There is an abundance of data available to most eCommerce marketing teams today, however, not a lot of certainty.
Dashboards have high volumes of data, from channels reporting conversions to spend trends moving. Yet when it comes time to make a real decision, whether to scale a campaign, double down on a channel, or justify performance to leadership, hesitation creeps in. The reason is not that the data isn’t enough, but that the final answer has uncertainty built into it due to the way that the numbers do not fully agree with each other.
Modern growth is being determined by modern realities that aren’t clean, linear, or reliable in the way most eCommerce marketing strategy frameworks were designed for.
The path customers take to a purchase spans between many different devices, platforms, sessions, and intent states. Privacy-first changes are also creating an even greater challenge to identify the customer’s journey. Yet, many strategies are still built upon the assumption that if they just look hard enough there will be enough information to determine the attribution.
Unfortunately, this will not happen.
In order for eCommerce brands to re-evaluate their growth strategies, they must go beyond tactical changes to make foundational changes around how they define, measure, and ultimately sustain their growth. For app-first brands, these foundational changes will usually mean building a more resilient measurement model, frequently utilizing platforms such as Apptrove, where attribution, lifecycle, and retention can all be viewed as a complete set of data as opposed to separate pieces of data.
What Is an eCommerce Marketing Strategy Today
An eCommerce marketing strategy used to be easier to explain. You acquired traffic, converted users, and optimised channels based on what drove the most sales at the lowest cost. The funnel felt linear and the metrics felt trustworthy. However, that world no longer exists.
Today, an eCommerce marketing strategy is less about controlling the funnel and more about interpreting behaviour across a fragmented journey. It is a long-term framework that defines how a brand attracts the right customers, moves them toward meaningful actions, and builds repeat behaviour that compounds over time.
Crucially, it is no longer enough to define strategy around channels. Customers do not experience brands as “paid social” or “organic search.” They experience a sequence of moments. Discovery, evaluation, hesitation, reassurance, purchase, usage, return. Strategy must now be designed around these moments, not the platforms that host them.
For app-first brands, this shift is even more pronounced. The app is not just a conversion surface. It is a retention engine, a data source, and a behavioural lens. Any eCommerce marketing plan that does not account for app behaviour is incomplete by default.
Why Attribution Broke and Why Strategy Failed to Adapt
Attribution did not break suddenly. It eroded gradually, as customer behaviour outpaced the models designed to measure it, and they journeys became non-linear.
A user might see a product on Instagram, search for reviews days later, install the app after a retargeting ad, and finally convert after receiving a push notification. The answer to which touchpoint deseves the credit for it depends on the model you choose, and that is precisely the problem.
At the same time, privacy-first platform changes reduced deterministic tracking. Signals that once felt reliable became probabilistic. As a result, different tools began telling different stories about the same user.
The strategic mistake many teams made was continuing to treat attribution as a single source of truth. Instead of adapting strategy to uncertainty, they doubled down on familiar models, often last-click or near-last-touch, because those were easier to explain internally.
Over time, this created distortions. Channels closer to conversion appeared disproportionately valuable, and the ones responsible for early intent creation were undervalued or cut. Growth became reactive rather than deliberate.
Rethinking eCommerce marketing strategy starts with accepting that attribution will remain imperfect. Strategy must be designed to function despite that imperfection.
The Real Cost of Broken Attribution for eCommerce Teams
The most damaging impact of broken attribution is not reporting inaccuracy. It is decision paralysis.
When teams cannot confidently link spend to outcomes, they hesitate to scale. When attribution models disagree, internal trust erodes. Marketing leaders spend more time defending numbers than improving performance.
This has downstream effects. Budgets are allocated conservatively. Experimentation slows. Teams optimise for metrics that look defensible rather than outcomes that drive long-term value.
Over time, growth begins to feel fragile. Even when revenue increases, confidence does not. And when conditions change, such as rising CAC or platform volatility, the strategy struggles to adapt.
This is not a tooling problem alone but a strategic one. The fix lies in redefining what signals matter most and building systems that prioritise those signals.
Rethinking eCommerce Customer Acquisition When Data Is Incomplete
Customer acquisition remains essential, but the way it is evaluated must change.
Traditional acquisition metrics focus on immediacy. The CPA, CPI or even CPP metrics are useful, but they are still incomplete. They definitely tell you what happened, but not what will happen next.
A modern eCommerce customer acquisition strategy looks beyond the first conversion. It makes you ask harder questions, such as if the users acquired from this channel return, or if they purchase again without heavy incentives and become profitable over time.
When acquisition is evaluated through retained cohorts rather than raw volume, priorities shift. Channels that appear expensive upfront often prove more valuable long-term. Others that look efficient at first quietly underperform once retention is factored in.
This is where cohort analysis becomes a strategic necessity. By tracking user behaviour over time, across app and web, teams can identify which acquisition sources actually contribute to sustainable growth. Platforms like Apptrove make this possible by connecting acquisition data with downstream behaviour, allowing marketers to see beyond the first transaction.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is an eCommerce marketing strategy?
An eCommerce marketing strategy is a long-term framework that defines how a brand acquires, converts, and retains customers profitably across digital touchpoints.
2. Why is attribution a challenge in eCommerce marketing?
Attribution is challenging due to fragmented customer journeys, privacy-first changes, and cross-device behaviour that limits deterministic tracking.
3. How should eCommerce brands measure marketing success today?
Brands should combine attribution data with cohort analysis, retention metrics, and incrementality testing to make informed decisions.
4. How do app-first eCommerce brands track performance accurately?
App-first brands rely on unified app and web analytics, behavioural segmentation, and lifecycle analysis to understand performance beyond last-click metrics.
