How To Replatform an E-commerce Site - Brit Tucker

Justin Aronstein (00:01.406) actually I forgot to ask, what is your exact title that you want us to use? Brit Tucker (00:04.43) Boy, isn't that a fun title. You can just say BP of product and technology. Justin Aronstein (00:11.628) VP of Producting at Society6, right? All right. Awesome. Welcome to Check In and Check Out, Britt. We're so happy to have you. So really just to start off, how's your week going? What's going on in your week? How are you feeling today? Brit Tucker (00:13.258) Yeah, that's society sex, Brit Tucker (00:30.846) I'm feeling okay. You know, it's a crazy time to be in e-commerce. And so I think every week is just another flavor of chaos. So just taking it a day at a time. Justin Aronstein (00:44.832) I want to hear about that chaos, but first, but first, so you're VP of Product and Technology at Society6. So what does that mean? What do you own? What do you do every day? Brit Tucker (00:46.273) I'm Brit Tucker (00:57.002) Yeah, good question. My title is a bit deceiving because I actually own quite a bit within the organization. with under me, I have digital product data and analytics, user experience, engineering, technology, customer success and e-commerce operations. So my, my day today is a little chaotic from how we started the conversation. I typically like to start my day by meditating and reading. Justin Aronstein (01:15.49) Whoa. Brit Tucker (01:27.02) you know, something to ground myself or working out quite honestly, just something to get my head out of the clouds. But it's a wild west day every single day. No day is the same, honestly. Justin Aronstein (01:29.494) Okay. Connor (01:42.542) I like we get a lot of people in here who describe a similar situation. They've got a lot of basically a lot of levers you're in charge of pulling. Do you feel like it sounds like maybe you're managing this, but do you think maybe the things that you're doing outside of work are helping you to keep from ever feeling burnt out or overloaded? Is there anything you do to maybe prevent that feeling? Brit Tucker (02:05.646) Well, 100%. I'm, I'm a firm believer that if you're not a whole human outside of work, nothing you do in the office is going to be additive. So it's an ethos I live by and I try to model it as best I can for my team. Cause if I don't model it, they don't embody it either. But for me, it is sort of a ritual in the morning, so to speak of. Connor (02:17.678) home. Brit Tucker (02:31.008) meditating, journaling, reading some combination of those three activities. And then I have to move my body every day, whether that's just doing some yoga on a mat in the living room or actually getting to a gym or workout class, something that just gets me out of my head and into my body is certainly helpful. then limiting as much screen time as I can. think that's really hard for people like us who are either glued to their laptop screen or their phone and Connor (02:55.209) Yeah. Brit Tucker (03:00.206) For obvious reasons, you know, my team has to make sure the website's staying up and running and orders are processing all the time. But anything I can do to unplug from screen time is certainly helpful. Connor (03:13.208) Yeah, I feel like it's important for people in our industry to be in the present. As maybe kind of silly as that sounds sometimes to say, but yeah, I mean, just so much of your job is in the computer and on the screen that I think it gets, it feels more overwhelming when that's the only place that you're living. So yeah, that's awesome. Brit Tucker (03:33.122) Yeah, it definitely taxes your nervous system, that's for sure. Justin Aronstein (03:38.59) So you own a lot of different teams. How many people is that? And how many meetings are you in a day? How many hours of meetings is that? Brit Tucker (03:44.622) It's about just over 20 people. They don't all report directly to me. I've got some managers, but the full org itself is about 20 people. And I'm not in meetings all day, although I would say a portion of my day is meetings, at least 50 % is meetings. And a lot of those meetings are one-on-ones with the team, either direct one-on-ones with my direct reports or skip level or one-on-ones with know, peers and collaborators who run the other departments. But it is, I'd say because my team is distributed across all of the time zones to my mornings or typically meetings through about midday lunch. And then the afternoon frees up for some deep thinking time. Justin Aronstein (04:33.696) And does that breadth actually make you better at your job because you have more context than you would otherwise if you were just highly siloed? Brit Tucker (04:43.224) I would say selfishly, yes, it does. Although I would say as somebody who has always had her foot in the world of digital product, being a digital product gives me a unique lens to work with every department. Unlike other departments, you just aren't afforded that same capability because the nature of being a digital product lead or just being a product manager means you're working with every team because you need information from all sources. Working with the data team, because you need to make sure that your source of truth or that the experience that you built is working effectively or not, or you need to work with finance to model out potentially what a new experience or tool might do for the business. You're collaborating with marketing or merchandising. So it certainly does. So you could argue that maybe it's too distributed across too many teams, but that's just the nature of, I think, lot of e-comm businesses these days. change we've seen over the pandemic. A lot of teams have been consolidated through layoffs, personnel changes, people exiting the organization and not necessarily back billing. And so it's a blessing and a curse at the same time, depending upon how you wanna look at it. Connor (05:57.24) That makes a lot of Justin Aronstein (05:57.346) Totally. And does your team handle everything? Do