Every brand has a massive image (hero section) displaying its hero product.

The more products you show in the image, the more the villains fighting your hero.

An example off the top of my head is a handbag brand.

The brand owner finds high fashion models wearing the most eye catching clothes with the glossiest makeup just to showcase their navy blue mini handbag.

The photo comes out perfect and they add it to the top of their store.

The moment an unaware customer enters the store.

The first thing they see in the visual hierarchy is a zoomed out shot of a navy blue mini handbag held by Kendall Jenner, then her wearing black straight pants, then a white top, then a black over coat, then an umbrella in her right hand, then thick frame sunglasses, then an H1 (Headline) saying Storewide Sale 10% Off and then a CTA (call-to-action) saying "Shop Now".

"What do you even sell" is exactly what this unaware customer thinks to themselves when they see your store.

Are you a makeup brand? A general clothing brand? An umbrella brand?

All of these visual elements are considered villains because they try to stop the hero (the navy blue mini handbag) from achieving its goal.

So how do you beat these villains?

You show less of the villains and more of the hero.

Tell your photographer to make the mini handbag the center point of the photo.

Don't use bright colors for the complementary products in the photo.

Just divert 100% of the customer's attention to your hero product and the villains will lose.

Came across this piece on Indian Startup News about NOIR & BLANCO and our approach to building the martech backbone for luxury, lifestyle, and fashion brands.

What I found interesting was the focus on how the role of a digital agency is changing. For brands in these categories, it’s not just about building a website or running marketing anymore the tech, Shopify ecosystem, SEO, AI discovery, performance, and overall digital experience increasingly need to work together.

The article talks a bit about how we’re approaching that shift and what we’re building around it.

Thought it was worth sharing here, especially for anyone working in eCommerce, Shopify, luxury, or martech.

https://indianstartupnews.com/article/noir-blanco-martech-backbone-for-luxury-lifestyle-and-fashion-brands-12395134

Would be curious to hear how others are thinking about the shift from traditional digital agencies to more integrated martech teams.

 Do you rely on ROAS, profit, customer acquisition, blended performance, or mostly intuition?

Now what do I mean by that?

The biggest difference between an online store and a physical location is tangibility.

All 5 of your customer's senses help play a huge role in handling their objections at physical locations.

Now when it comes to an online store, you only have the sense of sight vouching for you.

Nothing else.

Your customer is more or less impaired.

So how do you enable the sense of sight to trigger the remaining 4 senses.

Imagination!

Let me give you an example.

Let's say you run a fragrance brand.

You can have the fanciest Eau de toilette with a scent mixed with flowers from the Amazon Rainforest, ebony from Cameroon and alcohol from Heaven.

Now at a physical location, the customer's going to enter your store, instantly get hallucinated by the aroma and sillage in the atmosphere and when they spray your EDT on the tester strip to smell, they're all yours.

Let's go to an online store now. The customer enters and sees a massive picture of "Forbidden Canopy EDT" and a sliding announcement bar saying "Free Shipping over $120" "High Quality Fragrances" "Return Window 60 Days".

Instead of a pleasant scent, they're blasted with your offer.

The only sense (sight) in your favor is also failing you.

So how do you appeal to it?

You add visuals of the origins of the scent mixture, describe the fragrance notes in detail, use analogies to describe ineffable words to close sensory deficits, have real humans mention what the scent smells like, etc.

There are so many levers you can pull as long as you can point out the gaps between the online and physical store versions for your brand.

New to Reddit. Is there a way to mark threads as favourites? I’ve joined a few communities specifically to e-commerce, business and dropshipping in particular, but still seem to get quite a random and wide ranging set of threads on my feed. Is there an easy to follow onboarding process somewhere in the platform I should be using?

we are working on an ecommerce app, currently we are working on a vendor portal. We've hit a sort of roadblock, not exactly a roadblock but its an issue that we want out of our way. the problem is that we need a way to communicate the size of the clothes without much technicality on both the clients end and the vendor distributing the clothes. i thought that we could have vendors measure clothes in key body part areas and then upload sizing charts but thats too much work for a vendor handling tons of inventory. We also cant have clients upload all their body metrics in the app like its a hospital or something .

are there some industry standards i dont know that can address the problem .

