Ina Herlihy believes e-commerce brands are losing out on organic traffic and potential revenue by relying on third-party community sites, like Reddit and Facebook Groups.

As new user acquisition costs increase, in some cases by hundreds of dollars, brands have to care more about increasing retention and organic traffic, Herlihy told TechCrunch via email. By building an onsite community, brands are able to increase that retention and drive more organic traffic because the community is on their own domain.