The Echidna Blog

In today’s evolving digital marketing, finding the right technology to serve your business is an orchestration in itself. How can you ensure the various technology services you decide upon will guide you to out-innovate and outpace your competitors now and in the future? That is where headless commerce has proved itself to be a major milestone in this journey. Headless commerce comes in providing a way for digital experiences to provide a quick, consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experience. For those brands with complex and ever-changing customer requirements, headless commerce provides the opportunity to quickly deliver which means improving loyalty and retention with customers. What is headless commerce exactly and how will it improve your ability to innovate?

It’s been over a week since Imagine 2019 wrapped up and we couldn’t be more excited about the announcements, connections and education that took place at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas for those few days. There is no doubt that the merging of Magento and Adobe will create great things for the world of commerce, both B2B and B2C markets alike. A large topic of conversation was about creating a solid digital commerce foundation to allow merchants to become future ready and stop feeling forced to react to change, but instead start inciting it themselves. Magento Commerce, an Adobe Company showcased several ways they intend to help their customers continue to do this and further solidified their commitment to help merchants create a limitless commerce experience.

Does buyer behavior drive changes in B2B eCommerce innovation or does eCommerce innovation drive changes in buyer behavior? This question greatly matters to many B2B executives at the moment. It might be best answered by saying that the best service standard your customer has experienced anywhere is instantly the service standard they will expect everywhere. Your B2B buyer is likely experiencing the personalized, omni-channel greatness of numerous retailers out there every single day- and so what do you think they will inherently grow to expect when they sit down at their desk for the day, ready to make purchases for their business. Are you offering them a piece of that greatness or creating a rift in your relationship, making them start to research other similar companies that can offer this enlightened experience they have grown to expect?

Data breaches and cyber attacks on e-commerce websites continue to rise year after year. In fact, World Economic Forum reports that cyber attacks are one of the top three risks to global stability. Yet we find that many companies still keep thousands of files unprotected, including customers personal information when making online transactions. With the average cost of a data breach to an affected company coming in around $3.86m , working towards continually improving overall information security is definitely something to put on every executives radar in 2019. Part of improving your information security management process should be ensuring your partners carry ISO 27001 certification, which is the internationally recognized standard for outlining best practices for information security management systems, including managing risks to the security of information and the key advantage being data security.

After years of evolutionary change, the B2B market is now facing a major disruption and a true inflection point. Qualitative data is continually coming out to assert what many have already come to accept and acknowledge- that eCommerce technology is creating disruptive forces that can’t be ignored. Many B2B brands we work with come to us to help navigate and answer the strategic questions to assess this disruption.

Customer expectations are steadily rising across all industries and verticals. To retain business, companies must continually innovate, embrace digitization, and prepare for the future. Don’t think of this as creating something completely new. It is just not possible to walk away from your current business model and transform. Instead consider the critical gap areas of your business and focus upon those. The critical gap areas, whether it be not providing a direct-to-consumer business, a poor e-commerce strategy, inventory management, or the inability to digitally work with distributors and offer a streamlined ordering process, are where you can likely shine and innovate the strongest. Gap areas, once accomplished, will offer your business the largest edge against your competitors.

Over the next decade, we will see large changes in the way people prefer to do business. One part of your core foundation moving forward should be your e-commerce technology platform. While the way you practice and evolve your e-commerce business and other business units will change, you want to have a solid e-commerce technology platform in place to help you grow and evolve. The biggest challenge companies are faced with when choosing an e-commerce technology platform is assessing their current state and taking stock of what’s working well and what needs to be improved in order to advance growth long term and achieve leadership’s vision. So how can you find an e-commerce platform built for the future of your business?

We often discuss the differences in catering commerce for B2C and B2B experiences at Echidna. We are always trying to find advantages for our clients, regarding conversion improvements, driving more loyal customers, and keeping them engaged with relevant content and offers. One focus that is dear to our hearts is ensuring their customers continue to build bigger baskets. Why? Because the fact remains that every 2 additional minutes a shopper spends looking for his or her first product reduces the total basket size by a whole product. From a B2C user experience perspective, there are many metrics and standardized levers and functions that we rely on to ensure that customers are getting their fill of products and/or services by the time they checkout. But what about your B2B e-commerce experience?

2019 is all about creating a strategy for your digital operations and executing on it, but what does that mean to the building materials industry? With so many moving parts, this unique and at times highly complex sales cycle can pose interesting challenges for business and technology teams to figure out. However, with the shift to how people prefer to purchase both at work and outside of work, it is important for the building materials industry to craft a strong digital roadmap and overcome their hurdles to prepare for future success.

Earlier this month we looked at what to know about the Direct to Consumer e-commerce market going into 2019. This article offers insight on why direct to consumer channel should not be ignored by manufactures and as  how it is imperative to have a strategy around it to be future-ready. Being future-ready is the difference between good and great companies. The ones that are constantly confronting the reality of the market and consistently evolving will have staying power, while those that are not are will be pushed out by others that are- quicker than we anticipated. One avenue to explore for the manufacture is going direct to consumer (DTC). Direct to consumer e-commerce can be extremely intimidating and complex for the manufacture because it opens up a whole world of challenges from foundational to operational.

