Re:platform - Ecommerce CX and Technology Podcast: Recent Episodes

Paul Rogers & James Gurd

Weekly ecommerce CX and technology podcast hosted by two experienced digital consultants, featuring interviews with industry thought leaders and practical advice on improving end-to-end customer experience and understanding how to make better technology decisions.

We provide the answers to help you get the most from your platform and technology stack. Our episodes will help you understand the ecommerce tech landscape, plan for revenue growth and deliver performance improvements. And they're fun!

Summary:

James & Paul delve into the evolving landscape of agentic commerce, with agency leaders Chris Marshall of Onstate and Liam Quinn of Visualsoft.

The podcast focuses on the recent integration of OpenAI's technology with Shopify. The discussion highlights the potential impact of AI-driven commerce on ecommerce brands, emphasising the need to sift through the hype to understand the practical implications.

Key points include the exploration of AI's role in enhancing the shopping experience, the challenges of trust and adoption, and the potential for AI to transform product discovery and purchasing processes.

Learn about the strategic considerations for brands in adopting AI technologies, such as the importance of maintaining structured product data and the potential for AI to complement existing sales channels.

The conversation also touches on the competitive dynamics between tech giants like Google and OpenAI, and the evolving role of platforms like TikTok in product discovery. The episode concludes with a call for brands to focus on foundational elements like data quality and user experience to effectively leverage AI in commerce.

Key discussion points:

There is a lot of hype around AI, but practical applications are still emerging.
Trust in AI technologies is crucial for consumer adoption.
The checkout experience is complex and needs to be optimised.
Product discovery through AI can change consumer behaviour.
Brands must maintain a strong presence to foster loyalty.
Structured data is essential for AI to function effectively in ecommerce.
AI can enhance convenience but may not replace traditional shopping experiences.
Businesses should focus on solid data foundations before adopting new technologies.

Chapters:

[00:35] Introduction to Agentic Commerce and AI Checkout

[03:30] Understanding the Hype: AI's Role in Ecommerce

[06:05] The Practical Implications of AI in Shopping

[09:30] Trust Issues in Agentic Commerce

[12:00] Adoption Challenges and Consumer Behaviour

[15:10] Commercial Opportunities and Limitations

[27:40] The Challenge of Customer Experience in AI

[30:45] Navigating Payment and Fulfilment Challenges

[36:25] The Importance of Data Structure

[38:30] Practical Steps for Brands in the AI Era

[42:15] Security Concerns and Best Practices in AI

Unlocking the Secrets of Shopify Conversion Rate Optimisation: A Must-Watch Podcast

In the latest episode, we dive deep into the world of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) with industry experts Anya Geimanson, Co-founder of Visually, and Nick Phipps, CRO lead from Vervaunt.

This podcast is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to enhance their ecommerce strategy.

Why You Should Tune In:

Expert Insights:

Gain practical, real-world insights as Anya & Nick share their extensive experience in the field.

Actionable Strategies:

Learn about the importance of segmentation, personalisation, and testing in driving successful CRO initiatives.

Real-World Examples:

Discover how leading brands have achieved significant conversion rate improvements through strategic testing and personalisation.

Key Discussion Points:

The challenges and opportunities of conducting meaningful A/B testing on platforms like Shopify.
The role of AI in enhancing personalisation and optimising digital experiences.
Strategies for measuring the true impact of CRO efforts beyond just conversion rates.

Whether you're a seasoned ecommerce professional or just starting out, this episode offers valuable takeaways to help you optimise your online store and drive growth.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the best in the business. Subscribe now and elevate your CRO game!

Podcast summary:It's hard to keep customers happy, and coming back for more. Businesses are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance customer experience and drive growth. In our latest podcast, we delve into a transformative approach with insights from Martin Newman, one of the world’s leading authorities on customer centricity.Martin challenges the traditional mindset of viewing investment in people as a cost line. Instead, he advocates for a paradigm shift where people are seen as profit centers. This perspective focuses employee on shared outcomes, enhancing customer experience and driving tangible business growth. By investing in their teams, ecommerce brands can unlock the potential of their workforce, leading to improved customer interactions and increased profitability.Throughout the episode, Martin shares actionable insights and real-world examples of how businesses can implement this mindset shift. He emphasises the importance of empowering employees, fostering a culture of innovation, and aligning business strategies with customer needs. By doing so, ecommerce brands can create a competitive edge and build lasting relationships with their customers.Join us as we explore this groundbreaking approach to customer experience and discover how viewing people as profit centres can revolutionise your ecommerce business. Tune in to gain valuable insights from an industry thought leader, and learn how to transform your customer experience strategy for success.Key discussion points:1. Customer experience has evolved to be more customer-centric.2. Many businesses still operate in silos, hindering customer experience.3. Measuring customer experience should focus on long-term value, not just productivity.4. Company culture is crucial for employee engagement and customer satisfaction.5. Engaging employees in cultural change leads to better outcomes.6. Successful brands create emotional connections with their customers.7. Technology should be used strategically to enhance customer experience.8. AI can improve efficiency and personalisation in customer interactions.9. Customer lifetime value should be prioritised over short-term gains.10. A mindset shift is needed to view customer experience as a profit centre.Chapters:[00:45] Introduction to Martin Newman and His Expertise[04:40] The Evolution of Customer Experience[10:50] Measuring Customer Experience Effectively[16:25] The Importance of Culture in Business[22:25] Driving Change and Transformation in Organisations[27:15] The Importance of Employee Engagement[29:30] Building Brand Loyalty Through Purpose[34:55] The Role of AI in Customer Experience[48:40] Transforming CX from Cost Center to Profit CenterSubscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/inside-commerce-7126171854813188096/

Summary:

Design is critical to ecommerce success. However, design discussions can be fraught with emotion and subjective views. And design execution is influenced by the brand, customer demographic, product range and price point.

In this podcast, James Gurd and Paul Rogers delve into the nuances of good ecommerce web design. They explore the subjective and objective elements that define effective design, emphasising the importance of aligning design with brand goals and customer needs.

Good design isn't a one-size-fits-all concept but should be tailored to the specific traffic and audience of a site. The podcast highlights the need for a balance between usability and brand presentation, suggesting that design should cater to both high-intent and low-intent audiences.

The discussion also touches on the role of art direction in creating a brand's identity and the importance of functional coherence in design.

James & Paul reference several websites, including OKA, Sanqvist, Civilist Berlin, On Running, JW Anderson and Oh Polly, as examples of innovative design that successfully integrate creative elements with functional usability.

The importance of a structured design discovery process and the need for clear design documentation to ensure consistency and adaptability is emphasised.

Throughout the episode, James & Paul flag the evolving nature of ecommerce design, advocating for a strategic approach that considers both aesthetic appeal and practical functionality.

Key discussion points:

Good design varies by brand.
Understanding user intent is critical for design success.
Balancing creativity with functionality is key in ecommerce.
Art direction is crucial for brand identity.
The design discovery process involves managing stakeholder opinions.
Functional coherence is essential for user experience.
Testing design changes is vital for measuring impact.
Design documentation should be fluid and accessible.

Chapters:

[00:30] Defining Good Web Design

[06:40] The Design Discovery Process

[13:30] The Role of Art Direction

[20:05] Interaction Design and Functional Coherence

[24:40] Measuring Investment Impact in Ecommerce

[28:00] Balancing Risk and Innovation in Design

[29:50] Functional Coherence in Ecommerce Design

[36:25] Creating Friction: A Double-Edged Sword

[37:50] The Importance of Testing and Iteration

[42:50] Design Documentation for Consistency

Episode summary:

Selecting the right technology stack and managing roadmaps are crucial for success. Our latest podcast episode dives into these topics with insights from a seasoned head of ecommerce, Edward Scott-Finnigan.

Choosing the Right Tech Stack:

The discussion highlights the importance of aligning technology choices with business goals. A flexible and scalable tech stack can ensure seamless customer experiences. Edward & James emphasise the need for flexibility in integration capabilities, allowing different systems to work harmoniously.

Managing Roadmaps:

Effective roadmap management is about prioritising initiatives that drive growth. The conversation explores strategies for balancing short-term wins with long-term vision. Edwards shares tips on stakeholder engagement, ensuring that everyone is aligned and invested in the roadmap's success.

Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical advice on navigating the complexities of ecommerce technology and roadmap management. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting, this episode offers something for everyone.

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Key takeaways:

Edward's transition from agency to client-side offers unique perspectives.
Understanding the 'why' behind projects is crucial for success.
Ecommerce faces challenges with technology confusion and shiny object syndrome.
AI should be seen as a supportive tool, not a replacement.
Real-world experiences provide valuable insights into technology adoption.
Modernising legacy systems requires a nuanced approach.
Networking and real-world discussions are key to navigating the tech landscape.

Chapters

[03:20] Edward's Ecommerce Journey & Experience

[06:20] Agency vs. Client-Side Perspectives

[09:00] Understanding the Why Behind Projects

[12:20] Current Challenges in Ecommerce Technology

[15:20] Navigating Confusion in Ecommerce Solutions

[18:00] The Importance of Real-World Insights

[21:00] Shifting Pain in Ecommerce Operations

[26:30] Navigating Modernisation in Ecommerce

[31:30] The Role of AI in Ecommerce Operations

[37:40] Strategising for the Future of Ecommerce

[41:50] Unifying Technology for Enhanced Student Engagement

Get expert advice on the latest ecommerce shipping trends and how brands need to plan ahead to ensure a consistent quality of customer service.

Shipping remains a critical challenge. With fluctuating tariffs, evolving customer expectations, and geopolitical tensions, ecommerce teams face mounting pressure to deliver consistent, high-quality service. The complexity of global supply chains, coupled with regional variations in shipping regulations, further complicates the process.

To build resilience, ecommerce teams must diversify their carrier networks. By leveraging regional carriers, businesses can mitigate risks associated with reliance on a single provider.

Additionally, transparency in shipping costs and delivery times is crucial. Providing customers with clear expectations helps maintain trust and satisfaction.

Investing in technology that integrates seamlessly with existing systems can streamline operations and enhance flexibility. By adopting a proactive approach to inventory management and exploring alternative shipping routes, ecommerce teams can better navigate disruptions and ensure a seamless customer experience.

Ultimately, resilience in shipping strategies is key to thriving in the ever-changing global market.

Key discussion points:

Fluctuating Tariffs and Geopolitical Tensions: impact on shipping costs and regulations.
Evolving Customer Expectations: demand for faster, transparent delivery options.
Complex Global Supply Chains: challenges with regional shipping regulations and logistics.
Diversifying Carrier Networks: mitigating risks by using regional carriers.
Transparency in Shipping Costs and Delivery Times: building customer trust and satisfaction.
Technology Integration: streamlining operations and enhancing flexibility.
Proactive Inventory Management: preparing for disruptions and ensuring availability.
Exploring Alternative Shipping Routes: adapting to changes and maintaining service quality.

Chapters:

[00:30 - 03:30] Introduction to Shipping Challenges
[03:00 - 09:00] Impact of Tariffs and Regulations
[09:00 - 12:00] Customer Expectations and Market Trends
[12:00 - 18:00] Diversifying Carrier Networks
[18:00 - 22:00] Importance of Transparency
[22:00 - 30:00] Leveraging Technology for Flexibility
[30:00 - 36:30] Proactive Inventory Management
[36:30 - 45:00] Exploring Alternative Routes
[45:00 - 50:00] Conclusion and Future Outlook

Philip Kingsley had been on an interesting ecommerce journey, having to rapidly digitise its consultation service following COVID and subsequently making subscriptions the cornerstone of its growth strategy.

This episode dives into the brand's journey, led by Lauren Duncan, Head of Ecommerce, who shares insights on how they have transformed their business model.

The Subscription Model:

Philip Kingsley has embraced a subscription model that goes beyond mere convenience. By offering discreet delivery and personalised treatment plans, they cater to the unique needs of their customers, particularly those dealing with hair loss. This approach not only provides a seamless customer experience but also fosters long-term loyalty.

Digital Transformation:

The brand's digital transformation was accelerated by the pandemic, leading to the development of virtual consultations and a robust web app. These innovations have allowed Philip Kingsley to reach a broader audience and offer tailored solutions.

Customer-Centric Approach:

Lauren emphasises the importance of understanding customer needs and preferences. By leveraging data and customer feedback, Philip Kingsley continuously refines its offerings, ensuring that the subscription service remains relevant and valuable to its users.

Philip Kingsley's success in ecommerce is a testament to the power of subscriptions in building lasting customer relationships. By focusing on personalisation and convenience, they have set a new standard in the beauty industry.

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About this podcast:

In this episode, James Gurd and Paul Rogers discuss the current state of the ecommerce industry, focusing on key trends including:

Strategic partnerships for last mile delivery
Payment innovations
Structured product data & AI agents
The impact of AI in Customer Service
The evolution of search and product discovery

They explore how businesses are adapting to changes in consumer behaviour, the importance of structured data for agentic search, and the implications of AI on job markets. The conversation highlights the need for ecommerce brands to embrace new technologies and strategies to remain competitive, whilst avoiding the inevitable industry hype.

Key takeaways:

Strategic partnerships with delivery companies are becoming essential.
Delivery innovations are key to improving customer experience.
Payment methods are evolving, with new trends emerging regularly.
Buy now, pay later has become a mainstream payment option.
Personalisation in shopping is still evolving and not fully realised.
Structured data is crucial for AI and customer service efficiency.
AI is being overhyped, but it can enhance operational efficiency.
Ecommerce brands must adapt to survive in a competitive landscape.
AI will change job roles, not just replace them.

Chapters:

[00:40] Industry Trends and Client Concerns

[03:00] Strategic Partnerships in Delivery

[12:52] Payment Innovations and Trends

[26:40] The Future of AI in E-commerce

[35:47] AI Hype and Job Market Implications

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Podcast summary:

In this podcast, Warren Cowan and James Gurd delve into the critical importance of understanding the context of data when making ecommerce decisions.

They explore how misinterpreting data can lead to compromised decisions, using real-world examples like Elton John's unexpected influence on a test for Matches Fashion.

The discussion highlights the necessity of scrutinising test results to ensure reliability and the dangers of relying solely on metrics like revenue per visitor, which can be easily skewed by outliers.

Warren also emphasises the need for businesses to focus on customer intent and context, rather than just catalogue-driven approaches to merchandising, to enhance user experience and drive better decision-making.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to improve their data-driven strategies and understand the nuances of contextual data in ecommerce.

Key takeaways:

Understanding data context is crucial for better decision-making.
Mistakes in testing can lead to valuable learning opportunities.
Testing results can be skewed by outliers and external factors.
Customer intent should drive the design of ecommerce platforms.
The goal of focusing on customer intent is to inspire and support customers in their shopping journey.
Creating a seamless shopping experience requires understanding user journeys.
Retailers must adapt to changing customer behaviours and preferences.

Chapters:

[05:20] Warren Cowan's Journey to Founder of FoundIt!

[10:13] Understanding Testing and Misreading Results

[15:10] Celebrity Influence on A/B Testing

[19:40] The Importance of User Intent in Ecommerce

[25:04] Utilising Intent Signals for Better Navigation

[30:33] Creating Engaging Shopping Experiences

[32:45] Capturing Behavioural Intent Signals

[41:55] The Importance of Structured Product Data

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Episode summary:

Imagine walking into a store, stepping onto a scanner, and instantly unlocking a personalised journey that follows you from the shop floor to your phone and beyond. That’s the reality Vivobarefoot is building with its MyVivo CRM project - a bold step toward a seamless, omnichannel customer experience.

The MyVivo experience begins in-store, where customers are invited to take a foot scan. This isn’t just a novelty; it’s the foundation for a tailored relationship. The scan captures unique data, helping staff recommend the perfect fit and style. But the magic doesn’t stop there.

Once the scan is complete, MyVivo connects the dots across every touchpoint. Customers receive personalised recommendations and content through email, the Vivobarefoot app, and even in future store visits. The system remembers preferences, past purchases, and even foot health insights, ensuring every interaction—online or offline—feels connected and relevant.

What sets MyVivo apart is the commitment to true omnichannel engagement. Whether a customer shops online, visits a store, or interacts via mobile, their experience is consistent and informed by their unique profile. This not only builds loyalty but also empowers customers to make better choices for their feet and the planet.

Vivobarefoot’s MyVivo project is more than a CRM upgrade - it’s a reimagining of what customer experience can be. By starting with a simple foot scan and extending that data across every channel, Vivobarefoot is setting a new standard for personalized, omnichannel retail.

Tune in to listen to Amy Fullerton, Global Head of CRM, discuss how Vivobarefoot built the vision for MyVivo and the process they followed to start implementing this transformative service.

Key takeaways:

Understanding customer behaviour is crucial for effective CRM.
Vivobarefoot aims to encourage a barefoot lifestyle through education and community engagement.
Data integration and system alignment are key challenges in CRM.
Customer insights are gathered through biometric and behavioral data.
The importance of making data actionable for customer engagement.
The project is structured around four strategic pillars: product, health, community, and rewards.
Future developments will include on-demand health content and personalised recommendations.

Chapters:

[00:00] Laying the Foundations for a Connected Future

[02:41] Understanding My Vivo: Mission and Goals

[07:47] Strategic Pillars of Customer Loyalty

[11:34] Structuring the Transformative CRM Project

[14:19] Tech Challenges in CRM Implementation

[19:53] Gathering and Utilizing Customer Insights

[25:36] Making Data Actionable for Customer Experience

[35:35] Future Vision: On-Demand Health Content

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Episode summary:

In this conversation, James Gurd and Josh Duggan discuss the evolving landscape of ecommerce marketing, focusing on performance and brand marketing trends.

They explore how consumer search behavior is changing due to AI and chatbots, the importance of content in marketing strategies, and the need for brands to optimise for profitability.

The discussion also covers measurement techniques, the challenges of expanding into international markets, and the role of AI in enhancing paid media strategies.

Key takeaways:

The ecommerce landscape is rapidly changing due to AI and chatbots.
Consumer search behaviour is shifting, with a predicted drop in search engine volumes as AI agents increase
Brands must adapt their marketing strategies to focus on upper funnel tactics.
Content quality and relevance are crucial for engaging consumers today.
Understanding profitability is essential for effective ad spend management.
Incrementality testing helps brands measure the true impact of their marketing efforts.
International markets present significant growth opportunities for ecommerce brands.
Social proof can enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in new markets.
AI is increasingly being used to automate and optimise marketing processes.
Brands need to be strategic in their approach to paid media and content creation.

Chapters:

[00:40] Introduction to E-commerce Marketing Trends

[07:20] The Evolution of Consumer Search Behaviour

[13:15] Paid Media Strategies and Consumer Behaviour

[17:40] The Importance of Content in Marketing

[23:35] Optimising for Profitability in Ad Spend

[29:35] Measurement and Incrementality Testing

[37:45] Expanding into International Markets

[43:30] The Role of AI in Paid Media

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Episode summary:

In this conversation, James Gurd, Sam Hurley and Paul Rogers discuss the evolving landscape of SEO in the context of AI engines and LLMs.

They explore how AI search is impacting traffic trends, the importance of brand visibility, and the need for SEO strategies to adapt to these changes.

The discussion highlights the significance of content structure, the enduring principles of SEO, and the future direction of search in an AI-driven world.

Key takeaways:

AI search is not a myth; it's growing and impacting SEO.
Traffic from AI agents is increasing but still represents a small percentage.
Brand visibility is becoming more important than direct traffic.
SEO strategies need to adapt to the rise of AI-driven search.
Content structure and relevance are crucial for appearing in AI overviews.
The principles of SEO remain the same despite changes in technology.
Understanding how brands are perceived online is essential.
Longer, more specific search queries are on the rise.
AI overviews may change how brands approach content strategy.
The future of SEO will involve more focus on brand discovery.

00:35 The Rise of AI in SEO

03:00 Understanding Traffic Trends from AI Agents

06:45 Brand Visibility vs. Direct Traffic

11:40 The Accuracy of Data in AI Search

17:15 The Importance of AI Overviews

22:20 SEO Principles in the Age of AI

31:30 Practical Advice for Adapting to AI Search

Follow us on LinkedIn & subscribe to our bi-weekly ecommerce newsletter:https://www.linkedin.com/company/inside-commerce/Podcast summary:This conversation explores the future of Content Management Systems (CMS) in ecommerce, focusing on the evolution of page builders, the impact of headless CMS, and the integration of Gen AI in content generation.The discussion highlights the varying needs of businesses based on their size and type, the constraints of native page builders, and the importance of structured data and business agility. A case study on Jamie Oliver's migration to a headless CMS illustrates the practical benefits and challenges of such transitions. The conversation concludes with insights on the evolving role of Product Information Management (PIM) systems and future trends in the CMS landscape.Key takeaways

The future of CMS in e-commerce is evolving rapidly.2. Not all brands prioritize content in the same way.3. The role of a CMS varies significantly by business type.4. Native page builders have inherent constraints.5. Headless CMS offers flexibility and scalability.6. Gen AI is transforming content management processes.7. Business agility is essential for adapting to changes.8. PIM systems are evolving beyond just product data management.9. Structured data is crucial for leveraging AI effectively.10. Empowering clients through technology enhances their capabilities.Chapters:[00:00] The Future of CMS in Ecommerce[01:44] Understanding the Role of CMS by Business Type[07:11] Constraints of Native Page Builders[12:35] Evolution of CMS Platforms and Headless Solutions[15:40] Impact of Gen AI on Content Management[21:05] Navigating Ecosystem Choices[24:15] The Speed of Change in Technology[25:52] CMS Evolution and the Role of PIM[29:18] Headless CMS: When and Why?[32:48] Empowering Clients Through Technology[38:05] Future Trends in CMS and Ecommerce

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Podcast Summary:

Stay connected with the leading ecommerce platforms. In this episode, we interview leaders and visionaries from Shopify, BigCommerce, Centra, Commerce Layer, Remarkable Commerce, Scayle Commerce Engine and Shopline for a fireside chat on what’s happening in the second half of 2025.

The conversation covers global market trends, vendor-specific strategies, product roadmaps, and the impact of AI on ecommerce. Each vendor shares their focus areas, challenges, and innovations aimed at enhancing customer experience and optimising performance across various sales channels.

The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of ecommerce, highlighting innovations in POS systems, the impact of AI on shopping experiences, and the importance of modular and composable commerce solutions. The speakers discuss current trends shaping their GTM strategies, including the rise of marketplaces, operational challenges, and the need for localised approaches in global commerce. They also explore product roadmaps and the significance of customer experience in driving engagement and conversion.

Key takeaways:

AI is becoming a crucial tool for platforms to enhance operational efficiency.
Merchants are increasingly looking for solutions that simplify their operations.
The future of e-commerce will heavily rely on technology that adapts to changing consumer behaviours.
POS systems are evolving to capture more customer data.
Retailers are increasingly looking for flexibility in their tech stack.
Customer experience is a key focus for ecommerce platforms.
Global commerce requires localised strategies for success.
The importance of a unified user experience in ecommerce is growing.

Chapters:

[02:00] Centra

[15:30] Shopline

[28:45] BigCommerce

[44:30] Shopify

[1:00:45] Remarkable Commerce

[1:16:45] Commerce Layer

[1:35:00] Scayle Commerce Engine

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Summary:

In this ecommerce podcast, independent consultant James Gurd speaks with Henrik Hovfman-Kraft, founder of DEMA, about the challenges and strategies in ecommerce marketing.They discuss the importance of balancing short-term sales pressures with long-term growth strategies, the role of marketing mix modelling (MMM) in understanding marketing effectiveness, and the significance of incrementality testing in measuring true impact. Henrik shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey and how DEMA provides data-driven solutions for brands to optimise their marketing efforts and avoid leaving money on the table.

Key takeaways:

DEMA was founded to address the lack of data-driven decision-making in ecommerce.
Marketing mix modeling (MMM) helps brands understand the effectiveness of their marketing spend.
Incrementality testing is crucial for measuring the true impact of marketing efforts.
Brands often leave money on the table by not optimizing their marketing strategies based on data.
Data silos hinder effective decision-making in e-commerce.

