§ VERTICAL — ECOMMERCE & MARKETPLACES
GLOBAL · USD · ECOMMERCE

The digital marketing agency for eCommerce.

Average eCommerce CR is 1.4–1.8% on mobile. Top 20% above 3%. Closing that gap on existing traffic is worth more than doubling ad spend.

1.4–1.8%
AVG ECOM CR
3%+
TOP 20% TARGET
MOBILE
WHERE LIFT LIVES
SCHEMA
COLLECTION + PRODUCT
$5,999
STARTING MO
§ 01
WHY ECOMMERCE POD

Three places eCommerce compounds beyond DTC.

Collection + product schema

Most eCom sites ship product schema and stop. Collection schema, faceted-nav SEO, and breadcrumb hierarchy compound for years.

Shopping is 70% of paid spend

Google Shopping + PMax merits its own restructure separate from Search. We treat it as a different beast — different audience signals, different feeds.

Email scales with catalog

Replenishment + browse-abandon + post-purchase + win-back become highest-margin once your SKU count exceeds 200. Lifecycle reflects catalog depth.

§ INDUSTRY
WHAT IS ECOMMERCE MARKETING

Digital marketing for eCommerce, defined for Shopping + AI Overviews + marketplaces.

eCommerce marketing is the broader umbrella covering DTC, marketplaces (Amazon + Walmart + Target + eBay), traditional retail with eCom storefronts, and B2B-with-online-purchase. The 2026 channel mix anchors on Google Shopping + Performance Max (the strongest commercial-intent surface, where product feed quality + supplemental feeds + custom-label bidding determine outcomes), paid social (Meta + TikTok-led with iOS-restored CAPI), email + SMS lifecycle (Klaviyo + Postscript dominant for B2C; HubSpot for hybrid B2C+B2B), SEO + AEO (product + collection schema, faceted-nav crawl control, increasingly comparison content for AI engine citation), conversion rate optimisation (mobile-first checkout — 30–50% of revenue lost to mobile checkout friction), and marketplace bundling (Amazon Ads + Walmart Connect alongside DTC for reach + brand defense).

PMax

Performance Max — Google's cross-channel automated buying. Dominant for eCom Shopping in 2026; most accounts have 25–45% recoverable spend on initial audit.

GTIN

Global Trade Item Number. Required field in product feed; missing GTINs disqualify Shopping placements at scale.

AOV

Average Order Value. eCom median $50–$150; top-quartile $200+. Most influential lever on per-order profitability.

Faceted nav

Filter-based navigation (size, colour, brand, price) on collection pages. Crawl-budget hazard if not parameter-controlled — eats indexation depth.

Custom labels

Shopping feed attributes for margin-tier or season-priority bidding. Top eCom optimisation lever Google does not expose by default.

Cart abandonment

Browse + cart abandonment cycle. Mobile checkout abandonment 65–80% typical; recovery flows + Apple/Google Pay close 15–25%.

Marketplace

Amazon, Walmart, Target, eBay etc. Required for reach + brand defense in most eCom categories; managed via paired specialist.

Server-side CAPI

Conversion API restoring 8–18% of iOS-blocked attribution. Required for clean Smart Bidding optimisation on eCom paid.

§ ECOMMERCE BENCHMARKS

The numbers eCom brands measure quarterly.

METRIC
CATEGORY MEDIAN
TOP-QUARTILE
SOURCE
Average Order Value (AOV)
$50–$150
$200+
CATEGORY MEDIAN · 2025
Mobile checkout abandonment
65–80%
<55%
BAYMARD INSTITUTE · 2024
Mobile conversion rate
1.5–2.5%
4%+
WORDSTREAM · 2025
PMax recoverable spend (initial audit)
15–30%
35–50%
OUR DATA · n=14
Email % of revenue
6–8%
30–40%
KLAVIYO · 2025
Repeat purchase rate (90-day)
15–25%
40%+
CATEGORY BENCHMARK
Server-side CAPI uplift
8–18%
20%+
OUR DATA · n=27
Marketplace share (vs DTC)
20–40%
50%+
CATEGORY BENCHMARK
§ SUB-VERTICALS
ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Six platform paths. Each ships differently.

01

Shopify + Shopify Plus

Default for $1–250M DTC + small-mid eCom. Native Klaviyo + Recharge + Loop + Yotpo integrations. Hydrogen for headless. Strong app ecosystem; modest customisation ceiling.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
KLAVIYO + META + GOOGLE SHOPPING
02

BigCommerce

B2B + multi-storefront strength. Native multi-currency + Open Checkout flexibility. Better for enterprise-leaning mid-market than Shopify Plus on customisation.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
KLAVIYO + GOOGLE + B2B SALES MOTION
03

WooCommerce

WordPress + WooCommerce for content-heavy + bootstrapped eCom. Plugin-based extensibility. Slower than Shopify on default Core Web Vitals; needs LiteSpeed / Cloudflare.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
CONTENT + EMAIL + GOOGLE ORGANIC
04

Magento (Adobe Commerce)

Enterprise-leaning, complex catalogues, multi-store. Adobe Experience Manager integration. High TCO + slower velocity than Shopify; right for legacy enterprise.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
PMAX + B2B + ADOBE STACK
05

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Enterprise + omni-channel + global multi-region. Highest TCO, best B2B + B2C hybrid + global compliance. For $250M+ retailers.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
GLOBAL + ENTERPRISE + B2B HYBRID
06

Headless (Hydrogen / Saleor / Medusa)

Composable architecture with custom front-end (Next.js, Astro, Remix). Best Core Web Vitals + most flexibility; highest dev cost. Right for $25M+ with engineering capacity.

