Scaling an eCommerce Business - Adil Wali

eCommerce is one of the hottest and highest-growth spaces driving the world economy right now and while most companies attempting this space have quality products and a solid target customer, many of them will fail because they cannot execute quickly enough to beat their competition.

In this talk, we'll cover lessons learned in scaling multiple commerce business, including ModCloth, one of the fastest growing companies in the world of fashion. The topics covered will be driven significantly by the audience, with the goal of covering tangible-lessons-learned with real ideas that you can try tomorrow.

Transcript

1. Scaling an E- Commerce Business Adil Wali @adilwali August 2012 SpreeConf - Dublin
2. The Quick Snapshot
3. Winning is about luck.
4. I’ve Done a Lot of Shit
5. Choose your own adventure!  Features  Merchandising  Business Strategy  Tech Toolkit  Team & Process  Platform Scaling  Fullfillment and Customer Service  Capital Strategy
6. Have something worth scaling; Scale it
7. Have something worth scaling; Scale it
8. A Disruptive Business
10. Customer Acquisition
11. Customer Acquisition Customer Lifetime Value
12. Customer Acquisition Customer Lifetime Value Unit Economics
13. Business Strategy
14. Be disruptive about customer acquisition
15. Retention doesn’t matter if you have no customers
16. = ∞ profit Not all businesses are created equal
17. Always Room for Unit Economic Innovation
18. Always Room for Unit Economic Innovation
19. Always Room for Unit Economic Innovation
20. Always Room for Unit Economic Innovation
21. # Customers * (LTV – CPA) What is your business worth?
22. How many? How much do they cost? How much are they worth? # Customers * (LTV – CPA) What is your business worth?
23. Customer Acquisition Customer Lifetime Value Unit Economics
24. Customer Acquisition
25. Hard to win on paid channels
26. Unique Viral Customer Acquisition If Users are Viral, You can Spend more $$$ on Acq.
27. Get to Know Your Audience General Search Term
28. Get to Know Your Audience General Search Term Specific Search Term
29. Lifetime Value
30. Lifetime Value and Loyalty
31. Lifetime Value and Loyalty
32. Lifetime Value and Loyalty
33. Lifetime Value and Loyalty
34. Personalization Drives LTV
35. Personalization Drives LTV Large SKU count
36. Personalization Drives LTV Large SKU count Small SKU count
37. Features
38. You don’t need as many features as you think
39. You don’t need as many features as you think
40. Merchandizing, Branding, & Curation
41. Features magnify products
42. No Customer == No Brand
43. Win on Curation
44. Your Toolkit
45. DATA
46. Analytics == Part of Daily Life
47. Avoid Data #Failure
48. When You Scale: Everything Breaks
49. Optimize Around Fixing Quickly
50. Really. Everything Breaks.
51. Really. Everything Breaks. • Infrastructure breaks
52. Really. Everything Breaks. • Infrastructure breaks • Process breaks
53. Really. Everything Breaks. • Infrastructure breaks • Process breaks • Brand breaks
54. Really. Everything Breaks. • Infrastructure breaks • Process breaks • Brand breaks • Customer service breaks
55. Really. Everything Breaks. • Infrastructure breaks • Process breaks • Brand breaks • Customer service breaks • Fulfillment breaks
56. Avoid Catastrophic Failure
57. Don’t Talk About Everything, All The Time!
58. It’s Easy to Frankenstein your Brand
59. Customer Service is NOT a Cost Center
60. Experience is NOT just on the Web
61. Capital Strategy
62. If You Get It, You Will Spend It (Yes, all of it.)
63. It’s the People Behind the Money
64. Premature Scaling
65. Have something worth scaling; Scale it
66. Customers Will Vote with Their Money!
67. Thanks! @adilwali | adil@adilwali.com