Inside Commerce: Ecommerce Strategy, CX and Technology Podcast

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.