CHANNEL EMPHASIS
CWV + AEO + CUSTOM CRO
§ STAGE
ECOMMERCE CHANNEL MIX BY STAGE

What works at each eCom revenue stage.

REVENUE STAGE
PRIMARY CHANNELS
SECONDARY
TYPICAL BUDGET
$0–$1M
Google Shopping + Meta + Email basics (8 flows)
Mobile CRO + first-party data layer + GA4
$2–$15k/mo
$1–$5M
Shopping + PMax + Multi-channel paid social + 28-flow email + mobile CRO
SEO foundation + Klaviyo migration + first marketplace test
$5–$50k/mo
$5–$25M
Full pod + CAPI + AEO content + Klaviyo + Postscript + Amazon Ads
MMM hybrid + Pinterest / TikTok scaling + B2B/wholesale optional
$50–$300k/mo
$25M+
Multi-region + brand campaigns + retail integration + MMM + headless migration
OOH + connected TV + influencer at scale + M&A diligence
$300k+/mo
§ PITFALLS
COMMON ECOMMERCE MISTAKES

Six eCom pitfalls we see most often.

COMMON MISTAKE
DO THIS INSTEAD
Letting Performance Max run with brand-search included.
Exclude branded queries from PMax asset groups. 20–35% of PMax spend typically leaks to brand queries that would convert organically anyway. Brand-search separation is the highest-leverage single PMax fix.
Skipping product feed quality + supplemental feeds.
Optimise product titles + GTINs + structured data + supplemental feeds for category + custom-label bidding. Feed quality is the #1 determinant of Shopping placement frequency + cost.
Optimising desktop checkout while mobile is broken.
Mobile-first CRO. 65–75% of eCom traffic lands on mobile but converts at half desktop. Express-pay (Apple/Google/Shop Pay), address autocomplete, error-recovery UX, mobile-LCP <2.5s — that closes the gap.
Treating email as a campaign channel, not lifecycle.
Build the 28-flow lifecycle. Welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, browse, replenishment, win-back — most eCom brands run 6 flows; the missing 22 hold 25%+ of email revenue.
Skipping marketplace bundling (Amazon, Walmart) for "DTC purity".
Marketplace + DTC are complementary. Brand defense on Amazon (your competitors will buy your brand keywords if you do not own placements). Marketplace-only retainers from $2,499/mo paired with DTC.
Optimising for blended ROAS without server-side tracking.
Deploy GTM Server-Side + Conversion APIs first. Restores 8–18% of iOS-blocked attribution. Smart Bidding only works on clean signal. Optimisation on broken data compounds losses.
§ 04
ECOMMERCE FAQ

Common eCom questions.

What eCommerce platforms do you work on?+

Platform-agnostic — we ship on Shopify (Plus and standard), BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento (Adobe Commerce), Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Centra, Shopware, and headless setups (Hydrogen, Next + Saleor, Medusa). Most retainer clients run Shopify Plus; we have shipped product schema, faceted-nav SEO, server-side checkout tracking, and lifecycle integrations across all of them. Migration projects (Shopify → Shopify Plus, Magento → Shopify, headless → headless) are a regular sprint type and quoted separately.

What is the minimum ad spend for eCommerce paid retainers?+

$15,000/month recommended for paid-social and paid-search retainers — below that, the 8–10% management fee under-staffs the buyer + creative cadence. Sub-$15k/mo brands typically start with a $1,199 Google Ads or Paid Social Audit and a $4,999 sprint to fix account architecture, then graduate to retainer when scale supports it. Marketplace-only Amazon Ads retainers start lower at $2,499/mo because the optimisation surface is narrower. We will recommend in-house + freelance over us when the math does not work.

Should B2C eCom use Klaviyo or HubSpot for email + lifecycle?+

Klaviyo for pure B2C eCom — its eCom-native segmentation (RFM, predictive CLV, replenishment, browse abandonment) is best-in-class and integrates natively with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento. HubSpot if you also run B2B / wholesale alongside DTC, where the unified CRM is worth the slightly weaker eCom segmentation. Customer.io if you have a strong product-event data layer (e.g., headless commerce with Segment). We will not push you toward our partnership tier — recommendation is based on your stack and team capacity.

How long until eCom content gets cited inside ChatGPT and Perplexity?+

Schema rollout indexes across the four major answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) in 2–6 weeks. AI Overviews and AI-engine citations typically appear 4–8 weeks after content rebuild for cited-brand candidates (brands with existing third-party mention graph, Wikipedia / Wikidata presence, and structured product schema). New brands without an entity footprint compound citation density 3–6 months in. Product schema, FAQ schema, comparison-content structure, and llms.txt all stack — none in isolation is sufficient.

Do you handle Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, and other marketplaces?+

Yes — Amazon Ads (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, DSP), Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, eBay Promoted Listings — through our paired marketplace specialist. Marketplace-only retainers start at $2,499/mo for single-marketplace coverage; multi-marketplace at $4,999/mo. We do not handle Amazon SEO or listing optimisation as a primary service — we partner with Amazon-native agencies for that and integrate with their work. Marketplace + DTC + paid social run on shared attribution dashboards.

Do you run a BFCM-specific eCom programme?+

Yes — the 8-week BFCM Ready Sprint ($2,999) ships pre-warmed paid-search and paid-social accounts, a creative library of 30–60 variants for the peak window, a 28-flow Klaviyo lifecycle rebuild (or audit + fix if Klaviyo is already running), server-side CAPI deployment so iOS-blocked attribution does not collapse during peak, and a daypart bidding strategy. Sprint runs Sep 1 – Oct 31 ahead of Nov 24+ peak. Memorial Day, Prime Day, July 4, and Boxing Day moments handled within annual planning on Multi-Channel and Full Pod retainers.

§ START

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