you guys rely on partners? How much, like what's that look like for your company? Brit Tucker (06:07.032) Yeah, for my team specifically, we're largely in-house, so we do have a couple of partners that we work with to supplement the team. You we just recently replatformed our site to Shopify, and so we still are in a light engagement with the implementation partner that helped us just to transition and make sure that the team is trained up on the nuance of, you know, our new tech architecture. From a customer service and operations side, there are some partners that we use to just supplement the team, but it's a largely I would say 80 % of the effort is done in-house. Justin Aronstein (06:41.73) That makes a lot of sense. So I think as e-commerce leaders, product leaders, a lot of us are T-shaped. We work right at one or maybe two things if you're really good at your job, but then you also have a breadth. So what are you great at? And then also, where do you rely on others? Brit Tucker (07:01.154) Yeah, I would say I'm really good in the area of user research. It's been just a core tenant of who I am as a product leader and a digital leader. Been really fortunate in my career that talking to the consumer has been a part of every role I've ever been in, even before I worked in e-commerce. And so it's something I've brought with me and obviously is a huge component of the digital. product ecosystem. So user research is a big one for me. And I would say conversion as a result of that, just having a great pulse on what's going to make the customer tick and what are the mental models that customers operate off of in e-comm and challenging those with the first principles approach. I'd say where Justin Aronstein (07:45.132) Mm-hmm. Brit Tucker (07:49.842) I rely on others, either those are people who are on my team or coworkers or peers in the organization is typically acquisition, data retention, some of those things that require a bit more specialty. Quite honestly, you need somebody who's like, you could be an Ecom leader who's really great at data, but that only gets you so far. And I would argue if you're too data-driven, you're missing the gut instinct. That's really important to being a great Ecom leader in my opinion. So it's typically those areas where I think having really functional subject matter experts are really helpful to supplement and round out what an ECOM work can look like. Justin Aronstein (08:18.53) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (08:31.274) You said something really interesting that I want you to explain a little more. When you were talking about conversion, you said you used the first principles approach. Dive in further into that. Brit Tucker (08:36.206) Okay. Yeah, yeah, of course. This is something that is more common in the technology sass sort of engineering space and not so much econ. But I think that sometimes as econ leaders, we get really stuck in the look what other brands are doing, or what is Nielsen Norman Group or Baymar telling us in terms of best practices, and I'm using air quotes intentionally. And those are really helpful to guide you as a brand. But at the end of the day, my consumers different from Connor (09:03.694) you Brit Tucker (09:09.802) another consumer. at Society6, we can certainly look at competitors in the space, like in our space and the consideration set that our customers are looking at, but how they engage with our brand is going to be fundamentally different. And so with First Principles, you're really tasked with challenging the social norms, so to speak, of what a customer expects and break it down into the principles that make sense for your customer inside your ecosystem. You know, I, as the person who's in charge of the user experience for Society6 and at other brands in my career, you're often the person that people come to to say, we should do this, we should do that. And I'm not gonna say no out of the gate, but I'm gonna question why they think we should do it. And more often than not, you've got peers and leaders that are coming to you to say, well, this brand is doing it or that brand is doing it. And that's an area where I would want to test it to say, let's just make sure that our customers respond to that user experience before we assume that just because Etsy's doing it that we should be doing it. Connor (10:14.315) Love that mentality. It's such a hard thing to coach into a lot of people that you can't just look down the street and see what the other people are doing. You have to actually talk to people. Justin Aronstein (10:27.72) Awesome, that is really helpful and I think that tidbit is amazing to get, to really understand your customer and solve your customer's problems alongside your business problems. So let's look back at your career a little. How did you get started in e-commerce? I know you didn't go to school for it because there isn't an e-commerce degree, so what was your starting point? Brit Tucker (10:48.75) I landed in e-commerce by accident. But isn't that how we all end up here? Quite honestly. Yeah, by accident. You know, I started my career in digital agencies and I was working for client consumer brands and clients that this was pre-e-com days. know, everybody had a website, but nobody was selling on their website. So I helped Connor (10:55.884) was about to say, yeah. Justin Aronstein (10:56.962) 100 % of our guests have said that. Brit Tucker (11:18.358) A lot of those brands build their websites and help some of those early clients actually introduce commerce. You know, they all had WordPress sites at the time and WooCommerce was, you know, integrating into WordPress in such a way that some brands could do a light, storefront or swag shop on their site. And it was every client that came through in. on my plate and my career ultimately made me more and more curious about what this world was going to be. And so eventually I transitioned from the agency side to the brand side and helped many brands launch commerce related activities, not