ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ

Ask Me Anything

Corey and Agbi answered questions live as well as from registrations, sharing their best practices and demonstrating features in ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce to help customers succeed any time of year.

Transcript
Forgive me. It’s very sunny over here in New York.
Welcome. Welcome, everyone, to Commerce and Coffee. Today we have a couple of new faces joining us, and we are really excited to welcome everyone to this. Ask Me Anything session. So as always, we design our webinars to be interactive. But today is going to be all about you and answering your questions. So we pulled a lot of questions from registration. But we do encourage everyone to ask more in the Q&A pod. Throughout the presentation, you’ll type them in there on the next screen. And we’re going to do our best to answer as many of those as we can for you today. So I’m actually going to hand things over to my new co-host, Fabiano Castillo, to quickly mention a couple of housekeeping items before we go ahead and get started. Have you.
Thank you lot. Hello, everyone. As a little mentioned, I want to quickly go over a few of those items. We are presenting in ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Connect today and we are live, but don’t worry, this session is being recorded and you will get it in an email from us tomorrow afternoon. Once you have that, it can be viewed on demand and shared with other members of your team at a later time. I would also like to point out that at the top of your screen, there is a black bar and an icon with a hand on it. From there, you can drop down and find actions such as, liking the plotting, laughing. So feel free to use those actions throughout the presentation as we’d like to see. Engagement.
On the next screen, there will be a handout available for you to download. Corey. And I’d be have put together a couple of resources for you, for that. So you should be able to download that and take it with you. And lastly, as we’re closing out the webinar, we will have a few survey questions that you’ll see at the bottom of your screen. So if you could take an extra minute or two, to answer those questions, once we finish, we would greatly appreciate it. And to formally introduce myself, my name is Fabian and I’m a digital engagement manager here at ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ. So I’m working with Allen and team on providing you with, some powerful tools and resources like these great webinars. So you may start seeing the space a little more often in 2025. So with that, I’d like to hand it back over to Alana for the introductions and to kick us off. Thank you. Laura. I think that we are very excited to have you.
So welcome everyone. I am Alana Cohen and the senior digital events manager for our Customer Success strategy team here at ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ. I’ve been with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ for over six years now and spent a majority of those years organizing and hosting these events for you guys, our customers. So hopefully you recognize my face. But prior to my time on this team, I spent about two years working with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ’s Advertising Cloud customers. And then before coming to ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ, I spent many years of different advertising and media agencies around New York. But I’m excited to be here now hosting events like this for you guys. And if you have any questions or comments about today’s event, about your ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Connect experience or anything else, feel free to reach out to myself or Fabian. So with that, I’m going to hand it over to Corey to introduce herself. Corey.
Awesome. Thanks, Alina will welcome everybody. I’m Jorge, a lot of my senior commerce strategy consultant or a senior business advisor for commerce here at ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ. Then with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ now for, just about six years. Always kind of in the same role, leading the commerce practice, specifically in our advisory group. Essentially what our role is, is really kind of to strategize and work with commerce customers around various KPIs, goals, objectives they might have. So kind of falls into a few different areas. My background. So I’ve been in commerce now for a little over 20 years. Mainly kind of always been a strategist, consultative type of role, but spent about, 11 years of my experience is from new system integrator social alimentation world where specialized with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce, Magento as well as other commerce platforms. So I’ve been in the commerce landscape for a while now, and obviously for the Commerce and Coffee series. Excited for all of our new faces donned on here today, but looking forward to today’s chat and obviously in the future as well. So thanks for joining today. I’ll be I’ll hand it over to you.
Thanks, Corey, and I’m excited to be here. I’ll be brief with my intro. It’s quite similar to to Corey’s actually. I joined ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ at the beginning of this year. Prior to that, I spent the last 15 years on the SC side of things. So excited to, to be part of the team here. And, this will be my first, Congress and coffee presenting with you guys. So excited to to join the crew. Awesome. Well, we are very excited for all of these new faces. So let’s go ahead and get into the question.
We have it’s a little bit of a different layout and format today. So, we’re just going to hop right over to our Q&A, and just dive right in. I think, Fabian, you are going to ask, Abby and Corey the first question.
