Why 12?
No idea. 10 would be biblical and 20 would be too much.
Here you go.
1. Create a KPI plan for each month. Make sure you have targets for average order value, traffic, add to basket % and basket to order % each month. Otherwise how will you know how you went?
2. Things change. Embrace them. Marketing is moving faster than ever. Don’t hold on to things that used to work but no longer get results.
3. Have a beginner’s mind. The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing. Never think you are the best there are always people to learn from.
4. If you’re scared of investing in site and growth, ecommerce isn’t for you. Sell or get a job.
5. Be brave enough to make offers that seem outrageous to the competition, if they work no-one will copy them for a long time.
6. Design your site for one person, make it personal to that main buyer persona.
7. You can’t sell the same product that others sell more cheaply unless you are famous or the mafia.
8. Don’t do marketing that you cannot track the results of.
9. Build good arbitrage that you can leverage. Lower cost back office, lower cost delivery, famous products, exclusive product, reward points. You need something to arbitrage off.
10. Have min and max marketing budgets per month. Spend more when return is good and less when its not. Don’t try and spend the same each month. Make hay when the sun shines.
11. Competitors are mostly idiots, don’t copy them blindly. Seek out the few that get it.
12. Be creative artists on the shop front but like a military operation in the warehouse.
If any punched you between the eyes in a good or bad way, hit reply and let me know.
To your success
Mark ‘random’ Hammersley
PS
See how our clients used these commandments to scale their ecommerce businesses, watch our case study video here http://go.markhammersley.co/get-started