necessarily a true e-commerce initially. And that continued to pique my interest. I would say that the real big pivotal point in my career in and transitioning to e-comm was when I joined the beauty counter team in 2018 and helped them, I was a platform and really grow their DTC business. Justin Aronstein (12:29.408) So you actually answered my next question for some of the pivotal steps. Was there anyone along the way that kind of helped you, guide you into e-commerce, or kind of guide you how to be a better e-commerce leader? Brit Tucker (12:31.726) . Yeah. Brit Tucker (12:41.92) Nobody guided me into e-commerce, I think, because it was still so new, you know, I think being of a certain age, if you grew up in the digital space, there, it's sort of like, some of us know what life was like before the internet. It's the same in e-commerce. A lot of us know what life was like before e-commerce existed and you could really only buy in store or via a catalog. But there were a couple of great mentors I've had and still have in my career who have been really instrumental in helping me think about my path as a leader and advocate for myself. And two of them were managers that I had when I was working at Beauty Counter. They managed me in two different time periods. And then the other one was a coworker from Beauty Counter. Honestly, I would say my time there was... really impactful in the people and relationships that I've made. And it really opened my eyes to high caliber leadership that honestly like gives me some of my high expectations that I have today as a leader and as a peer to others. So those three people I still rely on. I had a conversation with one of my former bosses a couple of weeks ago just to check in and say hi and the former coworker I probably talk with weekly. So they're really instrumental in just being great sounding boards and mirrors for me throughout my entire career. Connor (14:11.914) I feel like I've got a lot of friends that I met when I first started out that have become, you've watched them kind of like pass you up in certain areas or you might pass them up, but there's this synergy of advice and communication that I feel like really helps people. So it's always good to have that kind of network. When you were starting out, do you feel like there's anything that you might, like if you could time travel and go back to when you first got into this industry, is there anything you might change or do differently? Brit Tucker (14:29.198) Yeah. Connor (14:40.118) now that you've got the experience. Brit Tucker (14:43.224) That's a good question. I've never thought about that. Honestly, I always say that if I had changed anything in my past, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with the two of you today. So I'm inclined to say there typically isn't something that I want to change. I'm very grateful for my path along the way. But there are certainly moments where I had maybe exited a role sooner than I should have or... Connor (14:55.074) picture. Brit Tucker (15:08.278) you know, my avoidant tendencies as a child maybe came out as an adult in the form of not sticking it through a harder experience in a job that could have afforded me maybe additional opportunities for growth. But there's not one particular moment that I'm like, damn it, why didn't I like rethink that or I'd love to have a redo. But those were the moments that maybe if I could have a redo, I'd maybe consider but I don't know that I would. Connor (15:34.606) That's a, yeah, it's a healthy answer and a good one. Yeah, I like that. Justin Aronstein (15:40.542) Yeah, I completely empathize with being avoidant. I think that is like my number one thing that comes up in every single relationship I've ever had. Whether with a partner, a co-worker, at work, any relationship in my life, I am just avoided. So the moment anything gets tough, I'm out. So I get it. Connor (16:03.406) I fight the urge to do the opposite and not just pester people when I'm like, what's going on? I need more information, I need more clarity. Tell me everything. Like, yeah, I'm the total opposite. Justin Aronstein (16:08.962) you Brit Tucker (16:15.918) We need both. We need both types. Justin Aronstein (16:16.801) Awesome. Totally. actually on related note, it sounds like you don't regret anything, but looking back on your time, were there any times like, oh man, this was a little bit of a failure that I learned from? I think these are the most important. Well, it's uncomfortable to talk about our failures. This is where like you've learned and we can help others learn as well. Connor (16:17.814) Yeah, yeah, very true. Brit Tucker (16:40.76) Yeah, I mean, I would definitely say my career hopping hasn't always served me, but I've made up for it in other ways. But when I think about some of the projects or work I've done when I've been within a brand, there's one specifically that stands out to me, which is I was tasked with building a new revenue stream at one of the D2C brands I was working at. And it wasn't intended to be a physical product. We sold physical product, but it was intended to be, how can we monetize in other ways? And that was through launching essentially a SaaS product within the D2C model. If you look at it on paper, it was a success because it generated multiple six-figure monthly recurring revenue for the business. but it didn't actually drive the behavior change for the consumers that engaged in that offering in the way that we had expected. So we let it run for a year knowing that behavior change takes time. as we talked about first principles historically, this was a brand new offering and we can't expect that people's habits are gonna change in three months. We need to really see it through. So we let it play out for well over a year before we ultimately made the decision to deprecate. that business again, it was generating revenue for us, but not meaningful enough for us to actually see the other upside that we were hoping to see. That's a really hard