of growth that you were going towards your goals. Today's market feels like not many people are on that trajectory anymore. Most people are kind of feeling either stagnant
a bit stuck or they are feeling like they have to restart things and change a lot of things up or some people are literally just seeing that like clear escalator up into the sky where the sky is their limit kind of thing. So there's a lot happening and I can really feel it in the community that I'm part of which is kind of like that service based e -commerce mentors anybody else that serves kind of like an e -commerce mentoring.
kind of thing. And then I can also fill it with my clients on the actual e -commerce side. And obviously I'm also starting up my own e -commerce business so can definitely sense a different energy in that space as well. let's talk about it. What happened? Why are we in this position today and what do we do about it? obviously back in 2020, so I started my e -commerce consultancy business in 2020 and that was the perfect time for me to start that e -commerce business because so many other people were starting e -commerce businesses. So I had a lot of
people coming to me looking for help because everybody was starting their own thing. We were all stuck at home, everyone was online shopping, e -commerce was flipping booming. I don't think e -commerce has ever seen a boom quite like that. And we were all being encouraged to shop small, shop local, which meant new businesses that were being formed would perform in really, really well. We obviously had way more time on our hands as well to start something new. So so many people were re -evaluating the way that they were living.
and trying to find different ways to avoid going back to their nine to five. And that worked for a period of time, right? So quite a lot of people were starting off their businesses and then they were building up momentum and then suddenly everyone gets called back to work, goes back into offices and then the time that you have to spend on those businesses is a little bit less frequent, right? Which means when you're not focusing on something, it's really hard to maintain it.
Obviously at the same time, like the retail industry, the high street world, like it was really struggling. So everybody was moving online and people were being encouraged obviously to shop small and local. So there was a lot of like shifts happening towards people starting their own businesses, starting their things online and e -commerce was the way to do that. Now that kind of boom in the e -commerce world lasted a while actually. Like it lasted, I'd say all through 2020 or throughout 2021. And I'd say only really started to die down from what I could understand.
like mid to end of 2022, which was kind of when we were coming out of the COVID bubble and coming out of lockdowns. And that's where we kind of saw people really craving like in -person connections again, really wanting to go out and shop, really wanting to go and get themselves back out into the world rather than spend all of their time online shopping. So from that point, when the world reopened and we started to see
things coming up and going again, the e industry started to kind of halt a little bit, I would say. And I definitely saw this with clients where like their growth trajectories all throughout 2021, 2022 were like booming. 2023 is where things started to shift. And I would say it was kind of like March, April, 2023 is where I really started to notice in clients' businesses where they would kind of get stuck at a certain number and really not be able to kind of like...
rise above that and in some cases they started to decline and I'd say that that started to happen around like summer 2023 end of 2023 and now still as we're into like three quarters of the way through 2024 it's just kind of gone on that same trajectory it's nothing's growing from what I can see everyone's feeling a little bit stuck a little bit stagnant now there are so many reasons as to why this has happened
And there are also reasons that could be happening in each individual business, but obviously as a collective there's things that are affecting every business as well. Naturally, the whole world is kind going through a cost of living crisis. Prices are increasing globally and particularly if we're talking about the UK specifically, obviously this all kind of stemmed from Brexit, then Covid, and we really did start to see costs of goods rising astronomically.
I actually spoke to one of my old clients quite recently and she told me that her cost prices for her product that she's been making for about six years, they've never really altered in that six years, in the past 16 months or 18 months, tripled, tripled in price, which is just crazy. Like if you think she's been running her business for six years, it's been going at a steady pace, she's been able to invest in her products because she knows the cost, suddenly it triples. What then happens with her retail price? Like what then happens with her wholesale price?
all of these things have to change. Her business has to go through a really big change and then she's going to lose customers. She's not going to be able to afford as much inventory. All of these knock on impacts due to the cost of living crisis and the prices increasing globally are having a crazy, crazy effect, particularly on product businesses because obviously you have to buy into inventory. naturally, again, because of Brexit, if we're thinking about the UK market in particular,
a lot of people then bought their production lines into the UK which is already really expensive in itself and has then massive cost implications to the e business and the products. So that is a massive factor of it. People are struggling, people can't afford to buy things, people can't afford to invest in luxury items anymore. There's housing crisis all over the globe as well and I can see this because I travel, I've been to a lot of countries in the past.
of years and I've seen this happen not just in one place, it is globally. So I think everybody is just kind of struggling from a financial perspective, businesses and on a personal level, which means people aren't as, haven't got as much disposable income and aren't as willing to spend the disposable income they have because of the generalized fear, anxiety around spending money and prices.
