you’re allowed to enjoy a day off without explaining how it improves your performance sometimes dinner with your family is just dinner with your family it doesn’t need to become a business lesson on monday

changing a creator commission in seller center doesn’t mean every order tomorrow uses new rate on TTS in the us, creators already promoting a product can retain their earlier rate under its 30 day commission protection rules so suppose you lower an open collaboration rate from 20% to 15% don’t immediately put 15% against every affiliate order in the forecast check which creators still have an active protected rate and when that period ends the number you just edited and the number you’re currently paying may be different also, talk to the creators they committed time and content based on what the offer paid a rate change might make sense for the business, but i’d rather explain it than have a creator find out while checking their earnings their economics deserve a place in the conversation too

before your next sale, give someone on the team 1 job try to use every legitimate offer a customer could find on same order welcome code from an old email automatic product discount free shipping promotion then look at the final checkout total shopify allows product, order and shipping discounts to combine when they’re configured that way nothing has to malfunction for this to become expensive the email team can set up their offer correctly the store team can set up the sale correctly the shipping promotion can work exactly as intended and together they can create an order nobody planned for i’d test the combinations, not just each offer separately finding out during setup is a much less annoying afternoon than discovering it after the campaign has gone out

“the bid is only a dollar” isn’t enough information for an amazon ppc review here’s a simple example with no other bid adjustments running $1 base bid 100% top of search adjustment now you’re at $2 for that placement with dynamic bids up and down, amazon can potentially increase that adjusted bid by another 100% now possible bid is $4 that doesn’t mean every click costs $4 it means the $1 you saw in the targeting tab wasn’t the full picture before changing bids, i’d check the placement adjustments, bidding strategy and any audience adjustments too otherwise you’re making 5 cent edits to 1 number while another setting is multiplying it those settings might be intentional and profitable but whoever is managing the account should be able to explain the whole calculation, not just the starting bid

not every reply needs to become a tiny sales pitch answer the actual question, share a detail that would save someone a mistake be funny when it’s funny people know where the profile button is

creator video you want to run in november might only be authorized through october not something i’d leave buried in a dm spark ads use creator authorization, and that permission has a duration tiktok can block ad setup when the authorization expires before the campaign ends before planning a promotion around someone’s content, i want the post link, authorized dates and renewal contact sitting beside the performance numbers then separately confirm whether we can edit the footage or use it on other channels a video being available in the ad account doesn’t answer all those questions this isn’t about making creator relationships more complicated it’s about avoiding the “hey, can you approve this tonight” message when everyone is already busy have that conversation while there’s still time to have a normal conversation

selling a 2 pack on amazon doesn’t automatically mean you get cheaper fulfillment amazon’s virtual multipack pilot lets selected brand owned products sell in multiples using single units already sitting in fba no separate physical 2 pack needs to be built convenient, but here’s part i’d check before setting the price amazon charges the single unit fulfillment fee for each unit in the virtual pack say that fee is $4 a virtual 2 pack means $8 in fulfillment, not one $4 charge you’re offering a bigger basket without necessarily getting the shipping economics you might associate with a prepacked multipack so before adding a quantity discount, compare what you actually keep per order i’d rather catch that while setting the price than after the discounted 2 pack becomes the best seller

before a big decision, leave yourself a note explaining why you’re making it not the polished explanation after you know the result the messy version from today future you is going to be very tempted to say “i knew that would happen”

there’s someone buying one desk lamp for their bedroom and someone buying 30 because an office is opening on monday i wouldn’t give those 2 buyers the same buying options the 2nd person may care about matching specifications, clear quantities and getting the whole order delivered when they need it amazon lets you separate business orders from consumer orders in your reporting that’s where i’d start which products are business customers already buying how many units do they order at a time which industries keep showing up then test business pricing or quantity discounts around an actual buying pattern not a random discount across catalog because someone said b2b is an opportunity before hunting for another product, check whether there’s a different buyer for the product you already sell

