Have you ever found yourself pondering over a complex problem for hours or days? You explore all possible paths yet end up with more doubts than certainty. Then, a casual conversation with a colleague suddenly illuminates your thoughts. Just articulating your challenge out loud, especially in a trusted circle, opens your mind and allows your ideas to blossom.

Imagine having a format to refer to every time you are stuck on a problem–a structured approach that unblocks the flow of ideas and brings order to chaos. A workshop is precisely that: a repeatable process to create an environment where conversation flows, ideas flourish, and solutions are nailed down.

At Nebulab, we use workshops to help our teams and clients navigate complex business domains, design efficient middleware integrations, and tackle multi-faceted productivity and collaboration challenges. Over the years, the humble workshop has proven, time and again, one of the most effective ways of taming complexity.

In this post, we’ll explore the practices we adopt for running workshops that bring value to both organizers and attendees.

## The Key Ingredients of a Good Workshop

If you’ve watched movies like A Beautiful Mind or the recently released Oppenheimer, you might be familiar with the process mathematicians use to dig into a problem. They gather in front of a whiteboard, and for the most part, they sketch formulas and diagrams rather than relying on verbal communication. They alternate themselves in the writing, pause, take a step back to glimpse what they produced, and question their thoughts with “what if” questions. 

It might not be evident at first glance, but these whiteboard conversations have a lot in common with workshops:

* The participants are exploring a complex domain
* The rules of engagement are well-understood
* The physical environment has the proper setup
* The participants visualize their concepts

All these elements are integral to a successful workshop, all concurring to create a space where ideas can be developed and examined collaboratively.

Let’s take a look at each of them, one at a time.

### Complexity and Collective Intelligence

The heart of a workshop lies in the rich interaction between participants.

This interactive environment is particularly effective when tackling complex problems characterized by uncertainty or requiring diverse expertise. Participants from different areas of the business (e.g., industry experts, e-commerce managers, and tech leaders) bring a range of diverse insights that rarely have a chance to converge.

In a workshop, we leverage the group's collective intelligence, which often leads to superior decision-making, problem-solving, and innovation than an individual could achieve by themselves. This is particularly true in scenarios where the complexity of the subject matter benefits from a multitude of perspectives.

Each aspect of a workshop–from its physical setup to the methods of visualization and facilitation– is designed to harness this collective wisdom to navigate and illuminate complex issues.

### Rules of Engagement

A simple, clearly understood set of rules is essential to facilitate efficient interaction and meaningful conversation in a workshop.

We can’t just put people in a room and expect valuable outcomes to emerge. Every workshop has a format and rules; for mathematicians, the format is mathematical symbolism, and the rule is to alternate in front of the whiteboard until a satisfactory outcome is achieved.

It’s critical to keep things simple: the participants need to be focused on exploring the problem domain, not on remembering or feeling constrained by the rules.

For instance, in a workshop I recently facilitated, we started with two rules: blue sticky notes to indicate a system and yellow sticky notes for activity in a system or data exchanged by two systems. In the second half of the workshop, I introduced a third rule: red sticky notes to highlight the critical/challenging aspects of a system’s behavior. With such a simple set of rules, all participants had an easy time contributing, the workshop ran all day with little effort, and the outcomes were excellent.

Pro tip: progressively revealing the rules is a trick that helps attendees focus on the matter at hand and ensures they aren’t overwhelmed.

### Physical Environment

An often overlooked but crucial aspect of workshops is the room setup.

Adequate space is necessary for participants to move freely, interact with each other, and engage with tools like boards or flipcharts. Think of the mathematician with unobstructed access to their whiteboard–this accessibility is critical.

In my experience, it's beneficial to rearrange the furniture to suit the workshop's needs. Typically, I align chairs along the room's perimeter, creating a central, open area in front of the board or designated workspace. This layout encourages movement, collaboration, and a focus on the current task.

Remember: the ideal setup can vary depending on the nature and size of the workshop. The goal is to create an environment that fosters active participation and easy access to your collaboration tools.

### The Power of Visualization

Relying exclusively on verbal communication often limits us to our existing mental models, creating a clash where new, breakthrough ideas struggle to emerge. This is because it's easier to interpret what we hear within our existing frameworks than to challenge and change them. 

Visualization offers a powerful solution to this limitation.

