The Echidna Blog

In the rapidly changing world of B2B commerce, businesses are facing a new set of challenges and opportunities. As a leading B2B eCommerce agency, Echidna has seen firsthand how the traditional models of B2B sales and marketing are being reshaped by digital transformation, changing customer expectations, and a more interconnected global economy.

In the ever-evolving world of eCommerce, VTEX has emerged as a powerful and agile platform. With VTEX Connect Live 2024 coming up after NRF 2024 Day 2,  this guide is designed for businesses contemplating or preparing for a VTEX implementation in the upcoming year. It's also a valuable resource for guiding other eCommerce technology implementations.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, B2B eCommerce is not just keeping up—it's leading the charge. The year 2024 is poised to be a pivotal moment for the industry, with trends emerging that promise to redefine the way businesses interact and transact online.

The difference between maintaining a customer and losing one often comes down to the effectiveness of your ecommerce fulfillment and shipping strategies. It's no secret that today's consumers expect rapid, reliable, and transparent delivery of their online purchases.

Security and user experience are two crucial pillars of eCommerce development and payment solutions. On the one hand, businesses face security threats such as fraud, which accounts for approximately 1.4% of online orders according to CyberSource. On the other hand, 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned due to complicated payment processes.

The auto parts industry is not just surviving; it's thriving. With a market size expected to reach $755 billion by 2026, the potential for growth is enormous.

In today's digital age, customer experience is more than just a buzzword; it's a business imperative, especially in eCommerce development. Companies that excel at delivering an optimized digital customer experience not only stand out from the crowd but also enjoy increased brand loyalty and revenue.

Echidna eCommerce agency is celebrating October's Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

When it comes to eCommerce, getting visitors to your site is just the first hurdle. According to a study by the Baymard Institute, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is nearly 70%. This means that 7 out of 10 visitors who add an item to their cart will leave without completing a purchase.

In today's digital age, a strong social media strategy for eCommerce is essential for success. With billions of users across various platforms, social media offers an unparalleled opportunity to connect with customers and drive sales.

In today's fast-moving digital world, businesses are increasingly leaning on paid marketing to stay ahead of the competition and reach their target customers. Whether it's Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or display ads, paid marketing has become a go-to tool for driving traffic, generating leads, and boosting revenue. But there's one thing many businesses overlook: the importance of regular paid marketing audits. This guide will walk you through why these audits are essential and how they can unlock your business's full growth potential.

Navigating eCommerce user experience is complex, but one thing remains clear: it is the backbone that holds an online store's success together. Customers weigh eCommerce user experience (UX) heavily when deciding whether to trust a website with their time and money. Once you've conducted a site audit of your current UX, the path to improvement becomes a journey easier to navigate.

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.

As a leading e-commerce agency, we often times work with our clients to help them navigate the best e-commerce platform for their current and future state. The e-commerce platform you choose will play an integral part in the core functions of your business, from both a customer-side and backend business operations point of view.  Last week we starting discussing when and why companies start to consider an e-commerce re-platform and several requirements a brand should consider when reviewing e-commerce platforms. This week, we are continuing with Part 2 of our e-commerce agency tips to vet e-commerce platforms. This is by no means a complete list, but will give you a good idea of what to consider when you start reviewing e-commerce platforms for your company.

As a leading eCommerce agency, we realize choosing an eCommerce platform to fit your business is no easy feat with all the options on the market today. However, choosing the right eCommerce technology for your business can simply not be ignored. In our increasingly digital world, it is important to be able to evolve with ease, but still, use the foundation you have built to maintain your core capabilities. One part of your core foundation moving forward should be your eCommerce platform.

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?

The ever changing landscape of retail is nothing new. Retailers continually need to do more to convince customers to follow through with their choice in purchasing items online or getting them into their physical stores to shop. Over the past decade, winners in retail have shown that by promoting positive disruption and innovative ideas they are able to build a stronger business from the inside and out. Driving such change comes in many forms, including implementing technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and the use of 3D graphics. From making the act of online shopping more like physically being inside a store to being able to showcase items directly in the consumers room of choice, technologies like VR offer the consumer what they desire both in-store and online - a more personalized and interactive experience in one and the retailers ability to differentiate themselves for consumers.

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.

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.

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?

Why do companies make the technology choices they do? Generally, we all try to gain the greatest value from the investments we make and choosing your technology strategy should by no different. Finding the right technology to serve your business in today’s evolving digital markets is an orchestration in itself because you want to ensure the various technology services you decide upon will guide you to out-innovate and outpace your competitors. Headless commerce has proven to be a major mile-marker in this journey and for good reason.

If you are on Magento 1, I don’t need to bore you with the information about how Magento will be ending support for it in June 2020- you already know this. What you are probably more curious about and trying to research is information around what a migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 entails, costs involved, and the potential timeline for such a project. You might not be ready to talk to a Magento Solutions Partner or even the Magento team directly regarding your questions- and that is alright. But the fact remains that even though Magento 1 support has not ended, the days of it are numbered. So today we are hitting to the blog and answering 3 common questions around Magento 2 migration and sharing our new 2019 Magento 2 Migration Insight which tackles more detailed information around costs, timelines, and “what to expect” when migrating.

Magento 1.X users, this is a post that will particularly speak to you to give insight on everything from what Magento 2 editions are available to what an expected cost and timeline looks like, and of course, does your site need to migrate off of its Magento 1 version (hint: it does).

When we talk digital maturity, the technology pillar is imperative. All of the digital capabilities we have discussed in the various pillars rely on the solid foundation of your technology, which is why it has been saved as the final pillar to discuss in our Digital Journey Maturity Model blog series.

As an Enterprise’s Digital Commerce Journey evolves and matures, the concepts of multi-channel and omni-channel get very blurred and potentially outdated.

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.