Then there's like loads of supply chain issues across the globe and obviously inflated shipping costs due to these supply chain issues because ultimately it's supply and demand. If more people want to ship products out but they can't then they increase the prices so that you can get more things onto the ships, etc. So there is a huge shipping crisis going on across the globe and a lot of challenges within that market.
time as well so meaning lots of products is delayed like I actually spoke to one of my old clients the other day and she sources products from all over the world and most of her orders they skipped a whole season one of the brands that she was ordering from she didn't get any of her products until the end of the season because all of the delays so that is really impacting businesses because ultimately if you're let's say you were I don't know it's with my brand if your products are delayed for more than three months you've missed the whole season
So it really does have a knock on impact on businesses because you need products to in on time. And as a buyer, that was my whole job to try and make sure that my products would come in on time. Naturally, there's always some kind of delay, but ultimately you want them to be as close as possible to get them in on time. So make sure that you are be able to sell them in peak time period. There's also been a massive rise particularly in 2024 of the digital market here.
Now that is mainly people moving away from physical products. I'm also into digital products and selling digital things online rather than actually investing into inventory. And I can even say that I'm part of that because I'm actually starting a digital business. It's an e -commerce business, but it is digital. I'm not going to hold any inventory. So a bit more kind of like the Farfetch model where they work without stocking anything in their actual own supply chain. They're working on people's supply chains. So that's becoming more popular, in which case people are kind of like...
dropping their e -commerce businesses and moving towards that because it sounds like it might be a easier venture to kind of break into. Established brands are making a comeback. So obviously people dropped off in COVID. Now they're all coming back. They've got a lot of ad buying power. They're putting on in real life events. They're updating their stores, shopping experiences, et cetera. So there's a lot of like more inclination to go back and shop with maybe like high street or luxury brands because there's more happening and like they're really doing a lot to attract people in. Obviously they've got
bigger budgets to spend and attract people in. Another thing that's been happening as well, and I've really noticed this, is that cybercrime has come through the roof. So there's been a lot of hacking, there has been a lot of people having their accounts taken over, and that has been, is obviously a huge problem, particularly for small businesses, because you've worked so hard, you've put everything into getting your business live and doing all this content and stuff, and then suddenly your account gets hacked, you lose everything.
And I think a lot of people are not only cautious to spend with brands that obviously lose things because you never know what's going to happen to your data, but also businesses are like, well, what's the point? Why would I restart that? Because if someone could just hack into it that easily. Now this actually happened to me. I had my whole Facebook account hacked a few months ago. And I saw a business flash for words because all of my accounts are linked to my Facebook. So if my Facebook had gone, everything else would have gone as well. So that is really terrifying. And I think that's...
making people fear on the side of caution when it comes to shopping and also kind of reestablishing their businesses. Customers have generally very high expectations now. don't, they're not just kind of looking for a product, they're looking for an ex -shopping experience. And they're just kind of like wanting something a little bit more. They're trying to buy into more brands for purpose rather than just like a brand that doesn't necessarily have a unique selling point. So you really need to be able to stand out in this current market.
