How we build, the bad acquisition, DTC’s strategic challenges

As we move into the fourth quarter of 2022 and contemplate a structural repositioning, I want to provide some reflections on the role of design, and how it can properly serve online stores.

It begins with a tweet from my pal Cennydd:

Design should be actively hostile to business as usual. Business as usual is killing us.

No matter what you think about design, the second sentence of this is objectively correct. Does anyone think DTC is doing okay right now? Does anyone have a sense of optimism about it?

I was talking with a dear friend about the state of our industry the other day, and she remarked how wild it was that things went from a sense of abundance, coolness, and wonder to nigh-total collapse within the span of two months. And this is happening with Black Friday right around the corner.

But this has been brewing for a long time. Store owners spent years cultivating the sort of panicked, self-serving ego-driven mindset that ignores real customer needs and relies too much on cognitive biases. I’m unsurprised that the number of structural issues in the industry, from supply chain to shipping, are causing things to buckle.

Which brings me to the first sentence of the aforetweeted. I work very hard maybe not to be hostile to business as usual, but definitely to vigorously challenge business as usual. It is my literal job to challenge the fundamental operations of your business by using design to channel customer needs.

It is, on face, a dumb idea to try and sell design this way. “Pay us thousands of dollars so we can make you feel uncomfortable” will seldom land as a pitch. So instead, we talk about what design can do in terms of economic outcomes. “We have a weird process that might sometimes feel uncomfortable, and at the end you’ll have a lot more money” is a better pitch. Some more optimistic ways to phrase the design process include:

• Challenge your thinking
• Question your assumptions
• Focus on customer needs
• Make evidence-based decisions
• Craft a clear strategy

This is optimism. This is progress. This is growth.

There are some days when I’d like to reach through my computer screen, shake you by the lapels that you definitely have, and scream about all of the ways in which you are thinking wrong. Not only doing it wrong, but the ways in which the things you’re doing reveal your intent, your mindset, and the ways in which you may never reform your behavior.

But ultimately, I’m trying to sell design, and through that I’m trying to sell your business a better future. You will buy design if and only if you are psychically open to the challenges that design presents for you. And if you aren’t, well, you’ll probably get what you deserve.

This week, for paid members

• This week’s lesson is a corker: the five biggest strategic issues facing value-based design consulting, along with how to proceed in each.
• Our design of the week looks to a new hotel for some fascinating primary CTA inspiration. Not just for zoomers!
• This fortnight’s teardown is for coffee-optimization brand Bulletproof.
• And we held our monthly office hours, talking about all sorts of interesting value-based design topics. Hope to see you next time – join us as a paid member if you’re not one already!

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

Links & analysis

• Prototyping tool Figma has been acquired by a business whose software I do not use. The general energy is that of grief – unless you are the CEO of the acquiring company, in which case the general energy is that of gleefully eating a beloved family member alive. In the wake of this I have been researching further into quality prototyping & collaboration, since I think that this will presage a massive, industry-wide shift away from Figma and towards… something. Nobody is going to take this lying down. Figma is the antithesis of its new parent company. That is the point. If you aren’t holding a meeting this week about precisely how you will be deplatforming from Figma going forward, then frankly you weren’t using Figma. What comes next for all of us? How do we work now? Related: a possible answer, or a first step.
• Have you ever dismissed a mobile popup and not meant to? What happens when that “popup” is your nav or cart? NN/g has the details on how to prevent mistaps from happening.
• Buttons should have a minimum width. Otherwise, they aren’t buttons. Super important when considering internationalization, especially to syllabic scripts like Japanese or Korean!
• Data bolsters the argument. Data is not the argument itself. Tattoo this on your forebrain. You use data to make the case for specific design decisions, not the other way around. This article is foundationally useful for any value-based designers to turn their synthesized decisions into actionable strategy.

This week’s paid lesson: What are the biggest strategic challenges facing DTC right now, and how should value-based designers approach them?

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