Going back to our example, mathematical symbols serve as the visualization tool. For a diverse workshop audience, simpler tools are often more effective: these can be post-its, diagrams, or even Lego bricks. Visualizing concepts on a wall is particularly impactful: it not only allows workshop participants to step back and see the 'big picture,' but also ensures that all participants can engage and contribute equally.

This method ties in with our earlier discussion on room setup (an open space in front of a wall facilitates this kind of visualization) and with the idea of a simple ruleset (guiding participants on how to contribute visually is vital).

## The Role of the Facilitator

In our example, a group of mathematicians might naturally fall into a collaborative rhythm without a facilitator. However, in a larger group setting, especially with individuals who have strong perspectives and diverse backgrounds, having a facilitator becomes essential.

A facilitator isn’t required to be a domain expert. Instead, their skills lie in observing group dynamics, actively engaging participants, offering suggestions discreetly, and summarizing discussions. The facilitator must be able to identify and guide the group’s focus to emerging concepts, even when they don’t have an in-depth understanding of the workshop’s subject.

Facilitators are crucial in navigating the complexities of group interactions, which can be unpredictable and challenging.

A note of caution to facilitators: not every workshop goes as planned, hence flexibility is key. Much like a jazz musician improvising in a jam session, a facilitator must read the room and adjust the workshop's flow as needed.

A good facilitator can transform a potentially chaotic discussion into a harmonious and productive session.

## How We Use Workshops at Nebulab

Across various industries, workshops are versatile tools that can be tailored to various needs. From Retrospectives and User Story Mapping in Agile teams to Event Storming for Domain-Driven Design architectures, their applications are manifold.

As an e-commerce agency, we find workshops particularly effective in two main areas. Hopefully, you can use these examples as inspiration for your own workshops.

### E-Commerce Middleware Design

Firstly, as detailed in [my previous blog post,](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-middleware) we use workshops to explore connections and dependencies between systems when architecting middleware software.

This workshop format is inspired by [Event Storming](https://www.eventstorming.com/), and it’s best described as a form of generative business process mapping: treating the wall as a timeline, we use sticky notes to represent the systems we are discussing (e.g., the e-commerce platform or the ERP software), the activities performed by the user or system, and events those activities generate.

Aligning the sticky notes on a timeline gives us a general overview of the business process and the system’s relationships. It also allows us to rearrange the responsibilities and dependencies between systems and the middleware.

On the brand side, we typically invite any stakeholders with an active role in the systems we’re analyzing. On the Nebulab side, we have a workshop facilitator, one or more strategists to provide insights into the business domain, and technologists to provide insights into the system’s architecture.

### E-Commerce Domain Mapping

Workshops are also invaluable when implementing complex business rules or requirements deeply rooted in a brand's unique domain.

In this case, we start by representing the different types of actors involved in the domain, then the names of the business rules, and then the logic behind each rule. Finally, we arrange everything as a tree. Focusing on the users and visually representing the conditions and constraints applied to the system helps us untangle complex business domains and spot corner cases that were not previously covered.

The value of these workshops lies in their ability to bring together people with diverse expertise–from those with deep business or process knowledge to technology experts who may not be as familiar with the brand's specific domain. This diversity is crucial for surfacing and clarifying assumptions, removing ambiguity, and fostering mutual understanding.

An additional benefit is the reorientation towards the “bigger picture.” It's common for individuals immersed in day-to-day tasks to lose sight of the organization’s broader objectives. These workshops serve as a vital tool to realign everyone’s focus on the overarching goals, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive approach to problem-solving.

## Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment!

If you are tackling a gnarly issue or trying to untangle a business problem, a workshop might be the answer you’re looking for. While they seem intimidating at first, the benefits of an effective workshop far outweigh the complexities–just follow the rules we’ve outlined, and you’ll be halfway through!

Of course, if you’re an e-commerce brand and would like some help from experienced facilitators who can challenge your assumptions and contribute with their own insights, [feel free to reach out!](https://nebulab.com/contact-us) We’re always down for a good workshop.


Using Workshops to Navigate Complexity and Build Alignment

Here at Nebulab, we’re privileged to work with tens of brands across different categories, business models, team compositions, and revenue stages, helping them shape, launch, and refine their eCommerce experiences. Some of these brands started with us, while others used to work with different agencies and told us about their experience.