decision to make as a leader to say we shouldn't have that anymore, especially when there's revenue, you know, basically a hundred percent profitable revenue at the end of the day that is contributing to the business. If it's not doing what you want the brand to ultimately do longterm. Justin Aronstein (18:22.166) That's hard decision. Connor (18:22.254) Yeah, I feel like we've dealt with that with clients in the past where we're the ones pushing for that kind of a decision. Like, hey, this is ultimately not going to help you long-term or sometimes they have these kind of black hat design patterns, you know. Can you go into more specifics about exactly what it was that wasn't clicking for the users or is that maybe NDA protected? Brit Tucker (18:51.618) I can probably lightly talk about it, just to speak at it. mean, ultimately what we were wanting to do is better curate the assortment that we had with data that helped us informed that decision. And what we saw is that people were opting into it no matter what, and we weren't seeing a behavior change that helped us make decisions about the assortment that we offered. So. Again, you know, it's a right product, but wrong problem situation. And so we've taken a step back. We took a step back from that and then ultimately decided that there's a better path to pursue. And that is to not keep, keep the marketplace open in a way that, that fueled growth for the brand. Justin Aronstein (19:28.738) Thank Brit Tucker (19:46.136) Keep the marketplace open in a way that fueled growth for the brand historically, but isn't necessarily fueling growth in a forward looking way, in a way we want to grow. Connor (19:54.574) Yeah, yeah, it's such an interesting problem and I've heard it before but yeah Brit Tucker (20:03.362) Yeah, I think a lot of failures, especially as somebody who spent a lot of her career and product are often truly centered on the fact that we're not solving the right problem. Solutions are very sexy. And so it's very easy to have shiny object syndrome towards a solution that feels really cool and exciting. And it's hard when you have momentum from other peers and other leaders who are pushing on that shiny object to not. to be the one person in the room going, I don't think that's a good idea. I do often, I am often that person who is saying no, probably more than I say yes, but that's also because I operate on the ethos of we say no to things so that we can say yes to the right things. But I think that's just embedded in me as somebody who spent a large part of her career in product is we can't do it all. We just can't. So no is one of my favorite words, maybe to a fault. Connor (20:57.582) I think every team needs a cynic. There was actually a, I don't know if you're a Radiohead fan, but there's a blog that the guitarist for Radiohead wrote when they were writing Kid A. And he talks about like the importance of a team dynamic. And it's actually fascinating to me, but he talks about how important it is to always have like a cynic. You've got usually like the technical skill, the person who's the most technically, you know, capable. Brit Tucker (21:00.832) you Brit Tucker (21:09.963) Mm-hmm. Connor (21:26.04) You've got to have the idiot savant, basically the lightning in a bottle that can't talk to anybody, but they can do something no one else can. You've got the leader and then you've got the cynic, who's essentially the most important role, the one who just says no, who questions everything, who tears it down in order to help everybody grow and evolve that idea. So yeah, I think that's such an element to have in a team. Brit Tucker (21:34.616) Mm-hmm. Brit Tucker (21:51.734) I like that I'm gonna have to find that, but my husband's a huge Radiohead fan, so I'm sure he's probably read it. Connor (21:54.156) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (21:58.357) you Connor (21:58.732) I'm blanking on the guitarist's name right now. It's not Johnny Greenwood, it's the other one, but I think anyway, it's great. Yeah, look it up if you're a fan. Justin Aronstein (22:07.029) I don't think people realize how limited development resources are. Everyone's like, oh, I have an idea. Let's just go develop that. Yeah, take 20 minutes. Just, yeah, whatever. No, no, no, no. We have a long list of things that we already think is good, and I don't have three weeks to develop that. It's hard to explain that to someone and for them to really understand it without showing them all the work the developers are doing. Brit Tucker (22:12.536) you Connor (22:33.272) Yeah, Tech Dead is real. Brit Tucker (22:36.918) Yeah. And I would argue sometimes showing them the list isn't honestly enough for them to have the shock value that you're hoping for. I've done this many times in orgs. I'm like, can we just acknowledge the list of things that you're asking the team to do and the ones that I've committed to, you know, for the organization and what we've delivered also, I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we've delivered a lot over a specific period of time. You know, we're knocking on the last month of Q2 right now and You know, my current team has delivered quite a lot in the first half of the year for an organization that has spent the last 18 months in re platform mode. The fact that we're, you know, basically right back to normal, so to speak, and just shipping things every month is pretty incredible while still navigating that post launch territory. So it is. You sometimes have to sit down with the team, hold hands and say, let's put all of our priorities on a piece of paper, not just the engineering team. Cause I think we. have a tendency to lose sight of, how much is it going to take the engineering team to do? And I'm the person who's going to say, well, the engineering team can build it, but who's going to market it? Do we have the resources to be able to support the marketing campaign that needs to support this thing we're building? It's not the field of dreams. I'm sorry. I love