eCommerce growth is rarely held back by one single issue.
A slow website might look like a development problem. A high checkout abandonment rate might sit with marketing. Low repeat purchases might be handed to the CRM team. Payment failures might be treated as a finance or operations issue.
But customers do not experience an eCommerce business in departments. They experience one journey.
That means the biggest growth opportunities often sit between teams, platforms and specialisms. Solving them requires more than one person looking at one dashboard.
It requires better conversations.
Our marketing exec, Holly Payne says:
Growth doesn't work in isolation, everyone needs to be part of the conversation. Developers, marketers, designers, payment providers and all the rest of them - each perspective matters. A development team might see that a site is technically fast, and how to optimise that, but marketing can see that users are still dropping off, and why.
Customer service might be hearing the same complaint over and over, but that insight might never actually reach the people responsible for the website, everyone needs to work together to make sure that information doesn't get lost.
When they come together, problems become easier to understand and prioritise.
Five questions every eCommerce team should be asking
1. Where are customers experiencing the most friction?
Every eCommerce business has friction, but it is not always where teams expect it to be.
It could be:
- A confusing navigation structure
- Poor mobile usability
- Slow category or product pages
- Missing delivery information
- Limited payment options
- An overcomplicated checkout
- Unclear returns information
- A difficult account creation process
The first step is not immediately choosing a solution, It’s understanding where the friction exists, how many customers it affects, and what commercial impact it may be having.
Analytics, customer service feedback, session recordings, technical data and payment insights can all reveal different parts of the problem.
2. Are customers able to pay in the way they expect?
Payments are often treated as something that happens at the end of the customer journey.
In reality, they can influence whether a customer begins the journey at all. The payment methods customers expect can vary depending on their location, device, order value and buying habits.
Businesses should regularly review:
- Which payment methods customers are using
- Where payment failures are occurring
- Whether mobile checkout feels simple
- Whether the right local payment options are available
- How clearly payment and security information is communicated
- Whether the checkout supports plans for international growth
This is one of the areas our meetup partner Mollie will be able to bring practical insight into.
The aim is not to add every available payment method. It is to understand which options make purchasing easier for your actual customers.
3. Which technical issues are affecting revenue?
Not every technical problem has the same commercial impact.
A long list of development tickets can quickly become overwhelming, particularly when every issue is marked as urgent.
The more useful question is:
Which technical problems are actively making it harder for customers to buy?
That could include:
- Slow page speeds
- Broken search or filtering
- Unreliable integrations
- Inaccurate stock information
- Checkout errors
- Poor mobile performance
- Tracking gaps
- Recurring bugs caused by technical debt
Technical teams should not be expected to prioritise this alone.
Marketing, operations and commercial teams need to provide context around customer behaviour, campaign plans and business goals.
The best technical roadmap is not simply a list of fixes. It is a prioritised plan connected to customer experience and growth.
4. Are our teams working towards the same priorities?
It is common for different departments to be working hard towards completely different goals.
Marketing may be preparing a major campaign while development is focused on a platform upgrade.
The retention team may want to introduce new customer journeys while customer service is still dealing with issues caused by the previous change.
Everyone is making progress, but the business is not necessarily moving in one direction.
Cross-functional planning helps teams understand:
- What is being launched
- Why it matters
- What could block it
- who needs to be involved
- How success will be measured
- What should be prioritised next
This doesn't mean every decision needs a large meeting.
It means creating enough shared context for teams to make better decisions independently.
5. What happens after the first purchase?
Acquisition often gets the most attention because it is easy to see when traffic and orders increase, but sustainable growth depends on what happens next.
Businesses should be asking:
- Do customers receive useful post-purchase communication?
- Are delivery expectations clear?
- Is it easy to get help?
- Are customers encouraged to return at the right time?
- Are repeat purchase rates being measured?
- Do loyalty and referral activity genuinely add value?
- Are reviews and feedback being used to improve the experience?
The first order shouldn't be treated as the end of the journey.
It is the point where the customer decides whether the experience was good enough to repeat.
Partners should add expertise, not noise
The best eCommerce partnerships are not based on adding more tools for the sake of it.
They bring specialist knowledge into the areas where internal teams may not have the time, data or experience to see the full picture.
- A payment partner, like Mollie can identify checkout and transaction trends.
- A hosting partner, like Hypernode can provide deeper visibility into performance and reliability.
- A CRM partner can help uncover retention opportunities.
- An accessibility specialist, like Recite Me can identify barriers that other teams may miss.
- A development and growth agency, like us, can help connect these different areas and turn them into a prioritised roadmap.
The value comes from combining those perspectives around a shared customer journey.
Better conversations lead to better decisions
There’s no shortage of eCommerce advice online.
There are reports, webinars, tools, podcasts, posts and platforms promising the next major growth opportunity.
What is often missing is context; what worked for another business may not work for your customers, platform, team, or budget.
That is why speaking openly with people working across different areas of eCommerce can be so valuable - you learn what is actually working, you hear about mistakes before making them yourself, & you discover how other teams are approaching similar challenges.
Join the conversation in Manchester
The evening will bring together developers, marketers, designers, merchants, partners and people working across the wider digital industry.
There will be a mix of technical and non-technical perspectives, practical insights and opportunities to meet people solving similar problems.
Our marketing director, Chris Munrow says:
There’s a great deal of reward in being in a room full of like minded people sharing ideas, experiences and building connections. Working in tech, we spend so much of our time looking at screens, reports and metrics that it can be difficult to miss the human aspect of why we do the roles we do. Putting on events isn’t always the easiest thing to do - often it’s juggled around other work priorities, there can be long hours and lots of admin involved - but the end results of seeing a community come together means that all the graft is soon forgotten about.
For me, it’s really crucial that the next generation of tech talent do not underestimate the importance of getting out to networking opportunities and getting into face to face conversations. You never know who you might bump into and one conversation could lead to an opportunity that would never have been possible otherwise.
It is not about sitting through a series of sales pitches or being told there is one correct platform, tool or approach.
It is about sharing knowledge, asking better questions and building a stronger local eCommerce community.
Whether you are writing code, growing an online store, managing campaigns, improving customer experience or simply interested in where the industry is heading, the evening is open to you.
Join Aware Digital and Mollie for our next Manchester eCommerce meetup; get your free ticket here.
