Fighting fear to make the right decisions, hypothesis-driven design, research integration

New zine alert: I am slowly expanding on the themes in Store Design. The first installment is on heat & scroll maps. You can grab a copy of You installed a heat & scroll mapping tool on your store, signed up for a paid plan, and then never used it for some reason right now, at the bottom of this page. Go forth!

I’ve been on a few interviews lately, and every time, people ask me if I’m afraid. Afraid of the world collapsing, afraid of global conflict, afraid of the supply chain, afraid of the stupid virus, afraid of all of it. I tell them the truth every time, which is that I am not afraid.

I’m not afraid of too many things. I don’t fear death. I don’t think I fear my surroundings very much right now. I don’t know what to fear, or what comes next, and so I would rather be grateful for my conscious existence in the present moment than panic about imminent societal collapse.

So no, I am not afraid. But I think I am afraid of other people being afraid.

When other people are afraid, they do rash, desperate things. When other people are afraid, clients fire me, I don’t get hired for new gigs, and people don’t invest in our books or courses. When other people are afraid, the market crashes and never recovers. When other people are afraid, we run out of toilet paper & bread flour for months. When other people are afraid, we suffer as a collective.

I am afraid of the consequences of others giving into their own fear. I am afraid of a society that is driven by fear. I am a radically optimistic person. My optimism exists as an act of resistance against what I believe to be a fundamentally broken way of approaching business & the world.

Like attracts like, and so lately I have found myself communing with others who are consciously envisioning a brighter & more expansive future. In vulnerable moments, we speak of the things that we see society doing to try and create stability & security for one another. More generic vaccines being produced. The price of diesel going down. Lumber trading at higher volumes, allowing us to build more housing. The word “recession” does not come up. Neither does “inflation.” These all speak to complex systems with many leverage points, and we are continuing to dance with them.

As all of this applies to ecommerce, a few things are true:

• The supply chain is unlikely to take a major hit before BFCM.
• Some product is deeply discounted right now, which means most of it will move before BFCM.
• Diesel costs are dropping significantly, which means shipping is unlikely to spike.
• Importing costs keep dropping.
• Paid RoAS is holding steady YoY, in the wake of iOS 14.5 updates.
• For businesses that cultivated a strategically incorrect overreliance on paid Facebook & Instagram traffic, a somewhat bright spot as you diversify: YoY graphs have ceased to drop off, because now they are incorporating post-14.5 data.
• Related: most ecommerce benchmarking is set against an unprecedented global pandemic that spiked revenues everywhere. Relative to 2019, things are still doing extremely well for most merchants, even though revenue figures dropped relative to 2020.
• Due to the drop-off in VC funding, they aren’t bidding up your paid ad keywords.

And then there are three things that are less fun:

• People are mostly investing in experiences during a summer where people are, by & large, psychically sloughing off the pandemic. This is not great for durable-goods brands right now, but it is likely to change as things close up again during the fall & winter.
• If you sell anything that depends on a chip, China’s conflict with Taiwan does pose a potential issue, since a plurality of the world’s semiconductor factories are based on the island.
• Design is, somehow, incorrectly lumped into many DTC brands’ marketing budgets, rather than earmarked as a necessary expense of maintenance on the store itself.

While the vast majority of DTC businesses are acting out of fear, de-costing and shrinking, numerous competitors have told me they are taking this opportunity to invest & act. These businesses will end up stronger after the economy & society start to bounce back – which will happen, after enough time.

What if 2023 is your best year ever?

What if we could help make it happen?

This week, for paid members

• Our weekly paid lesson talks about research integration. Research is only as good as the insights it creates and the actions that it prompts. What are the biggest issues around synthesizing & integrating research, and what can one do to head them off?
• And our design of the week highlights a peculiar quantity selector. How peculiar? You’ll just have to join to find out.

Want in? Join us now – now named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.

Links & analysis

• One of the most important components of value-based design lies in synthesizing research to create strong hypotheses. This post calls for hypothesis-driven design, effectively setting the intentions for your ongoing work practice. More.
• In business, there are no real gods but return on investment. Fortunately, design is proven to be one of the most reliably high-ROI activities in all of technology. This piece reinforces the case and states why.
• Today, I finally learned that customer feedback is economically valuable. How did I accomplish this, you may ask? Through Gorgias’ CX-driven growth playbook. I kid – this is legitimately a good resource – but it’s wild to think that stores need to be told to listen to their customers in this way.

This week’s paid lesson: What are the biggest issues around research integration that DTC brands face?

This week’s lesson is for paid members. Sign into our community to read it, or join us today to get access.