Why Ecommerce Brands Struggle with Technology

Ecommerce brands face a unique challenge: they need sophisticated technology to compete, but they're not technology companies. This creates a perfect storm of obstacles that make it difficult to build and maintain the right tech stack.

The Expertise Gap

Most ecommerce brands simply don't have access to the experience needed to make the right technology choices. And why would they? Their core business is selling products, not evaluating software architectures or integration patterns.

The natural solution—hiring consultants—often falls short. Consultants come and go without developing the deep, long-term relationship needed to understand your business context. What works for one brand doesn't necessarily work for another, for example how you structure your product information can have a huge effect on the technology you choose, yet cookie-cutter approaches are too often the default.

The Economics Don't Add Up

Here's the reality: technology expertise is expensive, ecommerce margins are notoriously tight. Brands can't afford to keep specialised technical talent on staff full-time when they only need that expertise intermittently. But going without it means making costly mistakes that eat into those already-thin margins.

Vendor-Led Decision Making

Without internal expertise, brands end up being led by their vendors rather than making informed decisions. There's no reliable way to know if what a vendor is proposing is genuinely best for your business or just best for their bottom line. We recently experienced a vendor charging £1000s a year to use something that has been free and core to the internet since its inception.

Even worse, many vendors expect brands to have a level of technical literacy that's simply unreasonable. A brand shouldn't need to understand how an API works just to get the functionality they need. The technology should serve the business, not the other way around.

The Path Forward

The solution isn't for every ecommerce brand to become a technology company. Instead, the industry needs better ways to bridge this gap—whether that's through more accessible technology, better advisory models, or tools that translate business needs into technical requirements without requiring deep technical knowledge.

At Deliberate, we're working with ecommerce brands to provide exactly this type of support. We act as a long-term technology partner who takes the time to understand your business deeply, helping you make contextually right decisions without the expense of a full-time technical team. Our goal is simple: brands should be able to focus on what they do best while having confidence their technology choices are serving their business, not the other way around.