A few years ago, I worked with a retailer whose online sales had completely flatlined. On the surface it looked like a typical conversion problem — traffic was coming in, but not enough of it was converting into orders. The immediate instinct from inside the business was to focus on the website experience.

In reality, the issues ran much deeper than that. And more importantly, the biggest lever for growth turned out to be something nobody had prioritised — not because it was complicated, but because it required a commercial decision rather than a technical one.

"Growth doesn't always come from complex solutions. Often it comes from identifying the one constraint that's holding the business back — and fixing that first."

What the Diagnosis Actually Showed

Before touching the website, I mapped the full picture. Three distinct problems were operating simultaneously — each limiting performance in its own way, but together creating a commercial ceiling the business couldn't break through.

Problem 1
Website Experience
Clunky functionality, missing trust signals, no product reviews. Converting traffic that did arrive was harder than it needed to be.
Problem 2
Operational Capacity
Backend at capacity. Stock visibility, order tracking and customer service processes were all limiting the ability to scale — even if demand increased.
Problem 3
Product Proposition
The online range was a fraction of what was available in store. Customers visiting the website couldn't find products they'd seen in person — and left without buying.

The natural instinct was to focus on problem one — refine the UX, rebuild the platform, run some A/B tests. These were all legitimate improvements. But none of them addressed the most significant commercial constraint. You could spend months improving the experience of a website that was selling the wrong range.

The Growth Unlock — One Commercial Decision

The Insight

Open Up the Full Store Inventory Online

This is a common challenge, particularly for retailers with larger or more complex product ranges — items that have historically been sold only in physical locations because the commercial mechanics of putting them online hadn't been solved. The question is always the same: how do you unlock that inventory without damaging margin or operational efficiency?

The answer required three things to be worked through simultaneously before anything could go live:

1

Delivery proposition: reworked to handle the size, weight and complexity of the full range — including categories that had never been shipped before.

2

Pricing structure: rebuilt to reflect true delivery cost by product type, protecting margin on categories where fulfilment complexity was highest.

3

Customer positioning: clear communication about what was available, how delivery worked, and what the customer experience would be — setting the right expectations before purchase.

Once these three elements were in place, making the full inventory commercially viable was a matter of execution rather than experimentation. The commercial model had been validated before a single product went live.

The Result

+60%
Year-on-Year Sales Growth

A 60% increase in YOY sales — driven not by a new platform, a paid media campaign, or a UX overhaul, but by a single commercial decision: making the full product range available online with the right delivery, pricing and positioning to make it viable.

More importantly, this created a foundation. Once the commercial model was working — once the business had proven it could sell and fulfil its full range online profitably — it made sense to invest in the next phase of improvement.

What Phase 2 Then Became

With a working commercial foundation in place and sales growing, the case for further investment was straightforward to make. Phase 2 focused on building on the momentum rather than trying to create it.

Website Experience
Product reviews, improved navigation, trust signals and checkout improvements that had been deprioritised during phase one — now commercially justified by the revenue they would convert.
Conversion Optimisation
Structured A/B testing programme against the expanded range — identifying which categories and product types converted at which rates, and where the largest UX improvement opportunities sat.
CRM & Lifecycle
With a growing customer base from the expanded proposition, CRM segmentation and lifecycle email became commercially significant — driving repeat purchase against a much broader product range.
Ecommerce Ecosystem
Integration with wider operational systems, improved stock visibility, and a more coherent online/offline experience — all of which were justifiable once the commercial case had been proven.
The Key Lesson
  • Flatlined sales usually have more than one cause — diagnose all three dimensions (experience, operations, proposition) before deciding where to focus
  • The most impactful lever is not always the most obvious one — in this case it was the product range, not the website
  • Commercial decisions that unlock growth require delivery, pricing and positioning to be solved together — not sequentially
  • Prove the commercial model before investing in the experience layer — a great UX on a limited proposition still has a ceiling
  • Growth creates its own investment case — once sales are moving, Phase 2 becomes much easier to fund and justify internally