Retail Decoded with JD Trask, CEO and Co-Founder, Raygun.
It’s become trendy in many circles to talk about business goals in terms of ‘customer experience’ (heck, I use that term often in this very column). This is a welcome development in many ways, reminding us all that all commerce is still very much about people. But while it’s certainly high-minded and compelling to focus on how you’re making customers feel, you are still a business. Presumably, you’re also quite focused on making profits — profit is a necessity for you to continue to provide a livelihood for yourself and your team, and keep your product on the market and available to your customers. And with those profits at stake and with money as a particularly relevant concern in our current economy, it can be difficult to justify an investment in something that feels abstract and unproven, like a software product.
So today, I simply want to provide a reminder that technology is an investment, not a liability. Software can be just as indispensable as your stationery or your furniture. Behind the scenes, you stand to make huge efficiency gains through better systems for stock management, customer data processing, or health and safety, just to name a few off the top of my head. And on the public front, a lacklustre digital presence is incredibly expensive, creating inconveniences for your customers and huge opportunity costs for you. There is a growing body of evidence that shows businesses that excel at harnessing technology rapidly outperform their competition. You probably spend a fair bit of money on your sales and marketing functions, but even if you drive a lot of traffic to your website, those expensive visitors will bounce off if you’re providing frustrating user experiences. Having a confusing or slow digital storefront vastly increases your cost to acquire customers.
That sounds a bit pessimistic, and I don’t mean for this to come off as scare tactics. Instead, I want to encourage you to feel confident enough to invest in technology, even if it feels counterintuitive. During times of uncertainty, we like to double down on what’s familiar, and avoid experimentation or evolution. But now is actually a great time to explore new avenues for reaching markets and delivering outcomes (within reason). Adding a couple of well-researched, well-reviewed tools to accelerate rote tasks or extend capabilities will pay off. If you’re unsure where to start, take a look at where you’re spending the most money, both in terms of processes and business functions. Chances are, there’s a better way.
And another recommendation, from experience — resist the temptation to save money by building instead of buying a solution. It’s definitely possible to build your own tools, and at Raygun, we did exactly that for a long time (that’s actually where our original product came from, but that’s a story for another day). But as the business matured and we started to think more strategically, we recognized the hidden, lingering costs to this DIY approach, and that the time and skills of our development team should be used on making a better product for our customers, not ourselves. If there’s a genuine need for a tool, someone has probably already made it their entire business model, and they’ll continue to maintain it and enhance its features. There’s a reason the SaaS subscription model is so popular, giving you the latest version without any big upfront costs and the flexibility to switch tools when needed.
Well, that’s my final column for the year. Happy Christmas! Enjoy some hard earned R&R, and I’ll be back in the New Year to ramble at you further. As always, send any questions to jdtrask@raygun.com.