Kevin Costner and I love baseball, but it just isn't. If you build it, they aren't going to come knocking on the door. You need a whole plan and resources around supporting that. So I think we get stuck sometimes in thinking, well, how much engineering is it going to require? And I like to ask the question, how many organizational resources are actually required to support this initiative, even if engineering is the bulk of it? Because again, there are other teams who have to do the work. to launch things on the website or in the digital ecosystem. It's not just the engineering and product teams. Connor (24:33.166) Very true. Justin Aronstein (24:33.486) love that and actually getting people to put down what they're working on outside of engineering is huge because they don't want to and they don't want to be held, yeah, no one wants to do that. It's a lot of work. Yeah, I hate writing down what I'm working on. So I love that, that's great insight. Brit Tucker (24:41.994) No. I don't either. Connor (24:44.814) Yeah, that's the only question for me. Connor (24:54.594) My fear is always when you start putting it down on paper, you can minimize it. But I think it's important to set the goal of why you're doing it. I think that can help make it a little easier for Brit Tucker (25:04.664) Yep. Yeah. Justin Aronstein (25:08.354) So now we're gonna get to the checkout portion of the podcast. And I really wanna hear from you. You mentioned replatforming a few times already. So how does someone know that they should be thinking about replatforming? What are some of the signs that they need to be thinking about? Brit Tucker (25:25.806) The number one thing is technical debt. Like how much of your engineering resources are spending time on technical debt versus impactful work to the business, incremental revenue driven, you know, features for the business. That's honestly the number one barometer. Because if you don't have, if your engineers are 100 % dedicated to technical debt and not doing anything else for the business, you're really handcuffed, quite honestly. I think the other thing is when was the last time you redesigned? And I don't always believe that a redesign and a replatform should go together, but when was the last time that your website had a significant baselift in a way that modernizes the user experience, takes you back to first principles, that's driven by user research. And then the last thing that I highly, highly encourage is that let's say there's one leader in the org, it's usually the CEO, but let's you know, there's one leader in the org who says we need to re-platform. You should ask everybody who sits at the exact table the exact same question. Why do you think we should re-platform? And if the answer or answers are not the same, then the answer to should we re-platform is no. Because everyone's gonna have an opinion, but it needs to be grounded in true impact to the business. You know, in the case of Society6, we're a 16 year old brand now at this point. We've effectively been on the same platform since our existence. And at the time when we started 15 years ago, there wasn't a Shopify. There wasn't really a Magento in a way that was, was working for the business model at the time. And when the founder started the business, they did so scrappily like most startup brands do and, and the tools didn't exist. And so we found that our time, our team's time was spent on too much technical debt or we wanted to do what should be a turnkey integration. And I've done too many ESP migrations and too many UGC integrations. Like I've done enough of them to know on average how long it's going to take an engineering time to actually do those things. And what we started to find is that it was taking our team sometimes two and three times longer than it should, because as they got under the hood, they found a ton more problems that we couldn't avoid and just leave. We had to also fix those things in addition to doing them. Brit Tucker (27:49.228) So for us, it was getting the team out of the weeds of technical debt and having them be more focused on incremental value by taking the core commerce activities and moving them to Shopify. We don't need to recreate the wheel. Like literally everything in our tech stack was bespoke from the checkout to the PDPs. Everything was custom. And so we, one, didn't have the team and resources to dedicate to maintaining that ecosystem and two, Justin Aronstein (28:06.69) Hahaha Brit Tucker (28:17.164) Why keep doing that when there are platforms out there that do it really well and you've got large enterprise brands that are on Shopify and you know, Commerce Cloud and others, you know, Shopify sort of the darling still right now. And so for me, it was an obvious choice of let's move that stuff off of our plate. Like we shouldn't have to brace every Q4 to hope that our homegrown checkout stays up during. Justin Aronstein (28:43.052) me. Brit Tucker (28:43.074) Black Friday, cyber Monday, like leave that to the pros who've built it and have guaranteed, you know, largely a 99.9 % SLA on checkout. So that's the biggest barometer. Honestly, it's not a fun project. I will be very clear. Replatforming is not a fun project. It sounds really sexy and cool. is not. It effectively means that for at least a year, your entire engineering team is dedicated to that. And that means no development, no new tools, no new features. maybe not even A-B testing during that timeframe. And so the entire organization has to hold hands and say, yes, we agree. We need this because it's going to add incremental value to us long-term. But in the short-term, we need to experience this pain of not being able to do A-B testing, to not have a new shiny feature on the PDP, et cetera, and just kind of run business as usual during that timeframe. It takes a lot. to do and it's why you have so many brands today that are still on archaic architectures because they understand it's, you know, with society six, that was actually the shortest I'd ever