While every agency has its own culture and way of doing things, we’ve identified a few traits that separate successful brand-agency collaborations from the rest. These are not defined processes, but rather a philosophy for working together.

In today’s article, we have distilled this philosophy into five fundamental principles. When implemented, we’ve found that these principles consistently lead to dramatic increases in agency productivity and effectiveness.

If you already have an agency and would like to take your collaboration to the next level, or are looking for an agency and unsure how to evaluate their work methodology, you should dive right in!


## 1. Promote Knowledge Sharing

Many executives provide context to their agency on an as-needed basis: burned by previous experiences or just strapped with time, they create a structure where communication only flows in one direction, and the agency only knows what they absolutely need to do their job.

While this might get you the short-term results you’re looking for, it also means you’re missing out on _a lot_ of value your agency could bring to the table.

Pretty much all eCommerce agencies are verticalized–that means they only work in the eCommerce industry. As a result, they accumulate valuable expertise about industry trends, baseline performance, and best practices, not to mention the networks that they often manage to build up over time.

**If your relationship with your agency resembles an assembly line, it’s very unlikely you will ever benefit from any of their organizational knowledge.**

Instead, aim to remove all communication and knowledge barriers between your team and your agency. Give them free access to your team, and expose them to as many ceremonies and artifacts as possible–all hands, cross-functional meetings, strategy documents, and anything else that might be useful.

Once you do that, you’ll be surprised at all the different ways your agency can help you.

**Recommended read:** [Sense and Respond](https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Respond-Successful-Organizations-Continuously/dp/1633691888/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1693399466&sr=8-4)


## 2. Demand Extreme Ownership

Here’s a controversial take: dedicated QA teams are a waste of time and money–at least in the way most brands structure them. If everything your agency does needs to pass a QA check, you’re doing it wrong.

This doesn’t just apply to QA but to any other areas where your agency needs “gatekeepers” or handholding. Instead, **you should aim for a structure where your eCommerce agency is responsible for all stages of execution:**

* Your agency should be responsible for contributing–as much as possible–to the product roadmap, based on their knowledge of your brand.
* Your agency should be responsible for refining your requirements and uncovering edge cases, problems, and needs you might have missed.
* Your agency should be responsible for QA’ing their own work, releasing it, and ensuring it’s working as expected once it’s live.
* Your agency should be responsible for proactively diagnosing and fixing the problem when something goes sideways—as it inevitably will.

If you’re reading this list and thinking, “My agency would never be able to do that,” there’s a fundamental lack of trust that you need to resolve. Perhaps they don’t have the skillset, or you tried giving them more freedom, and they failed. Talk to them openly about what you’re trying to achieve and see if the situation improves.

**Recommended read:** [Turn The Ship Around](https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Building-Breaking/dp/0241250943/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1693407060&sr=8-1)


## 3. Think in Products, Not in Projects

A structured product management practice is what separates the brands that aimlessly wander from project to project and the brands that are intentionally pursuing a business strategy with their eCommerce website.

Unfortunately, many brands confuse _product_ management–the practice of collecting and leveraging quantitative and qualitative data to inform your product roadmap–with _project_ management–the practice of establishing and following a structured process in the execution of said product roadmap. Let's put it this way:

* Doing product management without project management means moving chaotically in the *right* direction.
* Doing project management without product management means moving meticulously in the *wrong* direction.

A good place to start is how you frame problems and validate solutions: **rather than just writing down business requirements, use quantitative and qualitative data to explain the business need driving a particular initiative.** Then, once a solution is implemented, use data to validate the impact of the solution.

Obviously, there’s much more to product management than just leveraging data: a good product manager is a master storyteller and can craft compelling narratives for why your brand should head in a particular direction, collaborating with different stakeholders and rallying your whole team behind a shared vision.

In the past, we have written extensively about the value of product management and how to establish a product management practice in your eCommerce team, so feel free to check out our previous articles [here](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-product-management) and [here](https://nebulab.com/blog/product-led-ecommerce-growth).

