In this episode, Salena Knight explains why the products you regret buying can be some of the most valuable data in your retail or ecommerce business.

It is easy to focus on best sellers, products that sold out, and suppliers that performed well. But your clearance section, old stock, and products that have been sitting in the warehouse can tell you just as much - and sometimes more - about your buying decisions.

Salena walks through how to look beyond "it didn't sell" and identify what actually went wrong. Was the product itself the problem? Did you buy too much? Was the colour selection wrong? Was the price too high? Did demand only appear after a significant discount?

She also explains why clearing old stock isn't enough. If you don't understand the buying decision that created the excess inventory, you risk making the same decision again with a different product.

You'll learn how to:

• Use old stock as buying data
• Distinguish between a product problem and an overbuying problem
• Look at sales performance alongside discounts and timing
• Identify patterns across seasons and product ranges
• Recognise assumptions that influence your buying decisions
• Turn disappointing inventory into a lesson for future buying
• Ask better questions before repeating a buying decision

The key takeaway: You've already paid for the stock. Make sure you get the lesson from it, too.

You found the perfect product. You know your customers will love it. So you buy it.

But what if that isn't enough to make it a good buying decision?

In this episode, Salena challenges the way retailers think about inventory and explains why buying isn't just about finding products that fit your brand or that you believe will sell. Every dollar you put into stock is a dollar that can't be used somewhere else in your business, which means every product needs to earn its place.

Salena walks through how to think about inventory as an investment, why your revenue and profit goals should influence your buying decisions, and why the speed at which a product turns back into cash matters just as much as whether it eventually sells.

You'll also hear how one retailer discovered that the brand they thought was performing well wasn't the whole story. Once they looked more closely at the individual products, they found that bright prints were selling much faster than the plains and neutrals. That kind of insight can completely change what you choose to buy next.

If you're heading into a major buying season and want to make decisions based on more than instinct, this episode will help you look at your inventory through a much more commercial lens.

Register for the free Q3 Masterclass Series here.

In this episode, we're talking about a problem a lot of retailers are feeling right now: getting customers to your website is costing more, so how do you make more money from the traffic you already have?

Krisztian Kiraly, International Partnership Manager at OptiMonk, joins us to unpack the idea of "conversion before acquisition" - improving the customer experience and conversion rate before simply spending more to acquire additional traffic.

We talk about why independent retailers and ecommerce businesses can't win by trying to outspend massive marketplaces like Amazon, Temu and SHEIN, and what they can do instead.

A big focus of the conversation is the changing role of the product page. As customers increasingly discover products through Google, Google Shopping and AI tools, they may arrive directly on a product page without ever visiting the retailer's homepage. That means your product page needs to do much more than list a product. It needs to sell it.

Krisztian shares five areas retailers should focus on to improve their product pages, including better imagery, benefit-led headlines and stronger trust signals.

We also get into AI-powered personalisation and how retailers can make the experience more relevant based on where customers came from, what they've viewed and what they're likely looking for.

• Why rising acquisition costs are putting pressure on ecommerce profitability
• The "conversion before acquisition" mindset
• Why your product page is becoming your new landing page and salesperson
• The role of reviews, testimonials, customer photos and videos in building trust
• How AI is changing the customer journey
• What hyper-personalisation can look like in ecommerce
• How to get more revenue from the traffic you're already paying for

Free audit and consultation: ConversionLift AI consultation