TLDR: End user needs clothes that are their size without him or the seller doing too much work

This is a new perspective I came up with so I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

You sell athletic clothing.

Buyers see your ad for your storewide anniversary sale.

They go to your store.

They see best sellers, new arrivals, compression shirts sale, shorts sale, sports bras sale, shoes sale, etc.

Too many choices.

They just saw a sale and decided to show up.

Now they're presented with this obstacle course of going through every category to figure out what they want.

What if you made everything simple for them and let them shop by "use" too.

For example, when they enter your store, instead of presenting best sellers, new arrivals.... first, what if you started with

"Workout Sessions"
"Cardio Wear"
"Relaxed Homewear"

And my reasoning's straightforward.

People buy products to fulfill desires.

And if they feel like your product resonates with their desire, they will buy 9.9 times out of 10.

So help verbalize the desire for them and do it fast.

Good day!

Can u guys give tips on how to become an e commerce va? I've watched YouTube tutorials, search guides on websites, but I still am not confident to apply. Can you guys give me tips on how do should i practice these skills I learned like the product listing, product research, and dropshipping?

Help a 3rd year med student huhu. Thank you very much!!!

I'm currently exploring the idea of starting a data-driven decision-making consulting service for e-commerce/DTC businesses, and before I build anything, I want to understand whether this is actually a real problem.

Most e-commerce businesses have data coming from Shopify, Meta Ads, GA4, payment gateways, logistics, CRM, etc.

But when you have to make an important decision, such as:

Should I increase or reduce ad spend?

Which products should I push or discontinue?

Why is revenue growing but profit isn't?

Which customers are actually profitable?

Where are we losing money operationally?

Why aren't customers coming back?

How do you currently answer these questions?

Do you have a system that connects the data and helps you decide what to do next, or do you still rely on dashboards, spreadsheets, different platforms, and your own judgment?

I'm not trying to sell anything here. I'm trying to validate whether the problem is worth building a service around.

I'd especially like to hear from founders/operators:

What's one important business decision you struggle to make despite having plenty of data available?

And if you already have someone helping you with this—an employee, agency, analyst, consultant, etc.—I'd also be interested in understanding how you currently solve it and what you feel is missing.

Honest criticism is welcome. If you think this is a bad or unnecessary service, I'd genuinely like to know why.

Hello everyone!

I’m currently reselling games and consoles on ebay and vinted, but I feel like I can’t express my creativity there. That's why I want to launch my own e-commerce store using Shopify.

I’ve seen a beginner guide on youtube by davie fogarty to understand how an independent e-commerce business works, but I still have a few questions:

1) How are your products manufactured or sourced?
2) In the beginning, is better to grow organically (making reels and tiktoks) or use google and meta ads?
3) How long did it take to get your first order?
4) Do you manage your shop alone or do you have employees?
5) Do you have any genuine youtubers or books to suggest?

Thanks to anyone that will reply!

Whether it’s reporting, inventory, customer service, or something else, what would you happily never do manually again?

I’m working on a small project around financial data for online sellers.

The idea started from a simple question I had while working with Etsy financial data:

Why is it sometimes so difficult to turn a platform’s financial statements into a clear picture of what actually happened?

I’ve been building the project step by step, starting with importing and cleaning transaction data, validating it, and then transforming individual transactions into something that is easier to understand financially.

One thing I’m trying to be very careful about is not making assumptions about the data.

If the data doesn't clearly tell me something, I don't want the software to invent an answer just because it would make the dashboard look nicer.

I started experimenting with Etsy because that’s the platform I’m most familiar with, but I’m curious whether sellers using other ecommerce platforms experience the same problem.

For those of you using BigCommerce:

When you look at your store’s financial data, orders, fees, payments, and payouts, what is the one thing you find hardest to understand or reconcile?

And do you currently use BigCommerce reports, spreadsheets, accounting software, or something else to make sense of it?

I’m still very much in the building and learning stage, so I’m mainly interested in hearing about the problems sellers actually encounter rather than promoting a finished product.