6.. Understanding contribution margin is essential for sustainable growth.

Brands need to connect online and offline data for a comprehensive view.
The ad stock effect is important for measuring the long-term impact of marketing spend.
Brands should always experiment and test their marketing strategies.

Chapters:

[00:30] Navigating the E-commerce Landscape

[07:30] The Importance of Data in Marketing

[14:20] Understanding Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM

)[20:00] Balancing Short-term and Long-term Strategies

[26:37] Incrementality Testing in Marketing

[45:30] Identifying Missed Opportunities in Sales

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Summary:

In this ecommerce podcast, James & Paul drill into how to build out a loyalty strategy, with examples of brands executing this well. This episode is useful if you have a loyalty program and want to improve it, or are in the process of building out a loyalty strategy.

The main focus is on positioning loyalty strategy correctly, because loyalty is about more than a program. A loyalty strategy is focuses on customer engagement & customer experience, because loyalty is earned through consistently great customer experience.

This podcast will help you understand the fundamental mechanics of building customer loyalty, exploring levers to encourage customers to feel more positive about your brand and giving them a reason to shop directly with you. Loyalty starts when people first visit and come get used to your brand, not just when they're buying or in a repeat purchase cycle.

Tune in to understand the evolution of loyalty strategies, the importance of customer experience, leveraging customer insights and data, and the necessity of financial modeling to justify investments in loyalty programs. You'll get practical examples to help you enhance your loyalty offering and better understand customer value.

Key takeaways:

Loyalty is earned through great customer experience.
A loyalty strategy is more than just a program.
Understanding customer engagement mechanics is crucial.
Loyalty should be viewed as a broader customer strategy.
Rewarding positive customer behaviour is essential.
Customer insights are vital for effective loyalty programs.
Setting clear goals is necessary for loyalty success.
Measuring success should include customer experience metrics.
Incentivising data collection enhances customer understanding.
Financial modelling is critical for justifying loyalty investments.

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Summary:

In this podcast, the discussion revolves around the impact of AI on ecommerce teams, particularly focusing on the relationship between technology agencies and their clients.

The conversation highlights Seth's experiment of building a website using AI tools without any developer assistance, revealing both the potential and challenges of AI in development.

The discussion emphasises the importance of understanding AI's capabilities, the ongoing need for developers, and the efficiency gains that AI can bring to agencies. It also covers the future of AI in ecommerce platforms and the necessity of collaboration between AI and human expertise.

During this conversation, James, Seth & Jim explore the evolving role of AI in ecommerce, emphasising the importance of efficiency, risk management, and the need for prompt engineering strategies.

They explore how AI can enhance decision-making, streamline operations, and drive innovation while also addressing the complexities and risks associated with integrating AI tools into business processes.

Key takeaways:

Understanding AI's capabilities is crucial for marketers.
Building complex applications with AI requires technical knowledge.
AI can expose security vulnerabilities if not used carefully.
The role of developers remains critical despite AI advancements.
AI can speed up design thinking and ideation processes.
AI can speed up coding but requires human oversight.
Agencies are leveraging AI for efficiency gains.
The future of ecommerce may rely on AI-driven interfaces.
Collaboration between AI and human developers is essential.
Prompt engineering is essential for maximising AI productivity.
Agencies must evolve to become educators in AI usage.

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Episode summary:

In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, Paul Rogers speaks with Matt Parkinson from Gene about the evolution of Magento and Adobe.

They explore the dangers of platform tribalism, and discuss the current state of the platform ecosystem, the challenges and opportunities facing businesses in the ecommerce space. They cover the aggressive competition among platforms, the flexibility of Magento, and the implications of Adobe's SaaS strategy.

Additionally, they explore the role of Hyva in revitalising the Magento community and enhancing innovation. Paul and Matt Parkinson also discuss the evolving landscape of ecommerce, focusing on Adobe and Shopify.

Key takeaways:

The platform ecosystem has become aggressive and tribal, with strong opinions on various platforms.
Magento aims to serve a wide range of businesses, from small startups to large enterprises.
Adobe's SaaS strategy addresses known issues with Magento, such as total cost of ownership.
The app builder offers a low-code solution for integrating third-party technologies.
Adobe Commerce Optimizer provides a pathway to full SaaS for existing Magento users.
Hyva front-end has revitalised the Magento community and enhanced innovation.
Community advocacy plays a crucial role in product development.
The future of Adobe and Magento is leaning towards enterprise and B2B markets.
Shopify's ease of use contrasts with the complexity of B2B solutions.
Bluefinch aims to streamline the patching and upgrading process for merchants.
ShopThru seeks to revolutionize ecommerce by embedding checkout experiences.
The future of ecommerce will likely involve more AI and agentic commerce.

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Summary:

In this episode ecommerce podcast, Paul Rogers speaks with ThruDark founder Louis Tinsley , who shares his unique journey from special forces to ecommerce entrepreneurship.

Louis discusses the challenges and successes of building a brand in the outdoor industry, the importance of leveraging relationships, and the strategic decisions that have shaped ThruDark's growth.

He emphasises the significance of team dynamics, investment, and the lessons learned along the way, while also looking ahead to future goals and international expansion.

Key takeaways:

Louis spent years in the Royal Marines and special forces.
The idea for ThruDark stemmed from a passion for outdoor equipment and product design.
Initial challenges included navigating the transition from military life to entrepreneurship.
Social media played a crucial role in building brand awareness and reaching audiences.
Leveraging relationships with high-profile individuals helped ThruDark gain traction.
Hiring key individuals was essential for scaling the business effectively.
Investment from the Clark Group accelerated ThruDark's growth and provided valuable guidance.
Bringing in a CEO was a strategic move to professionalise the business.
International expansion is a focus, with a growing presence in the US and Canada.
Reflecting on achievements is important for maintaining motivation and setting future goals.

In this ecommerce podcast, Tash Grossman, founder and CEO of Slip, discusses the transformation of shopping receipts into valuable engagement tools for retailers. She shares her journey from management consulting to founding Slip, emphasising the importance of learning from mistakes and the challenges of integrating technology in retail. Tash highlights the significance of digital receipts in enhancing customer experience, loyalty programs, and the potential for subscription services. The conversation also touches on overcoming barriers in retail technology and the future of retail media.Key takeaways:1. Digital receipts can enhance post-purchase engagement.2. Retailers should prioritise the value of receipts.3. Customer acquisition costs are rising, making retention crucial.4. Opt-in rates can be significantly increased with self-service data entry.5. Loyalty programs can be enriched through personalised digital receipts.6. Subscriptions via digital receipts present a new revenue opportunity for retailers.7. Retail media can be monetised through digital receipts.8. Integration with existing systems can be quick and efficient.

Inside Commerce is the first podcast to talk you through what the latest Shopify release means for ecommerce stores. James discusses the relevance of key new features and upgrades with Ben Homer, Senior Solutions Engineer, pulling apart the benefits and implications for merchants.

Shopify Editions always attracts lots of attention. Following an embargo in the partner community of the pre-release information, there's a frenzy of LinkedIn posts sharing the key features updates. Our podcast goes deeper, sifting through the 100+ updates to focus on the strategic pillars that are most relevant, and what the feature improvements mean for ecommerce teams.

We focus on four key strategic areas:

The new Horizon theme suite
Architectural development in Markets for International commerce
POS (Point Of Sale)
Sidekick AI Assistant

James Gurd and Ben Homer focus on the strategic implications of new features and discuss what Shopify's 'declarative commerce' positioning means in terms of product focus.

The new Horizon theming is covered, exploring how flexibility for content management is the main focus, enabling business user to do more before they need development resource. This includes AI block generation, block copying and block nesting.

For Markets, James & Ben discuss how the latest improvements aim to empower merchants, streamline internationalisation, and simplify multi-store management, ultimately enhancing the ecommerce experience.

Ben explains the reasoning behind new enhancements in Shopify's offering, focusing on B2B capabilities, point of sale systems, and the integration of generative AI to improve business efficiency. The dialogue emphasises the importance of localisation in markets, the user experience in retail environments, and the potential of AI tools like Sidekick to streamline operations and data management. Additionally, the conversation touches on the next generation of

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Summary:

Why do brands invest in the upper funnel?

In this podcast, digital marketing strategist Geeta Randev discusses the evolving landscape of digital marketing, emphasising the importance of investing in upper funnel marketing to build brand awareness and customer loyalty.

She highlights the need for managing expectations regarding the time it takes to see results from upper funnel investments and the significance of understanding the entire consumer journey, which begins before a customer even visits a website.

Geeta also addresses the challenges of creating cohesive consumer experiences across multiple touchpoints, and the art of storytelling in marketing, advocating for a more integrated approach to engaging consumers.

The podcast explores the intricacies of digital marketing, focusing on the importance of landing pages, user journeys, and the role of AI in enhancing marketing strategies.

Geeta and James discuss how brands can better engage consumers through thoughtful content strategies and the necessity of nurturing leads through the sales funnel.

The conversation also highlights the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in marketing, emphasising the need for brands to adopt a strategic approach to its implementation. Finally, Geeta addresses common pitfalls in marketing strategies, urging brands to be authentic and transparent in their messaging.

Key takeaways:

Investing in upper funnel marketing is a long term commitment
Managing ROI expectations is challenging
The consumer journey starts before they hit your website.
You need to own the entire consumer journey from start to finish.
Storytelling should be interwoven across the site for better engagement.
Reconsider the formatting of landing pages to enhance user engagement.
Nurturing consumers through the funnel requires tailored content and strategies.
AI can significantly enhance marketing efforts but requires careful implementation.
Consumers are increasingly savvy and can see through inauthentic marketing.

Summary:

In this ecommerce podcast, James Gurd discusses the recent BigCommerce Partner Summit with agency leaders Rupert Cross and Mark Slocock.

They explore BigCommerce's market positioning, particularly in the B2B space, and share insights from the Partner Advisory Board.

The conversation delves into the challenges and areas for improvement for BigCommerce, including the need for better tools and features. They also discuss the roadmap for future developments, the role of AI, and the importance of composability in ecommerce solutions.

The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of ecommerce, focusing on BigCommerce's product strategy. Mark and Rupert discuss the importance of content management, the integration of B2B solutions, and the significance of self-service capabilities for businesses.

The discussion emphasises the need for flexibility in ecommerce platforms to meet diverse business needs and enhance user experience.

Key takeaways:

BigCommerce is focusing on B2B opportunities as a key growth area.
Vertical-specific solutions are needed to address unique business requirements.
AI and composability are becoming essential in ecommerce strategies.
Flexibility in licensing and pricing models is important for merchants.
Page Builder needs significant improvements for better usability.
Merchants want to see use cases rather than just features; you can't be all things to all people.
A strong promotions engine is vital for ecommerce success.
Flexibility in platforms allows for better growth opportunities.
Continuous dialogue among industry experts fosters innovation.

Follow us on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/inside-commerce/Video summary:In this ecommerce podcast, experienced ecommerce consultant James Gurd and Global Digital Director Will Lockie discuss the intricacies of expanding ecommerce brands into the Chinese market. They explore the unique dynamics of the Chinese consumer, the importance of compliance and local partnerships, and the strategies for successful market entry.The conversation also delves into the role of platforms like Tmall and WeChat, the significance of live shopping, and the challenges of performance marketing in China. Will shares valuable insights from his experiences, emphasising the need for a tailored approach to product strategy and marketing in this rapidly evolving landscape.Key takeaways:1. China teaches you how to accelerate digital.2. The customer journey is completely different to Western markets.3. Skincare is the top selling category in China.4. Spend time in the market to understand it better.5. Product formulations must be legally compliant.6. Allow yourself a bare minimum of 12 months.7. Hiring local talent is essential for success.8. Tmall Global is a great starting point for brands.9. WeChat is a mini CRM for brands.10. Live shopping is critical in a noisy market.Chapters:[00:35] Introduction to E-commerce Expansion in China [05:30] Understanding the Chinese Market Dynamics[10:25] Go-to-Market Strategies for China[14:20] Product Compliance and Adaptation[16:55] Navigating Bureaucracy and Compliance[18:00] Finding Local Advisors and Building Networks[20:20] Leveraging Tmall Global for Market Entry[22:40] The Role of WeChat in the Purchase Journey[27:50] Live Shopping Trends in China[35:00] Performance Marketing Strategies in China[40:27] Team Structure and Resourcing for Expansion

Follow us on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/inside-commerce/Video summary:In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, James Gurd interviews Dan Beckles, co-founder of Furniture Box, discussing the growth strategies in marketplace commerce. They explore the journey of starting a furniture business, the challenges faced in the industry, the importance of customer service, and the strategic partnerships that have driven success.Dan shares insights on leveraging technology for operational efficiency, managing inventory, and the recent investment in a new warehouse. The conversation also touches on future marketplace strategies and the significance of building strong relationships with partners like Wayfair.Key takeaways:1. The furniture industry presents unique challenges due to bulky products.2. Bootstrapping allowed for a focus on marketplace growth before building a website.3. Customer service is a core value that drives business success.4. Building relationships with marketplace partners is crucial for growth.5. Investing in technology can streamline operations and improve efficiency.6. Inventory management is complex but essential for multi-channel selling.7. A strong warehouse and distribution strategy can enhance fulfillment capabilities.8. Understanding data is key to making informed marketplace decisions.9. Consolidation of marketplaces can lead to better resource management.10. Future growth will focus on strategic partnerships and expanding into new markets.Chapters:[00:35] Introduction to Marketplace Growth Strategies[03:40] The Founder's Journey: From Idea to Execution[06:40] Navigating Challenges in the Furniture Industry[09:30] Building a Customer-Centric Business Model[12:40] Expanding into the US Market with Wayfair[15:40] The Importance of Strategic Partnerships[18:30] Leveraging Technology for Operational Efficiency[21:30] Inventory Management and Forecasting Challenges[24:50] Investing in Warehouse and Distribution Capabilities[27:40] Future Marketplace Strategies and Growth Plans

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In this ecommerce podcast, Kelly Goetsch discusses his transition from Commercetools to Pipe17 and the company's mission to revolutionise order management in ecommerce.

The podcast highlights the challenges of traditional systems and how Pipe17's network-based approach offers a more efficient solution.

The conversation covers the importance of integrations, the role of AI in order management, and the future of ecommerce technology. Kelly also shares insights on customer use cases, deployment strategies, and the evolving landscape of B2B commerce.

Key takeaways:

Integration challenges stem from walled gardens in enterprise IT.
Low-code solutions are becoming essential for business agility.
Pipe17 focuses on a network of integrations rather than a monolithic platform.
Pain-free deployments are achievable through pre-built connections.
Business users can define routing rules with a user-friendly interface.
AI assists in mapping and optimising order flows.
The future of ecommerce lies in real-time data visibility.
B2B commerce presents significant growth opportunities.

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In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, Paul Rogers speaks with Lana Rush and Ben Jones from Osprey London about their recent replatforming project to Centra.

They discuss the challenges faced with Magento, the rationale behind the transition, and the goals for their digital flagship store.

The conversation delves into the evaluation of different platforms, the benefits of headless commerce, and the importance of a strong tech stack. It's interesting to hear why a leading brand chose Centra over Shopify, and the advantages the Centra ecosystem offers the ecommerce team.

Lana and Ben also touch on international expansion strategies and the partnership with Grebban, highlighting the future roadmap for Osprey London.

Key takeaways:

Osprey London is a heritage brand needing digital transformation.
Transitioning from Magento to Centra was driven by technical limitations.
The focus was on brand storytelling and immersive customer experience.
Headless commerce offers creative freedom and flexibility.
International expansion is a key growth strategy for Osprey London.
The tech stack includes innovative solutions like Depict and Ingrid.
Working with Greban has streamlined maintenance and bug fixing.
Future projects will enhance customer engagement and brand loyalty.

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In this ecommerce podcast, James Gurd speaks with Elian Kool, CTO of VUI Eyeware, about their digital transformation journey in the eyewear industry.

They discuss the challenges of consolidating technology and processes, the importance of a phased approach to tech migration, and the selection of the right ecommerce platform. Elian explains why VIU selected Commerce Layer as their platform and shares insights on order management, after-sales solutions, and the role of automation in improving operational efficiency.

During the conversation, Elian discusses the complexities of automating lens ordering processes, streamlining after sales operations, and leveraging technology to enhance customer experience. He emphasises the importance of a unified system that integrates various functions, such as sales, inventory management, and appointment booking, to improve operational efficiency.

The podcast then explores the operational side of the business, exploring how Elian built a lean development team, adopting agile practices for frequent deployments, and utilising data to measure customer satisfaction and feedback.

Key takeaways:

Digital transformation requires a focus on customer experience.
Consolidation of data is crucial for operational efficiency.
A phased approach to tech migration reduces risk.
Order management should be integrated with sales processes.
Effective data management prevents errors and improves service.
Streamlining after sales processes can significantly cut costs.
Using Sanity for product data management allows for flexibility and efficiency.
A lean development team can achieve significant results in a short time.
Daily deployments enhance responsiveness to business needs.
Agile practices can be adapted to suit the team's workflow.

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In this ecommerce podcast, James Gurd and Carl Hendy discuss the evolving landscape of organic SEO, particularly in the context of ecommerce.

Carl is a well respected voice in the ecommerce and SEO industry, having delivered SEO audits and strategies for some of the biggest content and comerce website, including John Lewis, M&S, British Airways and Eventbrite.

They explore the impact of AI on search results, the fragmentation of search, and the importance of brand management in maintaining organic visibility. Carl shares insights on how brands can adapt their strategies to navigate these changes and optimise their online presence effectively.

Key takeaways:

Organic SEO remains critically important despite the rise of paid media.
The presentation layer of search has changed significantly with AI.
Search is becoming fragmented across various platforms, not just Google.
AI overviews are negatively impacting click-through rates for organic listings.
Brands need to manage their online reputation more proactively.
50% of all search queries are branded, which is often overlooked.
Controlling the user experience is crucial for brand visibility.
Over-optimisation can lead to confusion and reduced effectiveness in SEO.
Luxury brands may face challenges in the AI-driven ecommerce landscape.
Brands should focus on audience-led content that works across multiple channels.

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In this podcast, James Gurd and Alice Brown, founder of Seventh Wave Stories, delve into the intricacies of creating a coherent content strategy that resonates with audiences.

They explore Alice's journey from surf coaching to becoming a messaging strategist, emphasising the importance of understanding audience psychology and conducting thorough customer research.

The discussion highlights the balance between brand voice and customer insights, the role of AI in copywriting, and the evolving landscape of personalised content. They also touch on the significance of emotional connection in copy and the future of content strategies in 2025.

Key takeaways

Alice transitioned from surf coaching to marketing by helping others overcome obstacles.
Understanding messaging is crucial for all businesses.
Effective messaging requires a blend of emotional resonance and data-driven strategy.
Brands often struggle to align their voice with customer expectations.
Customer research should involve direct conversations, not just surveys.
One-to-one interviews yield deeper insights than focus groups.
Balancing brand values with customer insights is essential for effective messaging.
Personal content

James Gurd and Paul Rogers discuss the challenges of product data quality in ecommerce with Vidar Trojenborg, co-founder of Emfas.

Vidar has a lot of experience building ecommerce tech stacks to improve and manage product data, having previously held the role of Head of Data & Technology at ASKET.

In the po dcast, we explore how AI can automate product data management, improve catalog quality, and bridge the gap between product and ecommerce teams.

Vidar shares insights on the importance of context-aware AI, the role of guidelines in maintaining brand integrity, and the future of ecommerce technology. The conversation also touches on translation challenges and the integration of Emfas with existing ecommerce platforms.

Key takeaways:

Data quality issues are a common challenge in ecommerce.
Bridging the gap between product and ecommerce teams is crucial.
Emfas uses AI to maintain content authenticity and tone of voice.
The platform automates the auditing of product data.
Guidelines can be set for AI-generated content.
Emfas can handle large catalogues efficiently with rules.
Context-aware AI ensures accurate product descriptions.
Translation rules can be customised for different languages.
The future of ecommerce will heavily involve AI technology.

LISTEN:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/re-platform-replatforming-podcast/id1488091548

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25sR2mHAFdsVmrZoHMibzZ

Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/6b90a9bb-1554-4d79-849f-066f6139346b/re-platform---ecommerce-cx-and-technology-podcast

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In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, Paul Rogers speaks with David Franks, co-founder of Zelph, a SaaS platform designed to help brands and retailers expand their product catalogues without holding inventory.

Zelph's tech is proven at scale, having been built originally to power Kick Game's ecommerce marketplace, processing £50m+ GMV annually.

David shares insights into the challenges faced while scaling Kick Game, the demand for inventory solutions, and the technical complexities involved in building Zelph. The conversation also explores market trends, misconceptions about drop shipping, and the seamless integration of Zelph with Shopify, emphasising the importance of inventory management and strategic pricing for profitability.

Paul and David also discuss the current ecommerce landscape, focusing on the integration capabilities of Zelph with platforms beyond Shopify, the dominance of Shopify in the market, the potential of circular marketplaces, and the future vision for Zelph, including AI-driven innovations and market strategies.

Key takeaways:

Inventory risk is a significant concern for many retailers.
Standardising supplier data is a complex challenge.
Marketplaces are evolving into ecosystem builders.
Margins can be profitable with strategic pricing and negotiation.
Inventory management is automated to ensure accuracy.
Zelph will extend to other platform integrations, with Magento a focus
Circular marketplaces are gaining traction, but brands need to offer incentives.
The resale market is growing, especially among younger consumers.
Brands must be intentional in their approach to resale to avoid low volume.
Zelph aims to redefine how brands and retailers scale their offerings.
AI will play a crucial role in supplier matching and catalogue management.

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In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, James & Paul host a discussion with Emily Mcmorran, Customer Journey Manager for Oh Polly, and Samir Kamnani, Senior Product Manager at Loop, about the evolving landscape of return strategies in ecommerce.

They delve into the shift towards paid returns, the impact on customer perception, and the importance of managing returns as a part of the overall customer experience. The conversation also covers innovative solutions like Offset Returns Coverage, and how brands can leverage returns data to improve their service.

The episode concludes with insights into future trends in returns management and the delicate balance between customer satisfaction and operational viability.

Key takeaways:

Returns are a significant aspect of the customer journey. 2. The trend of charging for returns has increased significantly post-pandemic. 3. Shoppers are becoming more aware and accepting of return fees. 4. Offering a simple and fair return policy can mitigate negative feedback. 5. New customers often appreciate a free first return to gauge sizing.6. Brands are increasingly viewing returns as an opportunity rather than a burden.7. Utilising returns data can help identify product issues and improve offerings.8. The focus for brands is shifting towards encouraging exchanges over refunds.9. Balancing customer experience with return policies is a complex but necessary task.

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James Gurd and Hamish McKay discuss the critical need for order editing in ecommerce, exploring the challenges faced by customer service teams and the impact of order editing on returns and customer experience.

Hamish shares his journey as a startup founder, the growth of his company, and the technical solutions developed to address common issues in order management. The discussion also touches on the potential for upselling through order editing and the importance of addressing fraud concerns in the ecommerce space.

The podcast also discusses the intricacies of order editing, focusing on fraud prevention, rapid response to merchant needs, and the latest features including multi-currency support. It emphasises the importance of shipping recalculation, switching payment methods, and handling support tickets effectively.

The discussion concludes with an explanation of how merchants can get started with order editing, and the potential for future expansion beyond the Shopify ecosystem.

Key takeaways:

Order editing is essential for improving customer experience.
Many ecommerce teams struggle with order changes post-purchase.
Customer service agents often spend significant time on order edits.
Reducing return volume can have a positive environmental impact.
Upselling opportunities arise from allowing order edits.
Technical solutions can delay order processing to accommodate changes.
Fraud prevention is a key consideration in order editing; dynamic fraud checks can be implemented during the editing process.
Shipping recalculation can be complex but is essential for customer satisfaction.
Switching payment methods is a common reason for order cancellations.
Support tickets can hold orders until resolved, improving customer service.

