What does a collapsing parking garage have to do with e-commerce?
A collapsing garage in Nieuwegein, blamed on design flaws and lacking oversight, mirrors today’s fragmented e‑commerce. Specialists—SEO, SEA, email, CRO—work in silos with no one managing the whole. Assign a digital owner, like “Bob Johnson,” to connect the dots and prevent systemic failure.
Last week, NOS reported that a newly built parking garage at the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein partially collapsed last May. According to the Dutch Safety Board (Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid, OVV), the disaster was caused by a design flaw in the ramp connections, compounded by poor oversight. Crucially, there was no single person in charge of the entire structure—no one held a bird’s-eye view of how all the parts worked together nos.nl.
So, you might wonder: what on earth does this have to do with e-commerce? Quite a bit, actually. Because I’ve seen the same fragmented breakdown play out time and again—just in the digital world instead of reinforced concrete.
The breakdown: specialists without a helm
In the garage’s case, engineers treated the ramp designs independently. No one asked, “How will these all support each other under real-world loads—weather, rust, heavier cars?” No one had authority to say, “We must take a step back and check the entire system.” The result? A perfect storm.
In webshops, we see something eerily similar. You’ve got a sourcing specialist here, a buyer there, an SEO guru over in the corner, a paid ads (SEA) expert in another cubicle, plus email marketers, social media managers, tracking & dashboard specialists, and CRO consultants. Each is deeply knowledgeable in their domain—but who understands how it all fits together?
Sure, there’s usually an owner: let’s call him Bob Johnson. Bob might have some high-level ideas but often lacks tactical knowledge. Bob delegates—and then…nothing. No one is looking at the system end-to-end. No one asks how SEO changes will affect paid search, or how email flow interacts with landing page performance. No one ensures that the sum of the parts adds up to something stable.
Why it matters
When a webshop is “built” in this fragmented way, the risks are strikingly familiar to those of a physical collapse:
- Unforeseen overloads: Maybe a campaign brings in a traffic surge that crashes the checkout or email system.
- Ignored dependencies: The SEA landing page is lightning fast, but the email nurture flow sends links to slower pages, killing conversion momentum.
- No single oversight: Everyone does their thing—but no one has the safety net view to catch when the whole begins to buckle under pressure.
Just as in Nieuwegein, where no one was fluent in both ramp design and structural integration, e-commerce too often breeds a “Swiss cheese” structure—with gaps and risks nobody sees until it’s too late.
My solution: the digital storeowner
Webshops need a digital storeowner—someone like Bob Johnson, but empowered, knowledgeable, and accountable. This role isn’t a micromanager of specialists; it’s someone who keeps their eye on the whole system. SEO, SEA, email, UX, tracking—they all report in. Please call him “Bob,” but give him teeth: demanding integration, clarity, testing, fail-safes.
In the brick-and-mortar world, the storeowner sees inventory, foot traffic, staff, billing—everything. In digital, that’s exactly what we’re missing: the view across campaigns, tech, margins, and customer experience as one living organism.
build webshops that are not just strong in parts, but rock-solid as a whole
Sjoerd Mellema
Do I have my digital Bob?
Now for the twist: just as a collapsed parking garage isn’t entirely to blame on “not one person in charge,” nor is every e-commerce flop purely due to “lack of overview.” Sometimes the specialists do talk to each other, and sometimes the owner can’t possibly have all the depth across disciplines. But here’s the nuance:
The absence of whole-view responsibility often amplifies small mistakes into catastrophic failure. And it’s a fixable problem. No need for miracle hires. Just clarity, connection, governance—the same small corrective steps that would’ve saved the garage from collapsing.
So next time you hear about a structure collapsing—or a webshop tanking—you’ll hopefully think: ‘Do I have my digital Bob? The person who stands back, sees the load across my ramps—and keeps my business from falling down?’
Let’s take a lesson from Nieuwegein—and build webshops that are not just strong in parts, but rock-solid as a whole.