**Recommended read:** [Escaping the Build Trap](https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Management/dp/149197379X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=escaping+the+build+trap&qid=1693410820&sprefix=escaping+the+build+trap%2Caps%2C212&sr=8-1)


## 4. Improve Continuously and Systemically

You and your eCommerce agency should be on a path of continuous, systemic improvement of your baseline performance. Rather than shooting for the stars only when the situation requires it and then falling back down to your usual standards, **you should constantly reassess your work together to understand how to take things to the next level.**

If you’re unsure how to do this effectively, try running a retrospective. In a retrospective, all team members can bring and discuss their feedback in a blame-free environment, with the only goal of improving the team’s performance. Retrospectives are most often used by software development teams, but they are a generic tool that can be applied to pretty much any business scenario.

Retrospectives allow you to improve continuously, but you should also ensure you’re improving systemically. By that, we mean that you should strive to maximize the impact of any work you do by considering how the work will affect different areas of your business, now and in the future.

A prime example that we like to use is building a design system for your brand. A design system will allow you to dramatically increase your iteration speed in the long term: you’ll be able to build more in a shorter timespan and reduce the amount of decision-making needed during the design process.

Unfortunately, design systems never seem important in the short term: **you need to make a conscious effort and invest a bit of your time in your future needs**–in a way that’s compatible with your immediate goals, of course.

**Recommended read:** [The Goal](http://amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951/ref=sr_1_1?crid=291LJ6ND5CVPB&keywords=the+goal&qid=1693411801&sprefix=the+goal%2Caps%2C305&sr=8-1)


## 5. Do What’s Right, Not What’s Popular

The relatively recent commoditization of eCommerce infrastructure is fantastic news for brands: you can now build rich eCommerce experiences with a fraction of the effort that was previously required. Sign up for any modern eCommerce platform, and the amount of functionality available out of the box is mind-boggling.

However, this comes with a side effect: **many brands have stopped thinking about how to properly align their [eCommerce stack](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-tech-stack) with what their business really needs.** Instead, they just pick whatever’s most popular and stick to that. Unfortunately, agencies are not immune to this pattern–especially those that lack experience or strong R&D capabilities.

The result is a sea of online stores that all look and act the same and a borderline irrational fear of doing anything that deviates from the status quo.

**Best practices should be considered a starting point that you can build upon, not an absolute constraint.** Whenever you’re making a choice, it is your agency’s responsibility to present all your options and then determine what resonates the most with your market, vision, and business requirements.

Don’t get us wrong: there _is_ a cost for deviating from the most traveled road, and you need to be able to quantify it. It all boils down to whether the additional benefits justify it.

**Recommended read:** [The Lean Startup](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0670921602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1693414149&sr=8-1)


## Change Is Hard, Not Impossible

As you’ve seen by now, none of the principles we’ve just outlined are quick wins–in fact, many of them require a significant mindset shift, and we can’t promise that they will deliver results overnight.

What we _can_ promise is that **this way of working is infinitely more powerful than more transactional agency relationships**, where you’re just paying money in exchange for pixels or code.

We’ve also seen first-hand that this kind of change can be implemented–you just need to be patient and accept that there will be slip-ups in the process. When they happen, treat them as your opportunity to practice continuous improvement!

5 Principles for Doing Great Work with Your eCommerce Agency

The modern direct-to-consumer brand has potential access to a plethora of information about their customers: post-purchase surveys, CSAT scores, site analytics, [A/B testing](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-ab-testing), market research… Often, it can all be a bit too much, with brands not being sure how to use this information in a structured and strategic way to scale their business.

Luckily, that is precisely the problem product management was born to solve. Product management is the job of defining _what_ you should build, _how_ you should build it, and _when_ you should build it. It is a proven problem-solving methodology that allows you to collect and deploy information to work toward your business objectives.

Even though you might not have direct product management experience, you may already be doing some product management. For example, if you are looking at your conversion funnel analytics to understand where users are dropping from your checkout flow and then [running A/B tests](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-ab-testing) to determine how to improve your conversion rates, you’re doing product management.

In this article, we’ll try to provide you with a more structured approach that will allow you to elevate your product management skills, turning them into a repeatable workflow for identifying, prioritizing, and pursuing the most impactful goals for your brand. These are the same techniques used by behemoths such as [Zappos](https://www.zappos.com/) and [Warby Parker](https://www.warbyparker.com/) to achieve the impressive scale they’ve experienced over the last decade, so you’ll be in good company!

## Understanding and Applying Research Methodologies

At the core of product management lies product research, the practice of collecting data and insights that can inform which problems you should solve and how to solve them best.