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In this podcast, James Gurd interviews Jon Cleaver, CTO of a prominent sports shoe brand, about the challenges and strategies involved in digital transformation within the company.

Jon shares his extensive background in retail, and discusses the importance of resilience and adaptability in project management. He outlines the key challenges he faced upon joining the company, including team morale, technology issues, and stakeholder engagement. Jon emphasizes the need for quick wins and effective communication to build trust and drive change, while also addressing resistance to change and the importance of customer feedback in the redesign of their ecommerce stack.

In this conversation, Jon discusses their iterative approach to launching ecommerce platforms, emphasising the importance of learning from mistakes and customer feedback. He highlights the challenges of SEO during replatforming and the decision-making process behind choosing BigCommerce as a flexible ecommerce solution.

The discussion also covers the impact of these changes on the engineering team dynamics and the transition from project management to product management, showcasing the need for adaptability and continuous improvement in a fast-paced digital environment.

Key takeaways:

Digital transformation requires resilience and adaptability.
Building team morale is crucial for project success.
Addressing complex areas early can mitigate project risks.
Strong engineering teams are essential for successful project delivery.
Building a headless architecture allows for greater customisation.
Creating a flexible toolset empowers teams to work efficiently.
Identifying quick wins can drive momentum in change initiatives.
Incremental delivery helps manage change effectively.
Involving cross-functional teams in discovery fosters collaboration.
Using a headless CMS can streamline operations and reduce bottlenecks.
Understanding customer needs is essential for successful redesigns.
Transitioning to product management requires a shift in mindset and processes.

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In this episode, James Gurd, Liam Quinn and Paul Rogers discuss the current state of AI in ecommerce, exploring its adoption, opportunities, challenges, and the future of AI agents.

They delve into the importance of creative direction, data strategy, and the role of third-party tools in enhancing AI capabilities for brands. The conversation highlights the rapid advancements in AI technology and its implications for customer service, visual content generation, and overall brand strategy.

Key takeaways:

AI adoption in ecommerce is still in its early stages.
Customer service is a key area for AI implementation.
Brands must ensure quality data for effective AI use.
Creative direction remains crucial alongside AI technology.
AI can significantly enhance visual content generation.
Data structure is essential for leveraging AI effectively.
AI agents could revolutionise user interactions with brands.
Brands need to be agile in their AI strategies.
The legal landscape around AI-generated content is evolving.
Third-party tools are emerging to support AI integration.

Stay connected with the leading ecommerce platforms. In this episode, we interview leaders and visionaries from Shopify, BigCommerce, Centra, Commerce Layer, Remarkable Commerce, Scayle and Shopline for a fireside chat on what’s happened in Q3 and Q4 2024.

Every 6 months, we catch-up with the leadership teams of leading ecommerce vendors so you can hear directly from them about their strategic and product focus.

For this episode, we’re discussing key product updates, go-to-market focus, major new wins and what the roadmap focus will be for the next quarter.

Timings:

02:05 > BigCommerce

18:50 > Centra

38:35 > Commerce Layer

52:55 > Remarkable Commerce

1:11:35 > Scayle

1:22:45 > Shopify

1:37:40 > Shopline

Contact details for all vendors are on the landing page on insidecommerce.fm

Episode summary:

In this conversation, Janis Thomas, Managing Director of Look Fabulous Forever, discusses the importance of catering to a mature audience in the beauty industry.

She shares insights on the brand's mission to celebrate mature beauty, the challenges faced by older consumers, and the need for representation in marketing.

Janis emphasises the significance of building knowledge about customer needs, the role of educational content in engaging customers, and the impact of user-generated content in fostering community.

The discussion also touches on effective marketing strategies that prioritise customer journeys and trust-building. Janis also shares insights on driving repeat purchases, the significance of customer acquisition strategies, and the role of educational content in enhancing user experience.

The episode then explores the impact of quizzes on customer engagement, the importance of personalisation in the shopping journey, and the four pillars of customer loyalty that go beyond traditional discount strategies.

Key takeaways:

Authenticity in branding is crucial for customer trust.
Customer feedback is integral to product development.
Educational content is key to customer engagement.
User-generated content helps build community and trust.
Diversity in marketing teams is essential for representation
Understanding customer journeys enhances marketing effectiveness.
Quizzes can serve as valuable tools for customer engagement.
Personalisation should cater to both new and returning customers.
Community building fosters customer loyalty and advocacy.
Variable rewards can create excitement and engagement.
True loyalty is built on relationships, not just discounts.

Summary:

In this episode, James Gurd and Paul Rogers discuss the evolving landscape of technology change in ecommerce, focusing on the shift from tactical solutions to strategic decision-making.

They explore the importance of ecosystems in technology selection, the changing roles in project management, and the critical need for customer leads to oversee ecommerce projects.

The conversation also highlights the significance of understanding commercial considerations, managing risks, and ensuring thorough UAT processes to achieve successful technology migrations.

Key takeaways:

The market has shifted towards strategic decision-making in technology change.
Ecosystems are now a critical consideration in technology selection.
Project management roles are evolving to include more strategic oversight.
There is a need for independent due diligence in technology selection.
Technical discovery should not be rushed; it requires thorough exploration.
Customer leads are essential for bridging the gap between agencies and clients.
Understanding the timing of license fees is crucial for budgeting.
UAT processes need to be well-managed to avoid surprises
Agencies have become more capable in handling complex projects
Contingency planning is vital for successful project execution.

Happy New Year. After a two week break, which seems like an eternity in ecommerce, we're back and raring to go.

To kick-off 2025, we're looking at the broader economic picture and the intersection between macro events and ecommerce strategy, assessing the key trends we think will shape the ecommerce industry this year and which ecommerce teams need to be planning for.

We've pulled out 5 factors that we think will have the greatest macro impact on ecommerce businesses.

Mortgages and interest rates
Inflation
Stronger wage growth
Trump’s tariffs
Global supply chains

And then explore 6 key trends that arise from the current economic situation:

Cross border commerce
Loyalty & referrals
Content and top of funnel become more important
Technology consolidation
Flexible payments
Returns As A Service (RaaS)

Key takeaways:

Understanding macroeconomic factors helps shape marketing strategies.
The economic outlook in UK & US is slightly more positive than 2024 but still cost pressures on many households.
Consumer confidence is crucial for driving discretionary spending.
Premium & luxury brands are better insulated from the impact of shopping patterns due to rising costs.
Tariffs will significantly impact supply chain costs and operations.
Flexibility in supply chains is necessary to mitigate supply chain volatility.
Investing in inventory management is essential for ecommerce success.
Loyalty programs should focus on building long-term customer relationships.
Community engagement enhances brand loyalty and customer retention.
Buy now, pay later options can improve conversion rates if communicated effectively.
Ecommerce brands should explore less competitive international markets for growth.

Every year, Inside Commerce looks back at the key trends that shaped the ecommerce industry over the past 12 months.

In this episode, James and Paul discuss the evolving landscape of ecommerce as they reflect on the trends of 2024. They highlight the following:

More positive sales outlook & better consumer confidence
Consumers becoming increasingly value focused
Renewed focus on the importance of international markets
Emergence of focused use cases for GenAI
Growing significance of brand collaborations and influencer marketing.
Increased focus on loyalty and subscription strategies
Greater emphasis on sustainability

The discussion emphasises the need for brands to adapt to changing consumer preferences and leverage technology to enhance their strategies. We explore what's shaping consumer behaviour and the future of online retail, emphasising the need for brands to adapt and innovate in a competitive market.

Key takeaways:

Ecommerce is seeing a more positive sales outlook in 2024.
International markets are becoming a key focus for brands.
Consumers are increasingly value-oriented in their purchasing decisions.
AI is being integrated into ecommerce for practical use cases.
Collaborations between brands are on the rise as a marketing strategy.
Influencer marketing has matured with better tools and reporting.
Loyalty programs are evolving to focus on rewarding positive customer behaviour.
Subscription models are shifting towards quality and service rather than just discounts.
Sustainability is becoming a priority for brands and consumers alike.
Brands are investing more in creative content and brand strategy.
The importance of data in shaping marketing strategies is increasing.

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In this episode, James Gurd & Paul Rogers interview David Magee, Product Director at World of Books, about their recent migration from Commercetools to Shopify.

The conversation covers the strategic shift towards direct-to-consumer sales, the challenges faced with their legacy tech stack, and the innovative solutions implemented during the migration process.

David shares insights on the importance of middleware, A/B testing for performance validation, and the project management structure that supported this significant transition.

In this conversation, David Magee discusses the integration of Algolia for search and recommendations, the challenges faced in navigating international markets with Shopify, and the transition to Shopify Enterprise.

He emphasises the importance of a build-measure-learn approach during migration, the significance of partner selection, and the complexities of launching a new site while ensuring a good customer experience. The discussion highlights the lessons learned from these experiences and the proactive strategies needed to overcome challenges in ecommerce.

Key takeaways:

World of Books aims to be the world's largest sustainable online bookstore.
The migration to Shopify was driven by rising costs and the need for innovation.
Custom middleware was developed in-house to handle complex data integration.
A/B testing was crucial to validate the new site's performance against the legacy system.
Direct involvement from leadership was essential for project success.
The migration process included extensive customer feedback and competitor analysis.
Understanding data quality was key to the migration process.
Understanding platform limitations is crucial during migration.
A build-measure-learn approach is vital for success.
Deciding when to launch a new site is complex.
Collaboration with Shopify's product team was valuable.
Clarity on success metrics helps align team efforts.

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In this podcast, James Gurd and Paul Rogers delve into the concept of unified commerce, exploring its definition, evolution, and practical implications in the ecommerce landscape.

They discuss the similarities between unified commerce and omnichannel strategies, emphasising the importance of data integration and customer experience. The conversation also highlights the challenges of payment systems and the complexities of global operations. Through examples of successful brands, they illustrate how unified commerce principles can be effectively implemented, while also addressing the future of ecommerce strategies.

Key takeaways:

Unified commerce is a rebranding of omnichannel strategy.
Data integration is crucial for creating a seamless customer experience.
Payment systems can complicate platform consolidation in ecommerce.
The democratisation of technology has lowered barriers for small businesses.
Unified commerce aims to simplify operations without compromising customer experience.
Globalisation presents unique challenges for unified commerce strategies.
The conversation around unified commerce is often clouded by jargon and semantics.
A strategic aim of unified commerce is to consolidate technology and processes.
The future of ecommerce will focus on data-driven decision making.

Replatforming isn't always the best solution to technology challenges.

An ecommerce platform can be fit-for-purpose but the implementation flawed, or outdated, resulting in the business thinking the issue is the underlying tech. Sometimes it's quicker, cheaper and more effective to improve how the current platform is built rather than pivot to a new vendor ecosystem.

For this podcast, James Gurd and Michal Klim discuss the complexities of re-engineering ecommerce platforms, particularly focusing on Shopify. Michal is the CTO of respected development agency Commerce UI, and recently helped Pangaia re-engineer their Shopify storefront and tech stack.

James & Michal explore the concept of technical and process debt, the importance of thoughtful maintenance, and the challenges of historical decisions in technology.

Michal shares insights from his work with Pangaia, emphasising the need for a clean slate approach to build better solutions. The discussion also covers the role of automation, the use of Shopify Flow and MetaObjects, and the integration of third-party tools, culminating in a conversation about transitioning from classic to new customer accounts.

Key takeaways:

Re-engineering can be a better solution than re-platforming.
Technical debt accumulates over time and needs addressing.
Thoughtful maintenance is crucial for long-term success.
Historical decisions can complicate current technology choices.
A clean slate approach can lead to better outcomes.
Simplifying complexity can enhance user experience.
Automation tools can significantly improve operational efficiency.
Shopify Flow and MetaObjects provide powerful solutions to operational challenges.

Loyalty is a hot topic in ecommerce. For this podcast, we're joined by Ed Bull, owner of leading ecommerce agency Limesharp. We discuss the evolving landscape of loyalty programs in the luxury and premium brand sectors, exploring how brands are redefining loyalty beyond traditional points systems, focusing on strategic approaches to customer behavior, the balance between rewards and profitability, and the importance of measuring success through key metrics.

The discussion highlights the need for brands to adapt their loyalty strategies, especially during peak trading periods, and the changing perceptions of loyalty programs in the industry. We delve into the intricacies of loyalty programs, discussing tier movements, the impact of gamification and community engagement, common pitfalls in managing loyalty initiatives, and future trends in the loyalty landscape.

The episode emphasises the importance of understanding customer behaviour, the need for personalisation, and the potential of leveraging influencers to enhance customer experiences. It also highlights the evolving nature of loyalty programs and the necessity for brands to adapt to changing consumer expectations.

Key takeaways:

Loyalty programs are evolving beyond traditional points systems.
Brands need to understand customer behaviour through data analysis.
CFOs are crucial in discussions about loyalty program profitability.
Loyalty doesn't have to be publicly advertised to be effective.
Surprise and delight tactics can enhance customer loyalty.
Measuring the speed of movement between loyalty tiers is important.
Tracking unspent loyalty points is essential for program management.
Loyalty programs can formalize existing rewards that brands already offer.
Gamification can enhance customer interaction with brands.
Community-driven loyalty programs are gaining popularity.
Brands should avoid punishing customers for inactivity.
The future of loyalty will focus on hyper-personalisation.
Influencer partnerships can create unique loyalty experiences.

There's a feeling in the industry that some AI tools are solutions looking for a problem. In this podcast, we explore an AI solution that has a clear ecommerce use case and is focused on improving customer experience.

James Gurd speaks to Klevu co-founders Nilay and Niraj about their new product, Asklo, which integrates AI chatbots into ecommerce product journeys to enhance customer experience. This is the a logical evolution to PDP Q&As, with customers able to get real-time responses to product and service questions, rather than waiting for a reply.

The episode discusses the importance of optimising user journeys, the technology behind Asklo, and how it can improve conversion rates. The conversation also explores case studies demonstrating Asklo's effectiveness in reducing PDP bounce rate by 30%.

Key takeaways:

Asklo aims to democratise product discovery in ecommerce by providing AI-generated Q&A on the PDP
AI can significantly improve customer experience and conversion rates.
Understanding user intent is crucial for effective product recommendations.
The technology behind Asklo includes Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
Real-world case studies show a 30% reduction in bounce rates from PDPs.
Integration with existing systems is seamless and quick (measured page speed impact of 15ms)
Customisation options allow brands to control responses and tone.
The future of AI in e-commerce will focus on seamless user journeys.

Summary:

In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, Paul Rogers and Joe Fletcher discuss the critical aspects of ecommerce reporting, focusing on the importance of data measurement, key performance indicators (KPIs), and the challenges posed by new tools like GA4.

They explore the significance of conversion rates, tracking, and common mistakes businesses make in their reporting processes.

The conversation also delves into how businesses should approach their reporting needs, the value of understanding customer behaviour, and the various methods of attribution that can be employed to gauge marketing effectiveness.

Key takeaways:

Ecommerce has matured significantly, especially post-iOS changes.
Critical KPIs should tie back to fundamental business outcomes.
Conversion rates need to be contextualised for meaningful insights.
GA4 presents challenges but offers powerful data if utilised correctly.
Tracking issues can lead to downstream reporting problems.
Data silos can obscure the true performance of marketing efforts.
Businesses should start with their needs before selecting reporting tools.
Customer sentiment is a vital but often neglected metric.
Understanding the value of customers is essential for growth.
A hybrid approach to attribution is often the most effective.

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In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, Luke Hodgson from Commerce Thinking explains the common issues with ERPs and their integration with ecommerce platforms.

The conversation explores the importance of understanding ERP systems for ecommerce leaders, the evolving role of ecommerce directors post-COVID, and the demand for ERP in new businesses.

The discussion also delves into the role of middleware in ecommerce integrations, challenges related to peak order volumes, and strategies for maximising back office performance. Finally, we discuss the significance of technical leadership in ecommerce and provide practical advice for businesses facing integration issues.

Key takeaways:

E-commerce leaders must understand their ERP systems.
The demand for ERP has evolved post-COVID.
Middleware plays a crucial role in integration.
Peak order volumes require careful planning and execution.
Technical leadership is essential for e-commerce success.
Brands are increasingly exploring alternatives to traditional ERP systems.
Effective communication with partners is vital during peak periods.
Breaking down problems into stages helps identify issues.
A tech leader should facilitate collaboration among stakeholders.
The right technical resources are crucial for successful ERP implementation.

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In this episode of Inside Commerce, James Gurd and Paul Rogers discuss the critical decision-making process surrounding technology investment versus viewing technology migration as a cost reduction opportunity. They emphasize the importance of focusing on value rather than merely cutting costs, exploring the nuances of licensing fees, the significance of building business cases to justify technology investment. The conversation also highlights the need for customisation in SaaS platforms and the importance of planning for cost neutrality in long-term strategies via offsetting existing costs.

Key takeaways

Investing in technology should focus on value, not just cost reduction.
Understanding the nuances of licensing fees is crucial for accurate budgeting.
A strong business case is essential for technology change.
Positioning your investment request effectively can lead to better outcomes.
Marketing spend should be viewed as an investment in long-term growth.
Cost neutrality can be a strategic goal in technology investments.
Customisation may be necessary to achieve desired customer experiences.
Avoid standardised approaches that limit differentiation in SaaS.
Consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) when evaluating platforms.
Evaluate where costs can be offset to support new investments.

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🔥 This podcast will interest a broad audience. Paul Rogers and James Gurd discuss how the B2C ecommerce marketplace has become crowded, and where vendors need to focus to get attention, and why.

If you're working for:

A retail ecommerce business

An ecommerce platform

An agency/consultancy that advises/builds tech stacks

Get your comfy seat ready 😃

Why is this episode important?

The ecommerce vendor market is crowded. There are a lot of platform telling similar product suitability stories, albeit through different lenses and campaigns.

For merchants, unless you're niche, it's hard to cut through the volume of content to discern meaningful differences that give you the confidence to decide which route to take.

What we discuss:

🥱 Why changing terminology doesn't cut through e.g. omnichannel to unified.

🚤 Ecommerce businesses want speed to market, agility, automation.

🔎 DTC mass market has no space left for new players - Shopify dominates but niche / vertical specific solutions have potential.

🥸 Some vendors have already recognised this e.g. Centra, BigCommerce.

🔬 The winning vendors will be those who focus on burning challenges and critical use cases to deliver battle ready solutions.

Key takeaways:

Vendors must differentiate themselves to stand out.
Understanding merchant needs is crucial for platform success.
Niche solutions can provide a competitive advantage.
AI is set to transform ecommerce functionalities.
Connectivity with specialist 3rd parties is essential for growth.
Merchants prefer platforms that offer pre-integrated solutions.
Vendors should focus on specific use cases to attract clients.
The future lies in targeting specific verticals effectively.
A balanced approach is necessary for sustainable growth.

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In this episode of the Inside Commerce podcast, James Gurd interviews Seb Villien, the Digital Director at Smythson, discussing the nuances of customer experience and personalisation in the context of luxury brands.

They explore the differences between high street fashion and luxury retail, the importance of user experience, and how Smythson enhances customer service to drive revenue.

Seb shares insights on the role of AI, the significance of empowering customer service teams, and the strategies for measuring success and fostering customer loyalty. The conversation also touches on the challenges of internationalisation and localisation in delivering a consistent brand experience across different markets.

Key takeaways:

Customer experience is crucial for luxury brands.
Smythson focuses on storytelling in their collections.
Post-purchase experience is key to customer satisfaction.
AI is used to support, not replace, human interaction.
Customer service can drive revenue and loyalty.
Empowering teams leads to better customer experiences.
Personalisation is essential in luxury retail.
A thorough recruitment process is vital for customer service roles.
Internationalisation requires balancing global brand consistency with local adaptation.
Technology should be maximised before seeking new solutions.

In this podcast, Paul Rogers interviews Philipp Mensch, head of growth at Luca Faloni, an Italian premium menswear brand.

We explore the brand's recent replatforming to Centra from Shopify, focusing on the need for a scalable and flexible tech stack to support international growth.

Philipp shares insights on managing internal resources during the migration, the importance of internationalisation and localisation, and the brand's commitment to a direct-to-consumer strategy.

We also explore the omnichannel experience, customer services, and the evolving approach to loyalty programs, emphasising the need for a unique and engaging customer experience.

Philipp also provides his thoughts on the future roadmap for Luca Faloni, highlighting the focus on continuous innovation and improvement in the omnichannel space.

Key takeaways:

Luca Faloni focuses on high-quality, timeless menswear.
The decision to replatform was driven by international growth needs.
Centra's headless solution offers flexibility and scalability.
A hybrid approach was used for resource management during migration.
Localisation includes language, currency, and seasonal content adjustments.
Direct-to-consumer strategy is prioritised over wholesale.
Omnichannel services include endless aisle orders and gift cards.
Loyalty programs aim to create brand ambassadors, not just transactions.
Integration of loyalty with CRM enhances customer experience.
Future plans include improving omnichannel logistics and communication.

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Paul Rogers speaks with Anton Johansson, founder of Grebban, about the evolving landscape of ecommerce design and branding. They discuss the importance of creating a compelling brand experience, the shift towards investing in creative over development, and the role of AI in enhancing customer interactions.

The conversation also touches on the significance of community engagement, the impact of dopamine culture on design, and emerging trends in ecommerce. Through case studies like Djerf Avenue, they explore how innovative design can drive customer loyalty and conversion.

Key takeaways:

Investing in creative is essential for brands to engage customers.
Ecommerce design should focus on brand experience, not just transactions.
AI will significantly change the shopping experience in the future.
Community engagement is crucial for building brand loyalty.
Dopamine culture influences how users interact with websites.
Design subscriptions offer a continuous approach to creative needs.
Personalisation will become more advanced with AI technology.
Static websites struggle to retain user attention; interactivity is key.
Using two agencies can enhance both creative and technical aspects of projects.
Emerging design trends emphasise community and interactive elements.

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Flexible working is a hot topic. Amazon is the latest company to stir up debate around the virtues of giving employees the best possible work/life balance.

A CBI Employment Trends survey found that 99% of all businesses surveyed believe that a flexible workforce is vital or important to competitiveness. BUT...

Flexibility means different things to different people e.g. working around school runs, being able to work from home, starting later and finishing later, not having to take annual leave for appointments etc.

And you need to consider diversity and inclusivity.... it's not as easy as it looks!

We borrowed a quote from Sara Russell, Marketing Director at 5874 Commerce to kick start our debate:

“So does the eCommerce industry need flexible working? If we want to attract and retain top talent, keep our teams engaged and provide top-level customer satisfaction then yes we do.”

Tune in to listen to different approaches from three highly respected digital leaders: Ross Allsop, Director of Growth at PANGAIA, Dan Partridge, CEO at leading Shopify partner Swanky (Shopify Plus Agency) and Paul Rogers, MD at award winning digital agency Vervaunt.

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This podcast delves into the evolving landscape of return strategies in ecommerce, emphasising the need for retailers to shift their perspective from viewing returns as a cost & policy to recognising them as an important customer service.

The discussion highlights the complexities involved in managing returns, the hidden costs associated with poor return management, and the growing concern of return fraud. Additionally, we explore the impact of return policies on customer loyalty and the importance of defining fair usage.

As more major brands starts to embrace paid returns and reset customer expectations, we also explore technological innovations that can help you streamline return processes and improve customer experiences, ultimately helping you take greater control of your returns strategy and process.

Key takeaways:

Returns should be seen as a service, not just a cost line: services get invested in whereas costs get cut.
Poorly managed returns can lead to significant hidden costs.
Return fraud is a growing concern that needs addressing.
The impact of returns on customer loyalty is significant.
Defining fair usage in return policies is essential for sustainability.
Technological innovations can streamline return processes.
Data analytics is key to understanding return impacts.
The future of returns will involve more personalised and data-driven approaches.