replatformed a brand. It was 18 months, 17 months. Connor (29:55.917) Hmm. Justin Aronstein (29:57.73) 18 months? my gosh, that must be so boring. my gosh. That sounds so boring. Brit Tucker (30:04.462) It's not, it's not, it can be, it can be, but we had enough. We had enough in there because we also redesigned the site. The brand hadn't really redesigned the site. We had done a lot of user research in the context of that. We were, you know, migrating a lot of features, the complexities of society six is business require that we still have some custom components in our tech stack. So we had to make sure. Connor (30:04.696) Yeah. I was thinking stressful. Brit Tucker (30:31.758) that there was, you know, integration working within there. have a large product catalog. So there were lots of cool problems to solve. And the thing I told my team, none of whom had done a replatform before I said, this is the most you're going to learn in the shortest amount of time. And it's sort of like being, being in a startup, honestly, it's like being in a startup for a short amount of time. You're just going to learn so much. And the other thing is to expect the unexpected. So if you're somebody who thrives on chaos. Justin Aronstein (30:48.022) That's fair. Brit Tucker (31:01.602) or enjoys ambiguity or is naturally naturally curious. It can be, it can be a really impactful project. mean, we're still running a business at the end of the day. So it's not like that's all the, all the team was truly focused on. Cause there's orders flowing through and there's still bugs that pop up and you know, there's unique scenarios that happen that that's not the only thing the team was focused on. And the pro the total project itself was about 18 months, but Justin Aronstein (31:06.943) Yeah! Justin Aronstein (31:14.037) Of course, of course. Brit Tucker (31:31.714) the pieces and how everybody was involved ebbed and flowed. So maybe I and my product managers were the only ones working on the project for 18 months, but other teams were pulled in and out of it at different times because they had their own body of work to do. But all the other re-platforms I've done have been two plus years. Justin Aronstein (31:52.959) Wow. Brit Tucker (31:53.056) I have seen other brands do it and less. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it really depends on your architecture and your technical debt. And if you are moving from a bespoke platform to an off the shelf solution, chances are it's probably going to take longer than a year. Justin Aronstein (31:57.59) Totally. Justin Aronstein (32:11.788) So what are some of the things that you need to look out for when you're re-platforming? What are some of the gotchas that you have seen a few times now? Brit Tucker (32:20.794) The biggest thing is get really, get really clear on what your expected outcomes are beforehand. So like, are the KPIs that you're going to use, you're going to use to track to say, was this a success for us or not? And what's realistic? Obviously you're going to get some gains out of moving to a platform like Shopify that maybe you didn't have in your own, you know, conversion, other funnel metrics, et cetera. So get really clear on the expected outcomes and make sure the entire leadership team is. on that. I think the other piece is get really clear on what are your requirements. I typically don't recommend that brands go in wanting a bunch of shiny new features in addition to replatforming. I think you should pick sort of what's your baseline to migrate before you start adding everything because you'll get scope creep really quick. I promise this to everybody I've consulted with or worked with on a replatform is you're going to get to two months before site launch and you're going to start cutting scope. Happens every time there are features that you for sure thought you needed for launch that suddenly you're like, no, don't need it. Not a blocker anymore. We're going to move on. It'll be a fast follow. So just be prepared for that part of it. And I think the big gotcha is that a lot of brands think that they can do it themselves, even if they hire say an engineering partner, but you really need a project manager who's dedicated to it, whether that's somebody internally whose majority of their time can be spent on project managing that project. Or if you bring say a freelancer or a contractor in just for the breadth of the contract, I would say that is another one of my failures on this most recent project specifically is I thought I would have the bandwidth to be able to project manage it because I've done enough of them. And it did, it made it really hard to navigate. Look, we launched in record time in my opinion, but I think having somebody wholly dedicated to having the best intentions in mind for the project would have helped everybody at the end. And the other project that had that when I re-platformed, it's made a huge difference. Justin Aronstein (34:38.568) Yeah, having that person bring the team to the table consistently and hold everyone accountable is so useful. So, so, so, so useful. And especially like when you need executive buy-in or you need executives to actually do something and actually do work every once in a while, to have that project manager to make sure that's happening is like a godsend. Connor (34:38.584) Do you feel? Brit Tucker (35:02.348) Yeah. Yes. Yep. Absolutely. Connor (35:07.084) Yeah. Do you feel like I see this more with redesigns and I do with replatforming, but sometimes there's that novelty primacy effect where you redesign the site and KPIs tank and then they start to come back slowly. when we have clients that are doing redesigns and replatforms, we always try to give them that ahead of time, know, set that expectation that like this Brit Tucker (35:13.621) Mm-hmm. Connor (35:34.92) might end up tanking sales for a little bit when it starts out, things will start to align once we get in there, monitor what's going on, figure out where these points of friction