Over their career, experienced product managers learn to master various research techniques. You might have heard about some of them–such as A/B testing, customer interviews, and surveys–while others might be more obscure–such as tree sorting, fake door tests, and contextual inquiry. You’re encouraged to do your own research (no pun intended!) and learn more about each technique.

For now, you should know that every research technique exists on two spectrums: quantitative or qualitative and generative or evaluative. Let’s see what that means!

### Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative research is used to collect numerical data, generally through automated techniques such as closed-ended surveys or product analytics. The data is then consolidated and interpreted to identify a problem or opportunity in front of your business.

For instance, if your checkout conversion rate is well below the average for your industry, that might be something you want to work on with your team.

However, the numbers alone might not always tell you exactly _why_ something is happening: your conversion rate might be low because your prices are too high or the user experience of your checkout flow is confusing. That’s where qualitative research comes in.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, is used to collect in-depth information, generally through techniques such as customer interviews or open-ended surveys. The information is then collected, parsed, and distilled by a human being into insights–tiny nuggets of information that have some practical implication for your business.

For instance, if you interview ten customers who dropped out of checkout, and seven of them mention that they weren’t sure when they would receive their order, you might conclude that customers find your order tracking process challenging to understand. You can then use this information when prioritizing your work to improve the conversion rate (more on this below).

Note that quantitative research doesn’t always have to come before qualitative research: you will find yourself going back and forth between the two depending on the problem you’re currently focusing on and how you’re approaching it.

### Generative vs. Evaluative Research

The examples we have made in the above paragraph are all about _generative_ research, which is done to identify a problem to solve or an opportunity to tackle. In generative research, your goal is to gain an intimate understanding of your market, customers, and product to understand _what_ you should build and _when_ you should build it.

The research doesn’t stop when you have identified a problem or an opportunity. In fact, that’s just half of the equation. The other half is about using product research to evaluate potential solutions to the situation in front of you. That’s where evaluative research comes in.

In evaluative research, you aim to understand _how_ to solve the problem or tackle the opportunity. This can be done with various techniques, some of which can be generative or evaluative depending on the context: for instance, usability testing can be performed to identify problems with your existing checkout flow, or it can be performed to validate the UX of your proposed redesign.

Mastering some generative and evaluative research techniques will help ensure your work is product-driven end-to-end. Many retailers let the data and insights guide their product roadmap but fail to validate their design solutions. This can lead to doing work that doesn’t move the needle or even moves it in the wrong direction.

### Establishing a Continuous Discovery Practice

While it’s tempting to do product research only when you run out of things to do, the best teams are running research systematically–a practice referred to as “continuous discovery.” Continuous discovery combines automated and manual work to ensure a stream of qualitative and quantitative insights flows into your brand.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to continuous discovery, but there are some techniques that we’ve seen work for the majority of eCommerce and direct-to-consumer brands:

* **Post-purchase surveys.** Every eCommerce business should be running post-purchase surveys. At a minimum, you want to ask customers how they found out about you, which will help enrich your attribution data, but you can also use these to collect feedback about other aspects of the customer experience.
* **On-site analytics.** Solid on-site analytics will help you collect valuable first-party data, which you can use to spot challenges and opportunities and validate the effectiveness of new features, products, or UX improvements. The trick is not to overdo it: otherwise, you risk drowning in a sea of metrics.
* **Business reports.** Your eCommerce platform should offer some out-of-the-box reporting that you can use to quickly answer critical business questions, such as where your customers are coming from or what products are driving the most sales. However, you shouldn’t be afraid of implementing custom reports as needed.
* **Continuous interviews.** We’ve left this for last, but it’s arguably the most crucial research technique in your tool belt. You should try interviewing at least two customers a week, asking a mix of generative and evaluative questions about whatever you’re currently working on.

As you’ve seen, the key is embedding little product research opportunities at critical moments of the customer journey so that you don’t have to think about them consciously. If you need more in-depth information about a specific aspect, you can still go out and execute a full-blown research project, but continuous discovery will provide you with a solid foundation to start.

## The 6-Step Process to Accomplish Anything

Now that you understand what product management is and how to conduct product research, you might wonder how to tie these techniques to your business goals in a structured, systematic way. That’s precisely where the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) comes in.

