The Echidna Blog

Evolving technology has now made building an online marketplace within reach for many companies. With a variety of strong marketplace solutions available, many are no longer joining them but working towards creating their own.

Making order out of the chaos of 2020 is proving to be a challenge for brands across the globe.

Many of us are questioning the strategy behind the brands we work for, that we have helped build. Have we planned enough to compete effectively and operate efficiently? Is it time to redefine possible and pivot the way we are shaping the future? What does all this look like in a digital-first world?

Greetings from Echidna! Are you ready to set the stage for your brand's eCommerce growth? In this month’s newsletter, we are covering several areas to consider when looking to grow your digital sales and sharing how one company doubled product revenue by streamlining its online sales experience.

In today’s evolving digital age, there are few investments worthy of more consideration than the launch of a new eCommerce business.

These considerations require attention from IT and Business stakeholders alike. The execution of such an effort requires participation from people across many departments and disciplines (employees & partners) to ensure the final solution delivers the intended business value and reliability.

Commerce strategy changed rapidly for all sectors during Covid-19.  From self-checkout, digital payments, virtual appointments, and more brands shifted to meet guidelines and ensure their customers felt safe. But now as the pandemic eases, what does the future hold for digital? Companies can respond by continually improving their digital experiences in order to hold on to their newly digital consumers. Customers loved the convenient and personalized online experiences that emerged during the pandemic, and with their introduction, we can expect those conveniences to continue driving buying decisions in all industries.

As the growth in eCommerce continues, many companies are expanding the ways they transact with customers online. Marketplaces continue to be in high demand, but should you compete against the likes of Amazon and Alibaba or simply join them?

We’re living in an accelerated world of eCommerce.

10 years growth in 3 months according to a recent study by Bank of America and Forrester Analytics. While it can be debated how this measured, we can all agree things have changed rapidly in digital.

It’s clear B2B eCommerce offers a huge opportunity, but it also comes with plenty of complexity and challenges. Every company has its own set of unique growing pains and requirements, but by working with a partner that is able to meet those specific needs and having the right eCommerce technology you will achieve success in scaling B2B selling through digital commerce.

Higher margins, greater control, and better insights into your buyers don’t come without concerns.

While manufacturers and consumer brands are still selling through intermediaries, many of them are finding themselves considering adding a direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel. It’s hard to ignore the benefits DTC now offers, but even still most of them are still hesitant to take the plunge into exploring this channel's vast opportunities.

The time to move forward establishing a direct-to-consumer channel is now.

This statement sounds bold, but consider how COVID-19 has accelerated profound business trends- namely the massive consumer shift to digital. For example, eCommerce penetration within the United States in the first half of 2020 was equal to that of the entire last decade. Within Europe, digital adoption jumped from 81% up to 95% during the pandemic. Being able to drive these sales all while gaining better insight into your consumer is invaluable.

COVID-19 has brought massive change to the eCommerce industry. We are at a pivotal time of disruptive change for all markets. While the restrictions of COVID-19 won’t remain in place forever, customers will expect the conveniences too.

Flashback to early 2019, Jessup Manufacturing found itself using eCommerce, but not how it envisioned. What was once innovation, was now antiquated. Between the inability to grow due to numerous restraints its eCommerce platform created and its site’s less than friendly user experience, Jessup Manufacturing knew it needed a change in order to evolve and meet customer demands.

Enterprise eCommerce integration projects have a failure rate that the industry does not talk about enough. Failure as in the integration was built, went live, and then proceeded to quietly undermine the commerce experience it was supposed to power. These are not edge cases. They are the normal outcome of integrations that were designed without enough rigor, implemented without enough governance, or handed off to teams who lacked the context to maintain them.

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Boomi is how Echidna builds that foundation. Not as a simple data pipe — but as the central nervous system of the enterprise, transforming and cleaning data in transit, enabling parallel workstreams, and making it possible to modernize legacy systems without replacing them.