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In this episode, James Gurd and Paul Rogers discuss examples of innovative and creative executions in ecommerce. They highlight features and designs that enhance the customer experience, add value, and drive smarter business decisions.

The examples include Lily's Kitchen, Atoms, Gymshark:, Rimowa, Civilist Berlin, Patagonia, Nudie Jeans, Motel Rocks & Djerf Avenue.

The episode emphasises the importance of standing out and creating points of difference in ecommerce.

Key takeaways:

Innovation in ecommerce involves finding creative executions that enhance the customer experience and drive smarter business decisions.
Features like personalised feeding guidelines, stock notifications with product recommendations, and complex product configuration can add value and improve the customer journey.
Collecting and utilising product reviews can provide valuable insights and help counter conversion barriers.
Customisation options, engaging storytelling, and interactive elements can make the shopping experience more enjoyable and memorable.
Size profiling, curated looks, and brand value storytelling can help customers find the right products and connect with the brand's values.
Attention to design details, such as animations, iconography, and typography, can create a unique and engaging website.
It's important to stand out and create points of difference in ecommerce to drive better outcomes and customer engagement.

In this episode, we discuss BigCommerce's latest product release with Jordan Sim, VP of Product Management, and Joe Comins, director of strategy at leading SI Codal.

The conversation covers topics such as the current direction of BigCommerce's product strategy, the integration of Makeswift into the Catalyst framework, the flexibility and control provided by the visual editor, the workflow management tools, and the advancements in B2B functionality.

Jordan and Joe highlight the importance of providing an unopinionated and flexible platform for businesses to customise their storefronts and manage content.

BigCommerce is focused on B2B strategy, offering unique use cases for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers. They are working on creating a marketplace for B2B and B2C experiences. BigCommerce is also developing AI technology to speed up the B2B quoting process.

They are expanding their multi-storefront functionality to support localised blogs, shipping methods, and variant product data. The ability to have subdirectories in domains is supported through Headless and will be available on Stencil in the future.

Tune in to hear directly from the people shaping BigCommerce's product strategy and implementing solutions for ecommerce businesses.

Key takeaways:

BigCommerce's product strategy is focused on helping customers sell more and equipping them with tools to navigate the challenging retail landscape.
The integration of Makeswift into the Catalyst framework provides a visual editing experience for composable storefronts, making headless builds more accessible to marketers.
BigCommerce offers flexibility and control in managing content across the store, allowing developers and marketing teams to customise the visual editor based on their needs.
The platform provides workflow management tools and publishing controls, enabling collaboration and efficient content creation.
The advancements in B2B functionality, such as advanced account hierarchy, custom roles, and open-source fire port, cater to the needs of larger B2B enterprises and provide flexibility in mimicking their business structures and workflows.
AI technology is being used to speed up the B2B quoting process.
BigCommerce is expanding their multi-storefront functionality to support localised blogs, shipping methods, and variant product data.
Checkout extensions allow for customisation without the need for a custom checkout.
BigCommerce is also investing in feed dynamics, including a connector to the Shein marketplace and instant commerce for same-day delivery and in-store pickup.

Ecommerce is a fast-paced industry, with constant change, new market entrants and incumbents updating their products with new features and fixes.

James & Paul spend a lot of time looking at ecommerce strategy and technology, talking to agencies and technology vendors, so this series is a digest of what they’ve found interesting, what ecommerce teams should be thinking about, as well as highlighting interesting stories and cool tools they come across in their day-to-day work.

In this episode we cover the general, more positive market mood in the ecommerce industry. Inevitably we reference the dominance of Shopify in replatforming projects, the positive outlook for agencies, and the growth of other platforms like BigCommerce and Centra.

We also discuss interesting technology developments, including the launch of Blueprints by Patchworks and the ecommerce design subscription by Grebban. We then cover Amazon Prime Day, drone delivery, and collaborations between non-competitive businesses.

Key takeaways:

Shopify continues to dominate the replatforming market, but other platforms like BigCommerce and Centra are also seeing growth.
The market mood for agencies is more positive, with an increase in inbound leads and a surge in new projects.
Interesting tech developments include the launch of Blueprints by Patchworks and the ecommerce design subscription by Grebban.
Amazon Prime Day saw significant growth in mobile sales and a surge in high-ticket item purchases.
Drone delivery is gaining traction, with Amazon receiving FAA approval for longer flights and beyond visual line of sight.
Collaborations between non-competitive businesses, like Card Factory and Just Eat, are opening up new distribution channels.
Shein is suing Temu for selling counterfeit products, which affects brand reputation and drives up costs for brands.
Vervaunt's Pulse event in New York is expanding, offering a platform for ecommerce professionals to connect and learn.

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Roshni Patel, Head of Ecommerce at Wild Nutrition, joins the podcast to discuss her background and the evolution of ecommerce at Wild Nutrition.

She shares insights on the company's strategy shift after raising private equity, the importance of building the right teams and expertise in-house, and the challenges and benefits of using third-party apps in their tech stack.

Roshni also talks about the role of consultations in driving customer acquisition and retention, the tactics used to turn first-time customers into subscribers, and the focus on personalisation and CDPs in their future roadmap.

Your takeaways

Building the right teams and expertise in-house is crucial for the success of an e-commerce business.
Regularly reviewing the tech stack and evaluating the value delivered by third-party apps is important for growth and efficiency.
Consultations play a significant role in driving customer acquisition and retention, especially in the supplements industry where customers may need guidance.
Tactics like quizzes and personalised experiences can be effective in upselling and increasing the subscription basket.
Reporting on metrics like churn, LTV, repeat purchase rate, and AOV is essential for tracking the success of a subscription-based business.
Expanding into international markets requires careful consideration of regulatory and compliance factors, as well as market demand and product localisation.
Future plans include exploring CDPs and personalisation, optimising the quiz experience, and maximising the value of first-party data.

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Ecommerce personalisation tech has progressed rapidly, with a wide range of vendors to choose from. However, personalisation is often reliant upon pushing product recommendations based on prior and current browsing, and purchase behaviour.

But...

Not everyone visiting your website has purchase intent, and those that do will be in different stages of their decision cycle. Continuing to treat everyone as a high intent buyer isn't an optimal customer experience and is likely to be losing you potential customers.

In this podcast we talk about predicting user intent to improve on-site segmentation and conversion. Our guest, David Mannheim, is the founder of Made With Intent, a tool focused on understanding user intent. The conversation covers topics such as the problems with generic pop-ups and blanket discounting, the importance of segmenting customers based on intent, and the integration options for the tool. David's vision for the future is to embed predictive intent in ecommerce and change the perspective of the industry.

Key takeaways:

Understanding user intent is crucial for effective on-site segmentation and conversion.
Generic pop-ups and blanket discounting are not always the best approach and can be annoying for users.
Segmenting customers based on their intent allows for more personalised and targeted communication.
Made With Intent integrates with various platforms to provide data insights and improve customer experiences.
The future vision is to change how businesses optimise their websites.

Tune in for an interesting and lively debate on user intent.

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In this episode, James Gurd interviews experienced digital marketing strategist Anna Wilson about the role of offline media in ecommerce.

Anna explains the rise of the fractional CMO role, the changing role of offline media in the digital age, and the appeal of direct mail in a crowded digital space.

The podcast will help you understand the relevance of print formats for different audiences, the importance of personalisation in retention strategies, and the measurement of offline marketing success.

We also touch on the role of programmatic direct mail and the challenges and considerations of sustainability in print campaigns.

Key takeaways:

The fractional CMO role has become increasingly popular, especially in the ecommerce space.
Offline media, such as direct mail, is gaining attention and becoming more relevant in the crowded digital marketing landscape.
Direct mail offers a unique opportunity to stand out and engage with customers in a tangible way.
Personalisation is key in both acquisition and retention strategies, and direct mail can be tailored to specific audiences and demographics.
Measuring the success of offline marketing campaigns is relatively straightforward, as it involves tracking responses and analysing the impact on sales and profitability.
Programmatic direct mail is an emerging trend that combines the benefits of automation and personalisation in offline marketing.
Sustainability is an important consideration in print campaigns, and there are options for offsetting the environmental impact of direct mail.

James & Paul interview Hannah Tickle, an experienced experimentation leader who's currently the Experimentation Team Lead at Trainline.

The episode discusses the role of experimentation in ecommerce, the importance of ownership of within organisations, and the impact of hypotheses, testing speed, and data analysis.

Hannah shares insights on building a culture of experimentation and the benefits of using a custom testing stack. She also touches on the challenges of incorporating user feedback and the importance of understanding the limitations of qualitative research.

Takeaways:

True experimentation is essential for ecommerce businesses to improve strategic planning and prioritise product development.
Experimentation should be centralised to ensure accessibility and consistency.
Strong hypotheses are data-backed and focus on testing concepts rather than specific things.
Testing should be fast, light, and big, with a focus on impactful changes rather than small tweaks.
Understanding and analysing data is crucial for effective experimentation, and it's important to consider both quantitative and qualitative feedback.
Building a culture of experimentation requires consistency, responsiveness, and support from senior leadership.

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Let’s set the scene for this podcast. Operational efficiency is critical for ecommerce success. James recently moderated a panel at Dark Matter Commerce’s Commerce Fusion event, exploring the business case for investment in better automation with Green Feathers Ecommerce Director, James Ewens.

The topic for that panel was, "Say goodbye to excel and error-strewn manual work. Hello to automated retail and growing fearlessly".

The conversation was popular with the audience, so we decided to extend the discussion with James Ewens to ultimately answer the WHY, WHEN, WHAT & HOW of evolving from manual and spreadsheet based approaches to running key processes, to increased automation using modern technology.

Although we often joke about Excel or other manual systems managing a business, sometimes it’s the right thing to do given where that business is at. However, scaling on manual processes adds risk and businesses need to identify when it's time to change, and what change is required.

Both James' have first hand experience of large digital transformation projects and give advice on spotting the signs that change is required, the risks of not changing fast enough and the benefits of investing in better systems and processes.

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Stay connected with the leading ecommerce platforms. James & Paul interview leaders and visionaries from Shopify, BigCommerce, Centra, Commerce Layer and Remarkable Commerce for a fireside chat on what’s happened during Q2 2024.

Each quarter, we catch-up with the leadership teams of leading ecommerce vendors so you can hear directly from them what their strategic and product focus has been for the last quarter.

In this episode we cover:

Key trends shaping the vendor's strategy and roadmap
Key product releases from Q2 and impact for merchants
Looking ahead: what's coming in Q3?

Enjoy!

We often find ecommerce teams focus more on search algorithms and campaigns, like product boosting and redirects, less on ensuring the site gets people into relevant search journeys quickly and effectively. Through simple testing, we’ve seen search engagement (the % of users using search) increase by double digits.

In this 10-minute video & audio tutorial, James Gurd shares practical tips for boosting search usage and improving the search experience by focusing on two aspects:

Search box design and visibility

Default view and type-ahead efficiency

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In this episode, we sit down with By Association Only CTO Dan Gamble to review the latest Shopify product release, explaining what it means for merchants and what it reveals about Shopify’s product strategy and GTM focus.

If you’re part of the Shopify universe, then you’ll be well aware of Editions and the marketing bandwagon that accompanies it. Twice a year, Shopfidy drops a major product release containing 100+ new features, features enhancements and technical updates.

There’s a lot of talk about what has landed, less about the implications for ecommerce teams. In this episode, we pick out the important themes and explain what has impressed us, and why. We also discuss how these new features benefit ecommerce teams, whilst highlighting capability gaps that still need to be addressed, flagging which are in-flight but don’t have a committed release date.

We cover the following big topics:

Content management

Markets

Products & merchandising

Customer Service

Reporting and analytics

Checkout B2B

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Welcome to the latest episode of the Inside Commerce Podcast, your go-to source for innovative strategies to enhance your online retail business. In this episode, we explore the challenges of delivering cross-border ecommerce, featuring an interview with the experts at Swap Commerce.

Known for their market-leading returns platform, Swap Commerce now also helps merchants unlock new markets via their new cross border solution.

In this episode, Cian Wright explains how their services — DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) shipping, automatic tax remittance, and express customs clearance — streamline the complexities of international sales. We discuss the advantages of DDP shipping, which ensures that all duties and taxes are paid upfront, offering a seamless experience for customers and reducing unexpected costs at delivery.

An interesting insight is the benefit Swap Commerce provides to finance teams through the automatic clawback of duty on returns. This feature is crucial, as retailers often lose out when using merchant of record solutions that do not offer this functionality. By automatically reclaiming duties on returned items, Swap Commerce helps businesses maintain their profitability and operational efficiency.

Tune in to for advice on your cross-border ecommerce strategy, helping you expand globally while managing the financial intricacies of international trade.

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International expansion is front of mind for many ecommerce teams in 2024. In this episode we delve into the complexities of managing a global ecommerce strategy with the DTC Ecommerce Manager at BRG Group brands, which include Breville and Sage Appliances. Myles shares his experience and insights on navigating the intricacies of maintaining multiple websites across 17 countries, including multiple languages.

The conversation starts with the international setup and tech stack, and then covers the fundamental need for localisation of website content and the shopping experience. Myles explains that localising content is not just about translating text; it's about adapting the user experience to resonate with local cultures, preferences, and behaviours. This involves modifying product descriptions, adjusting imagery, and tailoring marketing messages to align with the expectations and norms of each region. Myles also highlights that true localisation requires a deep understanding of the local market, which often means collaborating closely with local teams or hiring native speakers.

Another key aspect discussed is the importance of standardising the technology stack via central ownership. Myles explains that having a unified platform and centralised control helps ensure consistency, efficiency, and scalability. By standardising on a single ecommerce platform, the brand can streamline operations, manage updates more effectively, and reduce the complexity of maintaining different systems. Central ownership also facilitates better data integration, allowing for more comprehensive analytics and insights across all markets.

However, with centralisation comes the challenge of maintaining a consistently high level of customer service across global teams. Myles candidly discusses the difficulties in achieving uniformity in customer service standards when dealing with diverse teams spread across various time zones and cultural backgrounds. Additionally, leveraging technology such as AI-driven customer service tools can help provide immediate and consistent support, bridging the gap between different regions.

Throughout the podcast, Myles' insights provide a valuable roadmap for any ecommerce manager looking to navigate the complexities of a global ecommerce strategy, balancing localisation, technological standardisation, and exceptional customer service.

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70.19% is the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate. Every ecommerce site has abandoned carts, and trying to recover them is every ecommerce team’s obsession (well, it should be).

In this video short, we talk you through a recommended 3-phase approach to abandoned cart email programs and the role of SMS reminders in the process. Having done this for a few brands, our advice (which should be tested of course!) is:

Don’t discount immediately, focus on customer service & USP prompts
Send the first email within 1hr
Send the second email +24 hrs and remind people stock isn’t reserved (if it is, tell them how long for to create urgency)
Send the second email +48 hrs and now test an incentive to complete the order (doesn’t have to be a discount, could be free shipping)
And most importantly, don’t take my word for it 🙂

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of AI tools and generative AI, focusing on how they're changing the content creation game for ecommerce businesses.

We're joined by highly experienced content and media strategist, James Carson. James was previously MD at History Hit and has led content and digital marketing teams for large publishers like The Telegraph.

We chat about how technology is democratising and revolutionising everything from product descriptions to video and animation, making life easier and more efficient for content teams.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; we also tackle some of the big concerns that ecommerce teams need to keep an eye on. From ensuring the authenticity of AI-generated content to maintaining the human touch in editing and approval flows.

Tune in for a lively discussion that balances the incredible benefits of AI with the potential pitfalls, giving you a well-rounded look at the future of ecommerce.

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We’ve been trying to get CurrentBody's CTO, Andrew Showman, on the podcast for several years to talk about how they run the tech side of their business, having grown it to £80m+ in ecommerce revenue and operating across 14 international stores.

When we last met, Andrew talked about their move to AirTable across a few areas of the business and in this episode he talks us through where it's being used and some of the benefits they've seen.

We’re also impressed with CurrentBody's adoption of AI to drive operational improvements, and focus on how they're using AI within the AirTable setup as well as the impact of Siena for customer services.

Tune in for all this and much more, get insights from a highly respected ecommerce leader and learn how a fast growth brand is using its tech stack.

A PYMNTS Intelligence report, based on a survey of over 3,500 U.S. consumers, found that direct-to-consumer brands are lagging in customer satisfaction compared to traditional retailers and online marketplaces.

We've spoken to many ecommerce leadership teams who don’t have a CX metric in their KPIs. If CX isn’t always measured and reported on at a strategic level, perhaps it’s not surprising to see this dischord.

In this 12 minute masterclass we break down how you should be using NPS on your ecommerce store to measure CSAT effectively and boost CX through proactive campaigns.

Unlock the secrets to running an efficient project team and crafting a winning product roadmap with our new podcast tailored for ecommerce businesses!

Dive into expert insights from B&Q's Digital Optimisation Lead Kaylie Mitten on orchestrating multiple disciplines, from strategic planning to flawless execution.

Learn how to build compelling business cases, manage stakeholders effectively, and deliver impactful Board presentations.

Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this podcast equips you with actionable tips and best practices to navigate the complexities of project management and roadmap planning.

Elevate your ecommerce strategy, streamline operations, and drive success with proven methodologies. Tune in and transform your approach to leading dynamic, results-driven teams!

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OneStock is a leading Order Management System businesses use to grow sales, simplify returns and optimise everything in between. It powers some of the world's leading brands including Whistles, Monsoon & Dune.

Managing supply chain complexity is a challenge for all businesses, with retailers wanting to be able to maximise their sales opportunity through effective inventory management across sales channels and control the logic for when and how stock can be sold.

In this podcast, Joe Till talks about the trends OneStock is seeing in global ecommerce and how their platform is helping retailers improve their OMS capabilities.

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In this podcast, Sniffie founder Tomi Gronfors shares his insights on helping more than 600 ecommerce retailers implement pricing automation strategies.

Dynamic pricing is a strategy where ecommerce brands adjust the prices of their products in real-time based on various factors such as demand, competition, market trends, and customer behaviour.

By implementing dynamic pricing, brands can optimise their pricing to better match what customers are willing to pay at any given moment. For example, during peak shopping periods like holidays or special promotions, brands can increase prices to capitalise on higher demand.

Conversely, during off-peak times, prices can be lowered to attract more buyers and move inventory. This flexibility helps in maximising revenue by ensuring that prices are always aligned with current market conditions, ultimately driving more sales and higher profits.

There is da Vinci quote used in Nick Kolenda’s book on pricing psychology that sums up what I’m talking about in this video masterclass: “All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions”Pricing is perception. How we each react to the same price can be different, depending on our perspectives. For this reason, price doesn’t have an absolute meaning. And if we understand what shapes perception, we can influence how price is perceived.This video explores ten practical ways this applies to ecommerce stores.[01:10] Your building blocks for understanding price[02:40] 1. Price fluency[03:45] 2. Price structure and simplicity[03:45] 3. Anchor high prices with larger numbers[06:30] 4. Break pricing into smaller units[07:15] 5. Use words of a small magnitude[08:25] 6. Alliteration creates a pleasant sensation[09:20] 7. Put the larger WAS price on the left[10:25] 8. Break down product costs[11:50] 9. Encourage customers to spend early[13:10] 10. Emphasise the most popular pricing option

The latest from our monthly ecommerce mini-series, where experienced ecommerce consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers step back to summarise what’s been happening within the ecommerce industry in February.

Ecommerce is a fast-paced industry, with constant change, new market entrants and incumbents updating their products with new features and fixes. James & Paul spend a lot of time looking at ecommerce strategy and technology, talking to agencies and technology vendors, so this series is a digest of what they’ve found interesting, what ecommerce teams should be thinking about, as well as highlighting interesting stories and cool tools they come across in their day-to-day work.

Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website https://insidecommerce.fm

In this podcast, James interviews Paul and his Vervaunt cofounder and performance marketing practice lead, Josh Duggan.

Both recently attended Elevar's US summit on the future of analytics for ecommerce and digital marketing and in this episode we explore what's relevant to ecommerce teams.

GA4
Attribution shifts
Profit
Data collection
Creative
Content

There are rules everyone can follow to improve the PDP for shoppers and drive better conversions. In this video, James Gurd breaks down the steps to achieving nirvana (the place, not the band).

Timings if you want to jump to something specific:

[00:40] Define primary and secondary audiences
[01:02] Build the customer mental model
[01:46] Define your buyer type
[02:28] Get the fundamentals right e.g. title, pricing, images, variants etc.
[09:50] Build in persuasion tactics
[11:20] Add useful information prompts
[12:25] Add navigation aids
[12:55] Add product associations
[13:22] Add contextual browse abandonment
[14:28] Review, adjust and finesse

Technology is redefining customer experiences as traditional retail approaches are adapted to fit with online platforms. As technology keeps transforming commerce, artificial intelligence chatbots have emerged as an essential component in boosting online CX whilst delivering operational gains for customer service teams by reducing ticket volumes.

In this podcast, we chat to the cofounder of one of the leading ecommerce AI chatbots, Siena. Siena is an autonomous customer service platform designed for commerce, combining the best of human empathy and AI to transform your customer experience.

Tune in to discover what's happening in AI, how ecommerce teams are using AI chatbots to improve their ecommerce operations and get advice on running proof of concepts and tracking chatbot performance.

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BigCommerce ran its annual summit last week in London, welcoming more than 400 agency and technology partners, 200 customers and 100 employees from across the globe.

In this podcast, James & Paul digest the latest company news, assessing what the Summit reveals about their market position, go-to-market strategy and what the latest developments reveal about their product proposition and roadmap.

It has been a challenging few years for BigCommerce. Shopify has accelerated its product capability but the pace of roadmap change from BigCommerce hasn’t really delighted merchants. They also had to cut the workforce as part of a global restructuring to align with their go-to-market strategy. However, BigCommerce is still landing marquee clients, really strong in enterprise B2B and has attracted a few exciting B2C brands like White Stuff and The Real Real in the US.

Join Paul and James as they explore the new Catalyst composable storefront, latest news on International & B2B, and what's happening with key product capabilities like Feedonomics and the tight partnership with PayPal that now has a password free checkout in beta in the US.

If you’d like to talk to use about how we can help you evaluate and select your ecommerce tech, please reach out on LinkedIn.

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There has been a lot of change in the ecommerce and marketing tech landscape in the last few years. Leading vendors seeking to expand market reach and increase the LTV of existing customers have broadened their feature set, resulting in trend of tech stack consolidation.

For example, Yotpo now offers loyalty / referrals / SMS / UGC / subscriptions (for Shopify), Klevu has enhanced its core search & merchandising toolkit with personalisation, product recommendations and an AI chatbot for product discovery, and Nosto has bolstered its core product discovery engine with a content personalisation module.

We spend a lot of time advising ecommerce businesses on replatforming and their wider tech stack selection. There are nuances to deciding which platforms to select, and the additional 3rd party tools that are required on the selected platform to deliver the required business functionality and operational gains.

A common challenge is deciding whether to invest in an all-in-one vendor that can offer a pre-connected set of capabilities out-the-box, or building a best-in-class stack using leading vendors for each capability. For example, a Shopify merchant using Yotpo to do all of their loyalty / referrals / SMS / UGC / subscriptions vs. using Yotpo for loyalty & referrals, Reviews.io for reviews and Skio for subscriptions.

There is no single right approach. The optimal tech stack is dependent on many factors including size of business, complexity of requirements and available resources. In this podcast, James & Paul explain how you evaluate the different approaches and sensible decision criteria to help you make the best decision for your business.

If you’d like to talk to use about how we can help you evaluate and select your ecom tech, please reach out on LinkedIn.

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The global email marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. Email still consistently delivers one of the highest ROIs out of all digital marketing channels. But it's constantly evolving, and consumer expectations are definitely high. So, why is it so many brands still push shoppers into generic marketing flows and don't make enough use of behavioural data to segment and tailor their marketing campaigns?