The Opportunity Solution Tree is a visual framework that helps your team stay focused on the current business goal while also ensuring they’re exploring the entire problem space. Depending on what you’re doing, you can either see the whole picture at a glance or drill down into the nitty-gritty of each project. Furthermore, an OST is designed for continuous optimization and evolution, which makes it the perfect tool in environments where you want to move fast but with intentionality.

![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/kqgmf0g2/production/f4efe697bad7b33a7525c24f001cf2936087db01-2056x3272.png?fit=clip)

Here’s how you build an OST:

1. **Start from the desired outcome.** This is usually informed by your overarching business strategy. For instance, an outcome might be “Lower the return rate for our online store to 20%.”
2. **Identify opportunities to achieve the outcome.** You will typically do this through generative research. For instance, you might interview ten customers who have returned a product in the last month and find that they got the wrong size. You would then create an opportunity labeled “Customers purchase the wrong product size.”
3. **Brainstorm solutions.** In this phase, involve as many relevant stakeholders as possible: your marketing team, your development team, etc. Use research insights and your team members’ intuition to develop ideas for tackling each opportunity. Ideally, you refine the solutions to 1-3 per opportunity to keep the process manageable.
4. **Design experiments.** Each solution should come with an experiment, which ensures the solution is actually going to tackle the opportunity. This is a crucial step: by adopting a data-informed approach, you’ll eliminate your biases, assumption, and emotional attachment to specific ideas. In some cases, you might want to run multiple experiments to evaluate different aspects of a solution.
5. **Evaluate your solutions.** The next step is to run the experiments you’ve designed to test the validity of your solutions: are they creating the impact you expected? Can you see any side effects to address before moving forward?
6. **Implement the winners.** At this point, you should have a list of solutions your team can implement to achieve the desired outcome!

Here’s a bonus tip: in the OST included above, you might notice that we have broken down the main “Customers get the wrong size” opportunity into two sub-opportunities: “Customers get the wrong size when buying for themselves” and “Customers get the wrong size when buying for others.” This is a common and encouraged practice when designing an OST: you should split your opportunities into the smallest possible size while ensuring that your opportunities are Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE). This will help you work in small chunks, which makes the process faster and more efficient.

The OST is a dead-simple yet incredibly powerful tool that can help you pursue virtually any business goal when appropriately followed. It might not be obvious, but OSTs aren’t limited to your eCommerce site: you can apply this process to improve other areas of your brand, such as fulfillment or customer service. The value of this technique lies in the fact that it forces you to structure your work and follow facts, not intuitions.

## Good Product Management Takes Practice

Most eCommerce companies are skeptical of product management at first. When you’re a small startup, every bit of process you add to your day-to-day seems like a luxury you cannot afford.

And yet, we’ve seen time and again that the brands with a clear vision and strong product management fundamentals to execute it are the ones who thrive: they exhibit lower customer acquisition costs, higher retention rates, and higher average order values. Most importantly, they move more quickly and intentionally than their competition.

You might be very excited to go out and try the new techniques you’ve just learned, and we very much encourage you to do so. However, remember that we’ve barely scratched the surface of product management in this article: while the fundamental principles are relatively simple, product management remains a vast discipline.

We have not said anything about when to use which research technique, how to develop an overarching product strategy rather than simply tackling one outcome at a time, what systems and tools are best to collect the outcomes of your research, and many other aspects that take years of practice to master fully.

If you’re curious to try product management or already have a product-driven approach and want to take it to the next level, we’re happy to help!

Supercharge Your DTC Growth with Product Management

With the rising cost of advertising and inflationary pressures making it hard to acquire, activate, and retain customers profitably, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are increasingly looking for ways to lower operating costs and scale more efficiently. This often takes the form of wholesale partnerships or marketplace expansions, which allow brands to tap into existing audiences and offload last-mile distribution.

We strongly believe a wholesale motion should be a crucial part of any modern brand’s go-to-market strategy. However, the DTC channel offers several opportunities that would allow brands to disengage from performance marketing as their only methodology of customer acquisition. At the same time, DTC brands can benefit from unique advantages, such as end-to-end control over the customer experience and direct access to zero- and first-party data.

This article will explore product-led growth, a methodology adopted by startups such as Dropbox, Slack, and Zoom to achieve low-cost, exponential growth. We’ll unpack the fundamentals and benefits of product-led growth, how it can be applied to eCommerce and DTC, and how you can take your first steps toward establishing a product-led growth strategy for your DTC presence.

