With Prime Day next week and the holiday season just around the corner, the ecommerce world is poised to go into overdrive.
One company working to help merchants through the period is Wix, the $15.6B web development firm with a fast-growing ecommerce business.
The company’s head of strategic marketing, Liat Karpel Gurwicz, told us recommendations for navigating the holiday season and her broader views on the ecommerce space.
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What advice is WIX giving to its merchants for the holiday season?
We have a number of suggestions for ecommerce operators:
- Diversify your suppliers: You should have a plan b and plan c, just in case.
- Plan and stock inventory: Look through your data to identify which products are selling well now, in previous holiday seasons and since the start of the pandemic (plan your inventory around these insights)
- Get creative on delivery: Logistics will be difficult for everyone (including Amazon), so be prepared to have non-tradisional delivery options like crowdsourcing rideshare drivers
- Make sure the website is ready: Including basics like shipping info, return / refund policies and — highly suggested — live chat (which Wix offers)
- Payment providers in order: Make sure your account is verified and ensure that any products you sell are allowed to be sold via the payment provider
- Stagger marketing efforts: Use every channel available (social, email, SMS) to get your marketing in early and plan for a few rounds of marketing
How does Wix’s ecommerce offering differ from Shopify?
I’d say our main differentiation with Shopify is that I believe we are a better solution for medium-sized businesses (~$1m a year in revenue).
The reason I say this is because we offer a number of high-tier features as part of our standard package including payments, analytics, native integrations (SEO, FB), automated text, custom cart checkouts and currency conversions among others.
What are some notable ecommerce brands using Wix?
Here are a few good D2C names:
- Ruby Love (Female Underwear)
- The Spice Suite (Specialty Spices)
- Coal and Canary (Candles)
What’s your response to people who say ecommerce is a “race to the bottom” game with no guarantees of success?
I don’t know if ecommerce is any different than the offline world. If you’re a small business brick and mortar shop, you have to make great products, go to where your shoppers are and invest in your customer relationships.
Wix’s platform enables people to do that online. We aim to allow any business to have the same tools as a big brand does.
You still have to do the hard work of making the business a success.
Who’s the most interesting person you know?
My grandma. She has 93 and has lived through a whole lot of crazy worlds. Coming off of World War II, she moved from Poland to Lesotho [a British protectorate completely surrounded by South Africa]. We are now all in Israel, where she arrived when she was 83.
What’s the best advice you ever received?
From my grandma, who is such a grounded and practical person. She says when it comes to hard things, you can either be a victim or a survivor.
You can’t control what happens but you can control your response to it. This is really useful advice for 2020.
What’s the best book you’ve read in the last 12 months?
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, which I’ve been reading to my kids.
Do you have a request for a startup?
If I had a really great idea, I’d do it myself haha.
But — as a shopper — my one beef is that there’s no easy way to know all the different coupons, deals and memberships I have with one brand. I’d love if there was an app that could track all of that.
