The AcroCast: Recent Episodes
Acro Media Inc.
Thought leadership from one of North America’s top ecommerce development agencies. Laura's the girl. Derek's the guy.
In digital commerce development, a good design system is the new gold standard for creating a single source of truth for how a brand wants to be seen globally. In this episode, Laura talks through some of the finer points of using a design system in web development.
This episode addresses the fact that ecommerce operators are often drawn to the idea of replatforming but that they might not always need to. What’s the deal with replatforming?
Scalable growth depends on your systems growing with you. Occasionally, applications become a barrier to growth. Maybe they won’t connect to new technology, or your company simply outgrows its platform use. This episode tells you what to measure if you think your company is outgrowing your commerce platform.
Are you experiencing digital commerce struggles and are ready to lay the blame on Drupal Commerce? Acro Media’s CTO Shawn McCabe isn’t hearing any of that. McCabe has a message for you: it’s not the inability of the platform but the inability of the developers you have using it.
You've seen the "update available" or, even worse, “this version is no longer supported” notices coming up in the back end of the ecommerce platform that your organization uses. Should you be worried?
If the people who wrote the code no longer support it, your software is technically classed "end-of-life," or EOL, and could be vulnerable. In this episode, Laura gives you the dirt on software end-of-life.
An open source commerce architecture is a fantastic option for many growing ecommerce businesses, but it’s not for everyone. Why is that? Who is it an ideal fit for? Find out!
If you're a new or existing ecommerce business owner/operator trying to understand how to successfully scale your business, you need to have the right commerce architecture in place to support it. In this webinar, Matt gives you the rundown on commerce architecture, the different types, and how they work for your business.
Outgrowing your ecommerce platform? Maybe the platform is shutting down and not supported anymore. Whatever the case, this podcast breaks down a data migration and how it can be performed successfully.
What is headless commerce? How does it work? How does it apply to you? Matt Gomez, Acro Media’s Director of Business Development, explains the benefits of separating the front end from the back end of your ecommerce site, and why this architecture decision could be beneficial. From Matt Gomez’s video “Headless commerce explained”
Recently, one of our top developers reached out to me with a question that has plagued ecommerce business owners, duplicate content and SEO penalties. I dug to the bottom of it to find out what to do if you run an ecommerce site with very similar product listings. Listen to find out more. From our article “SEO notes – Duplicate content penalty concern.”
Ecommerce in a #B2B setting is much different than in #B2C, and can help with your complex sales cycles, dealer and distribution networks and customizable products. Derek discusses how ecommerce for B2B is about using digital products to generate more sales.
Listen now - Learn how the right CMS provides the functionality your ecommerce users expect and supports your brand’s content marketing strategy. Inspired by Matt Gomez’s video “Content strategy is key.”
A lot of manufacturing companies don't think they should be doing ecommerce. Derek is here to change your view on what ecommerce actually means in the context of #B2B, and specifically within manufacturing.
Listen now - Part 2 of our talk on B2B digital transformation, highlighting how Acro Media helps B2B companies as a digital commerce development partner.
Laura talks about why B2B organizations identify the need for digital transformation, what it involves and how it doesn’t replace sales teams.
This content goes hand in hand with Matt Gomez’s video on our YouTube channel. Check it out too.
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. Find out if it's time for a cultural change at your organization, one that requires you to continually challenge the status quo and experiment.
Customers want to access the products they desire as easily as possible. With faceted search, they can! So why do 50% of ecommerce sites not use it? Derek investigates.
Typically B2B companies have been about 3—5 years behind B2C in digital solutions. The global pandemic has accelerated the need for digital solutions and B2B companies have been forced to fast track their digital transformation. Inspired by Matt Gomez’s video B2B Companies Need to Focus on the Customer Experience.
Millennials have much, much more buying power in the B2B space than ever before. Listen to find out how this impacts you and what you can do to keep up with the digital times.
Only 12% of ecommerce sites use location services. Laura explains how headless architecture can help reach new, location-specific markets.
