After 20 years working across ecommerce — from hands-on channel delivery to senior leadership roles spanning strategy, technology, trading, and teams — I’ve seen the discipline change dramatically.

We now have more data, tools, and dashboards than ever before. Yet many of the challenges businesses face today feel surprisingly familiar.

This article reflects on what two decades in ecommerce teaches you that no dashboard can — and why experience, judgment, and context still matter in a world obsessed with metrics.

Many of the points raised I have experienced first hand – been there / done that!

dashboards help ... but they need to be interpreted

Ecommerce has never been more measurable.

 

We track everything: traffic sources, conversion rates, lifetime value, attribution paths, cohorts, funnels, heatmaps, and forecasts built on thousands of data points. Dashboards refresh in real time. Decisions are expected to be “data-led”.

 

And yet, after 20 years working across the full ecommerce spectrum, I’ve learned this:


Some of the most important decisions in ecommerce are driven by experience — not dashboards.

That’s not an argument against data. It’s an argument for context, judgment, and pattern recognition — the things that only come with time

Dashboards Tell You What Is Happening — Not Why

Most ecommerce businesses aren’t short on data. They’re short on insight. Dashboards are excellent at highlighting symptoms:

  • 1 – Conversion rate is down

  • 2 – Paid media efficiency is declining

  • 3 – Revenue is growing, but margin isn’t

  • 4 – Returning customer rate is flat

 

What they don’t tell you is why these things are happening — or which levers actually matter most right now. That’s where experience comes in. An experienced ecommerce leader has usually seen:

 

  • 1- Same pattern during a platform migration

  • 2 – That same drop when a pricing strategy drifted

  • 3 – These exact symptoms when teams lost clarity on ownership

 

You don’t need weeks of analysis to spot it — you recognise the shape of the problem.

Experience Is Pattern Recognition at Speed

One of the biggest differences between junior and senior ecommerce leadership isn’t knowledge of tools or channels.It’s speed of judgment.

 

With experience, you start to see ecommerce challenges as recurring patterns:

 

  • 1 – Over-reliance on paid traffic masking weak fundamentals

  • 2 – Tech stacks growing faster than organisational capability

  • 3 – Teams optimising locally instead of against a shared commercial goal

  • 4 – Founders stuck too close to tactics, too far from strategy

  •  

Dashboards might eventually confirm these issues — but experience often spots them in the first few conversations. That speed matters. Especially when:

 

  • 1 – Growth has stalled

  • 2 – Profitability is under pressure

  • 3- Teams are busy but not effective

  • 4 – The business needs stabilising quickly

“Best Practice” Is Often Context-Free

One of the risks of a data-heavy, content-saturated ecommerce world is the rise of generic “best practice”.

 

  • 1 – Best practice CRO.

  • 2 – Best practice retention.

  • 3 – Best practice email flows.

  • 4- Best practice tech stacks.

 

The problem? Best practice rarely accounts for context. Ive seen this many times especially in small businesses where the day to day focus can be challenged by a multitude of factors.

 

What works brilliantly for VC-backed DTC brand may be wrong for a Mature omnichannel retailer What makes sense at £5m revenue may actively hurt you at £50m.

 

Experience teaches you when not to apply best practice — and when to break the rules intentionally. Dashboards won’t warn you about that.

Senior Judgment Is Still a Competitive Advantage

AI, automation, and analytics are transforming ecommerce — and rightly so. But they don’t remove the need for leadership judgment. In fact, they increase it. When everyone has access to the same tools, the differentiator becomes:

 

  • 1 – What you prioritise

  • 2 – What you ignore

  • 3 – What you sequence first

  • 4 – What you decide not to do

 

These are not technical decisions. They’re commercial and strategic ones. They’re shaped by having:

 

  • 1 – Seen similar businesses fail — and succeed

  • 2 – Made mistakes earlier in your career

  • 3 – Learned where optimism needs tempering

  • 4 – Learned where caution needs challenging

 

That learning doesn’t sit in a dashboard.

Why This Matters for Ecommerce Businesses Right Now

Many ecommerce businesses today are facing:

 

  • 1 – Slower growth

  • 2 – Higher acquisition costs

  • 3 – More scrutiny on profit

  • 4 – Leaner teams

  • 5 – More complex tech ecosystems

 

In this environment, experience compresses time. An experienced leader — whether full-time, interim, or fractional — can often:

 

  • 1 – Diagnose issues faster

  • 2 – Avoid expensive missteps

  • 3 – Focus teams on the right problems

  • 4 – Bring calm and clarity to noisy situations

 

Not by replacing data — but by interpreting it correctly.

Final thoughts

Dashboards are essential. I wouldn’t run an ecommerce business without them. But the most valuable insight I’ve gained over 20 years isn’t something I can export to a spreadsheet. It’s knowing Which numbers matter now VS Which problems are  distracting.

 

Which decisions will still look right six months from today vs short term knee jerk reactions to current trading conditions. 

 

That’s the part of ecommerce leadership you can’t automate.