are, et cetera. Do you feel like that's something that you set up well with stakeholders? Do you think there's any way to set that expectation early? Or do you feel like maybe you don't see that as Brit Tucker (35:58.518) No, I do. I do see it. I've seen it in every project I've done. And the best analogy I like to give people is, do y'all remember when the Apple removed the home button from the iPhone? Like that, that action alone, like there was outcry, people were annoyed. And then within three months, people shut up and moved on because it became second nature, right? And so the same thing is happening, particularly when you redesign, you've got a percentage of customers that are returning. Justin Aronstein (36:10.838) Yeah. Brit Tucker (36:27.128) but you have a percentage of customers that are new to the site, you're naturally always going to have a learning curve and dependent upon how drastic your redesign is. The reality is even if it tested really well in user testing, nothing beats actually having those features and functionality live on the site. You the best examples I can say is when brands fundamentally change the user experience of their site navigation. you know, maybe they're going from a mega nav to something else, or they're going to a mega nav from something else, that behavior change. One, I think if customers were never using the nav, changing the nav doesn't guarantee that they're going to start using the nav because maybe they just prefer search over the nav. That's an example, you know, specific to Society6. Most of our customers search. We did redesign the nav to be a mega nav because the last nav was way more overwhelming and less helpful. Connor (37:10.232) Yeah. Brit Tucker (37:22.082) But it didn't increase adoption of the navigation. Customers are still using search because that's just how customers search in the home decor space for us. And that doesn't mean that the nav failed. It just means that, you know, it's not serving the purpose of what the majority of our customers need. And again, that doesn't mean the nav should go away. Every, every site should have a navigation, but I would say it's even if you set expectations with your leadership team or your CEO ahead of time that have selective. amnesia and forget that you told them that and there's still going to be a freak out moment when some of those KPIs that had been performing well historically tank for a period of time before they recover. And all you can do is set yourself up for success if you're the one who's owning the metric and make sure that you're communicating on. I always like to do rolling trends because when I just look at week over week, it can be. Connor (37:53.325) you Brit Tucker (38:19.286) It can look too volatile and not really show the trend of the KPIs we're trying to track. So I would just say being open and communicative and reminding the team of this being a typical thing. SEO is another great example of that. That number always tanks after a site replatform and redesign. And so it doesn't matter how many times you tell people, SEO is going to drop, organic traffic is going to drop. And I don't know how much. And I don't know how much is going to be gained back. Connor (38:34.54) Yes. Brit Tucker (38:48.192) And the algorithm's also always changing. There's just so many variables, especially now, that make it hard to have a picture. And we just do the best we can by over-communicating as much as you can. Connor (38:50.572) Yeah. Connor (39:01.784) Great answer. Justin Aronstein (39:03.03) That makes a ton of sense. One thing on navigation, I actually have this like strong belief that navigation is an escape hatch that is a sign of poor design on the page. So if people aren't using your navigation, that's a good thing. That means you have a well-designed site and navigation should not be necessary and is only necessary because we only design things halfway. So. Brit Tucker (39:30.222) I love that perspective. Justin Aronstein (39:33.248) Well done that your customers aren't using your nav. That's awesome. Brit Tucker (39:36.782) Thank you. Justin Aronstein (39:39.522) Did you see a conversion rate bump when you guys moved to Shopify? Has it been from that? Awesome. Brit Tucker (39:43.746) We did. Yeah, we did. We did. We've seen a lot of great funnel metric improvements. mean, we did redesign, as I've mentioned. And so there was the expectation that we'd see some improvements in the funnel overall. You know, our add to cart rates have really skyrocketed because we really spent a lot of time redesigning the PDP to make sure that it's more impactful for the customer. You know, our year over year metrics and even compared to our benchmark for the year, our forecast for the year. add to cart is strong and conversion is stronger too. That was a huge consideration when we were thinking about do we replatform and to where do we replatform is what's going to help us naturally with some of those KPIs without us having to do a ton of extra legwork. Justin Aronstein (40:35.562) Awesome. So we're coming to the end of the podcast. Where do you see e-commerce going in the next 12 months? And as you answer this, we all know that AI is going to be a part of the answer. So where do you see the focus for Society6 and e-commerce in general should be in the next 12 months? Brit Tucker (40:38.925) Yes. Brit Tucker (40:48.92) Thank Brit Tucker (41:00.11) I think with the onset of AI and how it's being integrated into workflows and tools and systems, it opens us up to close the gap between the customer and the brand. gives us more, essentially should give us more time to have conversations with customers and really understand what their pain points are. I don't know that we're in a place yet where AI can totally replace that human to human contact in terms of understanding. what's going to make your customer tick. And I would say in the same vein with me having recently, you know, taken over the CS and ops team at society six, one of the things I really