And certainly let’s get started. So for the first question, we received, when will the company hierarchy feature be available and what is the unique selling point? Excellent question. I’ll kick this one off. Actually, great news that was released in our, B2B 1.5 release. At the end of October. So that’s out in the wild right now. I think one of the key features of that is the, the ability to nest, sort of child companies or, within a parent company. So giving, giving merchants the ability to allow sort of finer control, across, across, their customers and giving them more control over, you know, who can see things, who can purchase things and so forth. So, in addition, there’s some other enhancements to B2B that were in that release, including, enhancements to to the quoting module, like quote templates and things like that. So, really exciting stuff. Coming out, or actually released, currently. So awesome. That’s very exciting. Okay, I will ask the next question. Besides sales. What are the top three metrics a company should focus on weekly to evaluate its website performance? Yeah, I’ll kind of I’ll kick that one off. So, and I’ve been I spoke about this one. So this is one of our pre-registered questions which again we appreciate that so much. So obviously sales is important. Right. So I think, you know, let’s not lose sight of that metric itself and what that actually encompasses like average order value, etc… But I really think that if I were to kind of dive into this a little bit deeper and what I think are really good, three metrics that I typically kind of focus in hone in on throughout my career. It’s conversion rate while that might sound similar to sales, it definitely isn’t. I mean, you’re you’re converting on who’s actually coming to the site. So I definitely think conversion rate is a very, very important one. Average session duration. We want to know what the engagement looks like. You know, so when you’re when you’re looking at KPIs, when you’re looking at those types of metrics. Average session duration is also another area. And then bounce rate kind of similar to the average session duration. What our customer is doing when they get to the site, regardless if it’s B2B and B2C, what do they do when they get there and are they bouncing right off? What could that mean? Is your content not geared towards them? Is not indicative of what they’re looking for specifically, etc.? So I think those three conversion rate, average session duration and bounce rate. But are they all kind of passive to you? But what what’s kind of your things that you’ve seen as kind of the KPIs that you kind of go through our metrics that you really talk to merchants around as well? Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, bounce rate was one of the ones that that jumped out to me too, is, you know, knowing it’s great to see, you know, how many people are coming and converting, but being able to optimize your site and find find areas where your site isn’t performing well, is really critical.
I also tell my, you know, the merchants that I work with to focus on, you know, how people are engaging with the site, specifically search utilization. We know that visits using site search convert at a much higher rate typically. So tracking, you know, who’s using site search, is it more effective or not? And if it’s not, you know, being able to tune your search results, and the quality of the search, and then lastly, identifying your traffic sources, whether it’s paid, you know, paid traffic, organic traffic, are you getting social media referrals, things like that? What are, what are the sources of traffic? What are the most, the most prominent ones? Which ones perform the best and sort of leading in to, to those sources and, capitalizing on that.
Yeah, I, I think that those are great. This is going to be a little off the cuff for this as well. Obviously, asking anything is so I’d love to just kind of get your thoughts on it, and I’ll definitely share mine as well. But one of the ones that I was thinking about really kind of before we’re hopping on today was device usage and more explicitly, things that you and I have seen through UX assessments that we’ve conducted around payment gateways and how that actually attributes to device usage and what device is being used, whether that’s a desktop or mobile, and specifically what type of mobile devices. So I think to kind of maybe it’s not as much of a question as it is just I’d love for your comments on it as well. My thoughts on that is obviously looking at things like that too. Again, it kind of attributes back to sales right at the end of the day, I think everybody that’s here, everybody that’s joining what we’ve kind of gone through in the past, too, is always looking at how we’re going to increase sales, right. So these KPIs, these metrics I think are derivative off of that. They’re they’re they’re coming from that based on what you’re doing there. So I think one of the things we really kind of started looking into more and more is that device usage. We obviously know mobile’s really, really big. There are certain merchants that we again, you and I both do these UX, UI assessments often, and we see it pretty often where sometimes, that traffic isn’t what we thought it would be. We see it more in the desktop land. We see it more in the mobile side. So I guess just around your thoughts of that, things that you’ve been looking at from payment gateways, from mobile device usage, iOS devices, so forth, so on, offering different payment options, those types of things.
