Guides
Guides, news and ideas on guides.
Mobile ecommerce optimisation: Core Web Vitals, checkout, and the specific fixes that move conversion
70-85% of ecommerce traffic is mobile. The ten specific areas (Web Vitals, touch targets, form autofill, Apple Pay, thumb zones) that close the mobile-desktop conversion gap, with real tools and benchmarks.
Product prototyping: the five stages, in order, and the test each answers
Build cheap prototypes in sequence: sketch, mock-up, 3D print, functional, production. Each answers a different question. Skip stages and you pay 10x more to discover the same failures.
Email marketing for ecommerce: deliverability, cadence, and the silent killers
Email remains the highest-ROI channel for ecommerce. List-building done right, deliverability fundamentals, newsletter vs automation vs transactional, cadence guidelines, and the mistakes that kill programmes over months.
Copy is the cheapest conversion lever: ten places on your store to rewrite today
Hero headlines, buttons, empty states, error messages, email subject lines, thank-you pages. The specific places where copy either sells or gets in the way, and what to put there.
Shipping labels for ecommerce: the four options, and when to use each
Carrier websites, multi-carrier software, marketplace tools, or 3PL. A quick guide to what each does and the volume at which you should switch.
Fifteen underused tactics that actually lift ecommerce conversion
Shipping cost on the product page, free-shipping thresholds, honest scarcity, product schema, back-in-stock emails. The tactics most stores haven't implemented but should have.
How to sell digital downloads: the economics, the platforms, and what actually drives sales
Digital products have the margin profile of print. What actually works, which platform pays you the most at your volume, and why piracy is mostly a distraction.
Ecommerce customer retention: the five-email programme and eight things that actually work
Acquiring customers costs 5-7x more than retaining them. The five emails every store should have, where SMS and subscription fit, and why most loyalty programmes are over-invested.
Competitor research for ecommerce: the three-hour quarterly audit that actually produces decisions
Not browsing three competitor sites and feeling worse. The specific sources (ad libraries, negative reviews, SEO tools) and the three-hour method that gives you one concrete decision per competitor per quarter.
Selling digital games: Steam vs itch.io vs direct, and the three businesses most guides confuse
Indie game devs, key resellers, and in-game-asset traders all get lumped into "selling digital games" but run completely different businesses. An honest guide for path 1.
Starting ecommerce on a budget: the honest lunch-break version
Yes, you can set up a store in an hour. No, that isn't a business yet. Realistic budget, timeline, minimum toolkit, and what to spend your lunch breaks on for a real launch in four weeks.
Twelve product description patterns that actually lift conversion
Product descriptions are the shop assistant you don't have. The twelve habits that turn them from captions into conversion tools, plus where AI helps and where it doesn't.