Inside Commerce: Ecommerce Strategy, CX and Technology Podcast

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.

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?

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.

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

Key discussion points:

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:

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.