Your website probably doesn’t really matter
What matters is your ability to tell a good story, build connections, and engage on a human level.
Topic
Design
A collection of 20 issues
How can you expect to produce beauty and harmony if your marketing team isn’t “singing from the same song sheet”?
In order to maximize marketing performance, you need to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message.
The paradox of increasingly “powerful” ecommerce tools and realizing ultimate potential
As tools become more powerful, they also become more complex, which means less users are able to take advantage of that power. True power comes from leveraging simpler, more elegant, more pragmatic systems that combined enable outcomes that are greater than the sum of the parts.
Do you really want more features—or, do you actually want to achieve objectives?
If we rephrase “requirements” as goals and objectives, we will see leaner, more nimble projects that move faster, cost less money and headspace, and lead to more impactful and successful outcomes.
Growing faster and more sustainably on Shopify by adopting a “low-code mentality”
Despite all the best intentions, meticulous discovery, thoughtful design, and careful planning, how many ecommerce brands find themselves 6–12 months after launch of a new or refreshed site in a spiraling cycle of technical debt and increasing maintenance overhead?
Connecting marketing initiatives between the physical and virtual worlds
I am often surprised that so many brands send out direct mailers with no easy link between the physical and virtual experience—and no clear call-to-action or incentive to make a purchase.
Beware of the hidden costs of complexity
The more unknown unknowns there are in a design brief or system requirements, the more time is required to understand the core problems in order to design a suitable solution. Keeping things lean enables you to stay nimble, iterate faster, and grow more sustainably.
A first-principles mindset
If you’re building a people-first organization, you will grow faster and require less operational oversight if you develop and encourage a first-principles mindset in your team.
Some of the risks funded ecommerce startups face around over-designing and over-engineering for launch
For brands that have seed-funding, there is a strong tendency to get caught up in the look-and-feel and functionality of the website. Funded brands tend to quickly lose sight of factors such as nimbleness, technical debt, and the ability to iterate quickly based on analytics and data.
Designing with data, foundational principles, best practices, and facts
With any complex process, it’s important to separate pre-prescribed solutions from the ultimate goal. It’s important to fully understand the problems and the “whys”—and to avoid jumping to preconceived conclusions. Especially when problems aren’t fully understood in the first place.