And then don't even get me started on this one, but the rise of quick and cheap shopping experiences like Shein, Timo, TikTok. my gosh, I can't bear it. Now don't get me wrong, I have used them, but I just think it encourages so much overconsumption because this product is so cheap and so easily accessible now. Whereas this used to be really only wholesalers would be able to access products like this at this price point and that quickly. Now it's available to everybody. That kind of...
takes away the novelty of being able to source that product from your favourite boutique because you've got it accessible. Normally your favourite brand would maybe buy products from these places so they're all just buying stuff from the Far East for example which is normally where your favourite brands would go to source. Now you're skipping out the brand, you're going straight to source so you're kind of losing the need for having all of these ecommerce brands stocking stuff because
it doesn't make sense anymore because you can get it directly from where it's coming from at a cheaper price point because obviously when somebody then resells it they're going to have a markup so people are going directly to source. I think it's good in terms of like you have more things accessible to you but it does encourage overconsumption and I think that that's really going against everything that we learn in lockdown which was like shop small, shop local, buy more sustainably.
And now we've kind of gone the complete opposite way where we're over consuming and we're buying into just crap for the sake of it because it's cheap and it's there and it's available. There's been new social media platforms launched. There has been a bit of a death in influence marketing and then the rise of UGC creators, which I don't think is a bad thing. I think that that's a little bit more of a transparent way to kind of track influential business, but it has meant that again, businesses have had to shift, their money in different ways, redesign their marketing strategies.
And returns policies have changed as well. So ASOS now ban free returns for people that have returned a lot, which is crazy. And then a lot of companies are now charging much used to be free and that puts people off buying as well. So there is so much happening in the market. There's been so much change. And in all honesty, since 2020, a lot of businesses were born in 2020, I'd say. And if I look...
at some of the business that I actually went through my mailing list last week just to see kind of who's still on it and who's still relevant and like do I need to clean it out. I would say about 40 % of the people on my mailing list that once did have a business in 2020, that's why they subscribed to me because they were looking for my like e -commerce tips and advice. They no longer have a business. I went through all of them. I checked on their Instagram, checked out their websites. They no longer are trading and that is really sad honestly because some of them were like amazing businesses.
But I'm getting people come to me now and they're looking, they're struggling. They can't afford to invest in their business because they don't have the sales. So I can only imagine how disheartening that can be and how demotivating that can be to the point where you do just pack up a shop and you can't do it anymore. And I think it's going to take a very resilient type of person, resilient type of founder, someone that's really worked on their mindset as founder to get through this harder period.
to be able to maintain and consistently sell because otherwise I think it's going to be a real struggle to be able to fight through all the barriers and it's going to need somebody to be quite open -minded and able to pivot and change their business because ultimately what worked for you four years ago is not going to work for you today so if your business is still in the same position as it was four years ago in terms of like all of the processes and things that you're doing unfortunately that is not going to work.
One thing I want to touch on is that we're not the first generation to go through hard economic times and definitely we won't be the last either. And there's actually some really big companies in the world that have experienced and gone through this previously in the retail world that are still standing. So if they are still standing, then we can all still stand with our businesses. And I want to kind of give some insight into some of those and some inspiration stories because I think it's really important.
remember that it doesn't have to just end like you can pivot and like change things out and rebrand yourself and come back as a new evolved version. think I had a conversation with someone yesterday and there's actually Kimberly who runs the Oncommon Club if anyone is interested in joining the Oncommon Club it's actually a membership for creatives who aren't living like that traditional nine -to -five working life and like want to find that supportive community and learn all of the resources that they might need to set up and grow their businesses.
And we were talking about this because she felt the same way that I've been feeling and that's kind of what prompted me to do this episode. But that things are changing and not everybody is going to be able to keep up and be able to, you know, actually pivot their businesses in the right direction, in which case we're going to see even more businesses not in the market this time next year. So that's why I kind of want to give you some inspo stories and talk you through a couple of brands that I've actually worked with both of these brands that I'm going to talk to you about. They are massive.
luxury retailers and massive global brands not not necessarily luxury but the massive global brands so obviously they're not completely comparable but they all started at some point in the same way that you did probably with very limited budget and probably kind of as a one -man band well actually I know they did so I'm going to talk you through the examples but just to give you a of info these global brands started in same position as you and they've been able to pivot through some of these hard times as well so
Let's talk about them. As I said, I've worked for both of these brands. I actually started my career in this one I'm going to talk about, which is River Island. If you're in the UK, you probably know who River Island is. It's a fast fashion boutique chain on High Street in the UK. And it actually started back in the 40s where Bernard Lewis, who started a family -run business and opened a family chain called the Lewis Separates. And that was in the late 40s, late 50s. So it started as a family -run business.
