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.

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?