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.

Preparing for the future of commerce is no easy feat. While looking for a solution to fulfill current needs, you also need to be able to anticipate how you wanted to adapt and change in the future as you drive your commerce business forward. With an e-commerce platform being a core foundation for any business looking to create positive disruption within their industry, it is important to understand the basics when it comes to designing, building and maintaining a modern viable commerce solution. This includes the continuous innovation that is required to keep up in today’s digital economy. We are giving insight into this and the seven key steps on how to ensure the future-readiness of your commerce solution.

When it comes to starting an e-commerce business or adding e-commerce into your rolodex of purchasing options for your customers, you need to ensure you are fulfilling certain strategic, creative and technology needs in order to ensure short and long term success. Furthermore, in order to retain e-commerce business, you need to offer a superior web, mobile, and conversational interface or your customers will look to a supplier or merchant that does. So where do you start to research, launch and grow a profitable e-commerce business? By following a roadmap that is focused on a holistic approach to commerce strategy and solutions- building a team with strategy, design, technology, operations, merchandising, and data skills to mix into each individual clients particular needs at a particular point in time, you will be setting your e-commerce business up for future-readiness and success.

Taking on a customer-centric strategy is not just about success now, but in the future. Being able to show customers that you are not only here to sell them something, but to help them out in other ways is key to seeing continual growth. Many B2C companies are focused on this path, which includes personalized communication with every customer. The B2B market should also watch this topic closely, because it will likely be a huge disruptor of their operating models in the near term. Luckily, personalization strategies can be easier to implement than you think by understanding common roadblocks and starting with the data that you already have.

These three terms- digitization, digitalization and digital transformation have created a lot of confusion over the past decade (Probably longer. I’ve lost count.). As their meanings have slightly evolved over time, people are consistently using them interchangeably and oftentimes incorrectly. Obviously, it makes things clearer when you present the word correctly and are able to articulate the words meaning so everyone is on the same page, this is especially important when you are relating it back to your business. So what do all these terms mean and why are they important when it comes to discussing your overall business strategy and path to finding long term success?

The journey to build and grow your eCommerce business requires Continuous Innovation.  Your online storefront supported by eCommerce operations lays the foundation for innovation, and your journey ahead requires a diligent and practiced commitment to disciplined innovation. Finding an eCommerce platform to support your evolving needs can be easier said than done, as no one has a glass ball to look into the future. Ultimately, the biggest challenge in choosing an eCommerce technology platform is assessing 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. eCommerce platforms that will offer future-readiness will ultimately fix gap areas and stand strong in three key pillars.

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.

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.

Customers are more savvy than ever, with the ability to find what they perceive they want, when they want it. If your marketing pillar can focus on aligning itself with your organizations other pillars to gain important customer insights and move towards a strategy that treats customers as profiles not simply personas, to create a truly individualized experience, you will suddenly be able to perceive what these customers want before they do. And that is where your edge on the competition and ticket to customer loyalty is.

One size does not fit all for customers digital experiences anymore, no matter your industry or market. How you present and promote your merchandise in digital markets is going to move your business to the next level and set a solid foundation for being ready for what the future holds. Being able to succeed in digital merchandising requires a mix of both artistic expression and scientific analysis, along with complete alignment of your other company pillars. After all, without the right strategy, user experience, operations, technology, and marketing in place you will fail to convert the browser into a buyer or up-sell your current customer any day. By approaching digital merchandising with this in mind and taking a holistic view at your data, you will be able to resonate with your unique visitor profiles and offer a superior digital merchandising experience.

The user experience you create is the greatest competitive differentiator in the digital age for your customers. With 61% of US online adults stating they are unlikely to return to a website that does not provide a satisfactory experience¹ and the growing statistics in both B2B and B2C about the amount of people using digital commerce and preferring screens to calling or in-person conversation, the user experience can not simply be putting features, tools, and capabilities in a neatly packaged site anymore. In both B2B and B2C commerce, user experience is about focusing on the individual person to ensure they stay your customer.

It comes as no surprise that how your behind-the-scenes operations run will ultimately shape customer perception more than any other aspect of your business. Beyond that, it is also instrumental in increasing efficiencies and reducing costs throughout the buying cycle. Being able to have a clear view of where all your operations currently stand in order to meet future goals of improving order management, fulfillment, and customer care is the objective for the operations pillar in Echidna’s Digital Journey Maturity Model.

Digital growth is often driven by leadership’s vision and strategic directives. Many of our clients come to us because they have a vision, but it needs definition and an execution plan. This is where the business pillar that lies within Echidna’s Digital Journey Maturity Model emerges. The business pillar of your company is directing and driving your company’s innovation. Digital maturity fuels that drive with tactical efficiency and efficacy.

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.

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.