Does this sum up your 2024 ecommerce strategy?
“Fourth quarter…let’s never do that again!”
The holiday season puts ecommerce operations to the test. But when the dust settles and the last package ships, experienced teams know: surviving isn’t enough. It’s all about learning.
Taking a close look at your 2024 performance is the first step to improving your ecommerce strategy for 2025. A well-timed post-mortem – while the season’s challenges are still sometimes painfully fresh – helps you celebrate what went well, spot where things got tricky and map out what to do differently. It’s your chance to align your team, simplify goals, and create an ecommerce strategy that’s smarter, smoother and ready for growth.
A close look back at 2024 is the first step to a winning strategy for 2025
At Etail, we’ve spent over a decade helping brands, retailers, distributors and 3PLs overcome tough ecommerce challenges. One thing is clear: a strong ecommerce strategy starts with understanding the fundamentals of your operations inside and out. This article will walk you through the questions to ask and insights to uncover so you can strengthen your ecommerce strategy for 2025
Where Many Businesses Get Ecommerce Strategy Wrong
Many online businesses see operations as a back-office task. They treat order management, inventory, fulfillment and shipping as separate issues. Instead of solving root problems, they focus on quick fixes or short-term cost savings.
This approach leads to trouble. Small issues in operations – like slow shipping or out-of-stock items – quickly damage customer trust. Operations – especially fulfillment – isn’t just a cost center to be managed. It’s the main driver of brand loyalty, repeat purchases and overall customer satisfaction.
How Successful Businesses Think About Ecommerce Strategy
The best ecommerce businesses treat operations as a single, connected system. Every process – order management, inventory, fulfillment and shipping – works together. They invest in systems that are flexible and scalable, ready to adapt to changing demand while maximizing margins on every order.
A post-mortem of your holiday or peak season ecommerce strategy gives you the clarity to build this kind of system. It reveals where your operations excelled, where they struggled, and how you can create a more resilient ecommerce strategy for 2025.
Running an Ecommerce Strategy Post-Mortem: Turning Reflection Into Action
Post-mortems aren’t just fodder for prime time cop shows. They are an important part of sharpening your ecommerce strategy as your operations scale and evolve.
Gather your team – operations, fulfillment, inventory and customer service – the ones who lived through the holiday rush. Set a clear agenda focused on identifying wins, challenges and opportunities for improvement. Pull up the numbers. Look at what went well. Where did things fall apart? Don’t settle for surface-level answers. Dig deeper.
What systems broke under pressure? What processes slowed you down? Most importantly, where did you exceed customer expectations and where did you fall short?
Write it down. No generalizations. No excuses. Just lessons.
Then, decide what’s next. What’s worth fixing? What’s worth rethinking? A good post-mortem doesn’t just reflect on the past – it shapes the future.
Ten Questions to Improve Your Ecommerce Strategy in 2025
Order Management
1. Did our order management system handle peak demand effectively?
Scalable order management is essential to your ecommerce strategy. Look for delays, errors or bottlenecks, and identify opportunities for automation or upgrades
2. What was our order accuracy rate?
Review how often incorrect or duplicate orders happened. Were errors caused by system issues, training gaps or missed quality checks?
Inventory Management
3. Did we experience stockouts or overstock issues? Why?
Review your demand forecasts, supplier timelines and replenishment schedules. Align stock levels to customer demand more effectively.
Also, look at inventory location. Did you have the right inventory in the right place at the right time to handle demand? Evaluate distributed order management to improve results for 2025. It may make sense to add fulfillment locations or partners or to do a better job routing orders to the fulfillment options you already have.
Distributed order management is a powerful tool to address order, inventory and shipping cost issues
4. Were inventory updates accurate across all sales channels?
Real-time inventory visibility and updates prevent overselling and missed opportunities. Pay attention to complex SKUs like kits and bundles, which can cause inventory challenges. If your inventory management system can’t handle the inventory complexity caused by bundles, promotional SKUs and multi-packs, it may be time for an upgrade.
