eCommerce roadmapping and discovery has been a big area for us in recent times, helping to define short-term and long-term priorities covering key aspects such as technology stack, end-to-end customer experience, logistics, internationalisation, payments, new channels (e.g. wholesale or marketplaces), new business models (e.g. subscriptions), usability and lots more. We have extensive experience with most mainstream eCommerce platforms and have worked with most third-party vendors – reviewing utilisation and scalability of technologies would usually be part of the scope (reviewing usage / implementation of platform, third parties etc).

The general objective of working together on building or enriching a roadmap is to review an existing setup and look at the biggest and most impactful changes and new features that can be approached, with a view on capacity (and required resources), budget, trading periods, over-arching business objectives etc. We’d generally collaborate with internal team members to create a 12-36 month roadmap, with a view to creating a structured plan and being able to work towards key milestones and releases. We’d also map out responsibilities to help with realistic planning and ultimately holding people accountable.

There are a number of ways we work with clients on these projects on roadmapping projects, which commonly could be:

  • Fixed scope roadmap project – initial discovery workshops to understand current setup and business priorities, with key stakeholders. We’d then audit the existing site and review additional items that we consider a priority, whilst also looking at competitors and building in general best practices. We’d then present back a suggestion, with a view to adapting and then using as a master document for short-term and long-term projects and actions.
  • Roadmap suggestions / validation – this would be a leaner project where we’d essentially review an existing roadmap and add suggestions for additional items and also validate priorities.
  • Technical / solutions input – here we’d input into conversations, providing guidance on technologies, third-parties, implementation, how existing technology can be better utilised etc. We would essentially help to add detail to ideas, with a view to mapping out the best way to implement the roadmap items.
  • Delivery support – we regularly take ownership of delivering roadmap items, ranging from new payment options to new international stores to new currencies to new third-party vendors (e.g. search or personalisation) to new payment methods. We’d provide support to help get things done faster without relying on team members, who are focused on day-to-day responsibilities.

We’d commonly do these projects post-launch of a new store or as part of a new financial period – where we’d discuss business goals and objectives and align with functional areas and channels to build out projects and tasks. 

We also have a number of on-going relationships where we have a roadmap or backlog that is planned out and managed by our team. Recent examples of things we’ve covered as part of this type of relationship include:

  • Internationalisation projects
  • Further localisation in key markets
  • New digital channels (e.g. DTC, wholesale, marketplace etc.)
  • Bundling and initiatives to increase basket size / AOV
  • UX improvement & optimisation projects
  • Usability projects
  • Personalisation projects
  • Improvements around payments, checkout, shipping etc. 
  • Improvements to search
  • Reporting and insight projects
  • New third party integrations
  • Discovery and support around PIM 
  • Implementation of merchandising systems
  • CRM projects and implementation of new systems
  • Rolling out of subscriptions

These are just a few examples, but we’ve worked with a wide range of retailers to help define and roll out roadmaps. Examples of recent clients include Sunspel, The Conran Shop, Waterford, Wedgwood, This Works, David Austin Roses, The Bottle Club and various others.