## What Is Product-Led Growth?

Product-led growth (PLG) is a business methodology originally popularized by [OpenView](https://openviewpartners.com/) in 2016. It consists of techniques that allow you to shift away from spending marketing dollars to capture and retain customers, letting your product do the selling instead.

In contrast to more traditional approaches, such as market-led and sales-led growth models, companies that adopt product-led growth put their product experience at the center of the brand journey and take a product-first approach to scale their revenue and customer base.

They also automate secondary functions such as customer success and invest heavily in self-serve onboarding experiences, which allows potential customers to experience and play with the product before committing to the purchase.

For SaaS startups, this can take different forms, such as: offering customers a free trial, taking them through a self-guided onboarding tour, automating customer support, or facilitating word-of-mouth by rewarding customer referrals.

A well-executed product-led growth strategy has numerous benefits:

* **Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):** by letting your product and existing customer base do the selling and relying less on marketing campaigns, brands can reduce their CAC.
* **Higher Lifetime Value (LTV):** product-led growth leads to more engaged customers, which exhibit a higher Average Order Value (AOV) and Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR), making for a higher customer lifetime value.
* **Higher Revenue per Employee (RPE):** by automating as much as possible of the customer journey, you can lower your operating costs and free up resources to focus on more strategic initiatives.
* **Deeper customer understanding:** to adopt a PLG strategy, you’ll need an intimate knowledge of your customer base. This positively impacts all areas of the business, such as your fulfillment, customer service, and marketing teams.
* **Improved team alignment:** since product-led growth encompasses the entire organization, team members in a PLG company are more aligned and focused than marketing-led or sales-led teams, which makes them happier and more efficient.

As you can see, product-led growth allows you to create a flywheel that positively impacts key metrics across all areas of your organization. As you become more experienced at practicing product-led growth, you’ll start seeing the world through a different lens: rather than relying exclusively on paid acquisition channels, you will begin experimenting with ways your product can generate traction and create efficiencies.

## Does Product-Led Growth Apply to eCommerce?

The answer is: it depends. While product-led growth has been initially designed for traditional software companies, you can–with some creativity–adapt many of its elements to work for the business model and customer journey of an eCommerce/DTC brand.

For an eCommerce brand to become a product-led company, you must broaden your perspective of what constitutes your “product.” Many brands identify this directly with their physical product and consider the rest of the shopping experience an implementation detail. This mindset severely limits your ability to benefit from a product-led growth strategy.

![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/kqgmf0g2/production/16f5b011c01d62e0d9a223638a5fc607bf5a84df-2560x2402.png?fit=clip)

Instead, product-led brands consider every customer touchpoint part of their product, and they’re constantly thinking about how to create new touchpoints to engage, activate and retain the customer. Here are a few examples of brands that are using techniques borrowed from product-led growth:

* Vitamin brand [Care/of](https://careof.org/) has a [mobile app](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/care-of/id1273387955) that allows to personalize their subscription plan, track their vitamin and health routines, and get rewarded for consistency. The app allows potential buyers to experience Care/of’s product’s value while building further engagement with established/active users.
* Swiss sportswear brand [On](https://www.on-running.com/) recently released [Cyclon](https://www.on-running.com/en-us/collection/cyclon), a program that allows customers to “subscribe” to specific products, such as running shoes and tees. They have taken a sporadic event, such as buying a new pair of shoes, and turned it into a SaaS-ified experience that boosts customer retention.
* Rather than asking customers to pay for their orders upfront, apparel brand [Stitch Fix](https://www.stitchfix.com/) allows subscribers to try outfits and only pay for what they keep. This allows customers to experience the value of the brand before committing.

Subscription-based and membership-based brands have an inherent advantage over brands that favor a one-time purchase journey. This is because they start with a much larger “surface area” to engage their customers. However, brands that don’t have a subscription or membership program–and have no intention of establishing one–can still see success by borrowing and implementing individual elements from product-led growth.

## Embracing Product-Led Growth for Your Brand

Brands looking to start with product-led growth often get discouraged by the number of initiatives they could experiment with. If you’re coming from a traditional marketing-led approach, it can be hard to adopt the right mindset. 

