Commerce Experience

The process of scaling an e-commerce business internationally is tumultuous. Whether it’s tax and financial transparency regulations that vary from country to country or how you display pricing so that customers can make fully-informed buying decisions, there are a lot of potential pitfalls that companies can fall into that can have a seismic impact. Evan Wright, Senior Director of Cross-Border Gr...

Conversational Commerce may be on the rise in the US, but in many parts of the world, it’s already a normal part of everyday life. Across the globe, brands are engaging directly with their customers through text, WhatsApp, and other text-based apps, guiding them through the buying journey for everything from ordering a pizza to buying new clothes. Michael Ricci, Senior VP of Strategy at Sinch, joi...

While everyone is looking at how the metaverse will impact the future, mobile apps are still king of the hill for creating omnichannel customer experiences and assisting consumers through their buying journeys. How can mobile apps help businesses succeed in 2022 and what new and innovative features are just around the corner? Matt Hudson joins the show to answer that and more. Matt is an experienc...

In this episode, we are continuing the discussion we started in our last episode on the Metaverse. In that episode, we looked at a high-level view of the Metaverse’s impact on digital commerce. In this episode, Johnny Rodriguez, Director of Strategic Innovation at Fresh Consulting and thought leader in the Metaverse space, joins the show to share his experience with the Metaverse and how it is imp...

In our ongoing “Take 10” series, Brian takes (at least) 10 minutes to share some perspective on current events, hot topics, and controversial issues within the commerce landscape. The metaverse fits in all three of those boxes, with gaming, NFTs, and AR and VR technology making waves seemingly day after day, it’s important for companies to measure how they should engage with the metaverse, how muc...

In 2022, companies are being pressed to find new, more effective ways to find and keep customers. The 2022 Digital Trends & Investment Priorities Report, co-published by Comm-X and CommerceNext, found that companies are still concerned with ongoing supply chain problems, rising customer acquisition costs, data privacy, and more. Facing these challenges, how are companies positioning themselves...

In this special episode of The State of Commerce Experience, host Brian Walker speaks with Igor Gorin, Founder & Global Chief Strategy Officer of Astound Commerce, who grew up in Ukraine. Astound is a commerce technology services business with a significant business presence in North America, UK, Europe and with software development centers in Bulgaria, Colombia, Slovakia, Turkey, and four loc...

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and retailers are in store for one of the most challenging seasons in recent memory. With low inventories related to supply chain and logistics, labor challenges, and drops in consumer confidence, retailers are preparing themselves for an interesting few weeks to come. To highlight the factors impacting online shopping this holiday, as well as how retaile...

With customers now expecting unified digital experiences wherever they shop, the need for digital transformation has never been more urgent to businesses. But there’s a huge difference between identifying what needs to change and making transformation happen. To learn more about what digital transformation really means, and to help you navigate the process within your company, host Brian Walker sp...

Every e-commerce leader has a vision for how their brand is going to stand out online. But forcing off-the-shelf commerce functionality into their digital architecture makes it difficult to bring that exact vision to life. To learn more about how composable commerce empowers digital teams to realise their visions of taking complete control of their digital commerce strategy, Brian Walker speaks to...

It’s not only digital technology that’s advancing at warp speed — customer expectations have grown exponentially in recent years too. And when brands can’t keep up, customers simply move on. So how can businesses build loyalty in this challenging digital environment? To get first-hand insight into how brands need to be engaging with today’s consumer, Brian Walker speaks to Steve Soechtig, Global C...

Though the impacts of the pandemic have been seen across the globe, it is clear that, while widespread, those impacts were not necessarily equal. One area where this is evident is in the disparity between US and EU/UK e-commerce growth, where increases in the EU and UK lag far behind that of the US. To learn more about the trends and business leader sentiment guiding EU e-commerce strategy through...

Digital has changed the landscape of retail, and colleges and universities are beginning to find innovative ways to reflect that in their curriculum. Brian Walker speaks to Professor Kirthi Kalyanam of Santa Clara University, a leading academic with research and expertise in retailing, internet, and multi-channel marketing, to learn how classrooms are evolving to keep pace with a changing industry...

