This Week in M&A Issue #239

Buying a business is exciting – and stressful. Most new owners obsess over strategy, finances, and keeping the current business afloat, but the fastest way to protect your investment in the first 90 days is to stop money from quietly leaking out of the business you just bought.

Oculo Digital specializes in implementing automation into businesses, fully focused on sales and marketing. Which means they have seen where entrepreneurs struggle the most: follow-ups, websites, Google reviews, and marketing campaigns. They have spent countless hours working with customers and have created the exact solutions to solve these problems.

Let’s face it, when you start or purchase a business, you are drinking from a firehose. The last thing you want to be a victim of are these common things listed below.

Here are FIVE common mistakes they see again and again:

1. Missed calls- When the phone rings and nobody answers, callers don’t leave voicemails. They call your competitor. Missed calls typically can represent 20–40% of total lead volume.

2. Slow lead follow-up. Calls, SMS, website hits, ad opt-ins, and emails sit untouched for hours. Responding in under 5 minutes versus an hour increases contact rates by up to 100x.

3. No clear path to book. Your website looks fine, but there’s no automated funnel for booking or obvious “Book Now” or “Get a Quote” button so it’s not fully functional. Interested buyers leave because converting takes effort.

4. Happy customers, few reviews: The business does good work, but doesn’t consistently ask for reviews, so that proof never shows up for future buyers.

5. Inconsistent tracking: There’s no central place to see where leads came from, who followed up, and what happened. You can’t improve what you can’t see.

The good news is that these are fixable with a simple, owner‑friendly system that Oculo has built and fully supports.

If you recently bought or are considering buying a business, check out Oculo Digital’s New Owner Revenue Audit to see where your specific leaks are and how your current business stacks up online.

U.S. e-commerce grew 9.8% year over year in Q1 2026, its strongest quarter in over two years.

While any growth is good, in reality, the quarter was weaker than it looked.

According to MarketplacePulse, a big part of the growth came from higher prices, not more products being sold. When you adjust for inflation, real growth drops closer to 8%. So the market is still growing, but not as fast as the headline suggests.

Another key driver is credit. Buy-now-pay-later providers like Affirm and Klarna saw volumes grow in the 30%+ range, with user growth closer to 20%. That points to more spending being financed rather than driven purely by new demand.

Marketplace data tells a similar story. On platforms like eBay and Etsy, revenue is rising, but the number of active buyers is mostly flat. Existing customers are simply spending more.

There are also one-off factors boosting the numbers, like currency swings and category spikes in areas such as collectibles. These lift totals but do not reflect broad-based demand.

Even larger players like Amazon and Shopify show a familiar pattern: stronger sales, but unclear growth in new customers compared to increased spend per user.

At the end of the day, eCommerce is no longer in a rapid expansion phase driven by new shoppers. Growth today comes more from pricing, credit, and getting more value from the same customer base.

That doesn’t mean the sector is struggling. It just means the way we interpret “growth” needs to change.