Listen now! In this podcast, Laura talks about swivel chair processes, what they are, how they happen and how they impact your business. This topic comes out of our article “Eliminating swivel chair processes in ecommerce”.
Laura talks about the top 10 obstacles that companies face when trying to implement personalization and how to overcome them. Inspired by “Ten obstacles for personalization & how to overcome them”.
New podcast! Laura talks about why companies might work with ecommerce software consultants and some tips on getting the most out of your consultation. Taken from our article, “Why Companies Leverage Ecommerce Software Consultants. ”
There are a lot of ecommerce platforms out there and knowing the right one to choose for your business can be difficult. At Acro Media we’re big supporters of the Drupal Commerce platform, but know it has its downsides and might not be the best choice for your business. We explore the pros and cons of Drupal Commerce in this podcast.
Acro Media’s Director of Business Development Matt Gomez spoke with Daniel Fertig, BigCommerce’s VP of Agency Partnerships, about their offering in the B2B space, why B2B companies need to be selling online, what’s happening in B2B these days, and more. The following audio is from their insightful YouTube Q&A.
If you’ve ever built a minimum viable product site and added to it over time, you've probably accumulated technical debt, which essentially means choosing an easy solution once and needing additional rework to fix it later on. Technical debt is just like any other debt, it gets worse the longer you leave it, whereas little bits of maintenance along the way, goes a long way. Listen in as Acro Media COO Steve Netzlaw and our CTO Shawn McCabe tackle this topic as part of their YouTube series High Five. Enjoy!
Every ecommerce business is in 1-of-4 life cycle stages, according to Gartner. Listen to find out what the IT requirements for each stage look like and where your company fits in. From the blog ”Ecommerce business life cycle technology requirements.”
This episode focuses on end-of-life software, what that means, what you can expect, and the business risks with running EOL software. From our blog: The 3 Risks with Running End of Life Software
Listen and learn the best practices you should follow and the functions you should have to make sure your online store is optimized for conversions. This is also part of the blog “Top 5 Functional Requirements for Your Ecommerce Site”.
How does your tech stack help achieve your ecommerce growth goals? Laura talks over some top-level ideas on how a tech stack audit can improve performance. Taken from our blog: How to Evaluate Your Technology Stack and Reduce IT Costs
Becky Parisotto and Matt Gomez, colleagues who run the business development side of things at Acro Media, recently chatted about modern digital solutions for B2B companies.
They talked about six digital solutions, including how to work with old technology, moving online without upsetting customers, when and if a developer is needed when it comes to ecommerce, and much more. There’s a lot of great information here — enjoy!
Listen now to find out how your business can benefit by implementing personalization strategies across all your digital channels.
Matt Gomez, Director of Business Development at Acro Media chats about personalization in ecommerce with Travis Breier, Product Marketing Manager with Demandbase.
Enjoy!
Creating a personalized consumer experience on your website can help increase online sales, but many ecommerce companies struggle with the best ways to provide website visitors with the convenience of relevant recommended products or money-saving offers. By mining your customer database for prior sales information, abandoned cart data, and average purchase prices, you can drive customers to tailored landing pages designed to speak to them, wherever they are on the buyers’ journey.
As organizations grow, the need to become more efficient and develop new digital technologies increases. So, companies invest in new technologies adding to their ecosystem like patchwork. Rather than realizing increased productivity, employees are having to put in more time and effort to get work done. Faced with multiple solutions and complex workflows, they are met with the burden of digital friction.
Laura discusses the five common sources of digital friction and what can be done about them.
To help retail & B2C companies gain insights on the changing ecommerce landscape, and to find out how to protect your business, we organized a Live YouTube Q&A on May 5th, 2021 with a panel of ecommerce, online payment and fraud prevention specialists. The following audio is from that conversation, hosted by Matt Gomez, Director of Business Development at Acro Media, and featuring Matthew Vega, the director of Fraud Strategy and Chargebacks with BlueSnap, a global payments technology company, and Eric Hartwell, a Partner Manager at Signifyd, the world’s largest provider of guaranteed fraud protection.