Store operations · Level Advanced · E-commerce Category Strategy
Category choice: which lane
Opening a new store with several categories in mind.
Prompt
Four numbers: traffic, conversion, basket, repeat. Fix whichever fell hardest, one at a time.
Task: Opening a new store with several categories in mind.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- size and growth per category
- concentration
- supply capability
- my experience
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- score on size, concentration, personal advantage
- name the tempting category that is closed
- the smallest way to test entry
- the cost of exiting
[Process]
1. Locate the failing stage with data
2. Change one variable affecting it
3. Set the test period and criterion
4. Check the margin impact
5. Say which categories this does not apply to
[Output]
Diagnosis, one change, criterion, margin impact.
[Do not]
- Never change price and image together
- 'Improve experience' is not an action
- Never ignore return rate
- Platform rules are not suggestionsWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- size and growth per category
- concentration
- supply capability
- my experience
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- score on size, concentration, personal advantage
- name the tempting category that is closed
- the smallest way to test entry
- the cost of exiting