Digital marketing for ecommerce and retail

This page is for UK online shops and retailers who want their marketing channels run as one plan, and judged on profit after returns rather than on the revenue figure an ad platform reports. It explains how I decide which channels to fund, how I set up measurement so those decisions hold up, and the mistakes I find most often on UK ecommerce sites. If organic search is the only thing you need help with, my ecommerce SEO service covers it in more depth.

How UK shoppers find and choose a product

Many online purchases start in one of three places: a Google search, a marketplace such as Amazon or eBay, or something seen while scrolling Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. A person who types a named product with a size or colour already knows what they want and is comparing price, delivery and stock. A person who pauses on a Reel had no plan to buy anything a minute ago. They need different ads, different landing pages and a different idea of what a good result looks like.

Before they pay, UK shoppers check the total price with delivery, the delivery date and how easy it is to send something back. Google’s Shopping results put your product image, price and shop name next to your competitors’ before anyone visits your site, so much of the comparison happens there. If your delivery charge or returns policy looks worse than the shop beside you in that grid, more traffic will not fix it.

What is different about marketing an online shop

Retail runs on margin, and that changes what “working” means. A service business can judge a campaign on cost per enquiry. A shop has to know what each order is worth once product cost, delivery, payment fees, VAT and returns come off, because an order that looks profitable inside Google Ads can lose money after those deductions.

Which channels earn their place

I do not start from a fixed mix. I start from your margins, your best sellers and where your sales come from now, then put budget where an extra pound is most likely to return more than it costs.

• Google Shopping. For most UK shops with a reasonable range, this is where paid search budget does most of its work, because the ad shows the product, the price and the shop together. It depends on a clean product feed in Merchant Center. I usually run it through Performance Max campaigns with products grouped by margin, so high-margin lines are not competing for budget with cheap ones.
• Search ads for your brand and specific products. Brand searches are usually cheap to cover and make it harder for competitors to take customers who were already looking for you. Product and category searches are worth bidding on where Shopping coverage is thin.
• Facebook and Instagram. Good for showing products to people who were not searching for them, and for bringing back visitors who browsed and left. Facebook and Instagram ads for online shops work best with a product catalogue connected and creative that shows the item in use.
• Organic search. Category and product pages that rank bring sales with no cost per click, but they take longer to build. I treat organic search as the channel that reduces your dependence on paid media over time.
• Email and repeat purchase. Existing customers cost far less to reach again than new ones. Welcome, abandoned basket and post-purchase emails often add more profit than a new campaign, so I include them in the plan and in the measurement, whoever sends them.
• Marketplaces. Amazon and eBay reach buyers who would never find your site, in return for fees and less control over the customer. I factor them into the plan so your own site and your marketplace listings are not undercutting each other on price.

Getting the measurement right

Budget decisions are only as sound as the numbers behind them. For a shop, three things need to be true.

1. Each purchase is recorded once, with the right value. The purchase event in GA4 and in each ad platform should fire once per order and carry the order value, excluding VAT and delivery if your targets are set that way. I test this with real orders, following the steps in how to check your conversion tracking works.
2. Every campaign has a break-even figure. Return on ad spend means little until you know the ROAS below which you lose money. The ROAS and break-even calculator works that out from your margin. Where the data allows, I go a step further and judge results on contribution margin, which also takes off delivery, fees and returns.
3. Consent is handled properly. Under UK GDPR and PECR, analytics and advertising cookies need consent, so some visitors will never be tracked. Setting up consent mode alongside your cookie banner lets Google model part of what is missing instead of losing it. It does not make you compliant on its own: the banner still has to hold those tags back until someone agrees.

I also look at what a customer is worth across several orders, not just the first. A shop with strong repeat purchase can afford to pay more to win a new customer than one selling a product people buy once.

How I run the work

1. Review. I go through your sales by product and channel, your ad accounts, the product feed, the tracking, and the product and checkout pages.
2. Fix measurement first. If purchases are counted twice or values include VAT, every later decision is skewed, so this comes before any change to spend.
3. Agree targets from margin. We set a break-even and a target return for each product group and write them down, so everyone judges results the same way.
4. Restructure and launch. Feed, campaigns and audiences are rebuilt around those groups, with the trading calendar built in.
5. Review monthly. I report sales, profit after ad cost, and new against returning customers, then move budget to match. Where the job is mainly paid channels working to one target, it runs as performance marketing.

Mistakes I see most often on UK online shops

• Judging success on platform-reported revenue, when Google, Meta and the email tool can each claim the same sale.
• Product titles sent to Google exactly as they appear on the shop, such as “Classic Tee”, instead of brand, product type, colour, material and size.
• One Performance Max campaign for the whole catalogue, so a handful of cheap best sellers take almost all the budget.
• Paid social judged on last-click sales alone, so prospecting looks unprofitable, gets switched off, and retargeting soon runs out of people to reach.
• Tracked order values that include VAT and delivery, which flatters ROAS by 20% on standard-rated goods before delivery is even counted.
• Discount codes sent to the whole list every week until nobody pays full price.
• Product pages with no delivery date or returns information near the “Add to basket” button.