probably quite small, obviously it wasn't around the 40s, 50s, so I don't know the extent of it, but quite a small business. And then he just managed to grow there. He really developed a loyal customer base from what I understand in London and then from there kind of expanded. In the 60s, they pivoted from Louis Separates to Chelsea Girl and that was then like a women's fast fashion retailer. was actually one of the first fast fashion boutiques in the UK catering specifically to women.
And then in the noughties, during the financial crisis, they were actually one of the first retailers on the high streets to shift into e -commerce. I think it was around 2008 that they invested heavily into their e -commerce businesses. And that was way earlier than any other retailer at that moment in time. So they were way ahead of the game. So they pivoted and kind of foresaw the future of what was potentially going to happen.
and they shifted their business into that direction before they actually needed to so I bet they did quite well at knockdown actually. And then the 20 times which is I worked for them around 2008, 2010 between that time maybe to 2011, 12 I can't remember exactly but I do remember this specifically that they really pivoted their business more into kids and men so obviously they started out more...
focused on women's but they could see this growing demand in the kids and the men's sector so they weren't afraid to shift their original business plan and move into assortments and collections that they hadn't necessarily tried before. Now if we compare them to their at the time biggest competitor which was Topshop, Topshop no longer exists so I think obviously Topshop had its own challenges but I think if I look at River Island and again I've had a bit of an insider insight into this and
I can really kind of see why they have continued to be successful. It's because they really stayed very, very consistent with the person that they are targeting, their ideal target customer. They have maintained their price points. They haven't like suddenly jumped really high or reduced it drastically to try and attract in a new crowd. They've been fairly consistent and their products have stayed fairly consistent. Like if I go into a River Island store now, which is very...
very rarely but like when I do I recognize it like the essence of River Island still remains the same from when I worked there over 10 years ago now because they really know who they're targeting they really know what their selling point is they really know what their customer wants and they've got a really loyal and solid customer base that comes back to them over and over and over again and I think one thing
I will definitely say that I see with quite a lot of my clients that they don't do is focus on customer retention and focus on customer loyalty. They're constantly focused on marketing and attracted to new customers, in which case they're not building that consistent, loyal customer base that's going to come back over and over again. And obviously, we've finally ended up building that over a long period of time. They've cleared their business in different directions, built out different product categories, but they still remain fairly consistent with the person that they're targeting, and they've built a really solid brand identity.
And I think that's where it comes down to it. Obviously they've evolved with the times and they've changed things to allow for different things to happen in their business and grow with the economic climates. But at the core of it, they've remained true to what they believe in. They've remained true to their mission, their values. They've stayed consistent. They're a family -run business. They still are a family -run business. They haven't then gone to try and get external funding. They haven't tried to go public with their company.
They're still a privately owned company, family owned business, they haven't decided to like kind of grow beyond their means and I'm sure internally refined have had their own challenges as well and I was actually quite surprised if I'm honest like how they have stayed alive throughout all of this but I can see why like when I was doing the episode research for this, for talking about this I was like okay it actually makes perfect sense because they really have stayed true to their core and there's another example I'm gonna give you in a second which
has done exactly the same thing and I've also worked for this brand which is Burberry, obviously a completely different scale on the spectrum but Burberry started in the 50s, a few years later they were in Brighton but around the same time and again it was just started by one guy, Thomas Burberry, sorry 1850s, wasn't around the same time, when they morphed into what they are today it was more around the same time but Burberry was founded in the 1850s by Thomas Burberry in his 20s, he was solely focused on elsewhere and countrywear.
And then in the 1920s he invented the gabardine fabric which is a waterproof, freezeable fabric that then went on to become obviously the hallmark of Burberry and the trench coat. Now, what are Burberry known for today? Still known for trench coats. Now, Burberry, do not get me wrong, has had its peaks and troughs throughout the years but it still remained very consistent with its branding and what they're known for. Like the trench coat, you go to Burberry because of the trench coat, you go to Burberry because of the check.