love is when the product Ecom and CS teams are really deeply integrated with each other because it closes the gap in the voice of the customer. Like I have a product designer on my team. She's amazing. She's constantly doing usability research. and really vouching for the voice of the customer through the user experience. And obviously the CS team is hearing it, but they're hearing the reactive stuff. They're not hearing the proactive stuff. And so how do we take that part of the relationship with our customer and infuse it more within the organization? So I'm really curious to see how that will transform. But I think with the onset of AI should effectively free up some of our time, right? In theory. I'd like to see the market evolve to paying more attention to what the customer is telling us, either through their actions or through their actual words. Justin Aronstein (42:38.292) In other words, talk to your bleeping customer more often. Brit Tucker (42:41.642) Yes, yes, yes, yes, 100%. Justin Aronstein (42:45.12) , like you should always be talking to your customer. Of course your customer service team is, but your digital product team, your technology team. I mean, when the developers get to hear the customer say, hey, this is working really well for me or that is actually more confusing than I anticipated. I mean, the developers are always thinking about how do they improve the product they're working on. So really giving them that insight is huge. I love that. Yeah. Brit Tucker (42:49.24) to him. Great. Justin Aronstein (43:13.536) Talk to your customers more often. Use your free time for something good, not just to have another meeting. Brit Tucker (43:20.482) Yeah, and get more teams involved in the customer conversations. I think it's expected that CS is going to talk to the customers. I think it's expected that product and engineering are thinking about the customers and to some degree marketing, but I would argue that sometimes marketing teams get so focused and in the clouds when it comes to creating campaigns and messaging that they're just creating more distance between who the personas are, what the problems we're trying to solve and merchandising teams too. for for me, you my product manager or my product designer does a lot of lunch and learns with our marketing and merch teams to make sure that she's consistently sharing feedback and insights that help them do their jobs better too at the end of the day. But yeah, everybody should be talking to the customers. know, the businesses that I think that are exhibiting sustainable growth right now are the ones, ignore the ones that are going viral because they don't, they don't count, right? They're a flash in the pan. Hopefully. not a flash in the pan forever, but the brands that are truly exhibiting sustainable growth are the ones that have a pulse on who their customer is and they're regularly talking to them. Connor (44:29.752) So true. Justin Aronstein (44:29.78) Absolutely. And so lastly, what are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you digging into right now in your life, in your business to be better at what you do? Brit Tucker (44:43.214) I'm a self help nut. So I spend a lot of time reading a lot of books and just sort of this spiritual healing space. I'm also a yoga and meditation teacher. So that that shows up a lot for me. But I just picked back up the untethered soul, which was a book I read a number of years ago. I had read his other book and I apply why I'm for blanking on the author's name right now. I don't know. But I had read his other book. about surrender earlier in the year. And he, he's a former tech founder, which I thought was really interesting because both of his books are New York Times bestsellers and they have been for years. So I just felt compelled recently. I had walked into a Barnes and Noble. If people still do that, I still do that. I love walking into a bookstore, but I walked into a bookstore and it was like sitting right in the middle aisle, like as you're walking through the store. And I thought I have this on Kendall, but. Justin Aronstein (45:38.946) Thank Brit Tucker (45:43.308) I'm a highlighter person when it comes to books, so I grabbed the paper copy this weekend and started rereading it. Justin Aronstein (45:44.81) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (45:49.536) And what's the takeaway? It's by Alan Singer. By the way, I just looked it up. What's the big takeaway of the book? Brit Tucker (45:53.25) Yeah. Yeah. mean, it's a lot of it's just really focused on separating yourself from your ego and like checking at the door and getting to the core of what your values are as a human being and making sure that you're operating from that place on a daily basis. I am a big values person. I have them sitting on my desk. And so I look at them. I look at them often as a reminder when I'm making decisions or Justin Aronstein (46:16.513) Love it. Brit Tucker (46:21.496) how I think about life. So he's really focused on like, in this particular book is like separating yourself from the ego. Justin Aronstein (46:32.896) I love that. That's super helpful. I did a three day meditation retreat. At the time, was maybe during COVID, I was meditating a lot and all my anxiety drifted away in that retreat. like, I felt like what I've been searching for for my whole life, right? And I couldn't meditate after that because the search became even harder. So it's like, wait, this is actually achievable. Brit Tucker (46:43.64) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (47:02.691) And I know I should get back to meditation. Brit Tucker (47:07.192) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (47:08.706) Well, thank you so much for your time, Britt. This conversation was absolutely amazing. You have amazing insights, so I really appreciate that. So I'm gonna press stop recording. Don't get off the call right away, because it takes a second or two for it to... Brit Tucker (47:11.991) Yeah. Brit Tucker (47:22.701) Okay.