In this episode, we sat down with email marketing specialist Hannah Spicer to explore the latest trends in email marketing, providing practical advice to ecommerce teams wants to improve their campaign strategy and deliver better results. Tune in for the expert view.

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Introducing our new key vendor interview mini series. Each quarter, we catch-up with the leadership teams of leading ecommerce vendors so you can hear directly from them what their strategic and product focus has been for the last quarter.

For this quarter we're speaking to BigCommerce, Centra, Commerce Layer, SCAYLE and Shopify. Hear about their key product updates, go-to-market focus, major new wins and what the roadmap focus will be for the next quarter.

Hot on the heels of Shopify’s smart PR on their platform TCO cost model and value proposition ‘research’, we’re pulling apart why vendor-led cost model analysis needs to be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

The issue: no two TCO models ever show exactly the same cost model structure or calculations, so you’re not getting a true like-for-like comparison and evaluation. This can distort perceptions of value and create false flags, either under or overstating real costs.

There are lots of “research shows platform X has the lowest TCO / fastest ROI” studies, and from our experience this is smoke & mirrors. Which platform ecosystem delivers the most affordable cost model and highest value is dependent upon the size of business, complexity of build, operational setup and a brand’s red lines. It also depends upon how value is defined, and whether or not attempts are made to put a monetary value to things like opportunity cost and operational efficiency.

When a cost model assessment is based on the business type that is best suited to a particular platforms, inevitably the research will demonstrate it hits the value goal.

In this podcast, we break down why you need to be sceptical when vendors publish cost models showing they deliver the most value / quickest ROI. It’s great marketing but we explain why no platform can ever state it consistently delivers the lowest cost for any business. Let’s pick apart cost models!

Patchworks is a leading SaaS integration platform for ecommerce businesses, providing low/no code tools and flow builders to connect data sources and simplify integrations. They work with a wide range of businesses, so have their finger on the pulse of what tech stacks are trending and in most demand.

In this podcast, we caught up with Dave Wileman, VP Sales & Partnerships, and Conor Barr, CTO, to explore the trends Patchwork is seeing around omnichannel commerce and ecommerce data flows during 2023 and into 2024

We explore variance across territories, which markets are most active right now and the business challenges / resistance their customers are facing when migrating from legacy retail systems to modern SaaS tooling like Lightspeed POS.

Tune in for the strategic market view and practical industry insights.

LISTEN:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/re-platform-replatforming-podcast/id1488091548 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/25sR2mHAFdsVmrZoHMibzZAmazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/6b90a9bb-1554-4d79-849f-066f6139346b/re-platform---ecommerce-cx-and-technology-podcastFOLLOW US:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/re-platform-podcast/ EPISODE SUMMARY:All businesses face this challenge: what resources do you need to run an ecommerce store, and how does this change over time to deliver against growth targets?It's a challenge knowing what blend of skills do you need, what should be in-house vs outsourced and how do you structure and manage the team to ensure it delivers against growth targets and performance metrics.In this podcast we’re talking to an experienced ecommerce leader to find out how she approaches these decisions, and what she’s learned from running ecommerce for brands including Waitrose, This Works, Laura Mercier and Bare Minerals.Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website https://replatform.fm

The latest from our monthly ecommerce mini-series, where experienced ecommerce consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers step back to summarise what’s been happening in ecommerce in the last month.

Ecommerce is a fast-paced industry, with constant change, new market entrants and incumbents updating their products with new features and fixes. James & Paul spend a lot of time looking at ecommerce strategy and technology, talking to agencies and technology vendors, so this series is a digest of what they’ve found interesting, what ecommerce teams should be thinking about, as well as highlighting interesting stories and cool tools they come across in their day-to-day work.

Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website replatform.fm

Not another chat about headless! Don't worry, this podcast is packed with practical advice to help you better understand Shopify's headless solution and its relevance to ecommerce merchants.

We’ve heard from some ecommerce teams that it’s not crystal clear what the role of Hydrogen currently is, with frequent improvements to OS and Liquid making them question why a headless approach is needed. We see a long-term future of the Hydrogen / Oxygen stack and, alongside this, theming becoming more low code to help businesses who don’t have custom front-end needs to self-serve more effectively.

Although we’ve spoken quite a bit about headless commerce, we’ve never had a practical discussion around using Shopify’s Hydrogen to explore the genuine pros and cons. Given the surge in popularity of Shopify, it’s the right time to focus on this. To give you the best advice we’re talking to Michal Klim, CTO and Co-Founder at CommerceUI, who has worked with a wide range of customers implementing Shopify solutions.

Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website https://replatform.fm

We recently talked about fixing ISNO issues for ecommerce sites using smarter automation with the team at Sweft. In this episode we’re diving deeper into product data and looking at how ecommerce teams can enrich base data to improve ecommerce trading and operations. It’s an area that doesn’t always get enough attention during site migrations, and has platform specific considerations as well.

We explore why source product data is not always fit for ecommerce needs, the impact partial data has, tools you can use to plug data gaps and ways to add richer data to product records, and the operational benefits this has.

Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website https://replatform.fm

This podcast is inspired by an article from our guest Liam Quinn, Technical Director at Vervaunt, which featured advice from notable luminaries from Yottaa, Render Better and previous podcast guest and respected consultant Erwin Hoffman on optimising for page speed.We all know that the less you put on a webopage, the faster it will be. But we’re not just trying to make pages fast, for brands the customer and brand experience are equally, often more, important. And measured speed is different to perceived speed.There is a lot of data around the impact of speed improvements, with many big business case studie. For example a Deloitte report states that Tui saw a 31% decrease in bounce rates and a 78% reduction in load times through better tech optimisation, eBay found that 0.1 second improvement in load time resulted in a 0.5% increase in Add to Cart count (by reducing the pay load, critical path optimisation for above the fold content & prefetching assets).In this episode we discuss sensible ways to improve page performance, exploring the tools to use and how to use them.

In this episode, Paul & James review what Shopify's latest product roadmap release, Editions Winter 2024, reveals about their strategic focus and how they're positioning the product to tackle known challenges and feature gaps that previously required more work arounds.

Shopify's concerted push into the enterprise space is well known, and the latest drop contains some interesting feature growth for international, omnichannel and order management. What's interesting to see is the ticking off of some edge case features that will appeal to a certain size and complexity of business.

Tune in for insights into what the latest release means for ecommerce teams and how Shopify is evolving its market focus.

How confident are you that your website is fit to serve all users, regardless of how they access and read your content?An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. They represents 16% of the world's population, or 1 in 6 of us. And...they have serious buying power. So, if you've not taken accessibility seriously before, and your approach is to ensure you're not breaking the law but nothing more, then think again. Accessibility is about more than compliance. It's about respecting your customers and ensuring they are able to access and meaningfully use your website. It's also about providing a website that gives you the best chance to turn visitors into shoppers, and hopefully loyal customers.In this podcast we discuss accessibility strategy with Irina Enevska, Manager Accessibility Services at Crownpeak. Irina's team work with ecommerce merchants to audit their websites, then identify and prioritise improvements based on business and customer impact. We explore Crownpeak’s approach to educating customers and helping people get started, because accessibility isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, and the levels of compliance and legal frameworks vary depending on which country you trade in.

The latest from our monthly ecommerce mini-series, where experienced ecommerce consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers step back to summarise what’s been happening with ecommerce technology in January.

Ecommerce is a fast-paced industry, with constant change, new market entrants and incumbents updating their products with new features and fixes. James & Paul spend a lot of time looking at technology, talking to agencies and technology vendors, so this series is a digest of what they’ve found interesting, what is worth ecommerce teams thinking about, as well as highlighting interesting stories and cool tools they come across in their day-to-day work.

Grab your chance to learn from Michael Robinson, the ecommerce retail leader who launched and grew Anthropologie.com into a $200m+ online retailer, and James Brooke, ex-founder and CEO of Amplience, who scaled them into a market leading global DXP.

In this episode we cover a hugely important topic, one that affects pretty much all retailers: maximising inventory availability online.

Getting stock online is harder than it seems! For many businesses, siloed processes and technology result in inefficiency and slow down the speed to market for new products and range launches. Not to mention the sheer number of spreadsheets and manual effort involved to move products from one stage to the next.

The longer a product remains offline, the greater the margin loss because the window of full price opportunity shrinks.

In this episode, we share the combined experience of two ecommerce leaders who are helping ecommerce retailers improve automation and join the dots to speed-up product launches and minimises the number of products that are in stock but not available to buy on the website.

We’re expecting the tough trading conditions from 2023 to continue into H1 2024, perhaps longer in some markets. Retailers are under margin pressure, as discounting bites and CPAs have increased in many digital marketing channels e.g. Google Shopping. At the same time, customer support expectations are increasing, so a focus on delivering the best possible customer experience with the resources available is important.In this ecommerce podcast, experienced ecommerce consultants and strategists James Gurd & Paul Rogers give advice on how ecommerce retailers can measure and report on CX, and take steps to improve the online customer experience using proven techniques.Any questions, please let us know via LinkedIn or using the form on our website https://replatform.fm

There's no better way to start 2024 than with a retrospective on ecommerce technology developments and trends from 2023.

Key discussion points:

The state of ecommerce: trends and growth challenges
The big trend: omnichannel commerce and store sales growth
Investment in B2B/wholesale ecommerce
The growth and dominance of Shopify: why and is this good for the market?
Our take on key updates from leading vendors including Shopify, BigCommerce, Centra, Scayle, Remarkable Commerce
What's hot for 3rd party tech: loyalty, subscriptions, CDPs and last mile delivery
Future gazing for 2024

We hope you enjoy!

We've worked on more than 100 projects between us and have seen all sorts of resource models for technology implementation, from fully in-house to most roles being outsourced to external specialists.

There isn't a one-size fits all solution to resourcing migration projects. In this podcast, we explore the value outsourcing can add to your project, and discuss when it's appropriate.

Don't worry, this isn't a sales pitch. As experienced consultants, we both know there are projects that don't need contractor or consultant support and can be run using a lean project team. However, it's important to know how when and why you might need to invest in external support to compliment your internal team.

In this episode we explore:

When you don't need to invest in external resource
What roles outsourcing can satisfy & when they're needed
The role of contractors: what skills do ecommerce teams typically lack in-house?
Specific skills like integrations and storefront setup > being able to scrutinise agency recommendations on a tech level
Design and content for launch
Technical Discovery phase
How do you control a blended model with internal and external roles?

A recent LinkedIn post from Rick Watson provoked a really good debate. The subline was deliberately eye-catching: Most Enterprise CEOs Would Rather Gnaw Off Their Arm Than Replatform.

There’s no denying change in a large business is more complex and risky, and the status quo will seem preferable to turbulence. However, resistance to change isn't always in a business' best interests, so the C-suite needs reassurance that there are ways to mitigate risk and reduce the turbulence.

In this episode we discuss why large replatforming projects are challenging, what resources are required to plan for and mitigate risk, and practical advice for handling this type of project.

Tune in for Kibo CEO's ecommerce vision for the future and insights into where Kibo sees the world of ecommerce heading and how they're preparing for it strategically and technically.

We're joined by Ram Venkataraman, who has extensive experience in technology strategy and leadership. We discuss:

Kibo's product strategy: a firsthand account from Ram on the philosophy and strategic thinking that drives Kibo's product roadmap.
Latest releases & their impact: understanding the features, benefits and the anticipated influence of Kibo's newest product releases on the ecommerce ecosystem
Implementation Approaches: exploring how Kibo ensures seamless product implementation, guaranteeing efficiency and maximum ROI for their clients
B2B ecommerce:
The split between B2C and B2B customers, and how they're seeing the lines blur as more B2C businesses also switch on B2B commerce
What are the key roles AI is now playing for B2B ecommerce?
How do Kibo's products help enhance B2B customer experience?
Behind-the-scenes: a candid chat on the challenges and triumphs of steering a company like Kibo in a competitive market

Understanding how technology visionaries perceive the market is incredibly valuable. Don't miss out on Ram's insights.

MKM is the UK’s leading independent builder’s merchant, with branches across England, Scotland & Wales. Founded in 1995, they have branches across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom from Redruth to Elgin Norwich and Llandudno.

Ecommerce is an important part of the business, selling to trade customers and connecting online customers with local branches via free Click & Collect.

We're joined by Head of Digital, Craig McClaren, who talks us through MKM's ecommerce evolution story, migrating to a new headless stack built on BigCommerce and Bloomreach DXP.

Craig is an experienced technology and digital commerce leader with specialist knowledge and skills in composable commerce replatforming and devops team building from scratch. He shares insights into the technology decisions MKM made, the positive impact on the business and how, and why, they've built out their own internal engineering team.

Our regular listeners will know that we keep a keen eye on the ecommerce tech scene. Whilst sources like Gartner's Magic Quadrants shouldn't be taken as the gospel, they do provide a useful benchmark for changes in the ecommerce vendor landscape.

A new entrant to the UK market has pushed into Gartner's reckoning in 2023. Scayle Commerce Engine has a strong pedigree in Germany and other parts of mainland Europe. MD Tarek Muller is also the cofounder of one of Germany’s largest ecommerce retailers, About You, which sells 400k+ products from 2k+ brands, generating €5 billion annual sales revenue.

The technology that underpins About You was spun out to create Scayle, providing a PaaS solution to other retailers including Deichmann, Otto Group and Depot. Targeted at larger retailers with a GMV of £100m+, the platform has already proven it's capability at scale.

For this episode we're joined by Tarek, who shares insights on the business strategy, vision and philosophy, and Rico Adler, Head of Solution Consulting At Scayle.

It’s fair to say that Maplin's MD Ollie Marshall has a been a Magento Open Source loyalist and enthusiast for many years. We recorded an episode with him two years ago on how Maplin built a scalable Magento solution, at which point open source aligned with the business and technical needs.

When he announced that Maplin's ecommerce stack would pivot, moving away from open source to a new SaaS solution, we thought it would be interesting to find what brought about the strategic change of direction, and why now.

In this episode we explore the commercial decision-making path, understanding why Ollie decided SaaS was the right approach and what made Shopify the right fit.

An insightful podcast interview with Jim Herbert, CEO at Patchworks, a leading integration specialist. Listeners will gain invaluable insights into the dynamic landscape of ecommerce technology. Patchworks, renowned for its prowess in understanding the intricate web of integrations, empowers businesses with seamless connectivity.

During the episode, Jim Herbert sheds light on the current trends in technology integrations. With a finger on the industry's pulse, Patchworks provides a unique vantage point, discerning the technology choices embraced by thriving ecommerce enterprises. The podcast highlights the prevalence and significance of specific integrations that are currently trending among businesses navigating the digital marketplace.

You'll also get a forecast of the industry's trajectory as Jim shares his perspectives on where ecommerce technology is headed. His predictions and analyses, rooted in Patchworks' expertise, serve as a compass for businesses aiming to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Introducing our new monthly mini-series, where James Gurd and Paul Rogers step back to summarise what's been happening in ecommerce technology in the past month.

Ecommerce is a fast-paced industry, with constant change, new market entrants and incumbents updating their products with new features and fixes.

James & Paul spend a lot of time looking at technology, talking to agencies and technology vendors, so this series is a digest of what they've found interesting, what is worth ecommerce teams thinking about, as well as highlighting interesting stories and cool tools they come across in their day-to-day work.

In this episode:

General market mood heading into November
Key vendor platform news
Major investments
Trends and cool stuff

The marketing automation space is quite crowded with tech, and we like to showcase as many of the leading vendors as possible to help you decide which platforms are relevant.

In this episode we sit down with Voyado to focus on their multichannel marketing and loyalty product, Engage. We explore what type/size of business the product suits, with examples of well known brands using Engage.

We look at the market view, exploring how quickly SMS usage is growing and how this varies across different sectors/verticals.

Then we dive into personalisation and loyalty, discussing what types of personalisation can be realistically achieved and what loyalty techniques are most used by Voyado's ecommerce customers.

Tune in for practical industry and product insights from Karl Stone, an experienced ecommerce technologist.

B2B commerce is growing, and maturing, fast! Many businesses are well aware of the trend, working to transform their sales teams and experiences to meet the growing digital usage of customers. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.

In this B2B focused podcast, we tackle key questions for DTC brands planning their B2B strategy:

Why should DTC brands take B2B commerce seriously, when many are used to offline selling and have processes in place for account management and placing orders?
How are changes in B2B buyer expectations shifting digital demands?
What does a good online customer experience look like for B2B customers?
What are the key ecommerce platform features and functionality your business needs to understand and offer?
What are the operational challenges of evolving to provide a digital B2B channel?
How does the commercial model differ to B2C commerce?

Tune in to get insights from a highly experienced ecommerce leader with a track record of implementing B2B ecommerce technology and implementation growth strategies for B2B retail ecommerce.

This is a slightly different episode, with Paul in Miami on a half vacation / half work trip. Paul invited Shopify expert Alex O'Byrne to discuss the most important platform updates from last week’s Shopify Enterprise summit.

Alex welcomed Paul into his lovely house in Miami Beach, which is definitely the most exciting place we’ve recorded a podcast!

The Shopify summit was really interesting, as it felt like a very different narrative and a different level of energy from Shopify, and a real insight into how they're targeting enterprise level customers by removing previous platform constraints or perceived blockers.

Tune in for the inside view on Shopify's enterprise play and exciting new features that are helping leading agencies counter previous limitations that made Shopify a harder sell to large global businesses.

Josh Scotton is the Co founder and CTO for personalisation engine Personify, and also an Editorial Board Member for Frontiers in AI. For those of you who’ve worked in fashion ecommerce you may know him from his days at Truefit.

True personalisation, not just changing product recommendations based on behaviour, is the holy grail for ecommerce. For example, being able to change the content view based on a user's profile to prioritise content types that person wants to see. Personify provide an anonymous real-time analytics & personalisation platform designed to convert unknown visitors into loyal customers with engaging, automated website personalisation.

In this podcast we unpick what real-time personalisation actually means, and explore tangible ecommerce use cases including content personalisation across different user journeys.

Salesforce Commerce has a long history in the ecommerce platform market, from the acquisition of Demandware to the birth and growth of SiteGenesis. SiteGenesis was built before mobile dominated online shopping, so there are newer architectural options for SFCC customers. Many Salesforce customers are facing a big decision: stick with an old SiteGenesis version, or twist to either SFRA for a mobile-first solution or the newer composable storefront.

In this episode we aim to dispel some of the concerns with remaining on SiteGenesis. Customers don’t have to migrate if they have the right SI partner to maintain SiteGenesis but there are pros and cons of staying on this path that need to be understood, for example limitations with the roadmap, maintenance of 3rd party connectors, effort doing releases and maintaining performance.

The market is evolving, with some Salesforce customers having already moved to SFRA or composable storefront, which is making other retailers review their platform choice.

We’re joined by leading SFCC agency partner Tryzens, who also have experience delivering solutions on ecommerce platforms like Magento and Shopify. Listen to Liam Downes, Director of Strategy and Success, andShivko Rusev, SVP Salesforce Practice, share their views on how to approach Salesforce migrations and what type/size of business is best suited to the modern SFCC solution and why.

Tl;dr

Why Elastic Path's new marketing mantra is the "Unplatform"
Understanding the role of a modern ecommerce platform
Under the hood of Elastic Path’s new product strategy and positioning
Product roadmap for Q423 and beyond

Our industry has a habit of thrusting new buzzwords on the market that create more confusion than clarity! Elastic Path has refreshed its brand identity and is now talking about the 3rd wave of ecommerce platforms being the era of the "Unplatform".

We're playing devil’s advocate: this feels like marketing spin on what’s been a common theme in SME and enterprise for several years, reducing the role of the ecommerce platform and focusing on best in breed. We asked Elastic Path on to talk us through what they mean by Unplatform in relation to systems architecture & the overall technology stack, as well as operational implications for ecommerce teams.

Whilst we agree that the role of the ecommerce platform is narrowing, as businesses focus more on a connected technology stack simplifying the ability to isolate and retire specific components with much less effort and risk, we're not sure the industry needs a new buzzword to hang its hat on. Elastic Path has a lot of knowledge and experience guiding merchants through their technology evolution, so this episode provides a useful insight into their perspective on the market.

Tune in to hear directly from Elastic Path's Chief Experience Officer, Bryan House.

Tl;dr what we cover:

The key differences between headless and non-headless CMS solutions
Why some ecommerce business are moving to headless solutions
Crownpeak's integration capability with leading ecommerce platforms
Key feature walk through: content personalisation, internationalisation and accessibility

In our digital-first world, businesses are continuously adapting to satisfy ever changing customer expectations. Customers want seamless digital experiences across devices but equally the type of content people want to view can vary between mobile and non-mobile. Choosing the right CMS isn't always easy, as there are many vendors in the market and different technology models.

If you're considering a new CMS solution, it's likely you'll be wondering if headless is the right approach for you, as there is a lot of talk about the benefits of headless CMS. Going headless should never be a business goal, but a headless CMS may well solve your content challenges and provide the right tooling for your content management needs.

In this episode we take a deep dive into the Crownpeak CMS platform with Andreas Knoor, Chief Product Officer. Andreas explains the key technical and operational differences between headless and non-headless, as well as providing insights on how Crownpeak is helping other content teams.

Online grocery is an interesting industry when looking through a technology lens. Retailers operate in a highly competitive market with perishable product that needs smart algorithms and merchandising strategies to maximise sell through. Omnichannel selling stepped us massively during COVID lockdown, and Click & Collect and Ship To Store customer journeys are more important than ever.

Add to this mix demands from CPG brands selling via online grocery websites, requiring intelligent digital shelf analytics and merchandising tools to improve product visibility and sales rate.

The lessons learned in online grocery are relevant and useful to other ecommerce teams. In this episode we sit down with industry veteran Scott Miller, an independent consultant in the grocery industry and ex COO of Rouses and Pyramid Foods. Scott is joined by Prem Kiran, CEO at technology partner Hypersonix, who provide generative AI solutions to many industries including online grocery.

Discover:

How online grocery businesses typically approach ecommerce performance analysis
How online grocery retailers are using generative AI to help improve analysis and profitability
Using Hypersonix to improve data connectivity and protect margin
The business case for investment in generative AI

Tl;dr

What is AI negotiation and how does it benefit an ecommerce team?
How do you avoid giving away money you didn’t need to?
Business controls to determine when to enable negotiation
Examples of retail ecommerce stores getting results from this approach

Nibble is an award-winning chatbot for ecommerce that lets customers make an offer on the product page for instant results. Nibble's aim is to nudge undecided shoppers into action, to drive higher conversions and bigger baskets, with less margin sacrifice than traditional discounting.

To avoid giving away unnecessary discounts, you can program Nibble to appears only when you want it to and to specific customers. For example, you can make Nibble a subscriber-only benefit, product-specific, or trigger only on exit intent or dwell time. There are many use cases, including clearing excess stock through targeted offers and taking back control of discounting to protect margins and strike deals based on value, not just price.

Tune in to listen to founder and CEO Ros

What we cover: 1. What are the common operational issues ecommerce business face? 2. What is Airtable and how can it benefit ecommerce businesses? 3. How is Nolo Apps helping business use Airtable for operational efficiency gains? 4. How can businesses get started with Airtable?

We've been keeping a keen eye on Airtable this year, as it's becoming more popular with ecommerce businesses. Designed to enable data connectivity and the building of apps to empower teams to work faster and more confidently, this episode dives into what it is and how it's being used.

Oliver Rhodes has a stack of experience building out technology solutions for businesses doing between £1M to £200M in revenue. He recently co-founded Nolo Apps, specialising in designing and building apps on Airtable to help improve productivity whilst reducing running costs.

Tune in for practical insights into how Airtable fits in to the modern ecommerce tech stack.

Product development is an interesting part of the ecommerce vendor landscape, and SaaS world is a constant stream of feature updates. This week we’re focused on one of our favourite vendors and we’re joined by a leading voice in the BigCommerce strategy team

This is part two of our two part mini series with BigCommerce. In this episode we’re covering checkout, payments, omnichannel, promotions and inventory management with Jordan Sim, Senior Director of Product.