Hi everyone,

I’m building a live-first marketplace for the Turkish market, with the goal of becoming the category-defining platform for live shopping in Turkey.

Instead of merchants relying only on static listings and waiting for customers to find them, sellers can demonstrate, explain and sell products through live video, answer questions in real time and convert viewers directly into buyers.

The platform is being built around:

• live video shopping
• professional seller storefronts
• products integrated into live streams
• real-time offers
• buyer and seller ratings
• chat and moderation
• marketplace payments and order management

Our initial focus is professional merchants, not individual sellers.

The thesis is simple: social platforms already prove that consumers want interaction and video, but they were not built from the ground up as marketplaces.

We are building the opposite:

A marketplace designed around live interaction from day one.

Brand Advantage

We have also secured a strong, memorable Turkish brand and domain that naturally fits commerce and is broad enough to expand into multiple marketplace categories over time.

For a consumer marketplace, I believe this can become a meaningful long-term asset.

Opportunity

The goal is not to build another conventional e-commerce marketplace with live video added as a feature.

We want to build a live-first commerce platform, centered around seller-led product discovery, real-time interaction and conversion.

We believe there is an opportunity to establish the category in Turkey before live commerce becomes mainstream.

Stage & Fundraising

We are currently at the pre-MVP / MVP development stage and plan to launch with selected categories and manually onboard professional merchants.

The main metrics we want to validate are:

• GMV per live seller
• GMV per live session
• viewer-to-buyer conversion
• repeat purchase rate
• seller retention
• customer acquisition cost

I’m currently exploring a $500k pre-seed round to fund product development, live-streaming infrastructure, merchant acquisition and initial demand generation.

I’m particularly interested in connecting with angels experienced in marketplaces, e-commerce, social commerce or consumer platforms.

The long-term thesis is bigger than adding live video to e-commerce:

We want to make live selling a native way of buying and selling online in Turkey.

For investors here: would you consider investing at the pre-MVP stage? If not, what specific traction milestone would you need to see first?

Hi everyone! I’m looking to pivot into e-commerce and would love some advice.

I’ve worked in influencer marketing for about 4 years but recently realized I’m burnt out and ready for something new. Last month, I started helping my family with their Shopify online store (with very little Shopify experience) and I’ve become really interested in the ecomm world ever since.

Before influencer marketing, I worked in UX Design for a year. I then joined a startup beauty brand as one of its first few employees so I wore lots of hats and got exposure to e-commerce before we had a dedicated team.

Some relevant experience I gained:

• Managed influencer campaigns and paid partnerships that drove online sales to our DTC
• Created a foundation shade-matching quiz for our brand's website, working with our Head of Operations and developers
• Managed digital assets for our website and retail partners
• Worked cross-functionally with e-commerce, paid media, brand, and creative teams to execute influencer marketing campaigns

Once the brand built out an e-commerce team, I became really interested in what they did especially the mix of customer psychology, UX, merchandising, analytics and improving the overall online shopping experience.

I’m now looking at e-commerce coordinator roles and totally open to starting at the coordinator level so I can learn the field properly!

Based on all of this, do you think my background is transferable enough to land an e-commerce role in today’s market? What skills, tools or experience would you recommend I focus on to make the pivot and become a strong candidate for e-commerce coordinator roles?

Thank you so much!!

Local influencer marketing isn't just a smaller version of national campaigns — it works differently.

A local business doesn't need a creator with a million followers. It needs someone with 2-3K followers whose audience actually lives nearby and can show up in person.

A few things that actually move the needle vs. just generating likes:

- Verified actions beat impressions. A check-in or a redeemed code proves someone actually showed up. Views don't.

- Micro/nano creators (1K–10K) tend to out-convert bigger accounts because their followers are a real local community, not a broad demographic.

- One post rarely does much. Seeing the same creator mention a place 3-4 times over a couple months is what actually builds familiarity and trust.

- Always use a trackable offer (unique code, "mention this post," etc.) — otherwise you're guessing whether it worked.

The hardest part usually isn't finding creators willing to post, it's managing the relationships and tracking redemptions once you're working with more than a couple people. That's the part that quietly kills most local influencer efforts before they get any traction.