You have a special product in mind that you want to produce and sell? Or you’re already doing that? 

The DTC business model (direct-to-consumer or direct brands as they’re called by some experts for short) is gaining traction these days so you’re on the right path. You own your customers, control their whole experience journey and get all the profits.

But we know it’s not easy when others are using ready solutions like dropshipping and marketplaces. That’s why in this article we put together the the top things making positive impact for the many direct-to-consumer brands we work with.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, the e-commerce sector is a really tough competitive market, so I could only write this case study by replacing the name of the company, product and numbers with something similar.

The Hiking Backpack E-commerce Store (if a company with that name does exist, apologies, I am not thinking of them, this is just a fictional example) began to analyze their data. They were curious about: 

• Who is the best target group for them?
• What kind of product to offer to whom and when?
• Having answered these two questions, how can they reach the highest Revenue and higher Visitor-to-PremiumCustomer % in the long term?

Ecommerce is a strange industry.

You hustle еvery day, get some results and yet often you can’t tell if that’s good or bad. You probably get tangled up in daily tasks and often forget the big picture.

And yet – do you want to grow your business? How are you moving towards that goal? It’s hard to tell.

That’s why we created a tool that identifies growth opportunities for your specific business case. It takes into account your current state and projects how improvement in certain areas will affect your LTV.

Alright, online stores can be categorized in many different ways, but what concerns us today is the following division.

Some online shops are created to push some stock, make some money and get flipped or closed. The owners typically move on to the next niche and open the next store for another 1-2 years, then move on again.

Such store usually sell mass products like dropshipped clothes, kitchenware, baby products, imitation jewelry, which are widely sought online and barriers to entry are low.

You want to build and grow your online store profitably. You want to be successful.

But what’s the best way to do it? How to make sure you’re making the right decisions and not wasting precious time on trial and error? 

Although building any business is a process, some processes are more effective than others.

Gut feeling and testing things till they work out is great if you have that kind of time and resources. If not – data-driven marketing is for you.

Ecommerce is a wonderful field – anybody can start and succeed.

The community is huge and you can ask for advice people with all kinds of experience and background. 

But I see in many discussions among ecommerce entrepreneurs is that some still believe the simple guiding rules some guru wrote long ago, when commerce was young and competition was smaller.

“Just put $5 there and it’ll start pouring.” or “Find a Chinese supplier, put up a site and never work again.” BS.