Product development is an interesting part of the ecommerce vendor landscape, and SaaS world is a constant stream of feature updates. This week we’re focused on one of our favourite vendors, BigCommerce, and we’re joined by leading voices in the strategy and product development team.

In the first of two episodes, we talk to Aaron Sheehan, Director of Competitive Strategy about:

General product strategy and focus
Key capabilities like multi storefront and B2B
BigCommerce's evolution into generative AI

We've been aware of Shopbox for a while but hadn't had the chance to look under the hood of this AI solution that powers product selection for recognised and anonymous visitors.

Cold start strategies are generally quite rare in ecommerce AI/ML tools, or hard to get working effectively. Shopbox is deliberately focused on kicking in from the very first click, aiming to show shoppers more of what they want. The end goal is increasing retail ecommerce profit.

It sounds simple but what's the reality? We sat down with Shopbox CEO Alan Gormley to understand how the platform is being used by retail ecommerce businesses.

More than 40% of online spending post-pandemic is taking place on ecommerce marketplaces, according to Wunderman Thompson's Commerce Future Shopper Report.

Marketplace platforms have been instrumental in the creation of new ways online buyers and sellers connect in a global marketplace, enabling seamless transactions for small businesses and large alike.

Selling on marketplaces brings its unique challenges, as each has its own processes and product data requirements. In this episode we talk to marketplace commerce specialist eCommeleon, sharing advice on how to approach marketplace selling and how their platform reduces manual effort and improve data quality.

The migration away from legacy monolith platforms to headless SaaS solutions has picked up pace over the last few years, as the mid-market seeks more cost effective and flexible ecommerce ecosystems.

But no platform model or vendor is perfect, all decisions come with pros and cons. In this episode, Paul interviews the head of ecommerce and lifestyle brand J Lindeberg and their design and development partner, Grebban. He explores why the business decided it needed to modernise its ecommerce platform, why Shopify was chosen and the impact of deciding to go the headless route.

Tune in for practical insights into the decision-making process and implications of this ecommerce ride.

Dataships is an interesting niche vendor focused on improving ecommerce site compliance with data privacy regulations whilst simultaneously increasing opt-in rates to boost marketing activity.

What's interesting is that Dataships is able to dynamically change consent forms and opt-in capture forms based on a user's location, to ensure the website doesn't unnecessarily block legitimate opt-in permissions.

In this episode co-founder Michael Storan and head of partnerships Ian Madigan (who also happens to be an Irish international rugby player, which has delighted James) explain how the solution works and how ecommerce merchants are using it to get results.

ASKET boldly states that the world doesn't need another fashion brand. Their definition of progress is reduced wardrobes and people spending more on items that last for longer.

They adopt the same approach to their tech stack, investing in the best fit and quality systems to help them deliver the business vision.

In this episode we caught up with ASKET's Head of Data & Technology, Vidar Trojenborg, and Jonathan Selander, cofounder at their devleopmen t partner Made People.

We discussed:

Why headless was the right approach
Systems landscape overview and reasoning
Selecting a suitable front-end and CMS
Introducing a PIM
Approaches to data management: data warehouse, CDP, BI

The Bottle Club is a multi-brand ecommerce store selling nearly 10,000 different alcohol products. It has achieved considerable growth over the last few years, implemented specialist 3rd party systems to enhance its ecommerce capabilities.

In this episode we talk to head of ecommerce, Tim Martin Harvey, about the tech stack, how they approach multi-brand selling on Shopify, the value the Akeneo PIM has added and insights into using Algolia to improve search and merchandising results.

This the concluding episode of our Amazing Women in Ecommerce series, AWIE was launched by Yotpo in 2018 to celebrate how women are leading and shaping the ecommerce industry.

In this episode we interview the wonderful ecommerce team at Astrid & Miyu, a contemporary jewellery brand whose positioning is “More than just a jewellery brand, we are a movement on a mission to revolutionise the jewellery experience.” Let’s find out more!

KOOKAÏ was originally founded in Paris in 1983 with a simple vision to offer fashionable, high quality pieces at accessible prices. In 1992, the founders of KOOKAÏ Australia introduced the Parisian label into the lives and wardrobes of the Australian woman, with the opening of their first boutique on Melbourne’s Chapel Street.

As part of our series celebrating the achievements of leading women in ecommerce, we sat down with KOOKAÏ's ecommerce product manager to discuss how they're using Shopify to grow online sales and deliver an excellent customer experience.

Tune in to listen to Sera Volau discuss her role as a product manager and explain some of the ecommerce technology selection decisions the business has made.

Angie and her partner Bernard were driven to start ethical brand Kind Laundry to offer customers an alternative to single-use plastic jugs, with a mission to help eliminate 1 billion plastic jugs polluting our planet, every year. Their products are sustainable, contain no harmful chemicals and are much easier to use.

As part of our series celebrating the achievements of leading women in ecommerce, we sat down with co-founder Angie Tran to discuss how they're using Shopify to grow online sales and deliver an excellent customer experience.

This is part two of our podcast interview with Loop Returns founder Jonathan Poma. In the first episode Jonathan explained how Loop integrates with ecommerce tech stacks, the challenges they're helping retailers address and sensible strategies to manage ecommerce returns.

In part two, we progress to discussing customer experience considerations. We drill in to the state of returns in 2023, what changes Loop has seen, customer expectations and how retailers are meeting the demand for a professional and reliable returns service, including customer-centric tactics to help reduce your returns rate.

Tune in for industry insight and practical advice.

Returns suck! They represent lost revenue and reverse logistics adds cost and can also impact sustainability. Returns have been rising in the past few years, IMRG found that a quarter of all consumers return between 5% and 15% of the items they buy online. Your returns strategy can also impact sales: many shoppers check the returns policy before placing an order, with 40% saying they will not order a product unless the returns period is at least 30 days.

The good news? The technology has rapidly improved, with several specialist returns solutions available to merchants to automate returns management and implement a flexible policy to improve the overall returns experience for customers whilst minimising cost. In this podcast we explore what a good returns strategy looks like and tactics retailers are using to deliver the best customer experience with an affordable and scalable service.

For this episode we’re joined by Jonathan Poma, the CEO and Founder of Loop, a market-leading returns platform used by lots of large brands.

Ecommerce in the charity space is pretty damn interesting! Many charities have invested in their own ecommerce infrastructure and you'll find a surprising amount of retail innovation thrown in for good measure.

Oxfam is one of the UK's largest and longest serving Charities and has a challenging omnichannel model to manage, with 23,000 amazing volunteers running 560 shops nationwide, all adding inventory to the ecommerce site. What you probably don't realise about their product catalogue is that they sell premium brand items worth thousand of pounds.

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Ostcliffe, Head of Ecommerce & Retail Innovation, whose job is to extend the business's reach to connect with supporters, donators and shoppers using every BIG RETAIL design and technology available now and in the future, to make the brand the sectors go to online retailer of their choice.

Tune in to learn what makes Oxfam's ecommerce operation roar like a finely-tuned engine.

Shopify continues its stellar growth, with revenue up significantly YoY, key features like Markets fully rolled-out and capabilities like POS and Payments extended into new countries. At the same time, it has had to divest unprofitable parts of the business like the fulfilment network to focus on the core product.

The Shopify marketing team has been busy promoting new releases and there has been a lot of talk in the industry about the impact of its evolution into enterprise with Components, as well as the benefits to customers of the new checkout solution. In this episode we get the insider view from a highly experienced Shopify developer, Max Rolon VP engineering at leading agency Half Helix, who has worked with a wide range of brands including Peloton, Ulla Johnson, Laura Mercier and Bare Minerals.

There are many businesses that have a strong ecommerce site for B2C for whom trade sales is a significant % of revenue, yet they don’t have a dedicated ecommerce platform or haven’t invested in the same way for trade customers. In this podcast we talk to ecommece agency owner Tom McCaul, who has helped a wide range of ecommerce businesses launch, scale and optimise B2B storefronts. Tom shares his views on the key features B2B customers need to make the website work for them, as well as technical considerations for merchants.

Tl;dr what we’ll cover:

Understanding the B2C2B ecommerce tech stack
Exploring key B2B features like trade accounts, quotations and loyalty
Adobe Commerce spotlight: key strengths for B2B, platform challenges and workarounds

What we cover:1. What is Front Commerce’s front-end solution for ecommerce?2. What type of business does a headless front-end suit and why?3. Product features, roadmap and integrationsAs businesses grapple with the relevance and impact of evolving technology stacks to deliver greater flexibility and speed to market, with headless and composable both dominating the marketing speak, there has been a rise in front-end specialists. With great flexibility comes great responsibility, so it’s important to understand how the front-end market is developing and what better way that to speak one of the leading front-end platforms in ecommerce, Front Commerce.Listen to their CTO and co-founder, Pierre Martin, and Strategic Partnerships Manager, Christian LeLaidier, explain how the platform works.

Having recently talked about profit optimisation for ecommerce with Hypersonix, we’re drilling down into technology solutions that help ecommerce teams improve monetisation of the onsite conversion funnel and today our focus is on Rokt.

We're joined by Rokt's chief product & engineering officer, Bill Barton. Bill was previously vice president, Alexa Proactive Experience, at Amazon, where he spent 10 years building and leading teams that developed Alexa’s spoken language understanding and knowledge capabilities.

Tl;dr what we cover:

What problems Rokt is helping ecommerce businesses solve
How the technology is being used by leading retailers & marketplaces including Ticketmaster
Key product features & business tooling

Migrations are challenging but what’s it like when you’re doing it for the first time having previously not been in an ecommerce focused role?

Jodie Bratchell, ecommerce manager for leading equestrian brand LeMieux, moved into her first digital role in 2018 and shortly afterwards leapt into a Zencart to Magento replatforming project for B2C and B2B sites, as well as being the key ecommerce stakeholder in switching over payment providers.

Tl;dr what we cover:

What it’s like transitioning to an ecommerce role?
The experience leading a replatforming project for the first time
The benefits of deep customer & product knowledge when replatforming
Advice and insights on how to effectively manage a project

In this podcast we discuss Paul Smith's recent decision to move from Magento to Centra's headless platform, interviewing Paul Smith's head of digital Hannah Bennett and Ed Bull from their development agency partner Limesharp.

We've known Limesharp for many years due to their background in the Magento ecosystem, and talked about ecommerce platforms a lot. Last year Ed started working with Centra, a platform we've got a soft spot for! Paul Smith is Limesharp's pilot project and Hannah and Ed have worked together many times of the years.

We were excited to hear about their experience of working with Centra and how the migration is going, we hope you enjoy the project insights.

Businesses consistently underestimate how useful client side testing can be in refining the process for releasing new features and new platforms, before potentially wasting a huge amount of time and money. It's fascinating to see how consistently people's desire to build a site they can be proud of leads to them taking their focus off their customers. Dave Mullen is an experienced CRO specialist who knows how to help businesses fill this knowledge and skills gap.

Tl;dr what we’ll cover:

Integrating testing into full site replatforms & new tech launches
A sensible approach for validating new websites
The role testing should play after launch
How to run a proof of concept

Trading is tougher this year, with some sectors like housewares impacted by the prevailing economic gloom. Therefore a focus on profit is logical and in this episode we talk to our sponsor Hypersonix about their profit optimisation technology solution for ecommerce businesses.

We cover:

How Hypersonix enables profit optimisation for ecommerce
Using AI/ML to identify potential business risks
Integrations paths and product roadmap

Get hands-on advice from a highly experienced ecommerce CTO.

Nick has focused on implementing back office systems and processes for many businesses and in this podcast he talks us through some projects he’s led, key lessons learned when selecting and implementing an ERP solution and gives advice on how to evaluate back office systems to make smarter decisions.

In this episode we sit down with Attraqt Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Nicolas Mathon, and VP Go-To-Market, Imran Chaudhary to explore the cultural shift to AI-driven personalisation and operational challenges doing product discovery at scale.

Ecommerce has evolved to stop talking about search, browse, recommendations and personalisation separately and now the focus is on product discovery, which cuts across all these disciplines. As search, merchandising and recommendations merge to deliver personalisation across the user experience, product discovery engines play a key role in driving product engagement and conversion.

Attraqt is the convergence of Fredhopper and Locayta. They have an impressive customer base including ASOS, Fanatics, Selfridges and Screwfix so have a wealth of knowledge from real world projects.

Cabiri specialises in helping businesses through technology change and they have a lot of experience building composable solutions, which seems to be everyone's current architectural obsession. The project that caught our eye was the relaunch of Debenhams.com on a composable stack in an 8-week project, so we decided to find out how this was possible.

The term composable is used a lot in the industry but there’s still a lack of knowledge in many organisations regarding the operational, technical and financial implications of this approach, and it’s not right for everyone. Indeed, amongst the success stories are a few car crashes where money has been burned and projects ditched.

In this episode we sit down with Cabiri CEO and Founder Rex Bigger to get an expert’s practical view on the implications of a composable project and how Cabiri is simplifying the migration towards this architectural approach.

Tl;dr what we’ll cover:

Challenges and risks going composable
How Cabiri simplifies project delivery
Implications for resourcing and team structures

Centra is an API-first ecommerce platform that is focused on helping fashion & lifestyle brands expand into new markets and win global customers. It is growing in the UK based on a solid reputation in Europe with an impressive brand roster including Stronger, Sandqvist and Nudie Jeans. The platform is headless by design and boasts impressive native capabilities and ecommerce tooling including multi-storefront with international tax and duty handling, robust order management flows and a lightweight PIM geared to fashion and lifestyle brands.

We've been fans of Centra for a while and see 2023 as the year when it starts to get more traction with UK customers. In this episode we interview CEO and co-founder Martin Jensen on Centra’s current go-to-market strategy, its core products focus and future releases, as well as how the pricing model works.

Patchworks is well established as a leading integrations platform for ecommerce businesses. They recently launched a business intelligence (BI) solution built on Microsoft Power BI to provide a data lake and visualisation solution for customers wanting access to the data flowing through the platform.

In this episode we discuss why Patchworks launched its BI, what it offers ecommerce teams and what the product vision is for the future. Tune in to hear directly from CEO Jim Herbert.

Part two of our two-part mini series with The Gym Group.

The Gym Group recently invested in a large scale replatforming, evolving to a headless architecture to fix known issues and provide a more flexible and scalable ecosystem.

In part two Digital Product Director Jim Hingston and Digital Trading & Ecommerce Leader Seanpaul Walsh dive into the operational implications of change and how they planned for new technology adoption so the business was ready to make use of new improved systems.

Part one of our two-part mini series with The Gym Group.

The Gym Group provides the lowest cost no contract 24/7 gym nationwide, an impressive offering. Its online presence is more than an ecommerce store, it’s a bookings engine, content portal, exercise hub and customer service tool rolled into one that has to connect a vast customer base across more than 100 gyms. Its digital ecosystem handles millions of interactions every week, so technical performance and scalability is critical to success.

They recently invested in a large scale replatforming, evolving to a headless architecture to fix known issues and provide a more flexible and scalable ecosystem. In this podcast Digital Product Director Jim Hingston and Digital Trading & Ecommerce Leader Seanpaul Walsh share the inside view on what drove the need for digital transformation and how they approached project planning and delivery to set the business up for success.

The current global and local economic outlook is as bleak as today’s winter mist. Online retail boomed during the pandemic and online traffic and sales maintained a higher than pre-pandemic level throughout 2021 but towards the second half of 2022 and into 2023 the sharp bite of increasing costs and consumer nervousness around spending bit hard.

For some businesses, capital projects are on hold. For others, the need to improve tech infrastructure to support business growth or even protect existing sales means they need to press on but with a sharper eye on budget. In this episode we look at ways businesses can sensibly manage project costs downwards without having to rip the heart out their scope and functionality.

Tl;dr what we cover:

What are the biggest costs areas in a project and how do you manage them?
What project efficiencies can you introduce to shave cost lines?
What are the nice to haves that can be cut without materially damaging ecommerce project success?

Ecommerce payments is a big topic, so it helps to understand how key technology providers are supporting ecommerce businesses around the world. Mollie currently supports more than 130,000 businesses globally across a broad range of industries and regularly publishes data on payment trends to share insights with the industry.

We sat down with UK country manager Josh Guthrie to discuss the key global ecommerce payment trends from the last 12 months, how Mollie's commercial model works and some of the key features its customer depend upon, including daily settlement, recurring payments and support for local payment methods.

Tune in for platform insights and practical ecommerce payment advice.

Testing is done by lots of ecommerce teams to make incremental improvements to their website. Fewer fully embrace experimentation.

Experimentation is done without a fear of failure or expectation of outcome. Testing is done with with an expectation of a winner. Experimentation leads to new things, while testing validates assumptions. Experimentation is dangerous, while testing is safer.

In October 2020, Episerver acquired leading global experimentation platform Optimizely and rebranded as Optimizely. For this episode, we sat down with David Carlile, Senior Director Product Strategy, to discuss how the platform enables ecommerce teams to uncover customer insights and create high-performing experiences.

An interview with leading Shopify agency We Make Websites co-founder Alex O'Byrne to review Shopify's current market position and go-to-market strategy. Alex shares his perspective on what Shopify's big recent announcement about Components really mean to ecommerce merchants and whether or not it marks a fundamental architecture shift or rather a marketing play to establish its credentials as a composable solution.

Tune in to learn from a respected Shopify thought leader how Shopify is positioned against market leading component-based platforms like Commercetools, where its heading with its product strategy including the capabilities of the new B2B offering such as native price lists as well the value proposition of Web3 and how applicable this technology is to mainstream ecommerce (Alex isn't a fond Web3 proponent!).

Most people consider Commercetools as an enterprise solution, competing against alternative models like Salesforce and Adobe. However, there has been recent discussion about Commercetools growth product plans to target the mid-market and how the mid-market will become more important from a product strategy point of view.

This episode features an interview with Chief Strategy Officer Kelly Goetsch, a co-founder of the MACH Alliance and respected technology thought leader. We explore the current product focus, key platform capabilities including search, content and B2B.

Buzzword bingo! Headless is thrown around a lot in our industry but amidst the noise there are some interesting projects emerging demonstrating the value that a flexible tech stack can have if the business properly understands the impact of going down this route. Today we’re talking to an expert who has stacks of real-world project experience. Jim Tattersall is Founder & CTO at Rotate°, who are strategic design & technology partners for ecommerce brands.

We discuss:

What is the real value proposition for investment in headless?
How does the challenge & experience building on different headless platforms compare?
What is Studio' s preferred front-end tooling?
When isn't headless the right approach for an ecommerce team?

Stylitics is the world's largest producer of shoppable digital content for the fashion industry, supporting 50M shoppers per day with personalized inspiration from over 3,000 brands and across nearly 100 of the world's largest retailers. In this ecommerce podcast we interview Rohan Deuskar, Founder and CEO, to discuss what type of business outfitting tech best suits and why, how can ecommerce teams are blending automation with brand control and how Stylitics customers are using the tool to drive a genuine ROI.

The ecommerce platform landscape is busy and every year platforms update their roadmaps, increase feature sets and sometimes pivot strategically. That’s why we like to stay up to date with what leading vendors are doing and share with you their perspective on the market and where they’re taking the product roadmap. In this episode we dive into the world of Shopware to cover:

How has Shopware’s market strategy evolved and why?
Key product capabilities and how they’re reacting to competitor evolution
Roadmap focus for 2023

The interview is with Justin Biddle, UK GM for Shopware since 2019, and Ben Marks, Director Global Market Development since 2021.

As we're technology and vendor agnostic and our goal is to help you better understand the ecommerce technology landscape, our final episode of 2022 dives into the current ecommerce platform market to look at key vendors and ask:

How has the product strategy changed during 2022 and why?
What are the top product features added in the last 12 months?
What has been the biggest customer account win of 2022?
Roadmap focus heading into 2023

We’re covering among others Shopify, BigCommerce, Optimizely, Elastic Path, Commercetools, Oro, Shopware and Remarkable Commerce. Please note it’s not exhaustive, there are so many players and we did reach out to a few others for their input but didn’t get a reply in time to include them.

In this ecommerce podcast, James interviews Erin Twyman, Senior Manager for Learning & Enablement, and Itay Vladomirsky, Director of Partnerships, at customer marketing platform Yotpo.

Erin and Itay share insights on how ecommerce teams make use of the Yotpo platform ecosystem to automate customer campaigns, including customer reviews, SMS marketing and loyalty programs. They also explain how the new Subscriptions product for Shopify merchants works and where the future roadmap focus is heading into 2023.

Whenever tax and duty handling is mentioned during an ecommerce migration, it usually raises a few sighs because it’s a highly complex area and people working in finance and compliance are used to headaches. In this episode we interview Avalara's tax technology solutions manager, Heather Wight, to get an expert view on latest tax developments.

Tune in to get practical advice about the realities of handling tax & duties for international ecommerce. Heather covers

Key international tax policy developments and their impact on ecommerce
What merchant problems does Avalara solve and how?
What’s the integration path on leading ecommerce platforms?
Where’s the roadmap heading?

After 14 years at DHL building up a formidable knowledge of cross border trade, supporting a wide range of businesses to understand and plan for compliance, Heather moved to Avalara this year as a tax specialist and is ideally placed to give ecommerce teams real-world advice.

In our 155th episode we're joined by Phil and Dave from Paase Digital, who talk to us about how they implemented a personalised quiz (along with other CRM tactics and features) to help drive revenue and increase first party data capture for Curlsmith.

We have a lot of discussions around Magento and how the market fit and customer type has changed since the move to Magento 2 and Adobe's acquisition. There is a lot of negative sentiments towards Magento as a platform, a common view being the total cost of ownership is always much higher than on leading SaaS vendors like Shopify and Big Commerce. Given our platform agnostic outlook, we like to stress test this type of assumption because every platform has its place in the market and relative strengths and weaknesses.

In this episode, we sit down with Lewis Sellers, a highly experienced Magento developer and MD of Pinpoint, a respected Adobe Commerce specialist agency. We ask Lewis where he sees Magento fitting in the ecommerce platform marketplace now, for what type of business and use case it's still the right platform and how to address known issues such as the complexity of support and maintenance and handling upgrades.

Content features quite highly in most ecommerce platform RFPs, especially with brands looking to focus on customer experience and not just commerce capability. Vendors talk about their page builders whereas businesses are expecting a CMS (content management system). In this ecommerce podcast we look at valid use cases for when investment in a specialist CMS is required because native page builders can’t satisfy the business needs. Please note by native page builder, we mean the inbuilt page builders on market leading ecommerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, Big Commerce and Shopware.

We cover what native page builders can do and when the page builder is sufficient for an ecommerce business, what page builders can't do that a specialist CMS can and how you can meaningfully evaluate a CMS to build the business case for investment.

It has been a challenging year for many ecommerce businesses due to tougher trading conditions following bumper years in 2020 and 2021. Some verticals like furniture have struggled to hit sales budgets as customers cut back on spend, and businesses are reevaluating the need to invest in capital projects, as well as tightening the opex purse strings.

With this in mind, we're exploring what can be justified reasons for investing in capital projects for ecommerce during an economic downturn. We ask isthere a justification to invest during tough trading times, what are the risks of undertaking a big tech project during a recession and how do you mitigate risk and make the right decision?

In this ecommerce podcast, Paul & James explore how Wordseed has pivoted from providing marketplace technology to a brand discovery platform. Tune in to listen to co-founder Harry Beattie discuss the operational and technology implications of changing business models, how they enable content creators to launch their own branded websites and how what the plan is for their recent acquisition of the Bombinate marketplace platform.

It’s common for the chosen SI (systems integrator) partner for a replatforming project to provide design resource and manage the development project end-to-end. However, not all agencies have sufficient depth of design skill or breadth of experience to satisfy the client’s needs, especially for luxury brands where brand experience is as important to the project as the ecommerce functionality. In this scenario, the client will partner with a design specialist to deliver visual designs to the development agency.