Yeah, it’s a good point. And I think, you know, in some ways ties back to the conversation around bounce rates is, you know, tracking, tracking which devices, device types and, you know, actual brand of devices or operating systems are being used helps you further optimize the site. And so, you know, we do sometimes see sites that are maybe very price, you know, in a very price sensitive, kind of market. You might get a lot of mobile traffic. And that’s kind of attributed to people window shopping when they’re in the store, sort of price comparison shopping online. But, you know, being able to keep track of that and again, meet your customers where they are, offering them payment methods that, that match their, maybe not their demographic so much, but, you know, matching their, devices that they’re using. Right? So if you see a lot of, iOS usage, you know, offering Apple Pay, if you see a lot of, you know, Android or, you know, Chrome usage offering, Google Pay, right? These are, these are common payment methods that people are using in their everyday life. And so, that builds more comfort and confidence when, when shopping with you and of course, streamlines the purchasing process. So, these are all beneficial in the process. What are your thoughts? In that respect? Corey. Yeah. No, I, I, I mean, not to double down and not to, not to completely say to piggyback, but yeah, it’s it’s extremely critical. Again, I think even in the B2B realm, when you really start thinking about a businesses use Apple Pay, they use Google Pay, they use these payment options as well. So I think dovetailing into that like, yeah, it’s you’re making it much more efficient by offering those types of payment options and payment gateways. When you’re on the checkout. It doesn’t fit everybody, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we’re talking about metrics that you should focus on and weekly and so forth. So once you evaluate website performance beyond just obviously site speed, because I do think that that’s definitely critical, right. As monitoring that and making sure. But I think for these types of things too, it’s it’s equally important to make sure that you’re looking at these opportunities and these options. I love the idea of what you said before to around like the window shopping, not the idea, but what actually happens, oddly and funny and whatever kind of word you want to use around it. That happens very often with E-comm too, is you have window shopping. And ultimately, at the end of the day, one of the things that I’ll say around just kind of thinking through those payment gateways and thinking about what we’re talking about right now, which is really kind of that customer and buyer experience. One of the things that I think is really critical to keep in mind is that your shoppers, right? So those that are on this call today, your shoppers are also shopping with your competitors. So for you to be able to offer things that are going to make their experience much more simplistic, that’s something that they’re really going to look for. So I’ll kind of hang it on that. So we can get to the next question. I know we have a bunch, but this is a really good question. I knew that we were going to go into a few different areas, so I’m glad that I, we obviously you stuck with me for that one too, because I know we didn’t really talk to too much of that. So I love the off the cuff though. So, Bobby or I’m not sure is asking the next one, but I’ll pass it back to you guys.
Yeah, I can tell you on the next one. What are the top three pain points where ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce is focusing its product efforts? Are you on that one? Yeah, I’ll start it. But definitely feel free to kind of hop into it, too. So, you know, three pain points where ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce is focusing its product efforts. So ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ really kind of focus in our efforts. I’ll say it that way. So I’m in, an optimistic. So I’m going to say this as I look at this is not three pain points but three opportunity areas that we’re focused on. So I think from the platform itself, it’s the kind of the the point that we’ve been making for the past few years now. It’s really kind of looking at the platform holistically and understanding that we obviously have different merchants and more importantly, there’s different target audiences that are going to be using, quote unquote, the platform itself, regardless of what that business type of model is. So I like the idea and what I think are, are opportune areas that we’re really focusing on is creating these services first and foremost. So I love, you know, what we’re doing with catalog services. I love with the fact that we’re dealing with payment options and payment gateways. Obviously, everything that we have that’s through artificial intelligence as well. I love the ideas of how we’re doing certain things in merchandizing at this point in time. So I really do, and I’m a huge fan of those pain points. Pain points, I’ll say it that way. Or opportunity or open areas where I think that we’re really kind of doubling down on. And I know I kind of set three of them right there. But beyond that, too, I think it’s making the platform a little bit more agnostic to being able to grow as well. So as businesses change and as businesses adapt, you can add on to things like the B2B capabilities. You know, we’re really focused on B2B, and because B2B is still somewhat I don’t want to say new because it’s not new in E-com, but we’re still obviously going through an adoption phase. Right? The maturity of E-com in B2B, and I talk about this a lot of times in a lot of seminars that I do in a lot of different customer roundtables where, you know, that adoption, what what those, those shoppers are looking for, your customers are looking for is essentially retail like experience. Right? So it’s the concept of the B2B. And I know that that’s just buzzwords, but it is a business. Everyone, as you’re doing that. And I think that that’s where ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce really plays well. So I think those types of things and then honestly, to kind of just it’s not a pain point, but an area that we’re still continuing to focus on is the multi store functionality, is the multi brain and multi-tenant aspect. It’s the things like I mentioned before around the company hierarchy feature within the B2B commerce side of it. And then I think again, one of the things you’re really going to see, and we’ll probably say this a few times throughout today, because there was a lot of questions around it. But, keep an eye on the horizon. We have ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Summit coming up and I would say, you know, to tease it, definitely stay tuned. Stay tuned for what’s coming for the for the upcoming year.
