Key Takeaways:
- Brands must prioritize agility, data-backed strategies, channel diversity, and customer engagement if they want to find eCommerce success.
- Following these tips helps brands navigate key eCommerce challenges, from platform changes to customer retention.
- By investing in unique brand imagery and content, Just Sunnies created an engaging shopping experience that has led to long-term success.
Over 56.1% of internet users aged 16 to 64 make at least one online purchase every week, a clear sign that eCommerce is now part of everyday life, not just a trend.
The question now is how can brands stand out online and convert web visitors into customers.
Standing out in the eCommerce world requires more than just a great product lineup. It's about creating a unique digital experience capable of resonating with customers, not only enough to buy, but to keep coming back.
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Just Sunnies, one of Australia's leading eyewear retailers, has cracked this formula with some great moves in the eCommerce Space.
I reached out to Laura Brukner, digital marketing & eCommerce manager, to learn more about their strategies. Below you’ll get tips, challenges, case studies, and even upcoming trends to be on the lookout for.
Who is Laura Brukner?
Laura Brukner is the Digital Marketing & eCommerce Manager at Just Sunnies, where she leads data-driven strategies to grow the company's online visibility and conversions. With over six years of experience in SEO, digital content, and eCommerce, Laura has played a key role in helping the brand earn national recognition in Australia’s retail industry.
Just Sunnies’ success in Australia needs to be partly attributed to its overall digital strategy, powered by a “well-structured tech stack.”
“Before 2021, Just Sunnies operated on a custom-coded website with limited scalability.
Transitioning to a headless tech stack gave us the flexibility to optimize the customer journey in ways traditional platforms couldn’t support,” Laura says.
This change was crucial to improve the speed and personalization of the brand’s digital platform, two factors that helped boost conversion rates.
The new website was supported by a solid foundation across key digital channels, including Google Ads, email marketing, SEO, and paid social, all while maintaining a strong brand experience.
“This helped us reach our audience effectively, but what set us apart was refining the online experience and tailoring it to individual customer needs.
By combining data-driven strategies with an optimized user journey, we positioned Just Sunnies as one of Australia’s leading online destinations for sunglasses.”
Laura recalls one of Just Sunnies most successful campaigns, during last year’s Black Friday promotion:
“We focused heavily on optimising our Paid Google channel, ensuring our product listings and discounting aligned with Google’s AI-powered sale promotions.
We spent a lot of time refining our promotional processes, pricing structures, and offers, leading to impressive performance, even in such a competitive environment.”
Four Challenges to Overcome
Performing at a high level as an eCommerce platform is challenging but keeping that level of performance can be just as difficult.
Laura helps me list four of the biggest challenges the brand faced as it expanded into the digital space:
- Keeping Tabs on Changes: With constant algorithm updates, restrictions, and rising ad costs, brands must consistently test and adapt their strategies.
- Making Data-driven Decisions: Trust the data you collect and use it when making decisions. Otherwise, it will be easy to fall behind.
- Over-relying on Paid Channels: Paid channels can get you short-term wins, but neglecting organic search and CRM, will hurt you long-term.
- Keeping Customers Engaged: A strong digital presence isn’t just about getting customers; it’s also about turning them into loyal repeat buyers.
Laura also shares a very specific branding-related challenge Just Sunnies had to overcome:
“One of our early challenges was standing out as a retailer without our own brand imagery.
We relied on assets provided by the brands we stocked, which made it difficult to create a distinct identity or run campaigns that truly felt like our own.”
To address this, Just Sunnies decided to invest in their own photoshoots, while curating content that resonated with their audience.
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This allowed them to build a stronger brand voice over time.
“This not only improved engagement across our marketing channels but also helped us create a more cohesive shopping experience, one that customers could connect with on a deeper level.”
Six Tips to Thrive as an eCommerce Brand
After outlining the key challenges holding eCommerce brands back, Laura shifts gears and shares the proactive steps brands should be taking if they want to thrive.
To help brands stay on the right track, here are six tips she recommends:
- Optimize Product Titles: You should focus on organic traffic, and that requires frequent optimization of product titles and pages. Include the right keywords, especially for large catalogues.
- Prioritize Stock Visibility: Clicking on an ad only to land on a product that’s out of stock can be frustrating. Make sure this does not happen by auditing availability, ad destinations, and landing pages.
- Test Every Functionality: A good eCommerce platform needs frequent testing and refinement on every touchpoint. That’s the only way to ensure a smooth customer journey, and you need that to build a loyal customer base.
- Keep Your Strategies Aligned: If you keep your paid and organic strategies separate, they can work against each other instead of supporting one another. Make sure to think both simultaneously, creating synergy between them.
- Benchmark Year-on-Year: Using core KPIs like cost, conversion value, ROAS, and conversion rate, you can effectively measure growth, especially during predictable peak seasonal periods like summer
- Track Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER): Assess data across both paid and retention channels, to ensure balance between cost of ads and overall return. This helps evaluate spending at a broader level.
The Defining Moment
Despite all its recent success, Just Sunnies reached a significant milestone in 2021, when the company became a finalist in an eCommerce awards competition.
“Being recognised as an award finalist alongside leading eCommerce brands in 2021 for our eye health campaign was a defining moment for Just Sunnies. This reinforced just how much it resonated with our customers.”
Achieving this mark became a turning point for Just Sunnies, further motivating them to incorporate eye health deeper into their strategy.
“This milestone validated our commitment not just to offering high-quality sunglasses but also to educating and guiding customers in choosing the right eyewear for their needs.
It also played a key role in the launch of our optical branch, allowing us to offer a more comprehensive service that caters to both sun protection and prescription eyewear,” Laura adds.
Choosing the Right Agency
Partnering with the right agency to achieve all these goals is crucial, so I asked Laura about Just Sunnies’ process for selecting a partner agency.
“We prioritize expertise in e-commerce, particularly with experience working with retailers.
It's essential that the agency understands the unique challenges retailers face, especially in such a competitive digital landscape,” she shares.
Laura also highlights good communication as a key factor to consider, along with the willingness to go the extra mile when support is needed.
“Ultimately, we seek an agency that can deliver tangible results and align with our business goals, ensuring a strong partnership that drives measurable growth.”
Look Out for These Trends
Concluding with a look into the future, I asked Laura about upcoming trends that could have an impact on how businesses handle eCommerce.
Unsurprisingly, Laura believes AI and machine learning will dictate what will happen next in the sector:
“These technologies are already making things like promotions and personalization more efficient, and they’ll only get better at helping brands optimise campaigns in real time.
Omnichannel marketing will also be crucial. Customers now expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints, whether it's social media, search, email, online shopping, or even in-store interactions.”
Laura also believes short-form videos will keep gaining traction, with platforms like TikTok and Instagram driving sales and brand awareness by delivering engaging videos to new audiences.
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While doing business on an online platform has never been easier, the downside is that there’s a lot more competition.
By following Laura’s advice, brands can take practical steps to improve their eCommerce strategy and establish the foundation for long-term success.