So they have like developed such a solid branding and then therefore people that are really loyal to their brand because of the way that they haven't consistently chopped and changed their mission or values or what they do. They've had very many different iterations and they've gone through different branding but if you look at the way that they've then come full circle they're now back to kind of their core essence, their original kind of reason for being and in those years where they ventured away from that were where they were really struggling and that's the reason why they've kind of come back to that core essence.
Again, built a very, very loyal customer base and they have people that come back and shop with them over and over again. Again, I've had insight into both of these businesses. I've worked for both of them. I was a buying manager for Burberry for a while. And also, again, Burberry were ahead of its time. They were one of the first luxury brands to start their e -commerce platform in 2006. And then they also pivoted and grew their business into more of like the luxury fashion brand market. So I think both of these businesses, where I wanted to kind of give you the inspiration is that they have stayed true to their core.
And this is where I think quite a lot of people go wrong and I've seen this go wrong in other brands that I've worked for. They don't stay true to their core. They don't stay true to the mission that they originally set out on. They don't think and consider the target customer that they originally set to target. And that's where things go wrong and that's where things get lost in translation because then they're still trying to target new people. They're doing things that aren't necessarily targeting their old customers. They're having to shift into a new customer. And this is where things go
consistently go wrong and I can give a really good example of this. This is where Kate Spade went completely wrong when they got bought out by Coach because they had a really strong unique identity with all of their novelty products. No one else was really doing that and then we got bought out by Coach when I was working for them and immediately that changed. We had to go into these bog standard bags which already Michael Kors and Coach were catering for so there wasn't really a need for Kate Spade to kind of go fully into that.
Coach and Michael Kors weren't offering the novelty products, that's really what set Cates Bader apart. Coach bought Cates Bader out and they completely lost that and ever since then Cates Bader hasn't necessarily been the brand that it once was. Obviously I don't know what their sales are these days but I can very clearly see that they're not plastered all over the press as they once were and the intention behind the brand is no longer as prominent as it once was. So I feel like
those brands that really stay true to their core essence are the ones that are there for like the long term and that is really like looking back at your brand mission, what you set out to do when you launched your brand and who that target customer was and trying to maintain that. Now obviously there are going to be tweaks in your strategy along the way. You might decide that you need to pivot and completely target a different customer. That's okay. But you need to be very clear on like with your attentions of that and like what your mission is behind that and then maintain that.
things do naturally change in the long run but I think if you can really understand what value you offer and what is your unique selling point and communicate that really clearly throughout all of your marketing and stay true to that, that is why these brands have succeeded over some of their competitors that maybe haven't done as well. Now as I said earlier, what you were doing four years ago is no longer relevant today. So if you haven't evolved your business, if you haven't evolved the processes that you work through,
and doing different things to attract new people in and get your sales going. Unfortunately, probably that is why your business is struggling because you need to make change. Now, I had a client recently come to me and she had always run her business on Instagram. Now, Instagram has gone through its own challenges, which I know most people that run their businesses and focus primarily on getting customers from Instagram are definitely struggling right now because there's so many changes happening all the time on that platform.
Anyway, she ran her business mainly through Instagram and most of her customers came from Instagram. It got to a point where her sales were just so stagnant and she wasn't willing to put the energy and the effort and attention into trying different platforms to get people to come through because she'd exhausted the sales from her current audience. She needed to attract in new customers and I can tell that because her conversion rate was really good. She was getting traffic onto our website. So she was converting the traffic that was coming through from Instagram.
But then it meant that she wasn't attracting anyone new in, so we needed to do new things to target new customers because she'd already exhausted her existing audience and that can happen. If you have had an audience, the same audience since 2020, they've seen you, obviously you wanna build relationships with those customers and that may entain them, but if you're not launching new products consistently or your product isn't something that they can buy over and over again on repeat purchase.
it's gonna be quite hard for them to continue to buy from you. So then in which case you do still need to attract in new customers. So trying to make sure that you are diversifying your marketing channels is a really good way to do that because then once you're really solid in one, you can maintain one of your marketing channels and then introduce another one, explore different things that happen on those platforms and pivot your marketing strategy. If you just keep doing the same thing and it's still not working, it's probably still not gonna work for you no matter how hard you try.
