Best Practices

Summer 2025 is over, and while most e-commerce businesses are breathing a sigh of relief after "surviving" another slow season, Matt's post-summer analysis reveals something different—while one business experienced the predicted 50% sales drop, another grew 19% year-on-year by challenging default assumptions and focusing on mobile optimisation and new customer acquisition while competitors pulled back. In this episode, Matt introduces Aurion's "undefault" principle for questioning business assumptions, shares research showing 70% of summer purchases happen in March-May, and provides three practical steps to challenge your seasonal defaults for 2026, proving summer can become a competitive advantage rather than a period to survive.

Matt Edmundson confronts an uncomfortable truth: after 200+ episodes interviewing experts, he's only implemented about 5% of what he's learned. Drawing from his £38 million business lesson—when a supplier relationship decimated revenue from £6 million to £1 million—Matt argues that we're all drowning in good advice whilst our businesses stay the same. This solo episode marks a shift for the eCommerce Podcast, introducing focused implementation episodes and free peer cohorts to bridge the gap between learning and doing. His challenge: stop taking notes, start taking action.

Omer shares proven methods for avoiding panic decisions during trade disruptions, building tariff-resistant businesses, and long-term strategic planning for international sourcing.

In this episode of the Ecommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson engages with Farzad Rashidi from Respona to explore innovative strategies for leveraging AI in search optimisation. The discussion centres on how businesses can effectively utilise AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance product visibility and recommendations. Farzad shares insights into the evolving landscape of AI-driven search, emphasising the importance of frequency and credibility in online mentions. He introduces practical strategies, such as the Listicle and Product Review approaches, to boost organic traffic and mentions across various platforms. The conversation also highlights the significance of balancing content creation with promotion, advocating for a strategic shift towards more targeted outreach efforts. This episode is a treasure trove of actionable advice for ecommerce brands looking to adapt and thrive in the AI era.

Ben Leonard challenges the toxic side hustle culture in eCommerce by distinguishing between "just selling stuff" online and building genuine brands. Drawing from his experience scaling Beast Gear to £6 million annual revenue and achieving organic endorsements from Liverpool FC and MMA fighters, Ben reveals why brand building has become essential for competitive advantage. His Value Pyramid framework demonstrates how brand foundation drives sustainable growth, reduces risk, and creates the customer loyalty that makes businesses genuinely valuable to potential buyers.

Most ecommerce entrepreneurs get trapped on a hamster wheel where business growth equals more stress and less freedom. David Braithwaite reveals the Four Freedoms framework that transforms entrepreneurship from exhausting hustle into sustainable success. Learn why you should schedule rest before work, take only what you need from your business, and build the support systems that prevent burnout whilst creating genuine wealth and life satisfaction.

Mario Lanzarotti reveals why eCommerce entrepreneurs burn out and shares his Zenpreneur framework for scaling businesses without sacrificing wellbeing. From recognising burnout symptoms to implementing service-first approaches and building essential support systems, discover how prioritising wellbeing actually enhances business performance rather than competing with it.

Most e-commerce founders have lost touch with their customers, relying on data dashboards instead of direct conversations. Peter Murphy Lewis reveals how strategic questioning transforms businesses—from £49 to £299 pricing increases to 15-month customer retention improvements. His framework focuses on discovery paths, decision factors, improvement opportunities, and pricing validation through systematic customer interviews that reveal what quantitative data cannot capture

Discover why 95% of brand decisions happen unconsciously and how eCommerce brands can master the art of being distinctive rather than just different. Staeven Frey reveals the brand science methodology behind memorable customer connections, explaining how distinctive brand assets across five sensory categories create lasting recognition whilst maintaining category credibility. Learn the systematic approach Fortune 500 companies use to build brand authority pyramids and why traditional positioning strategies fail in our System 1 thinking world.

Discover why Google's Chief Strategist Neil Hoyne believes marketing might be harder than rocket science and how small eCommerce businesses can compete with Amazon through relationship building rather than operational efficiency. Learn the framework behind bodybuilding.com's success, why the thank you page represents your biggest missed opportunity, and how to implement the "one percent daily improvement" philosophy that transforms customer relationships without overwhelming your resources.