If you don’t know where to start, an excellent first step is to map customer touchpoints across different stages of your shopping funnel and user experience, from brand awareness to order fulfillment. There are a few ways to do this:

* Involve stakeholders from different departments to understand how they interact with the end-user, directly and indirectly.
* Talk to your most loyal (and least loyal!) customers to collect feedback on how your brand fits into their day-to-day, their current pain points, and any ideas they might have.
* Look at quantitative analytics to uncover usage and engagement patterns.

The more feedback and data you can collect, the more holistic your understanding of your brand-customer relationship will be, and the more opportunities you’ll uncover for a product-led growth transition!

Once you have your customer touchpoints mapped out, look at each critically and ask yourself the following questions:

* **How can you command a greater share of customer attention?** Many DTC brands have a transactional relationship with their customers and fail to invest in a longer-term relationship. In reality, zero-party and first-party data allow most brands to create deeper connections: what are some “aha” moments you can generate?
* **How can you deliver value before capturing value?** For a DTC brand, this often takes the form of content-driven education or offering a tool that helps customers enter your brand’s world and experience its value _before_ a traditional activation. Sneaker marketplace [The Edit](https://www.theeditldn.com/), for example, provides a free [personal shopping service.](https://www.theeditldn.com/en-eu/pages/personal-shopping-service)
* **Can you create efficiency by investing in automation?** This is often more nuanced than a simple yes-or-no answer. Any investment in automated/self-service workflows must offer a justifiable return on team efficiency or customer engagement (or both!). Generative AI, in combination with low-code/no-code platforms, creates some fantastic opportunities to automate customer service, product quizzes and similar while mainaining a human touch.
* **How can you spark virality?** Product-led companies are masters at making their products viral. eCommerce brands have many opportunities in front of them: packaging, transactional notifications, and even customer service interactions can become ways to generate positive word-of-mouth.

If you come up with an endless list of initiatives, don’t panic! Start with smaller experiments that allow you to build momentum and train your product muscle, and see how your customers respond. A strong product management foundation can help identify the biggest point of leverage.


## 5 Examples of Product-Led Initiatives for eCommerce Growth

For inspiration, here are the five most common product-led initiatives that we see eCommerce and DTC brands apply:

* **Membership programs.** While traditional loyalty programs primarily reward spending through cashback or similar models, well-designed membership programs take the brand-customer relationship one step further by leading customers to identify with the brand. This can take the form of early access to new products, in-person or virtual get-togethers, direct access to company founders, and any other perks relevant to a brand’s unique customer base.
* **Referral programs.** Happy customers love to spread the word, and referral programs allow them to do just that. It’s common for brands to reward referrals with discounts and promo codes, but we encourage brands to design a bespoke strategy that will resonate more with their customer base. If you’re a luxury brand, offering swag/products in partnership with other brands might be better than offering $20 off.
* **Try before you buy.** Allowing your customers to experience your physical product before committing to a purchase is the epitome of delivering value before capturing value and can be a great way to engage undecided customers (especially when paired with some of the other initiatives in this list!).
* **Educational content.** Content is one of the most common organic marketing efforts pursued by DTC brands, and with good reason. Producing valuable, educational content for your audience is a straightforward way to generate brand awareness by solving a genuine problem. If you go down this path, nvesting in a solid [content infrastructure](https://nebulab.com/blog/ecommerce-content-management) will pay dividends.
* **Web-based/mobile apps.** Often, brands design mobile apps that are purely transactional, making them useless to customers that have not already decided to shop with the brand. In doing so, they miss invaluable opportunities to nurture their audience through content and interactions that don't aim for a direct sale.

While these are all good starting points that will apply to many brands, you should have the courage to explore unique ideas that will make you stand out. Rolling out a successful product-led strategy requires a deep understanding of your customers, how they experience your brand, and what opportunities you can capitalize on to become an indispensable part of their daily routine.

If you need help rolling out your product-led approach, [reach out!](https://nebulab.com/contact-us) Since 2012, we’ve helped tens of DTC brands scale their presence by developing unique experiences. We’re happy to help you figure out if product-led growth is right for you and how you can get started on your product-led journey.

The Nebulab

Using Workshops to Navigate Complexity and Build Alignment

5 Principles for Doing Great Work with Your eCommerce Agency

Supercharge Your DTC Growth with Product Management

Scaling DTC Brands Through Product-Led Growth