your september customers haven’t had june’s chances to buy again sounds painfully obvious but compare their repeat purchase rates without accounting for that and you can talk yourself into thinking the new customers are worse compare both groups at the same point after their first purchase 1st month against 1st month 3rd month against 3rd month shopify’s customer cohort report lets you make those comparisons instead of mixing customers of completely different ages then check what they actually bought someone who ordered a 3 month supply shouldn’t need another bottle on day 30 someone who bought one bottle might before deciding the retention emails need to be more aggressive, i’d check whether we’re asking people to reorder something they haven’t finished

customer can buy your product without seeing your ad and still show up in your product gmv max results that’s how tiktok documents the attribution while the campaign is running, paid and organic orders for the included products are credited to it so when someone shows me a beautiful campaign roi, my next question is what those products were selling before the campaign started this doesn’t mean gmv max is bad it means you shouldn’t read the report as if every sale came from paid traffic i’d look at total product sales, total spend and what else changed did a creator’s video take off did the offer change was demand already growing even a before and after comparison doesn’t prove which orders the ads caused question worth answering is how much additional business the spend created number inside the campaign isn’t automatically that answer

asking a creator to “sound natural” after sending 6 paragraphs of mandatory wording is a hell of a brief give them the facts they need to get right and the claims they cannot make then let them finish a sentence without committee approval

your amazon orders dropped 10% you also gained share against competitors both can be true take a simple example for one search term last week, shoppers made 100 purchases from that search and 10 were yours this week, they made 80 purchases and 9 were yours your orders fell your purchase share went from 10% to 11.25% that’s why i want to see search query performance alongside the ad report are fewer people shopping for the product are competitors getting more of the clicks or are shoppers clicking you and choosing something else those are different problems before deciding the agency broke something or the listing needs another rewrite, figure out which one you actually have

amazon accelerate starts tomorrow here’s software demo i’d actually sit through let the tool make a bad decision now show me how quickly we notice it and how easily we undo it say it wants to change 200 prices or rewrite half the catalog can i review those changes first can i see what information it used can i reverse them without creating another problem that tells me more than watching it summarize a dashboard i’m interested in automation, but i’m not handing over the keys because something worked nicely in a presentation start with recommendations let me check the reasoning earn more permission over time an undo button would get my attention faster than another promise to run the whole business for me

there’s a weird stage in ecommerce where business is growing but everything feels worse more orders more inventory more support tickets more people more software more money going out every week you look at the revenue chart and think “this is supposed to feel better, right?” that’s usually when you realize growth and business quality are two different things the goal isn’t just getting bigger it’s getting bigger without every extra $ of revenue creating another $ of complexity that’s a much harder game but probably the 1 worth playing

something i think brands underestimate on TikTok Shop: creator fatigue you finally find someone who can sell product then you ask them to make the same video 14 different ways until neither they nor the audience care anymore if a creator works, don’t just squeeze more output from them give them new reasons to talk about the product new use cases new objections new offers new stories same creator doesn’t have to mean same ad

1 thing business cured me of: needing every decision to feel certain before making it sometimes you have 70% of the information and that’s all you’re getting make the call

free shipping thresholds are one of those things that look ridiculously simple until you actually model them say your AOV is $58 you set free shipping at $60 because it “feels close” customer adds a $4 item nice, AOV went up but then you realize the extra item has weak margin and you just ate the shipping cost too you technically increased revenue and made less money this is why i’d never set a threshold from AOV alone look at: basket composition gross margin shipping cost what people usually add where contribution margin actually improves CRO gets a lot more interesting when you stop optimizing for prettier numbers

one PPC mistake i see way too often: a keyword converts, so everyone assumes it deserves more budget maybe but first check how it converts does it bring new to brand customers? does it convert without a coupon? does it assist organic rank? does the ASIN actually have enough margin to afford it? a sale is a signal not automatically a green light

the creator who asks 12 annoying questions before filming is usually the one i want means they’re actually trying to understand the product instead of just checking a deliverable off the list