And then really focusing on your customer experience as well and trying to again like I retain that customer it's gonna be make all the difference and allowing yourself to Understand the data and I know that's a quite scary thing sometimes for quite a lot of e -commerce business fathers because finances and data analytics is not what you start your business for you started because you like the product but understand your data can make all the difference and you can really start understanding your consumer buying behaviors
You can improve your action, taking a decision, making your business because actually you have all of the information that available to you in your business that's going to tell you everything you need to know about what you need to change. But you just need to be open enough to accept that and not be stubborn and like stick with things that aren't working. You need in these times to be able to change. The people that are able to change and pivot and adapt to the current market are the ones that are going to see success in their business later on. The ones that don't, I can guarantee you you're going to be sat here moaning about the same things.
this time next year. Potentially your business might not even exist because ultimately you're not getting sales and you haven't got the cash flow, in which case businesses fail. So I think the only failure you can have in a business is if you don't try and if you don't try to pivot and change something about your business, that's the only failure you could ever have. So I would strongly suggest if you feel stuck and things are not progressing and your business and the market has changed so much in the past four years that your business hasn't been able to keep up.
I would highly recommend taking a bit of a step back for your business and trying to figure out exactly what is going on and reviewing your data and analytics to help you understand that so you can make better informed decisions about how to trade your business and market your business in the longer run. then always everything you do, come back to who you're doing it for, come back to your customer, come back to your mission. Because like I say, with the examples of River Island Burberry, they were two brands that, yeah, they've survived for different things, but...
If I look at them consistently, they've gone through so much change over the pit time periods, even the times that I've worked for them. They've gone through so much change in their business, but ultimately they've always come back to their core true essence as a brand. And I think that that's really important to remember as a founder is remember why you started, remember who you started it for. And then you can't really go wrong if you're doing that. And the last point then would be to kind of really refine your unique selling point and figure out what makes you stand out from the crowd.
because in a very crowded marketplace in an unstable climate, you need to have a point of difference. There's no way someone's gonna come and buy from you over your competition unless they know exactly what you've got over the competition. So making that really clear and making that stand out. Now, I actually talk about a lot of these things in a free resource that I recently created. It's called the Convert More Customers Checklist. And it basically goes through 10 points that I see all the time with my clients that they're not doing.
which is causing them to not convert customers that are coming onto their website. So you've got lot of browsers on your site, you've got traffic, but you're not actually converting them into sales. In case you didn't know, the average e -commerce conversion rate is actually 2%. If you've got traffic coming onto your website right now and your conversion rate is lower than 2%, I can guarantee you are missing opportunities in your sales. So I created this free Convert Your Customers checklist so that you can understand what some of those things might be that are holding you back and help you take action and pivot some of the things on your website to help you make changes.
I also talk a little bit in there about building a more significant sales strategy using the data that you have available to you and I actually include a free little training around how to use the data in your business. So if you are interested in that, I will pop the link in the show notes. For now, I think that's everything I needed to say on this subject. I could go on for ages, but ultimately the message is if something's not working in your business, please change it. Don't just sit there and wait for it to something to change because ultimately if nothing changes, nothing changes, right?
and you have to initiate the change, no one is going to be able to do that for you. So don't feel stuck, make change, no one is ever stuck in the same position, it's all about choices. If you make the choice to stay there, you are going to feel stuck forever. If you make the choice to change, you're going to slowly but surely go back onto the path of growth and the trajectory that you want to put your business in. So please let this be your inspiration to not just sit in your shit and actually get yourself out there, push yourself out of your comfort zone and...
and take action to make your business where you want it to go. And if you need that first step to help you, download the free guide that I've got available in the show notes. And hopefully that can help you give you some inspiration on what actions you need to take to get your business back on track.