How can industries that operate in physical experiences, many of which were hit hard by the pandemic, drive greater success by thinking like an e-commerce company? This is what Brian Walker and Ari Greenberg - Chief Commercial Officer at Brightline Trains, dig into in this episode of ‘The State of Commerce Experience'. Brightline Trains is the first and only privately funded high speed rail compan...

To stay ahead of the latest retail trends and keep pace with ever-changing consumer behaviors, you need data gathered from the front lines of commerce. And that’s where today’s guest has spent her entire career. In this episode, Brian Walker speaks with Sucharita Kodali, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, and leader of the 2021 State of Commerce Experience Report - a study...

In part one, Brian spoke to Bloomreach CEO Raj De Datta about his entrepreneurial journey and his role in evolving the company into the industry leader for eCommerce experiences. In this, the second half of their conversation, Brian speaks with Raj about his new book ‘The Digital Seeker,’ a how-to guide for digital teams to build winning digital experiences. Together, they discuss what it means to...

People don’t go online because they want to watch ads, they go online because they want great experiences. That’s exactly why Raj De Datta co-founded Bloomreach back in 2009. In today’s ‘The State of Commerce Experience’ episode, Brian Walker speaks to Bloomreach CEO Raj De Datta to learn more about his entrepreneurial background and his role in evolving Bloomreach into the industry leader for eCo...

While many organisations have diversity and inclusion initiatives, there’s still a long way to go to make the C-suite, VP and director level grades as diverse as the consumers they serve. To find out how we can level the playing field, Brian Walker speaks to John Thompson, former SVP and GM at Best Buy, and one of the few black leaders at the helm of the US e-commerce industry. Together, they disc...

When you take up a new role as CEO, your first year is usually very hands-on as you scope out the challenges that lay before you. But what happens when that new role coincides with the worst global pandemic in the last 100 years? To find out how one global industry leader has navigated this huge challenge, Brian Walker speaks to Charlie Cole, CEO at FTD, the 110-year-old flower and gift delivery b...

As eCommerce accelerated in the wake of the pandemic, a shift in focus away from branch sales saw B2B manufacturers facing huge disruption to their traditional distribution model. To delve deeper into what's been happening in B2B manufacturing over the past year, Brian Walker speaks to Randy Higgins, Chief Strategy Officer at Shift7 Digital, the leading digital agency for manufacturers. Together,...

Like many in online retail, BigCommerce saw incredible year-on-year revenue growth during 2020, the year that was ‘make or break’ for so many businesses out there. But it didn’t come easy. To find out how they transformed their strategy to respond to the pandemic and were able to successfully complete an IPO in the midst of the downturn, Brian Walker speaks to Brent Bellm, CEO at BigCommerce. Toge...

As one of the world’s leading organizations, Amazon’s approach to culture, leadership and best practices are unlike any other company out there. Brian speaks to Colin Bryar, former Technical Advisor to Jeff Bezos, to discuss what’s driven the incredible success of the eCommerce giant over the past three decades. Co-Author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, rel...

“The companies that are becoming the future unicorns have the best data about their customers. We have clients that are 6X up, year-over-year. You can’t do that without knowledge of your customers.” Collecting customer data is key to any successful business that is looking to scale. But simply collecting masses of data won’t give you a competitive advantage – you have to truly understand that data...

“Stop thinking the only way you can make money is by selling assets that you make or buy. You can also make money by mutualising and monetising assets you have built over time, whether it's your brand, your partner network, your customer base or your access to markets.” Today’s customers expect to be able to buy exactly what they want, when they want it and for the best price available. This rise...

"In customer experience, you have to tell a story. And that story is not just a customer story. It's an operational story, a cost story or a technology story that takes pretty sophisticated individuals to pull together. Tools are not going to help you as much as you might hope." When bank branches suddenly closed during the pandemic, it left many customers with no option but to try digital banking...