The digital economy continues to reshape how consumers interact with brands at a rapid pace-  2019 will be no exception. This is creating an opportunity that most did not see coming for the brand manufactures willing to evolve their business and operations to be digitally mature. Just as e-commerce opens more doors, the brands that aren’t digitally maturing will eventually be left behind and in many cases it is happening quicker than imagined. Many direct to consumer brands are popping up and making a big impact, pushing out the well-known industry giants in verticals like mattresses, shoes and even men’s grooming.

This blog heading is nothing we haven’t all seen by now. Many of these writings contain opinions and data around how to improve a brands digital maturity and further their reach in the market. However, at Echidna we feel that a lot of these post and articles are lacking one important topic essential to the growth and future-proofing (if such a thing exists) to a digital business. Whether you are focused on the B2B or B2C market, if you are not continually innovating you will be left behind. Left behind can mean many things; perhaps your sales growth slumps, maybe your site performance is lacking, for some it means your workflow process and business operations are antiquated, or perhaps you can’t keep up the changing demands of your ideal buyer because you don’t understand their behaviors.

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?

These next few months have become peak season for many eCommerce sites. Whether B2B, B2C, or DTC, taking a proactive approach to prepare for peak season creates an excellent opportunity to jump-start brand growth and sets a solid foundation moving forward.

Optimizing the online customer experience is an ongoing challenge for both B2B and B2C companies. As digital adoption has accelerated, the result in people's expectations continues to grow. By embracing a customer-first approach, merchants will not only be able to work towards creating the modern commerce experience their customers desire but gain a truly competitive edge.

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.

How many clicks does it take a new visitor to find what they need on your website? The #1 annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation that leaves your user lost and wondering what to do next in order to find what they need.

Google has officially switched to mobile-first indexing for all websites. This means Google is first looking at your mobile site and using that to based on how it will rank your desktop site according to the information given.

Poor eCommerce user experience continues to be a top main reason businesses are failing to hit their digital growth goals. From drops in conversions, increasing bounce rates or cart abandonment, and overall low sales, a poor UX can do major damage. Echidna's user experience (UX) team has provided actionable insights and recommendations to remedy these issues and more for our clients. By leveraging data and applying best practice user experience and usability principles, you can start to identify key pain points and areas of opportunity.

You can feel the opportunity to differentiate your brand's online presence. But how? Visitors are finding your site and even going through the steps to put items in their cart. But they suddenly stop short at clicking purchase. Optimizing your conversion, increasing revenue, and improving engagement is literally clicks away from your reach. So what's stopping them- your user flows, too many usability errors, something else?

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?

If your website or mobile app is continually underperforming, it means it is time for a UX Site Review. With organizations taking on a customer-centric approach, this is one of the most important tools you can have to make sure you are putting your customer's needs first.

Distributors and manufacturers, it’s go time. Many of you have eCommerce sites, many are working towards getting it up. But is your on-site search box ruining your customer experience? The search box continually ranks #1 as the top thing that frustrates buyers with the B2B user experience.

Have you ever clicked onto a website searching for a specific item, but you just can’t seem to find it? Beyond that, you want to ask for help and it takes digging around the site to find their service contact section. Frustration sets in as you circle around the site trying to find the right page and you finally end up leaving the site to make a purchase elsewhere. Beyond that, maybe your loyalty to the company dissipates because they aren’t easily able to serve your needs. More often than not, clients nowadays associate their negative user experience with the company or product.As more B2B buyers shift from sitting behind a desk all day to doing tasks in the field, during commutes, between meetings or after regular hours with their mobile devices the need for an intuitive B2B mobile user experience is becoming more apparent. Whether you choose to go with a native app, progressive web app or simply a responsive website (or a combination of these)- making sure the customer is able to easily navigate and complete their tasks with ease is imperative to the success of the mobile strategy.

Last week we starting discussing how taking on a customer centric approach should include reviewing your user experience and what that means for your e-commerce growth going into the 2020 and beyond. When a customer centric approach is taken in user experience, you will be able to see an improvement in understanding your user behaviors, increased opportunities to innovate because of user interactions and a return on your user experience investment. By following user centric design, you can better create user personas, site maps and customer journeys to start to craft your ideal user experience. Now we understand that precisely mapping out key user tasks, understanding the core processes and watching actual user behavior fulfills one piece to the user experience puzzle, but what’s next? This week, we are discussing how wireframes, prototypes and design concepts play and important part in the user experience.

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.

Echidna will be at Boomi World 2026 in Chicago. As a Boomi partner with 16+ years of integration experience, we work with B2B commerce organizations to design and implement the integrations that keep operations moving — from ERP and EDI to CRM, PIM, OMS, and modern commerce platforms.

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March 2025: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

February 2025: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

January 2025: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

The NRF 2025 Big Show is packed with innovation, inspiration, and strategies to shape the future of retail. With so many sessions to choose from, it can be tough to decide where to focus your attention. That’s why we’ve rounded up three of the most exciting, game-changing sessions you simply can’t miss. These discussions bring together retail leaders, digital visionaries, and industry disruptors who are reshaping the way we do business.

December 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

November 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

October 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

September 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

August 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

July 2024: Your Monthly Digest of Top Digital Commerce Insights

The automotive industry is undergoing a major shift, driven by rapid advancements in digital technology. This transformation is reshaping how vehicles are manufactured, marketed, sold, and serviced. From AI-driven manufacturing processes to sophisticated online sales platforms, automotive eCommerce is becoming the backbone of modern automotive operations. This shift is not just a trend but a necessity for survival and growth in an increasingly competitive market.