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Let’s debunk a popular myth before we start: Continuous innovation is not a one-off event or just a buzzword. It’s not about having that one groundbreaking idea that skyrockets your business to success. True innovation is a continuous process. It’s about applying strategic, tactical, and operational strengths consistently to prepare for future shifts. In a world where technology evolves at breakneck speed, staying relevant requires more than a flash of brilliance. It demands a relentless, ongoing commitment to change.

In recent years, voice search technology has transformed the way people interact with their devices and access information. This innovation allows users to search the internet, control smart home devices, and perform various tasks simply by speaking commands. Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have become integral parts of our daily lives, making voice search an essential aspect of modern SEO strategies.

Throughout 2022 and early 2023, there was an explosion of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that captivated business leaders, investors, and society as a whole with its impressive ability to create new and seemingly human-made text and images.

You know that providing a seamless, personalized experience to your customers is the key to success. With online purchases on the rise and the growing popularity of omnichannel retail, chatbots have become the go-to tool for businesses looking to improve customer service and increase sales.

Construction Specialties has been at the forefront of providing specialty building products worldwide for more than seventy years. With a presence in twenty countries, they have obtained more than 40 registered product patents and produced ten distinct product lines. Their products can be found in or on some of the world's most famous buildings.

With eCommerce sales doubling in the past five years and markets expected to almost double again by 2026, companies are making sizable investments in their eCommerce capabilities.

In a time when every company is digital to some degree, your strategy is the differentiator. The stronger your strategy the easier it is to not only navigate rapid change and innovation, but as a result those companies also see higher conversion rates.

The automotive industry is at a crossroads. One way maintains the current status quo with little room for competitive edges and scalability, while the other path leads to reimagining its core operations and focusing on digital channels. While the latter path might seem intimidating at the moment, it is important to understand that the industry is moving towards digital selling as a business model for both B2B and B2C markets. Choosing to ignore buyer demands can hurt automotive brands in the long term.

We’re living in an accelerated world of eCommerce.

10 years growth in 3 months according to a recent study by Bank of America and Forrester Analytics. While it can be debated how this measured, we can all agree things have changed rapidly in digital.

We knew this year would require brands to work on the ongoing challenge of optimizing the customer experience. However, being able to embrace a customer-first approach through digital operations has turned instrumental for brands in 2020. As merchants work towards the post-coronavirus future, what does that look like?

Quoting is not the reason your products cannot be sold online. Unexamined quoting workflows are. Sort your order volume honestly, move the standard majority to self-service, give the negotiated remainder a visible digital workflow, and measure quote abandonment the way you measure cart abandonment.

B2B site search fails when it speaks catalog language instead of buyer language. The evidence is sitting in your search logs right now, and most of the fixes are content and configuration work, not a replatform.

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When a B2B buyer gets stuck on your site, they do not generally abandon the relationship. The site's conversion rate is technically unaffected, because the buyer never entered the funnel at all. Meanwhile a sales engineer spent part of their afternoon reading a spec sheet aloud. Your support volume is the usability report your analytics cannot produce. Here is how to read it.

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Most B2B eCommerce sites look fine and perform poorly. Here's what enterprise buyers need from a digital commerce experience—and where most designs fail.

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You don’t need another pep talk about “putting the customer first.” You need levers. The good news: modern UX testing tools are exactly that—levers that move revenue, reduce cost-to-serve, and de-risk big bets.

In today’s competitive online market, cutting the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of your eCommerce platform is critical for long-term profitability. Believe it or not, one of the most effective ways to do that isn’t about the technology—it's about user experience (UX). Here’s how enhancing UX can help you slash costs, boost conversions, and reduce hidden operational drag.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, mobile users demand seamless, intuitive experiences. A mobile UX audit is the key to uncovering friction points, optimizing usability, and boosting engagement. Whether you’re launching a new mobile app or optimizing an existing one, following best practices ensures your mobile experience meets user expectations and drives conversions.