Nice. And I think I think sort of the, the lean into to B2B is really important. I mean so many I work with so many merchants and B2B like you have Corey and it’s almost been like a really bespoke process for, for every company, right? Everyone has their own systems and they interact with them in different ways. So, you know, I think the efforts there to sort of try to standardize that process and like you say, you know, make it B2B where, you know, buyer is B2B buyers now are also B2C buyers in their personal life, and they have certain expectations for how they want to to purchase from you. Right? Because that’s what they do in their personal life.
So I think that’s really important. One of the ones I was really expecting you to call out, Corey was I think I see a lot of, merchants talk about total cost of ownership. And that’s a really, you know, I would say more of a historical problem, or opportunity, as you say, with, with commerce. And I think, you know, the idea of sort of streamlining our release schedule and really clearly publishing that and, and even the the efforts with, with Apple, they’re sort of being able to decouple the customizations outside of the core application are really great opportunities to, you know, simplify your core commerce code base and, you know, and simplify things like upgrades and patch releases and things like that. So I’m really excited about, you know, what the future holds for, for those things. So yeah, I so it’s, it’s great. And I again without us we try to do so for everybody that’s on today the ask me anything. We really try to make sure that this is very much so off the cuff. We’re not trying to prepare anything in addition to to looking at the questions that are there, that were pre-submitted. And again, I think that this is an opportunity that you guys can see. This is where for what I’ve been, I are talking through, and I agree, I love the idea of what you said around just at builder and thinking about total cost of ownership, that that area is a huge point that we really been building on with the ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ side. So after the platform was acquired by ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ, at this point in time, you know, we’re we’re worlds ahead of kind of that process and the schedules and what we’re trying to look at in trying to make sure that, again, that total cost of ownership is a big priority point, as well as just the upgrade process in general. That’s where Apple really does come into play, you know, so anybody that’s out there right now that you’re using integrations and you have middleware softwares, Apple there can act as that liaison for your platform, for your business. Essentially. The other thing that it does is really, really well, there’s anything that’s custom, anything that’s an extension based can all be done through App Builder. So that is definitely an area where, you know, we could spend an entire session on that. We have more technical sessions that are geared towards that builder. In the coming year we’re going to do even more, on those as well. So that’s it’s a really good opportunity for you to kind of again, that’s why I said there’s definitely some things on the horizon for it as well, some things that obviously just a little tedious around it. But you know, Apple, there is something we’re really building on the momentum from this year and really kind of focusing on that doubling down those efforts and just kind of, again, riding that momentum into next year and talking about what that’s really going to do and help businesses. So yeah, that that was great for sure. So, Bobby, Alana, I’ll push this back to you guys. Yes. Thank you guys.
Piggybacking off that, there’s in the handout, there is links to our past recordings, and there is a link to, an app builder behind the brew session that we had back in August that Corey mentioned. We will be touching upon it again next year, but you can definitely, watch the recording that from a couple months ago. It’s all still very relevant. So, thank you. And thank you guys for answering these really hard hitting questions.
All right. Next one, what are the best practices for Live search? Yeah, I’ll kick this one off and Corey and I’ll, I’ll pass it to you in a second. Maybe you can do a little demo for for the crew. I mean, there’s, there’s so many options and, I gather we will touch on different ones here. I think one of the, the most important ones for me and what actually applies to search in general, not just live search is, you know, identifying, what people are searching and especially tracking zero search results, search terms. Right. So if somebody’s searching on your site and it’s not like a gibberish search term, and they’re not getting any results, that’s a missed opportunity to be merchandizing to that customer. Right. So finding those opportunity and and redirecting them whether to a category page, a synonym or even a PDF if it’s a very specific search term. Is is a great opportunity to, you know, to reduce friction for that visit.