Each approach has its own set of pros and cons, and in this episode we’re talking about how to align design & dev agencies to minimise the risk of designs not being fit for purpose or adding unnecessary cost to the build phase to shoehorn visual designs into an ecommerce platform and set of front-end templates.

Tl;dr what we cover:

Pros and cons for separating design and development
Running an efficient design phase including kick offs and briefing
Aligning design with development for your happy path

Personalisation covers a wide range of ecommerce use cases. Often it's discussed in the context of product personalisation, that is refining the products shown to shoppers on websites and via digital marketing channels like email based on their user profile, what they've previously bought and browsed. Increasingly, ecommerce teams are looking for ways to provider deeper personalisation of the shopping experience to reward customers and encourage greater loyalty, in other words improve retention rates.

In this ecommerce podcast, we explore how Maverick is helping ecommerce retailers get results by delivering personalised video at scale using its AI platform. Maverick enables retailers to record a single customer video, then personalise based on name, and distribute to its customers via email marketing. Maverick also plans to roll-out its tech to additional distribution channels like SMS and WhatsApp, and enhance the elements in the video its customers can personalise e.g. which product they bought.

Listen to co-founders Debarshi and Eitan explain why they launched the platform, how retailers are using it and where they see AI-driven personalisation in ecommerce headed.

The ecommerce platform landscape is ever shifting and there have been a lot of new vendors entering in the past few years, responding to the increase in demands for flexible, scalable technology stacks. In this episode we give you an insight into a composable commerce API for developers, Commerce Layer. Tune in to understand where Commerce Layer fits and how its proposition, being developer focused, is different to some of the other mainstream platforms like Shopify, Adobe, BigCommerce etc.

Listen to founder, Filippo Conforti, explain the genesis of the platform, their go-to-market strategy and where the platform roadmap is headed.

It's safe to say that website performance has a direct impact on customer experience and conversion rate, there's plenty of data out there to make the correlation. However, performance can become fragmented and compromised given how many systems make up an enterprise ecommerce implementation, from back office systems supplying source data to 3rd party apps and widgets performing specific front-end functions like UGC feeds and customer reviews.

In this episode, Paul & James sit down with Tal Ofer, Senior Partner Manager, and Zuzana Samaj, Senior Solutions Engineer atCloudinary. Cloudinary's mission is to help companies unleash the full potential of their media to create the most engaging visual experiences. The podcast covers key DAM related issues faced by ecommerce businesses, the impact of DAMs on speed and performance, the use of AI in digital asset management and integrations with ecommerce platforms.

SMS marketing has seen strong growth in the past few years, as marketers look for differentiation given how crowded email inboxes are. At the same time, shoppers are looking for simple ways to pay online to speed up checkouts and make life easier when shopping on mobile devices. For this episode, we sat down with Osa Gaius, Founder and CEO at innovative SMS payment specialist Parrot.

Parrot is an end-to-end payment solution that leverages SMS to drive easy checkout and a higher frequency of recurring purchases. Listen to Osa explain Parrot’s SMS solution, how it benefits ecommerce teams, how it integrates with their existing tech stack and the commercial model and impact.

Beerhawk is a fast growth DTC business selling craft beer and a beer dispenser to bring the pub vibe to homes and offices. James & Paul sat down with MD Alex Nelson to understand what's driving the sales growth, how the business operates its ecommerce stores, how and why it's using Magento and how it is balancing the use of development resources between its in-house engineering function and external partners.

Delivering a seamless cross channel experience is a strategic imperative for omnichannel retailers but operational complexity makes it hard or expensive to achieve, usually due to challenges integrating disparate technologies. In this episode we explore the partnership between OMS specialist Fluent Commerce and in-store experience platform Mercaux. Mercaux recently launched a universal shopping basket solution that integrates with Fluent's OMS platform, so we interviewed Shaun Britton, Global Sales Director at Mercaux and Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent, to understand who it's designed for, how it works and what benefits merchants can expect.

When the word ERP integration is mentioned in an ecommerce project, it either creates a surge of panic and fear, or people assume it’s just a simple case of sending data between two systems and underestimate the potential complexity and impact. In this episode we interview Luke Hodgson, a specialist in managing ERP & other systems integration projects for a wide range of clients.

We discuss when a business needs an ERP and when it doesn't, the pros and cons of using one vs. not and how integration projects can be de-risked. Tune in to learn for Luke's practical experience as the founder of both Patchworks and HighCohesion.

Data migration is an essential part of all site migrations. However, it’s not always focused on enough during Discovery resulting in a lack of detail in statements of work, which can cause problems further down the line in the project, for example scope and cost creep. In this ecommerce podcast, Paul & James share their advice and project experience, discussing what a good data migration looks like and covering the different types of data businesses need to plan into their migration and what to look out for to do this effectively.

The ecommerce platform landscape is quite cluttered. In this interview, Paul chats with with Chord's Co-founder and CEO Bryan Mahoney, looking at where Chord sits in the ecommerce platform market and whats its key selling points are for merchants.

Bryan's background is running an design and development agency helping early stage DTC brands like Glossier grow their ecommerce presence. Bryan shares his expertise and discusses how their data-first approach provides a point of difference to older platforms that have only recently evolved into providing robust APIs.

We’ve seen a few businesses pulling back the number of storefronts for ecommerce due to the day-to-day management effort and the cost impact e.g. licensing, maintenance, support etc. There needs to be a clear business case for investing in one or more additional storefronts and businesses really need to be able to measure incremental impact.

In this ecommerce podcast James & Paul do a talking heads on the use cases for single vs. multiple storefronts. They provide a clear definition of what multi-storefront means, exploring how the decision impacts ecommerce teams operationally, then cover common use cases for single storefronts with multi-currency and localisation vs. when multi-storefront is a worthwhile and necessary investment.

An interview with Paul Grey, Product Marketing Lead for Shopify's Ecosystem Team. Paul works closely with Shopify's development and agency partner network to help merchants improve how they use the Shopify platform and its app network. Learn more about the product strategy behind new tools like Editions.

Join us for a podcast deep dive into Narvar's customer experience platform. We interview Adrien Nadeem and Chris Hoskin to discuss how ecommece teams can build the business case for post purchase CX, the key features of the Narvar returns portal and how they support retailers to provide a red carpet experience for premium brands. Discover how other businesses are using Narvar and where Narvar sees the future of post-purchase CX.

Founded by former Attraqt CEO, Andre Brown, Advanced Commerce initially went out to market as an ecommerce platform but pivoted back to focus on search and merchandising. As 2022 brings tougher trading conditions and a sharper focus on improving onsite customer experience to boost sales and retention rates, we sat down with Andre to explore how Advanced Commerce set about to offer a point of difference to ecommerce teams in the search & merch space. We cover their market positioning, points of difference with other market leading systems and the benefits more advanced merchandising can add to an ecommerce business.

The industry talks a lot about connecting with customers at the right time and the right place. In this episode, we're joined by Allen Chaves, CTO of our sponsors Klaviyo, to discuss how their platform enables ecommerce businesses to drive smart email marketing flows. We also explore emerging trends and innovative uses of the platform.

Luxury brands want shopping to be an experience, not just a functional process. Often this results in money thrown at the front-end and in visible elements like packaging but not always the logistics. We all know that the shipping experience pays a vital role in nudging first time shoppers into repeat buyers. In this ecommerce podcast, Paul & James interview the founder of leading concierge provider Harper on the value of a concierge service, for example white glove delivery for VIP customers.

Queue abandonment is a common issue for retailers and long wait times frustrates shoppers. In this episode, we sat down with Mishipay CEO and founder, Mustafa Khanwala, to discuss common in-store purchase frustrations and the benefits of digital solutions like barcode scanning for retail teams. Mustafa shares his insights on the challenges of in-store checkouts and how the Mishipay solution has been designed to put shoppers in control of the checkout to improve conversion and drive basket value.

The martech landscape is cluttered. The Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic states around 5,000 vendors but in reality it’s much more. Modern businesses demand agile tech stacks and greater speed to market, as well as the elusive single customer view of data, but achieving this isn’t straight forward. Additionally, tech selection isn’t always well orchestrated, with silos resulting in systems being selected without company-wide integration being understood or planned for. In this ecommerce podcast, James Gurd and Paul Rogers sit down with an experienced ecommerce data & technology consultant to discuss common issues with martech setups, how to address them and what a good martech stack looks like.

Many organisations have moved away from the ‘one source of truth’ platform that does everything e.g. application, logic, compiling code, submitting the html to the browser. Instead, theyhave a hybrid setup where ecommerce plays a more closely defined role, sometimes it’s simply just a shopping basket & checkout!

An important distinction is now being made by ecommerce teams as to what the role of an ecommerce platform should be and how it enables the business to achieve other functionality e.g. how to support an RMA process without having to be responsible for the heavy lifting of processing returns.

In this podcast, experienced consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers talk about the typical systems that are being plugged into modern ecommerce platforms, such as PIM, what purpose they serve and how they benefit ecommerce businesses.

The ecommerce and martech space is crowded, with thousands of vendors to consider. In this podcast, Paul & James share insights on which capability areas are getting investment & why, based on their own projects and what the ecommerce businesses and digital agencies they work with are prioritising. They discuss established and emerging 3rd party technology and how it’s being used, what the tools can do & what's good about them, challenges to look out for and opportunities for these vendors to enhance the feature set.

Learning how to plan and manage your ecommerce roadmap is really important. The roadmap is a schedule of work for the maintenance and continuous improvement of your website, the ecommerce equivalent of a content calendar. It indicates the ecommerce team’s priorities and can be distributed to help internal & external partners plan and align. In this podcast, Paul & James give advice on what a roadmap needs to include, how to manage your roadmap and how to use it effectively to prioritise resources to ensure you can deliver planned work.

When embarking on an ecommerce technology project, for example migrating to a new ecommerce vendor or integrating a 3rd party CMS, it's imperative to have a structured plan for communicating across the various internal and external stakeholder groups. Without clear communication, projects can be derailed by inefficiency, such as important tasks not being completed on time that slow down development sprints. In this podcast, James & Paul share the key learning from a combined 30+ years of ecommerce technology project management, exploring how you need to communicate with and when, proven techniques for managing communication effectively and some of the most popular tools used by Client-side teams.

Preparing for a new site launch can be a daunting prospect and the hard work that has gone into the development phase can be undone if the migration isn't planned in detail. In this ecommerce podcast, consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers talk through their top 10 things for ecommerce teams to focus on to help them avoid common site launch issues and ensure everyone is working to a clear, structured plan.

Historically, a common challenge when proposing BigCommerce to ecommerce businesses with a strong International presence was the lack of a genuine multi-storefront (MSF) solution. Instead, merchants typically required separate storefronts logins and integrations. With the latest MSF release, BigCommerce has significantly improved its MSF capabilities so we sat down with the team to discuss how it now compares to market leaders like Magento and Salesforce? James Gurd and Paul Rogers interview Kristina Pototska, Head of Product Management, and Jim Herbert, Senior VP & General Manager EMEA. They provide an honest appraisal of the current level of maturity for BigCommerce's MSF product suite and discuss how they're constantly improving to address some of the known limitations.

In this ecommerce podcast, consultants Paul & James interview Marxent's Founder and CEO, Beck Besecker. Ther discussion explores what Marxent’s 3d Cloud proposition is, how much work is required for a retailer to get started with 3D product configurators/AR and how the integration works for ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento. Tune in for platform and ecommerce insights.

Shopify Online Store 2.0 was announced to developers in Q2 2021, representing a major upgrade to the theme architecture to improve storefront management for developers and ecommerce teams. Paul & James sat down with leading Shopify experts Piers Thorogood, Co-Founder at WMW, and Dan Gamble, Development Director at BAO to discuss the impact of 2.0 on ecommerce teams. Listen in for insights on Sections Everywhere, headless commerce, Shopify Markets and international ecommerce, multi-language, Shopify Flow, B2B and predictions for where Shopify is headed as a platform.

When you change your ecommerce vendor model, such as going from Open Source hosted to a cloud-native multi tenant SaaS, you’re not just swapping out the software; it’s a different way of working and you need to understand the implications so you can plan for them. No platform is perfect, so learning how and when to compromise is key. In this episode Paul and James share their experience of the impact migrating to a true SaaS solution has on ecommerce teams, both technically and operationally, exploring the key benefits and some of the challenges that need to be understood.

An ecommerce podcast explaining what browse and basket abandonment are and why they’re important for ecommerce. We cover common mistakes and how to avoid them, tools ecommerce teams can use and implementation challenges to watch out for. Our advice is based on experience implementing campaigns and working with other ecommerce teams who run this type of marketing automation.

Expert insights on where ecommerce analytics is heading with all the changes to privacy and cookie-based tracking. Hear from Elevar's owner Brad Redding on the demise of cookie-based tracking, what all the changes have meant for advertisers and ultimately merchants and what other solutions are out there to replace cookies.

In our 121st episode, James is joined by analytics experts Anna Lewis and Jill Quick, who discuss all things GA4. Key topics include when users should be migrating to GA4, the current state vs UA, the likely roadmap for GA4 pre the migration deadline and much more.

Composable commerce is a popular industry term but isn't well understood by many ecommerce businesses. In this episode we're jargon busting with Elastic Path, Amplience and Algolia. We explorewhat composable commerce means for ecommerce businesses, the challenges & business benefits of composable architecture and how Elastic Path's accelerator solutions for composable are designed to benefit SMEs and speed up time to market. Join us + Rory Dennis, Co-Founder and GM North America, Amplience + Bernadette Nixon, CEO, Global ISV Partnerships, Algolia + Jamus Driscoll, CEO at Elastic Path.

In this ecommerce podcast, James Gurd and Paul Rogers explain why businesses need to accept that risk is inevitable when embarking on ecommerce technology projects and give advice on how to implement a sensible approach to risk mitigation, based on experience working on a wide range of projects.

In this episode, Paul talks with ecommerce veteran Kate Walmsley, who is the Co-Founder of sustainability / re-sale startup, Tern. Key topics include the role of re-sale in today's ecommerce world, the benefits to brands (beyond just revenue), example programs from big brands and much more.

In this episode, we explore the key trends in ecommerce shipping with Matt Barrie, founder at fast delivery platform Quiver, and Ollie Marshall, MD at Maplin. We discuss Quiver's focus on customer centricity, what this means for retailers and shoppers, the impact of fast delivery on customer retention and so much more. Tune in for advice, insights and all round good conversation!

In this episode we focus on fragrance ecommerce, interviewing Julian Holt, COO at The Fragrance Shop. Julian talks us throughthe tech stack for the UK's leading independent fragrance brand, running live shopping events, delivery subscription, offering BNPL in the checkout and much much more.

We welcome back the wonderful Luke Carthy, founder of Afrodrops and respected ecommerce consultant. Luke talks about the importance of black-owned ecommerce businesses, what diversity means for brands and how to launch lean and grow a new ecommerce business from the ground-up.

Disruptive technology provider Fast provides a one-click checkout that enables shoppers to use a central wallet across any retailer that supports the Fast payment method. Tune in to learn for an interview with CEO and Co-founder Domm Holland on what Fast is, how it works and what benefits it offers customers and ecommerce businesses.

Ed Davies, CEO and Co-founder at Wearth London talks to us about why the business chose BigCommerce & partner 5874 for their ecommerce operations, reasons for building their own product management system in-house instead of using a 3rd party and some of the tech that has helped them grow online.

For this episode we focus on Kick Game's brand & customer proposition and its rapid growth to being a £30m+ retailer. We talked to David Franks, Co-founder & CMO, about the trials and tribulations growing a retail brand on Shopify and launching marketplace ecommerce, with an honest appraisal of working with Shopify as an ecommerce platform.

In our 111th episode, Paul and James discuss the importance of building a solid statement of work when going into a replatforming project. They cover key things such as scope definition, roles and responsibilities, supporting documentation and various other aspects.

In this episode we interview Sean McGinnis, President & Integrator at KURU Footwear, about the lessons learned managing a fast growth consumer brand and the technology helping to drive that grow. Sean talks about the use of Magento as their ecommerce platform, the challenges of fast growth including building a team, key marketing decisions and much more.

For most ecommerce businesses, email marketing has a higher ROI than you can expect from any other form of marketing. However, it's not easy maintaining a good quality email list and finding smart ways to use marketing automation to drive £££. In this episode we speak to two highly experienced digital marketers, Maret and Sarah, who give advice based on their experience working for a wide range of ecommerce companies.

Join Paul and James, two experienced ecommerce professionals, as they explain valid reasons to replatform, how to build the business case for investment and scenarios when a business might need to pivot and throw away an existing migration.

In our 107th episode, we talk to Ashley Hubbard, Ecommerce Manager at Grenson, about his experience with migrating to BigCommerce Enterprise. We discuss their approach to design, why they decided not to go headless, key pros and cons of the platform, data migration and lots more.

There are so many ecommerce platforms on the market, and lots of different models. It's impossible to cover each platform and every change in 2021, so for this episode Paul & James, two experienced ecommerce consultants, discuss the major technology trends from 2021 and assess some of the big market announcements, from BigCommerce launching multi-storefront to Episerver's acquisition of Optimizely and subsequent rebrand.

Wordpress has an extensive community and massive install base. Over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month! It’s used on content sites like TechCrunch and commerce sites like the Bjork Official Store (for 90s indie lovers!).

Being Open Source presents challenges to ensure your implementation delivers a high performance site & poor governance can ruin your CWV scores. For this episode we talk with Jono Alderson, a leading voice in the Wordpress community and a marketing technologist whose favourite things are web development, futurology, WordPress, science-fiction, and gin!

How much more would you sell if you could onboard existing and new suppliers in minutes, not months? We sit down with Roger & Chris from Convictional to understand how their supplier enablement platform and expertise is improving business efficiency for ecommerce teams selling through dropship and marketplace models.

In our 103rd episode, we're joined by ecommerce veteran and Innovation Director at Space48, Tom Robertshaw. Tom talks to us about all things BigCommerce and how Space48 have found it in comparison to other platforms, as well as how he's personally found transitioning into a product role and the new apps Space48 is building for BigCommerce merchants.

Monwell recently replatformed to BigCommerce and implemented Comestri as a PIM to provide advanced product catalogue management. In this podcast we spoke to Co-founder and Director Nick Sidwell, to understand why BigCommerce has been chosen to power such a large product catalogue business.

Maplin is a much-loved UK brand with a surprisingly large product catalogue and diverse audience. Having gone into administration in 2018, the brand was bought by Digital First Retail Ltd. It’s now online only having shuttered the stores, so we’re getting under the hood to explore how & why Magento was used to power its new ecommerce operation.

Rapha was founded in 2004 in London with the goal of making the world’s finest cycling clothing, for beginners through to cycling professionals. The brand has grown rapidly online and technology has inevitably been a key enabler. For this episode we talked to Rapha’s Technology Director Ben Bodien about the technologies they use and how they’re using them to support and drive business growth.

Investment in marketing automation tools has been increasing rapidly. Did you know that 9 out of 10 marketers use more than one form of marketing automation software? According to Marketo 76% of companies that implement marketing automation generate a return on their investment within the first year.

Having recently talked at BrightonSEO, we invited Nick Huber, cofounder & CEO of Noopd, to discuss how AI tools help people make smarter campaign decisions. This episode is ideal for people working in ecommerce who don't yet have an advanced level of paid media knowledge and want to learn more

It’s the $million question. You’re migrating to a new platform and want to ensure it’s fit for purpose, and you’ve understood potential issues & risks to enable mitigation plans to be put in place. How do you evaluate a new platform to get meaningful insights and avoid a vanilla box ticking exercise?

In this episode, Paul & James provide practical advice and tips based on years of experience. They cover deciding which capabilities to focus on, how to plan & run effective demos, how to do due diligence and much more.

We've been involved in many agency selection processes, whether that's offering advice on how to run the project or making agency recommendations. What these projects have in common is a find the best-fit agency partner based on culture, capability, experience and affordability.

In this episode we share advice on how to select an agency partner, discussing why you need to take this process seriously, the key capabilities of a good partner and effective decision criteria.

Did you know that cart and checkout abandonment account for up to a 70% loss in sales on average, based on 41 studies conducted between 2012 and 2019? Reducing and recapturing this lost revenue can greatly increase your conversions, allowing you to grow faster. One way to achieve this is to improve the quality of data capture using smart automation tools.

For our 96th episode, James was joined by Matt Furneaux, Global Commercial Director at Loqate, a GBG solution. Loqate is a global solution specialist, providing a range of technology services to ecommerce teams to improve data capture and validation in the checkout.

In our 95th episode, Paul and James discuss a host of different roles and when / why they're needed for different types of replatforming projects. Key topics for this episode include resourcing PM functions, different approaches to creative / design, the benefits of different technical inputs / roles and the importance of subject matter experts.

Ecommerce growth has been pretty epic since 2019. McKinsey stated that the US experienced 10 years’ growth in just 30 days! There are two sub-trends we’re covering on this podcast episode: ecommerce marketplaces and pre-owned luxury shopping. Linnworks consumer research found that nine out of 10 shoppers regularly started product searches on marketplaces, while figures from Mirakl show marketplaces grew 80% in the final quarter of 2020, twice the growth rate of other ecommerce channels. We discuss the challenges of starting and scaling a marketplace for pre-owned fashion and accessories with the CEO of Open For Vintage, Colin Saunders.

In our 93rd episode, Paul goes solo and is joined by Diego Fria, experienced Luxury ecommerce professional and Ecommerce Director at global fashion brand Toteme. Diego talks about Toteme's recent migration to Shopify Plus, scaling internationally, growing in Asian markets, multi-channel ecommerce and building out his internal ecommerce team.

In our 92nd episode, we're joined by TrueFit EMEA Managing Director Sarah Curran and Principal Success Manager, Astrid Laidet. Sarah and Astrid talk to us about the optimum setup for sizing in ecommerce, the impact of poor sizing information and context, how TrueFit works and various case studies illustrating how retailers are reducing returns rates.

It’s fair to say, the ecommerce platform vendor landscape is cluttered. People have their preferences, based on prior experience and also, let’s be honest, bias. Depending on which expert source you read, the recommendation for which platform is best varies and there are so many resour, including Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester’s Wave.

When comparing platforms, it often appears that they do very similar things, with comparable feature sets either achieved natively or through ecosystem partners and apps/plugins. But how they do it and how close this fits with your operational model can vary significantly, as can the cost of running each platform. For this episode, we answer a question we've heard asked many times: does platform choice really matter i.e. is it worth spending time and £££ doing a detailed selection or can you just pick a platform that seems a good fit?

In our 90th episode, Paul and James discuss various considerations around building an in-house eCommerce team. Key topics include the importance of different roles at different levels, the right first hire for a relatively new business, important skills for different roles, the value of a generalist, key challenges when building a team and outsourcing vs hiring in different areas.

Getting a viral hit is every brand's dream: it creates a snowball of publicity and raises the brand profile online and offline. However, big spikes in publicity also presents challenges. When a high profile event accelerates ecommerce sales, it also has operational implications. In this podcast you'll discover the short and long term impact of The Dress for its owner, Roman Originals, and how it led to them migrating to Remarkable Commerce's SaaS platform.

For our 89th episode, we're joined by Roman's Head of Ecommerce, Ian Johnson, and the Head of Product from their ecommerce technology partner, Remarkable Commerce.

In this episode we discuss ecommerce trading & merchandising challenges, strategy, tactics and technology with Kat Richardson, Boden's Digital Trading Manager. Kat has a wealth of ecommerce trading experience in Fashion & Jewellery and shares her insights on how to handle trading for large product catalogues, campaign planning & execution, the impact COVID has had on trading teams and how Boden uses AI/ML tools to drive product merchandising.