Seamless system integration has become foundational for success in B2C and B2B eCommerce. As companies shift to digital-first strategies to remain competitive and responsive to client demands, integrating systems like ERP, CRM, and inventory management is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity.

Once upon a time, the most advanced digital assistant many of us knew was Clippy—the quirky, ever-helpful paperclip in Microsoft Office. For all his flaws, Clippy was groundbreaking: the first mainstream, interactive UX assistant that tried to understand what users were doing and offered guidance (even if often unrequested). Though Clippy fell short in many ways, he introduced the idea of proactive assistance in a digital workspace—a concept that has since evolved dramatically.

The holiday shopping season is already in full swing—don’t panic! There’s still time to make quick, impactful adjustments to your eCommerce site that can help you handle the holiday rush like a pro. 🎁 With these last-minute tips, you can boost site speed, optimize your checkout process, and leverage social media to drive more traffic and sales. Let’s dive into the tweaks you can implement right away to get your site holiday-ready.

The industrial goods sector has seen a significant shift toward eCommerce in recent years, with businesses increasingly turning to online platforms to purchase tools, machinery, and raw materials. However, selling industrial goods online comes with unique challenges—ranging from large and complex product catalogs to diverse customer needs, such as procurement managers, engineers, and technicians seeking highly specific items. In this evolving landscape, AI personalization in industrial goods eCommerce is becoming a key driver for success, as buyers now expect tailored product recommendations, custom pricing, and seamless navigation through large inventories.

In the rapidly evolving world of automotive eCommerce, data-driven decision-making is no longer just an advantage—it's a necessity. With the rise of online vehicle shopping, managing customer expectations, inventory, and competitive pricing has become increasingly complex. Automotive eCommerce managers need more than just intuition to succeed in this environment; they require the power of data to make informed decisions that drive growth and enhance customer experiences.

Quoting is not the reason your products cannot be sold online. Unexamined quoting workflows are. Sort your order volume honestly, move the standard majority to self-service, give the negotiated remainder a visible digital workflow, and measure quote abandonment the way you measure cart abandonment.

Replatforming does not have to cost you your search traffic or your place in AI answers. The teams that come through clean treat SEO and AI visibility as first-class requirements of the migration, with an owner, a checklist, and a monitoring window, not as a task for launch week.

B2B site search fails when it speaks catalog language instead of buyer language. The evidence is sitting in your search logs right now, and most of the fixes are content and configuration work, not a replatform.

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Digital commerce projects stall because the return gets measured in the wrong place. Incremental online revenue frames the website as a channel competing with your sales team. Cost to serve frames it as capacity you are currently spending on order entry. One of those arguments makes reps resist. The other makes them advocates. How to build the case, and the four things that have to be true first.

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Shopify B2B has closed most of the gaps that used to disqualify it for manufacturers and distributors. It has not closed all of them. Deeply configurable products, multi-stage quoting, and complex organizational hierarchies are still where the enterprise platforms earn their cost. A clear assessment of both sides, plus the four questions that produce an answer when feature checklists produce a tie.

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Every AI demo in B2B commerce is buyer-facing. Agents drafting orders. Chat windows answering spec questions. The work that actually returns is none of those. It is catalog enrichment, and it is the only AI investment that makes every later one cheaper. Why the unglamorous use case wins, what the work involves, and the four controls that keep AI-generated product data from becoming a liability.

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Adobe's lifecycle documentation lists August 11, 2026 as the end of support for the Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 release line. If you are running 2.4.6, your store does not stop working that day. What changes is quieter and sometimes moreexpensive. New vulnerabilities discovered after that date do not get official patches. Your PCI posture starts drifting. Extension vendors begin testing against newer versions and stop testing against yours. Every future integration decision gets made around a platform version that is no longer moving.