Fulfillment Strategy
5. What bottlenecks slowed down fulfillment?
Identify inefficiencies in picking, packing or shipping workflows. Look for solutions like ecommerce automation or workflow process improvements.
6. How can we make our fulfillment operations more flexible?
Scalability matters during peak demand. Explore options like temporary staffing or adding additional fulfillment options to handle demand surges.
Now’s the time to take a look at your ecommerce order management software. Make sure it has the capabilities to easily add 3PLs and other fulfillment partners – working the systems they already have in place to manage orders and inventory at each stocking location.
Shipping Strategy
7. Did we meet delivery promises?
Reliable delivery is a cornerstone of a customer-focused ecommerce strategy. Analyze your on-time delivery rate and identify delays. Review carrier performance and internal processing times.
8. Were our shipping costs managed effectively?
Balancing cost and speed is key to a competitive ecommerce strategy. Look for ways to balance speed and cost. Explore opportunities to reduce shipping costs, Consider strategies like renegotiating carrier contracts or optimizing packaging. Or look into automated cartonization, which ensures the right packaging is chosen for every order, every time to cut shipping expense and improve margins.
Data and Analytics
9. Did we have the real-time data we needed during peak periods?
Evaluate whether your reporting tools delivered timely insights. Think back to the day-to-day data you used – and the data you needed but didn’t have. Identify any gaps that slowed data-driven decision-making.
10. Which metrics should we focus on for 2025?
Set clear goals for key metrics like order accuracy, fulfillment costs and inventory turnover. Track them consistently.
How to Build a Better Ecommerce Strategy
Building a better ecommerce strategy starts with focusing on the big picture – connecting operations, using data and making steady improvements that drive growth and keep customers happy. Here are some tips to get you started:
Think Systematically
Your operations are connected. Every improvement – whether in order management, fulfillment or inventory – strengthens the entire system.
Use Data to Guide Decisions
Make sure your systems and processes can handle growth. Find the weak spots from this year’s holiday rush and fix them now.
Plan for Scalability
Ensure your systems and processes can handle growth without breaking down. Look for weak spots from the holiday rush and fix them before next year.
Focus on the Customer Experience
Operational improvements should lead to better customer experiences. Late deliveries, stockouts and damaged items hurt trust – fixing these issues pays off.
Commit to Continuous Improvement
Make small, steady changes. Whether it’s upgrading systems, optimizing workflows or improving training, focus on progress – not perfection.
Using Outside Expertise to Optimize Your Ecommerce Strategy
An internal post-mortem can show you where things went wrong. But without outside expertise, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture. That’s where Etail Solutions’ D2C Executive Workshops come in.
Your team knows the details of your business. But ecommerce is complex. It’s not just about fixing what broke – it’s about seeing what’s possible. Are you asking the right questions? Are you focused on the right priorities? Without clear alignment and a broader view of industry trends and proven solutions, even the best teams can get stuck.
Etail brings more than a decade of hands-on experience to help you see what you’re missing. Working with our expert staff, we’ll help you align your leadership team, tackle tough challenges – supply chain issues, pricing conflicts, legacy systems – and turn blind spots into opportunities.
This isn’t about theory. It’s about action. Real solutions, clear direction and a plan to scale smarter. Instead of rehashing problems, you’ll leave ready to build a stronger, more resilient ecommerce strategy.
Internal reviews are a great way to get started. But if you’re serious about growth, you need expertise that challenges assumptions and opens doors. Let’s make 2025 the year you turn challenges into momentum. Click here to learn more about supercharging your ecommerce strategy with Etail’s D2C Executive Workshops. Each workshop is customized to your business and unique ecommerce challenges. Specialized workshops are available for brands and ecommerce retailers, distributors and 3PLs.
Click here to learn more about Etail's D2C Ecommerce Executive Workshops.
