Expanding internationally sounds exciting: new markets, bigger audiences, fresh revenue streams.

But in reality, cross-border growth comes with difficult decisions that directly affect margins, operations, and customer experience.

One of the biggest is this: Do you manage international sales and duties inside Shopify Markets, or do you outsource fulfilment to a third-party logistics partner (3PL)?

Two dye lots look the same under warehouse lights.

They’re not.

A week later, returns pile up and you’re writing off stock.

Or a pallet of pet food sits at the back. Nobody’s sure on dates, so it gets left. By stocktake, it’s past safe sell and you’re binning it.

Batch tracking prevents those losses, once you’ve set up the basics: clear labels, simple rules, and a well-maintained record of product movement.

Most ecommerce set-ups start simple: an intuitive platform, a handful of tools and a system that keeps everything running smoothly. And it works for a while.

But then growth happens.

Orders ramp up, new product lines get added, and suddenly managing it all starts feeling complicated and overwhelming. Stock gets harder to track. Orders take longer to fulfil.

Then someone goes on holiday. They’re the only person on the team who knows exactly where everything is stored. Panic sets in.

That’s the tell.

As of 29th August 2025, the US has suspended its de minimis exemption, which previously allowed parcels under $800 to enter duty-free.

For UK brands selling into the US, this is more than a minor policy change. As duties and related clearance costs now apply to lower-value items, they are already seeing the direct effect on margins, operations, and customer experience.

There’s a certain kind of pain you only feel when you’ve outgrown your ecommerce setup.

Not a dramatic failure. Not a checkout disaster. Just a creeping frustration that builds up day by day. Clunky processes, outdated systems, and workarounds that rely more on habit than logic.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone! Which leads to the real question:

At what point is it painful enough to move systems, and when does it become too painful not to?

When you make a change to your ecommerce setup whether it’s a UX update, an app integration, a new product bundle layout or a whole new checkout flow the instinct is often to launch, move on, and hope the numbers follow.

But if you’re not measuring what happens before and after, how do you know whether the change had the intended outcome?

I’ve been tying my shoelaces wrong for 40 years.
Not in a metaphorical, life-lesson kind of way—literally. A quick comment from my partner as we got ready for a walk turned into a humbling realisation: I’d been looping the wrong way for decades. It wasn’t just inefficient—it was contagious. I’d even passed the method down to our kids.

It got me thinking: how many other small, everyday habits do we just accept because we don’t know there’s a better way? And more importantly—how often does that happen in business too?

Your website looks great. It loads fast, converts well, and has that premium feel your dev team loves to show off. But can everyone actually use it?

For eCommerce brands, accessibility is no longer a ‘nice to have’; it’s a legal, financial, and reputational tightrope. And whether you're selling in the States or the EU, that tightrope is getting a lot more taut.

Beyond just legal side quests, these acts are shaping the future of eCommerce UX.

Have you woken up to an email this morning from Shopify talking about ‘Shopify Tax’ and the impending additional cost. Are you not sure what this means or worried about the additional costs involved? Don’t worry, we’ve pulled together a high level overview of it below for you.

There are 3 levels of the new Shopify Tax system. Manual Tax (free), Basic Tax (free), Shopify Tax (% Fee but Capped)

From London To Valencia! In the last 2 weeks we've been traveling around a few key events. In London we got to experience the eCom Expo, an amazing event at the London Excel Arena. Focussed very much on the future of eCommerce, and services/partnerships aimed at helping eCom thrive in the current climate. Following that we got vist the beautiful Valencia for the EU Agency Summit. An intense but fun few days packed full of like minded people from agencies across the world.