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We rank nine real use cases by whether they are delivering ROI in production today, whether they are conditionally working depending on the substrate underneath, or whether they remain experimental for most enterprise teams. The framing matters. Investing in a use case in the wrong bucket is how AI budgets quietly disappear in year two.

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Every B2B commerce leader is facing the same set of decisions right now. Should we build this AI capability ourselves. Should we buy it from a vendor. Should we wait until the market settles before committing budget.

Getting these three decisions right matters more than picking the right AI use case. A team that buys when they should build ends up locked into a vendor that owns their data. A team that builds when they should buy spends two years reinventing what was available off the shelf. A team that invests when they should wait funds a category that will look completely different in eighteen months. All three mistakes are common. All three are avoidable with a clear framework.

After working with enterprise B2B commerce teams for seventeen years, including most of the past three years deep in AI implementation work, a pattern is clear. The companies pulling ahead are not the ones investing the most in AI. They are the ones operating with the clearest framework for what AI is actually changing in commerce, and what it is not.

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After four articles on what AI-ready commerce actually requires, the question we get most often from enterprise commerce leaders is the same one: "How do I tell where my organization stands without spending six months on an outside assessment?"

Here are the twelve questions we use to anchor every conversation with a new enterprise commerce client. They are grouped into the four pillars of AI-ready commerce: data, integration, organization, and measurement. Answer them honestly and the priorities will be visible by the end.

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AI commerce features rarely succeed or fail cleanly. They tend to deliver real value in narrow places and underperform in others, with the net result obscured by attribution challenges, attribution overlap with other initiatives, and metrics that were not set up at the start of the project to answer the question that finance is now asking.

The teams that hold up well in their year-two budget conversations are not the ones with the biggest results. They are the ones with the clearest measurement. Six metrics, in our experience working with enterprise B2B commerce organizations, cover the picture honestly. Together they tell finance whether the AI investment is paying back, where it is leaking, and what to fund next.

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Replatforming does not have to cost you your search traffic or your place in AI answers. The teams that come through clean treat SEO and AI visibility as first-class requirements of the migration, with an owner, a checklist, and a monitoring window, not as a task for launch week.

B2B site search fails when it speaks catalog language instead of buyer language. The evidence is sitting in your search logs right now, and most of the fixes are content and configuration work, not a replatform.

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If your brand sits in that sweet spot—north of $10M, south of $5B—social shouldn’t just be “posting and hoping.” In 2025, social is a performance channel, a customer research lab, a talent magnet, and for many categories, a storefront.

Let’s be honest: digital marketing budgets are under more scrutiny than ever.

When it comes to showing up in search, your site isn’t just competing for attention—it’s fighting for relevance. And in 2025, the rules of SEO are sharper, smarter, and more user-focused than ever. If you want better rankings, more organic traffic, and a website that actually converts, it starts with a solid on-page SEO audit.

Unlock Better PPC ROI with the Right Strategy and Execution

Why eCommerce Platform Implementation Matters

A Strategic Approach to SEO and Digital Marketing for Sustainable Growth

The holiday shopping season is already in full swing—don’t panic! There’s still time to make quick, impactful adjustments to your eCommerce site that can help you handle the holiday rush like a pro. 🎁 With these last-minute tips, you can boost site speed, optimize your checkout process, and leverage social media to drive more traffic and sales. Let’s dive into the tweaks you can implement right away to get your site holiday-ready.

Imagine this: A small eCommerce business invests $500 in a PPC campaign and, within a month, sees a return of $2,000 in sales. That’s a whopping 300% return on investment (ROI). This scenario isn’t a fairy tale but a real possibility when PPC campaigns are executed effectively. However, achieving such high ROI isn’t just about luck; it’s about leveraging data to drive decisions.

In the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimization (SEO), staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success. Recent developments have shed light on new opportunities and challenges within this dynamic field. A glimpse behind the curtain has provided us with a deeper understanding of how Google possibly evaluates and ranks content, underscoring the importance of adapting our strategies to align with these newly uncovered criteria. However, Google does caution against making assumptions based on potentially outdated or incomplete information contained in these documents.

