CakeCommerce

06/11/2026

Hot take: More marketing isn't always the answer.

We see a lot of home decor brands focus on driving more traffic when sales slow down.

But if your website isn't converting, your email program isn't retaining customers, or your customer journey has friction points, more visitors may just mean more missed opportunities.

The strongest ecommerce brands don't just focus on getting people to the site.

They focus on what happens after they arrive.

Sometimes the biggest growth opportunity isn't more traffic.

It's making the most of the traffic you already have.

What do you think is the most overlooked growth lever for ecommerce brands today?

06/02/2026

Remember when every brand was scrambling to figure out SEO?

AI-powered shopping feels a lot like that moment.

Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools for product recommendations, research, and purchase decisions. That means the way people discover brands is evolving faster than many businesses realize.

The question isn't whether AI will influence shopping behavior.

It's how quickly brands adapt to it.

Read more:

As automation fuses with eCommerce, brands must thoroughly understand how AI is changing online shopping. For starters, consumers are increasingly swapping out traditional search engines for agentic tools that deliver faster, more personalized recommendations. According to AI eCommerce trends in 202...

05/26/2026

A high ROAS feels like proof your strategy is working. But when margins are shrinking and blended performance tells a different story, that number stops being a signal and starts being a distraction.

We broke down exactly how "good" performance masks real problems and what to look at instead.

Read the full blog here 👉

At first glance, “good” performance purportedly denotes a thriving eCommerce brand. While most marketing teams celebrate strong ROAS, efficient CPA, and rising conversion rates, these signals aren’t without hidden caveats. Far too often, they mask insidious, underlying problems like declining ...

05/20/2026

Your email list could be costing you more than you realize.

A lot of eCommerce brands continue paying for inactive subscribers that:
• don’t engage
• don’t convert
• and impact performance over time

Growing a list is important, but maintaining list quality matters too.

We break down what brands should actually be watching here:

Given Klaviyo’s popularity among high volume senders, most brands see their bill as a worthwhile growth and scale investment. Amid performance across automation, revenue attribution, and segmentation, teams typically answer with a resounding “yes” when considering “is Klaviyo worth the cost ...

05/13/2026

Google and Meta ads still matter, but they shouldn’t be the entire strategy.

More brands are expanding beyond traditional paid social and search to create a more balanced media mix and reach customers earlier in the funnel.

A strong growth strategy is bigger than just two platforms.

Read more here:

In striving for demand, far too many performance approaches overindex on Google and Meta. Despite the prevalence of both platforms, neglecting a programmatic eCommerce media mix strategy leads to higher customer acquisition costs, along with blind spots across reach and frequency control. Given toda...

05/06/2026

ROAS is helpful, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

At scale, brands often see:
• strong campaign performance
• growing revenue
• shrinking margins

That’s because ROAS doesn’t capture everything that impacts profitability.

To really understand performance, you have to look beyond it.

We break it down here:

In today’s eCommerce landscape, it’s imperative for operators to track performance marketing metrics beyond ROAS. Ad spend return, despite its subjective utility, doesn’t help brands in isolation. It should be paired with LTV, blended attribution, and incremental revenue metrics. At CakeCommer...

04/30/2026

As eCommerce brands grow, the way they approach marketing has to change.

Early on, growth is often driven by acquiring new customers.

But at scale:
• customer acquisition costs rise
• efficiency becomes harder to maintain
• relying only on new customers becomes unsustainable

That’s why lifecycle strategy becomes critical.

Brands that continue to grow focus on:
• retention
• repeat purchases
• maximizing customer value over time

It’s not just about getting more customers.
It’s about getting more value from the ones you already have.

Learn more here:

As eCommerce brands ascend to higher peaks, new challenges are unavoidable. Scaling, by its very nature, introduces growing pains that teams have to strategically overcome. These challenges materialize in myriad ways. Previously established systems during earlier phases turn into bottlenecks. Once m...

04/23/2026

Fast growth can still lead to problems if margins aren’t keeping up.

A lot of eCommerce brands focus on increasing revenue, but overlook what’s happening underneath:
• rising customer acquisition costs
• lower efficiency from paid channels
• profitability becoming harder to maintain

When that happens, more growth doesn’t fix the issue. It can make it worse.

Sustainable growth means balancing revenue with margin.

We break this down here:

In the current eCommerce landscape, many brands face a conundrum: their revenue is steadily increasing while their profits shrink. At the heart of this revenue-profit paradox lies considerable tension between top-line growth vs. bottom-line reality. While striving towards sustainable business growth...

04/15/2026

Shopify just announced that products can now be discovered and purchased directly inside ChatGPT.

That means customers can:
• ask for product recommendations
• see real-time pricing and options
• and complete a purchase without leaving the experience

This is a big shift in how people find and buy products.

For eCommerce brands, it opens up a new layer of discovery that didn’t exist before.

It’s still early, but it’s worth paying attention to.

04/03/2026

If your eCommerce brand feels stuck around $5M, it’s probably not a budget issue.

At that stage, a lot of brands start to see:
• Higher customer acquisition costs
• Lower efficiency from existing channels
• Growth that feels inconsistent or unpredictable

The instinct is to increase spend.

But real growth comes from fixing what’s underneath.

We break down what’s actually causing brands to stall and how to move past it here:

In 2026, eCommerce profit margin challenges are both common and significant. Despite robust marketing investments from brands, their long-term growth is still prone to stalling after the $5 million threshold. As a partner for established eCommerce brands, CakeCommerce has witnessed this trend firsth...