With with live search, there is the ability to set up sort of specific search term rules, you know, so if somebody searches for pants, let’s say, you know, tuning that, that result specifically, but having a sort of a fallback default rule, right? We want to be using the AI, the AI tool to, to help you merchandise for your customer. So make sure that you have a good default rule in place. In addition to, you know, your specific, search terms and again, you know, tuning those search terms, especially for the really popular search terms, ones that maybe have a lot of search results, ones that are, you know, maybe more broad than others, you know, tuning those, those search terms for very specific results. And, and, and the quality of those results for your customers, I think is really, really impactful. What do you got, Corey. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think you’re you’re hitting all the right areas that I would really kind of call on our, our kind of those differentiators. But also at the same time, you know, those common best practices that you typically are going to look for, I mean, ultimately, as we are all shoppers in one way or other, are all buyers, are all shoppers. What do you look for when you’re on a website? What are you doing as you’re searching for things like that? So it’s really yes, I always say make sure you tune everything to your target audience to who is actually shopping on the site, but you can also use yourself to some extent. We all shop. We all use the search bar. Most commonly we purchase through the search bar. So that’s when we’re actually converting the most. And I’d be touched on that before, but I’ll kind of showcase a few things here, because I think it’s always good to kind of see this and to be able to kind of see what we’re what we’re talking about a little bit more. So let me share screen. You guys will be able to see that in just a second. Give me one second. All right. You should be seeing my screen right now. I’ve been. You see? Live search. See? Yes, sir. We gotcha. Perfect. Okay, so the performance, I. This is exactly what I was talking through. This is a really good. Just kind of look, see? At a specific date range. You can export this data too. So I, I again, I, I wholeheartedly agree, which is kind of where I was going with that with that zero results. If you have zero results, what can you do for something like that? You can create a synonym around it. You can create a search term, redirect around that to make sure that it’s going to somewhere specific. So I think that this is a really good kind of call out for this. And something that is simplistic too, right? You don’t want to do it for every single one. And over time, ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Sensei, right. It’s going to start augmenting that behavior. So as the experiences happen, as you see those, your results, when somebody searches for something and there’s a zero result, but then immediately afterwards maybe they just misspelled it, they search for something specific. And if that happens time and time again, what happens with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Sensei is it starts recognizing that and over time it will start providing results. But in term, right. If you know that there’s something that’s a zero result and it happens very often, that’s a really good opportunity for you to kind of look at this creator sitting around and create a search term redirect. So I love that idea. I love the fact that putting something like that in place. So I agree that is something simplistic. Search merchandizing to you know, is just around kind of what I was talking through creating those search term type merchandizing rules. You could do it in various areas. So within past commerce and coffees I’ve done it where it’s the pants search query. If you were creating a default rule too, right. So we continue to talk about, and you continue to keep hearing it. Right. And I’m sure at nausea and at, you know, it’s just too much and it’s you just hear it all the time. Ultimately, at the end of the day, saying something like this personalization, I understand annoying might be the word that you’re thinking of or kind of that feeling. If you keep hearing it all the time, but your customers are expecting it, they’re expecting a personalized experience. That’s, I think, again, where there is a very simplistic opportunity here when it comes to live search and what you’re able to do. So when you do a search term type role, you could do a default rule. For instance, a default rule basically gives you that opportunity. And even if you hover over the rule type here, it will tell you that search query. It basically means it doesn’t match any specific rules. So any term essentially can be intelligent ranked as H. For instance. So we have pants as a term before let’s say somebody searches for shirt. Let’s say that on me and I search for shirts. But I like polos. I’d be like long sleeve shirts, whatever that kind of looks like. If we both search for that same term and there’s not a search term, we’ll run it. But there’s a default rule set up. We could do intelligent ranking that does recommended for you. So if we do the same search term I would get polos towards the top of my results, but we would get longer at the top of his results. So the same thing with kind of doing most of you, most purchase, most out of the cart, you can create that experience around it. The other thing to that, again, is that simplicity aspect is you can manually, you know, basically pin products. So if you’re saying this product I want to show here every single time, you could do something with with Live Search on that too. So but I don’t want to get too far into it. But I do think those are really, really simple areas. I’ll say just another point to for, you know, kind of what are those best practices around it. It’s still making sure that you have attributes set up. So with your product attributes and I pop these open just so that we can kind of talk through this. But you want specific ones to be searchable still. So Live Search still works with your weighted searches. So your weighted attribute. So if I go into here and let’s just well I’ll just use the yes for searchable right now so we could see all the ones that I have that are set. So for instance, if, if color is being used right now. So I have that as a searchable attribute, I have a filter. Both results too with this specific lead. If I kind of go into this you can actually see I have, you know, the colors I have so forth, so on all these different types of things, the storefront properties, I’m actually weighting this search because I know that this isn’t as heavy as what I would want something else to be. So maybe like fitness type for a business might be a little bit higher. So your search weight is still important. So best practice wise it’s still not losing what you think for your product taxonomy and what you need to set up there too. So I think again obviously the zero results, I think search merchandizing rules are really important and really kind of easy to win synonyms, obviously really easy. Those are best practices. But ultimately, again, the data aspect itself, making sure your attributes are set up properly. Again, thinking of your product taxonomy, thinking about how your customers are going to be searching the keywords that they’re going to be searching. Don’t just do long description right, don’t just do short descriptions around where you want to be searchable, because that’s going to cover so many words. That means if somebody searches the the every product might show up because you have, inside of every single long description. So I think that’s an opportunity area just to kind of think through. So, with the attributes, make sure you guys have those kind of set up. So I’ll kind of stop there. I think our next question we’re keeping demo up. So I’m just going to keep this screen shared for now. But I’ll pass it back to you guys. I think if I recall that.
