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.

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:

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.