Everyone seems obsessed by headless commerce Acronyms like PWA and SPA are common but we often find the non-tech audience doesn’t fully understand the implications, or know what impact this approach to the frontend can have on site speed and performance. In this episode we speak to an expert who has helped many retailers through the transition to headless commerce. Tom McCaul is the founder and CEO at leading Magento agency Tom&Co, who have built B2C and B2B ecommerce sites for brands including Agent Provocateur, Oliver Bonas, RHS and Topps Tiles.

In our 86th episode, Candice Ren from 173tech joined us to talk about building out BI functions and business reporting systems for brand teams. In this episode we talk about when this is needed, the people required to build out this function, some of the benefits of building out bespoke solutions and much more.

Amazon doesn’t really need an introduction; if you’ve not heard of them not sure this podcast is for you!

2020 was the best year for e-commerce marketplaces in over a decade. Amazon marketplace sold an estimated $295 billion worth of products, increasing their sales by $95 billion, up from $200 billion in 2019. Attracted by that, nearly $1 billion in fresh capital was committed to firms looking to acquire Amazon sellers and brands.

Today we’re exploring what makes a brand successful on Amazon and common pitfalls to avoid. We’re joined by Jon Elder, an ex-seller who grew his own multi million $$$ businesses on Amazon from the ground up & now advises other businesses on how to achieve success.

In 2020, the retail ecommerce sales value in China amounted to around $2.3 trillion, up from 1.8 trillion the previous year. This year, for the first time anywhere, the majority of retail sales for the entire country will transact online. This revenue opportunity continues to lure retailers around the world, looking to tap into the fast-paced growth.

However, selling online in China raises unique challenges. In this podcast we get the inside view from local market experts, Hylink. Ying Tiun, Digital Director, gives advice on selling via marketplaces like TMall, dealing with firewalls, tapping into social and live commerce and much more. As China's influence on ecommerce grows, this episode is essential listening.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing ecommerce for small and big businesses. AI is being used by various ecommerce companies to get a better understanding of their customers. It is also being used to improve the online customer experience

For episode #83, we speak to the data science team at Coveo. Coveo is an ecommerce vendor providing self-optimising AI that learns from every click and query. We discuss the role AI plays in a leading technology company and how it is benefiting merchants.

Technology constantly evolves and there’s a lot of talk in the industry about modern architecture vs. monolithic systems, with a trend towards unified commerce based upon flexible system design using APIs, microservices and cloud-based technology.

On today’s episode we're providing practical insights to help people not only understand the terminology but grasp the practical applications & benefits for ecommerce. Our focus is on microservices and packaged business capabilities, which are essentially compilations of services to deliver business functionality. We're joined by Boris Lokschin, CEO of Spryker, & Michael Vax, Founder of Commerce is Digital consultancy, who have supported a wide range of Clients through their unified commerce journey.

For our 81st episode, we're joined by Chris Raven, UK Channel Manager for Oro Commerce to talk about B2B commerce platforms and features. We talk to Chris about the rapid growth of B2B commerce, what this means for vendors like Oro and how merchants are using and customising the platform.

In our 80th episode, we're joined by Will Critcher, Director of Ecommerce for Death Wish Coffee. Will talks to us about the rapid growth of the Death Wish brand, the role of subscriptions in their business, their technology stack and the role Shopify has played for them. He also shares insights on the upcoming rebranding.

Retail has taken a battering through the pandemic but omnichannel remains as important as ever to ecommerce; for example in the US Curbside Pickup grew by more than 300% in 2020. What drives results? What do customers really want? What are the common issues omnichannel businesses need to understand?

For our 79th episode, we’re talking to two highly experienced omnichannel ecommerce directors who have a wealth of practical learning from a wide range of leading brands including Aspinal, Ugg, LK Bennett and Crew Clothing. David Williams, Director at DHW Digital, and Graham Broomfield, Chief Omnichannel Officer at Neve Jewels Group, share insights on a wide range of topics including people, process and technology.

In our 78th episode, we're joined by Haroun Saleemi (Head of Ecommerce at Quiz Clothing) and Thomas Cahalan (Founder of Aurora) to talk about how high-volume fashion brand Quiz Clothing has used with the Aurora ecommerce platform to drive growth and to explore the reasons why they remain committed to the fast-growing platform.

In our 77th episode, James is joined by GDPR & privacy expert, Karima Noren, co-founder of the Privacy Compliance Hub. James and Karima discuss a wide range of GDPR and privacy-related topics, including the fundamentals of being compliant, what good looks like in key areas like cookie consent, creating change in large businesses, how GDPR is changing and ensuring on-going compliance.

In our 76th episode, we're joined by Matt Curry, who is the former Head of Ecommerce at Love Honey and now the Ecommerce Manager at Graham & Green. We ask Matt a host of questions focused on how he's found the shift from working with a custom-built platform in his previous role to working with Magento Commerce at Graham & Green.

In our 75th episode, we're joined by previous guest, Fred Potter (from Adyen), who talks to us about the upcoming PSD2 and SCA changes and how retailers should be planning / allowing for it.

In our 74th episode, we're joined by web performance expert Erwin Hoffman. Erwin talks to us in detail about Google's upcoming Core Web Vitals update, covering the likely severity of the update, how ecommerce teams should be reacting, platform-level considerations and much more.

Lack of website accessibility isn’t just a problem for disabled people. It’s also damaging to ecommerce businesses that want to reach those customers. Being accessible requires technical skills as it impacts coding as well as design. Not every business is equipped with these skills, so this episode is aimed at accelerating knowledge.

Who better to talk to us about accessibility and provide advice and guidance for ecommerce teams than the experts at RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People). For this episode we're joined by Robin Spinks, Principal Manager for Digital Accessibility, and Lori Di Bon-Conyers, User Experience Evaluator.

The term AI is used freely but not always accurately. What’s the difference between ML and AI? How can AI measurably benefit ecommerce teams? There are lots of questions people want to answer.

For our 72nd episode, we turn the spotlight on a market leading AI-driven search, merchandising and personalization platform, Attraqt. Mark Adams, CEO, and Nicolas Mathon, VP of Innovation, join us to explain Attraqt's product set and how retailers are using its AI capabilities.

Data is at the heart of ecommerce and ecommerce teams are increasingly looking to develop personalised shopping experiences. But personalisation is tricky given the fragmented user journey and proliferation of devices and channels. With disparate data sources, data unification is an important step to help retailers on the path to genuine personalisation, not just segmentation.

Today we’re talking to Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach. Their website boldly states that “Great Commerce Experiences Start with Product Discovery” and we agree - if you can’t find or be recommended a suitable product, then the wider customer experience becomes less impactful. We explore with Brian where the Bloomreach DXP fits in and how the platform enables ecommerce teams to improve product discovery.

For our 70th episode, we're joined by cofounder and Chief Customer Office of Ometria, James Dunford Wood. We discuss data integration of eCRM and lifecycle marketing strategies using smart ESPs for campaign automation. As a recognised market-leader, we wanted to explore how ecommerce teams can create and deliver incredible experiences across all customer touchpoints using Ometria's cross-channel marketing platform.

In our 69th episode, we're joined by James Fearne, Lead Customer Success Manager at Contentsquare. James explains the Contentsquare product, how their solution differs from others on the market and how ecommerce teams typically use Contentsquare to get insights into content performance and new opportunities.

In our 68th episode, we're joined by James Brooke and John Williams, CEO and CTO from Amplience, who discuss how headless CMS solutions work and add value, common requirements for CMS solutions for different types of retailers and the broader role of a CMS for ecommerce businesses.

In our 67th episode, we're joined by a global thought leader in ecommerce and CX, Martin Newman. Martin talks to us about the importance of customer experience, where it should sit in a business and the perils of bad customer service with practical examples. He also explains his new CX platform Customer Service Action and where it fits in a retailer's customer service framework.

In our 66th episode, we're joined by experienced eCommerce professional Emma Bonar, who recently moved away from working for brands to starting her own business, 69b Boutique; a multi-channel fashion boutique based in London. We talk to Emma about the nuances between working for big brands and running her own business, the pros and cons of Shopify, the role of their physical store and much more.

In our 65th episode, we're joined by Ash Young from Carmats.co.uk (also the MD of Evoluted), who talks to us about how he has grown his ecommerce side project to > £1m turnover in just 12 months. Ash talks about key aspects such as scaling on Shopify, the move to Shopify Plus, key acquisition channels and much more. Get practical lessons from a business owner on what is behind this success story.

In our 64th episode, we interview the Ecommerce & Technology Strategist at Loaf, Louis Adamou, on the challenges of owning the enterprise wide technology stack and the art of managing an ecommerce product roadmap.

For episode 63, we talked to Neil Howarth, Solution Director for SAP about their new SaaS commerce platform that's cloud-native and enables fast launch of ecommerce experiences. We discuss why SAP launched Upscale, what the tech stack looks like, how SAP is positioning the product in a crowded marketplace and an overview of some of the core features.

In our 62nd episode, we're joined by Ecommerce & Customer Director at Heal's, David Kohn. David talks to us about how they are approaching their Magento 2 implementation, key insights from the discovery process, the process of selecting third parties and their recent shift to focus on digital.

At your most business-critical times and under peak demand, digital channels need to cope with high volumes of traffic without fail. Many businesses don’t have the tech skills in-house to do detailed performance monitoring, or don’t have the bandwidth, which is why they turn to external specialists. So we reached out to the team at thinkTribe, who work with a wide variety of retailers including Boden, Cineworld, Dixons Carphone. In episode 61, we discuss what impact performance monitoring has on the bottom line and what the real cost of failure to test is.

In our 60th episode, we're joined by Data and Analytics Specialist, Al Wightman, who talks us through how GA and GTM should be implemented on the average ecommerce site, best practices for leveraging events and custom dimensions, the new GA4 features and much more.

In our 59th episode, we're joined by Chris Hemmings from Signifyd, who talks to us about the fundamentals of managing fraud risk, best practices at different levels, where and why a tool like Signifyd adds value to retailers, how Signifyd is helping brands to unlock more revenue and where the product is going in 2021.

In our 58th episode, we're joined by Bob and Richard from Yottaa, who talk to us about the importance of performance, balancing performance vs functionality, measuring performance improvement and also about how Yottaa works and where their gap is.

For our 57th episode, Paul and James discuss common challenges for ecommerce teams in terms of vendor selection when replatforming for ecommerce platforms and the wider ecosystem of 3rd parties you need to plugin in to your tech stack. We're joined by Fergal O’Mullane, CEO and Co-Founder at Validify, a vendor management platform that gives consumer brands the tools to source, evaluate and manage the procurement of technology solutions into their business.

In our 56th episode, Paul and James look back at some of the key changes made by the commonly used eCommerce platforms, including Shopify's recent subscriptions changes, BigCommerce's continued focus on headless, Shopware's move towards PWA and Episerver's acquisition of Optimizely.

In our 55th episode, we're joined by Vue Storefront CEO Patrick Friday, who talks to us about the key benefits of PWA, how the platform has developed over time, moving up-market, the ecommerce platforms they're currently working with, their partner eco-system and much more.

In our 54th episode, Paul and James talk about key tools and solutions for getting the most from key sales periods. We discuss a number of important areas including product recommendations, bundling, popups and overlays, basket abandonment campaigns and various other aspects of on-site trading.

In our 53rd episode, we're joined by Shopware's Developer Evangelist, Sander Mangel who talks to us about their new ecommerce platform version 6. Shopware launched v6 and the end of 2019 and it represented a complete re-architecture to an API-first platform. We talk to Sander about how the new version has evolved in 2020, which features have been migrated, how much progress has been made by the community in porting apps over to the new platform and getting under the hood of the new PWA.

In our 52nd episode, James and Paul are joined by Rita Mantler, who is the Technical Director and Founder of Telescopic. Rita answers a host of questions on how bespoke integrations should be approached, the benefits of bespoke vs off-the-shelf solutions for integrations, how to approach technical discovery, risk management and Rita's preferred tech stacks to work with.

In our 51st episode, we're joined by Recharge's Head of Partnerships and Growth, Rob Barr, who talks to us about the impact of Shopify's recent API changes (allowing for subscriptions within the native checkout, amongst other things), the ever-changing requirements for subscriptions, Recharge's upcoming integrations with other platforms, the Recharge 2021 roadmap and much more.

In our 50th episode, Paul and James discuss the importance of on-site search in eCommerce, how search should be managed internally, the benefits of using a third-party solution, the different native platform capabilities, core feature requirements for third parties and much more.

In our 49th episode, James and Paul are joined by Zach Hemmant-Low (Sales Director at Emarsys) to talk about the increasing need for a broader CRM / customer engagement platform in eCommerce. We ask a number of questions about the Emarsys platform, core requirements for systems today, extending the platform via APIs, integrations and the growing importance of personalisation at different levels.

In this episode Paul & James interview Burc Tanir, CEO & Founder of Prisync, about how they're helping ecommerce businesses to manage product pricing more effectively.

Pricing strategy is fundamental to any ecommerce business and having the right tools in place to enable price management is a competitive necessity. Reacting to market changes for some brands can be the difference between success and failure, especially when selling a commodity product, for example an ecommerce store that’s a reseller of 3rd party brands such as electrical goods.

Managing price with a flat price file structure is time consuming and manually intensive. That’s why lots of organisations have invested in automation technology.

In our 47th episode, Paul and James are joined by BigCommerce General Manager (Europe), Jim Herbert, who talks us through the platform's recent growth in Europe, their shift towards headless projects, some of the larger and more complex projects that are being worked on, key items on the roadmap for 2021 and new features that've been released over the last 12 months.

In our 46th episode, Paul and James cover the important and topical subject of peak planning - with discussion points including technical planning / provisioning, merchandising best practices, common issues and points of failure, forecasting demand and various ideas for effective trading.

In our 45th episode, Paul and James sit down with Murat Soysal (Co-Founder of Segmentify) to talk about the importance of personalisation in eCommerce, how the Segmentify product has evolved to stand-out in a relatively saturated market, the role of their search product, reporting and much more.

In our 44th episode, James and Paul are joined by world-renowned international SEO expert, Aleyda Solis. Aleyda answers questions on a host of topics, including localisation strategies for ecommerce, hreflang best practices for ecommerce, handling ecommerce edge cases with hreflang, different approaches to GEO-IP redirects and much more.

In our 43rd episode, we're joined by Mark Slocock, Managing Director of GPMD, a multi-platform eCommerce agency. Mark answers questions from Paul and James on working with different platforms, GPMD's initial transition from Magento-only to working with Shopware, the difference for developers between the open-source platforms and the SaaS platforms, their recent adoption of PWA and lots more.

In our 42nd episode, Paul and James are joined by highly experienced eCommerce director and Non-Executive Director, Gabrielle Hase, who has led and been a key stakeholder in a number of large replatforming projects. Gabrielle, who is the CEO of Soleberry (her consultancy), draws on her experience to provide recommendations on how to get leadership teams bought into replatforming projects, setting expectations for key areas, managing stakeholders, key roles and lots more.

In our 41st episode, James goes solo to talk with Eric and Anais from French commerce platform, Proximis. James delves into key features of Proximis, the need for a unified commerce platform, key order management challenges, how Proximis can solve complex challenges around mixed basket & split shipment etc and much more.

In our 40th re:platform episode, we're joined by seasoned eCommerce pro, Mark Pinkerton (Co-Founder of Prospero Commerce), who talks to us about the pros and cons of running an RfP, best practices for how an RfP should be approached, how to get the most out of product demos and getting buy-in from various different stakeholders.

In our 39th episode, we talk to Episerver CEO Alex Atzberger about their recent acquisition of Optimizely, the product in general, where Episerver sits in the market and lots more!

In our 38th episode, Paul and James talk with Shopit Founder Adam Pritchard - covering the core platform, PIM & merchandising, multi-store & international, pricing models and then how the platform differs from some key competitors.

In our 37th episode, Paul and James talk about how the last 48 hours of a replatforming project should be approached, things to look out for, things that can go wrong and then what can and can't be moved to post-launch / prioritised.

In our 36th episode, we're joined by Carl Hendy (Director at Reddico), who is highly experienced in large-scale replatforming projects from an SEO perspective. Some of the topics we cover include project planning for a large migration, where things can go wrong, getting buy-in from key stakeholders, managing and quantifying risk and key tools to help projects.

In our 35th episode, we're joined by Quentin Montalto, who is the COO at ShipperHQ. We ask Quentin a host of questions about ShipperHQ's growth, how ShipperHQ is able to facilitate complex shipping logic, best practices for shipping comms, live rates vs table rates, displaying multi-origin shipping comms, ShipperHQ's roadmap and much more.

In our 34th episode, Paul and James discuss how testing should be approached and resourced at different levels of a replatforming project. This episode covers who should be testing, when testing should start, what should be tested when, test environments, what should be covered in test scripts, how third parties can be tested etc.

In our 33rd episode, Paul and James welcome Martin from eCommerce platform Centra, which was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. In this episode, we cover the core capabilities of the platform, key differentiators from the competition, the market fit, the headless approach & common technology stacks, wholesale and more!

In our latest episode, we're joined by Matthew from Reach Payments, who talks us through the product and how it solves a number of key issues with international payments, particularly with Shopify (with advanced multi-currency and lots of international payment options).

In our 31st episode, Paul and James discuss their views on checkout user experience, covering key considerations like payments, shipping comms, overall design, process & flow, fields, international areas and various other aspects!

This is the first in a mini-series focused on UX. In this episode, Paul and James discuss approaching the area of UX when planning a replatforming project, as well as various UX considerations around core areas of eCommerce.

In this week’s episode, Paul and James discuss how content migration should be approached, the common challenges, planning and how things should be approached by development agencies.

In our 28th episode we're exploring the WooCommerce platform to find out where it fits in the market. We're joined by Luke Carthy, a highly experienced Ecommerce Growth Consultant and Kimberley-Jane Leary, CEO of Birmingham-based Squibble Web Design and Chair Birmingham Tech Week.

In our 27th episode, we're joined by Brad and Martin from commercetools, who answer a host of questions about the commercetools platform, their eco-system, the benefits of using an API first platform and much more!

In our 26th episode, we're joined by Matt Barral and Hannah Rowlatt from Checkout.com to discuss all things payments and what needs to be asked when selecting a new provider. Topics covered include managing disputes, handling international payments & multi-currency, integrating with different systems, PCI requirements and much more!

In our 25th episode, Paul and James are joined by Finbarr Taylor, who is the CEO of eCommerce CMS and page building vendor, Shogun. We talk to Finbarr about best practices in managing content, the gaps in CMS with mainstream platforms, how Shogun works with these platforms, Shogun's brand new 'Front-end' headless CMS solution and lots more.

In this episode, we’re joined by Gavin Laugenie from DotDigital, a highly experienced digital marketer who talks to us about various CRM and email marketing topics, including best practice for marketing opt-in, customer data migration, broader CRM / ESP integrations and email marketing automation.

In our 23rd episode, we're joined by Nilay Oza and Niraj Aswani who are founders of eCommerce search company, Klevu. We talk to Nilay and Niraj about the principles of semantic search and who it's relevant for, best practices for optimisation / merchandising, image search, Klevu's roadmap and lots more!

In our 22nd episode, Paul and James discuss when an MVP is needed in replatforming projects, how the scope (and any change) should be managed, the types of items / features that can generally be de-prioritised and lots more.

In our 21st episode, we're joined by Sejal Parekh who talks to us about her new initiative (started with her husband, Kevin Maguire), called Help Your Hood. Help Your Hood is designed to drive awareness around local businesses and encourage users to buy gift cards online, helping to provide much-needed financial support whilst they're unable to trade.

In our 20th episode, we're joined by Andrew Chart, the Head of eCommerce at Andertons Music Co. Andrew kindly agreed to talk to us about their large-scale move to IBM from a bespoke platform - we discuss the selection process, why IBM was chosen, how Andrew's team managed the project, the highs and lows and lots more.

In our 19th episode, we’re joined by James White (UK General Manager) and Valter Andersson (Product Manager) from NOSTO, who talk to us about a wide range of eCommerce personalisation topics and also NOSTO itself.

In our 18th episode, we're joined by Scott Wright (Paul's colleague at Vervaunt) to talk about best practices for paid media when moving eCommerce platform. We cover general involvement & timings for paid media representatives, core considerations around data feeds, tracking and site structure, web analytics and more!

In our 17th episode we're joined by James and Tim from Akeneo, who talk us through how a PIM system can benefit replatforming projects, the general value that can be added for eCommerce teams, the core problems PIM systems can solve, some of Akeneo's key features and much more.

In our 16th episode, James shares 10 project management essentials that all eCommerce teams should bear in mind when managing their replatforming project. Based on experience from many replatforming projects, this advice will help ecommerce teams plan sensibly and improve internal control for project delivery.

In our 15th episode, we're joined by Neill Holland (currently working as a Solution Architect for Burberry), who talks about all things business systems integrations (in the context of replatforming) - covering topics such as planning, the concept of an MVP, managing stakeholders and much more!

In our 14th Re:platform episode, we discuss why it’s important to select the right ecommerce platform and the potential risks of getting it wrong, amongst other things. This episode is designed to cover the general process retailers should follow to better understand the platforms and what they should be looking to know before they start talking to providers.

In our 13th episode, Paul is joined by Piers Thorogood to talk about Shopify Plus at scale, managing international Shopify builds, new features likely to be introduced at Unite 2020, headless Shopify and various other things!

In our 12th episode, we're joined by Stuart McMillan, who is the Head of Multi-Channel at Tiso Group and the former Head of eCommerce at Schuh. Stuart talks us through the importance of performance optimisation, general best practices to follow, how performance can be measured, creating an optimisation culture and much more.

In our 10th episode we were joined by Episerver's Brand and Product Evangelist, Joey Moore, to explore Episerver's core capabilities, how their recent acquisition of content personalisation engine Idio is driving the personalisation agenda and their roadmap going into 2020.

In our 11th episode, Paul and James discuss the importance of TCO cost model planning, how it should be used, the stakeholders that should be part of assessing your TCO, the costs that should be included and the pitfalls and nuances when assessing different platforms and technologies.

In our 9th episode, we were joined by Shopware's Dominic Klein to talk about their new version 6 release. This re-architected version of the platform features a host of major changes to core features as well as the introduction of a new API-first approach. We discuss these changes, the migration path, further upcoming features and how they plan to continue to develop the platform into 2020 and beyond.

In episode 8 we're joined by Ben and Bill from Workarea, a rapidly growing eCommerce platform who recently announced an open-source solution. We talk about the open-sourcing of the core product, new features and their roadmap going into 2020.

In our 7th episode, Paul is joined by Rafael and Jade from VTEX - an eCommerce platform provider currently working on entering the UK market, having recently raised $140m of investment, led by SoftBank.

In the sixth episode of Re:platform we focus on a key process for replatforming projects: capturing business requirements. It's critical you have a clear process for understanding the high-level business requirements that will drive your platform evaluation. In this podcast, James talks you through 10 tips for managing stakeholders effectively to deliver a successful outcome, based on experience from working with a wide range of Client teams.

In the fifth episode of re:platform we're joined by Fred Potter from leading payment company, Adyen. Fred answers our questions on all things PSD2 and SCA, along with the impacts and planning considerations for retailers.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Re:platform, where we compare Magento Commerce with Magento Open Source. We'll discuss the suitability of both versions for enterprise projects, key feature gaps, examples of large retailers using the open source version, rough license costs and much more.

In this episode, James Gurd goes solo (with Paul away on holiday) and discusses how eCommerce platform assessment should be approached and the key areas that need to be reviewed.

In this episode, Paul and James interview Gerry White, a highly experienced technical SEO professional currently running the SEO team at Justeat.com. The episode is focused on approaching replatforming projects as an SEO, common issues, getting internal buy-in and much more. Thanks Gerry for joining us!

Welcome to the first full episode from the Re:platform podcast series - by eCommerce consultants James Gurd and Paul Rogers. This episode is focused on common issues and risks when replatforming and how they can be countered.

Welcome to the only ecommerce podcast dedicated to CX and ecommerce technology. We introduce ourselves (Paul and James), the concept for the Re:platform podcast and explain what you'll get from our weekly episodes.