Nobody owns the size guide

In an apparel business the size guide converts more customers than the campaign does. In a mother-and-baby business it is the delivery page, because a woman ordering for a baby due in three weeks needs to know which day the box arrives. In both it is the script the person on WhatsApp uses to answer the fortieth "is this in stock" of the day.

None of these were written by anyone whose job it was.

Look at how they came to exist. The size guide was built by a merchandiser with a free afternoon and a tape measure, two years ago, and has been pasted into every new product page since. The delivery page was written the week the courier changed, by whoever was angriest about the complaints. The WhatsApp script was never written down at all. It lives in the head of the person who answers, and it changes when she does.

Now look at the org chart. There is a team for awareness: brand, content, creators, the campaign. There is a team for conversion: performance, the site, the checkout. Between them is the place where the customer actually decides, and the chart has nobody standing in it.

That is the default. When nobody is given the middle, the middle gets done by whoever had the time, once, and is then never touched again, because touching it is nobody's job and nobody's number.

I have watched this from more than one seat, at every size of company. The awareness team presents reach. The conversion team presents rate. A size guide that actually fits the customer to the garment does more for returns than anything on either slide, and it is on neither. So it is in no quarterly review, and in no budget, and it stays the merchandiser's afternoon from two years ago.

The money is in the assets that never appear in the quarterly review. That is exactly why they never get a budget.