Ian Hammersley reveals why most e-commerce businesses remain stuck despite having beautiful websites and slick marketing. Through 20 years of analysing thousands of stores, he's identified the "shiny distractions" that prevent growth and developed frameworks for focusing on metrics that actually matter. Learn how one £20 million fashion brand wasted six months perfecting the wrong element, why "everything's in beta" should be your new mindset, and the mathematical realities that determine which businesses can scale to £10 million and beyond.

Most eCommerce brands operate with just 5 brand assets when they need 30-50 to be truly memorable. Stæven Frey reveals the Brand Science™ framework that explains why customers forget most brands immediately after purchase. Discover how memory formation actually works, why distinctiveness beats being different, and the systematic approach for building brand assets that make customers think of you first when they're ready to buy.

Most e-commerce brands treat customers as numbers in analytics dashboards, missing the fundamental truth that behind every website visit is an individual human being. Monica Sharma-Patnekar's 4D Framework transforms customer understanding through genuine conversations rather than cold data, revealing the desires and stories that drive purchasing decisions. By implementing systematic customer interviews and treating insights as strategic business intelligence rather than customer service tasks, brands build sustainable loyalty that compounds over time whilst rediscovering the joy in business building.

The eCommerce M&A landscape has shifted dramatically from a seller's market to a buyer's market, with multiples dropping from 5-7X to 3-4X as aggregators realise the operational complexity of running online businesses. Ben Leonard reveals why brand building has become the foundation of sellable value, replacing the previous cash arbitrage model with genuine CPG-style business evaluation that rewards sustainable competitive advantages over quick profits.

Discover why rapid eCommerce growth often destroys businesses and how to break free from the financial treadmill trap. Eric Youngstrom reveals the 60-120 day cash conversion cycle that keeps profit perpetually tied up in operations, preventing business owners from paying themselves properly. Learn systematic approaches to capital allocation, accounting infrastructure, and pricing strategies that enable sustainable growth whilst preserving personal finances and building long-term business value.

Most eCommerce businesses chase A/B testing whilst missing the brutally effective optimization method that works better: user research. Oliver Palmer reveals why talking to just five customers delivers more insights than sophisticated testing programmes, why software vendors' promised results are rare exceptions, and how to conduct practical user research that uncovers the real barriers preventing purchases—even with limited budgets and traffic.

What if every technology problem in your business wasn't actually about technology at all? Ian Finch, CEO of Mando Group and chair of the British Interactive Media Association for the Northwest, has spent 25 years watching eCommerce businesses blame their tech stack for problems that stem from something far more fundamental: their own readiness for change.

Most eCommerce businesses chase revenue targets that inspire nobody and create no competitive advantage. Mike Jones, organizational psychologist and former British Army officer, reveals why strategy is about choices, not forecasts. Discover the fundamental question every founder must answer, why clear purpose beats profit doubling, how mission command creates genuine empowerment, and why culture doesn't actually eat strategy for breakfast. Learn to develop strategy that fits on five pages, aligns your entire organization, and creates sustainable competitive advantage in crowded markets

Six eCommerce experts share their biggest lessons from 2020, revealing how unprecedented challenges actually made the industry stronger. From building resilient systems to embracing small steps, balancing automation with humanity, and developing the mindset to handle volatility, these leaders provide practical frameworks for turning crisis into opportunity. Discover why resilience, adaptability, and refusing to take anything for granted will define success in the years ahead.

Discover three battle-tested tips for startup success from Heikki Haldre, who's built six companies and sold four—including one to Rakuten. Learn why getting a co-founder (structured properly with vesting schedules) matters more than you think, why solving your own problem creates sustainable competitive advantage, and how embracing the courage to try transforms "silly" ideas into world-changing innovations. These aren't theoretical concepts—they're practical strategies that have generated millions in revenue and successful exits.