The boundaries between social media and eCommerce are becoming increasingly blurred. Today's buyers expect not only to interact with brands through social platforms but also to make purchases there without skipping a beat. This shift has given rise to a new phenomenon known as social commerce, a fusion of online shopping and social media that is transforming the way brands interact with their customers.

In our latest client case study, we go behind the scenes of the digital commerce success achieved by a global manufacturer for adhesive coated and laminated materials and photoluminescent films and sheets- Jessup Manufacturing.

Working together while working apart has become commonplace and will continue to be more important than ever these upcoming weeks and even months. Thousands of in-office workers are experiencing their first foray into the world of remote working as businesses try to manage the threat of COVID-19 by asking their employees to stay home. Since Echidna’s founding, we’ve served many companies as a virtual extension to their teams- building a proven practice of team collaboration, project governance, and reliable delivery whether team members are in the office or distributed far-and-wide. We’ve put together this informative blog and free downloadable resource to help you navigate remote teams' best practices.

The coronavirus pandemic has created an unprecedented challenge for eCommerce merchants. The long-term impact of COVID-19 will have on digital commerce is unknown, but for some, it means near-term planning to keep afloat while others are thinking about once the crisis has passed and what the new normal will look like. We recognize the difficulties merchants are facing to pivot their business strategies with little or no staffing and stay-at-home orders nationwide. So how do you navigate what’s next when the news is changing at a rapid pace?

There has been no slowing down since Adobe announced its acquisition of Magento Commerce back in 2018. With Magento Commerce joining the Adobe Experience Cloud, they are now bringing the Imagine Conference community to join forces with the Adobe Summit at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas from March 29 through April 2. This co-location will allow Magento Commerce experts and pioneers the ability to expand their learning and networking opportunities, along with giving access to all Adobe Summit keynotes, events, and well over 400 sessions and labs. So what’s in store for those attending Magento Imagine 2020 @ Adobe Summit, and where can you find Echidna? Read on to find out.

Echidna, a Gold-level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), is pleased to announce that Construction Specialties (CS) chose Oracle Commerce Cloud to replace legacy systems and collaborated with Echidna to implement the technology to improve their overall user experience.

Echidna is gearing up to join hundreds of fellow industry experts and merchants at the 2019 Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, NV. This year should prove to be extra exciting as our client, Frontpoint Security, as been announced as a finalist for the Best Commerce Experience category at the Adobe Experience Maker Awards. With so many reasons to attend Adobe Summit we have narrowed down the top 3 moments we are most looking forward to this year.

Omni-channel personalization is something brands are quickly looking to implement into their digital strategies if they have not already. Echidna is excited to announce our partnership with data and predictive analytics platform, 4-Tell, who is an innovator and pioneer in the space. Through this partnership, Echidna will be able to further offer our clients the customer loyalty, engagement, and the superb user shopping experiences they require to stay competitive.

Echidna, a leading digital agency that provides expertise around building digital strategy, user experience and e-commerce systems, has announced the promotion of Michael Braun to the newly-created role of Chief Experience Officer effective January 1, 2019. Michael has been with Echidna since its inception in 2010, during which time he has held positions as the Director of Experience and Vice President of User Experience.

Echidna, a leading digital agency and e-commerce service provider, is pleased to announce their continued partnership with Magento Commerce as a Magento 2 Trained Professional Solutions Partner and Diamond Sponsor for the 2019 Magento Imagine Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Echidna, a leading digital agency that provides expertise around building digital strategy, user experience, and e-commerce systems announced today that they are accepting meetings from companies interested in improving their e-commerce operational efforts.

Ergodyne has been pioneering the development of products that make workplaces safer since 1983. With 124 global patents and 104 trademarks, they contacted our team at Echidna to help them improve their overall digital commerce experience and move them over to Magento Commerce.