For. Yeah. So I guess I’m on it.
Yeah. I can read this next. Yeah. If we’re seeing the demo, this works out because I think the next question was, can Commerce data be exported to a spreadsheet? Would you be able to walk through that. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So it’s a little open ended that question. But I’ll say that ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce does offer a few different areas of doing, export essentially. So I’ll start with product data first and foremost. So there are within the system you have this what’s called data transfer. So you have import, you have export processes. You also have the ability to do scheduled import export. So if we said, you know what, hey, I want to export all my products just right now, you could see I have product catalog, I have stock sources, but you could do advanced pricing, export products, customer finances, customer main file, which basically is inclusive to everything about a customer, customer addresses and stock sources. So you can export either one of these for the scheduled aspect. I’ll just kind of quickly show that to I don’t have anything I think set up right now, but you could schedule an import, you can schedule an export. You also can schedule it to where it’s going to. So one of the really cool functions, one of the really cool features is that you can also say where you’re you’re basically putting this file. So if you said I want to do a remote FTP, you could do something like this, or you could even do it on a local server as well. And you basically say when you want something like this, so you like a scheduled export for product catalog. This could be used for let’s say you’re just using catalog on a different channel. Let’s say it’s through a marketplace channel, etc. you could do something like this. You also do have the option of doing daily, weekly, monthly type frequencies as well. So product as well as customer. So you could do either which one of these. Again here is that aspect here of that advanced pricing, your products your customers etc… Now for reporting itself. You also have that. So if you notice before and I’ll actually go back here just for a second with performance you can export the live search. So even through live search you can export this data the same thing with product recommendations. You can export the data. You can import it into, let’s say you have a business intelligence tool or something like that. You can export this data. You can import it. It’s there report wise, kind of the same thing. I’ll just use that the really simple like orders. Same thing here. You can export anything that you have. You can export it to an Excel. You can export it to a CSV, anything that’s underneath the report section. So products in cart, abandoned cards, orders, tax, invoice, shipping, refunds. So like all those types of things, customer register actions, realistically everything that you see here, you can essentially export as well. So it’s a great question. But yeah any data you can essentially export directly, you know through the admin side itself. And a lot of the grants to query have have export capabilities too. So like the price point, for example, or the orders grid. Yeah, the same thing with the order. Yeah, it’s a good point. So you can do this through here as well. You can also do it through, say customers again through customers. You’re already kind of doing that anyways. But you can export things through here, especially if you want to filter down export it that way. So it’s a great point. So you can do the scheduled ones. You can also do the manual ones that you kind of see through this as well. So same thing with quotes too. So for B2B you can also export quotes. You could also export some certain payment options and then different things that are gateway transactions. So it’s good. Good point. Good call.
Some but not great. All right. Back to you. All right so next question for you guys. What do you believe is the biggest pros and cons of using ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce for medium to large organizations? And how will that change in the future? It’s a really good question. And I’m curious to to where I’d be would think about this because I think for, for Ogbe and I, both of us, we’re, we’re not so much marketing. And we kind of look at this in a very much so, what our merchants and the discussions that we have and we both have that experience from the system integrator world, and we’ve been kind of boots on the ground with customers and merchants and in that world, so, you know, for me, I’ll say it as you know, what I think is kind of the biggest pro, you know, I think it’s actually both, Wow. I’m going to say this. It’s it’s both a pro and a con. I think the platform just being so massive and so many different areas that you can kind of go into, and the open source aspect of it, the flexibility of it, are definitely one of the areas that are pro. I’ll say it in a way that I’ve used to say it on the C side, and I know that I’m an ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ employee, so it’s going to have some biased aspect to it here. And I’m going to show favoritism. But honestly, the way I look at the platform is as a business, as a as an actual business, you should not have to think of if you’re on a platform, regardless of the technology, regardless of what the, the need is. Right? So commerce platform, WMS and ERP, etc., whatever it might be, I look at it this way, technology should be able to fit and mold itself into a business. And what a business need is more importantly to double down on there is what your customer expectation is, what your customer needs are. That’s what a technology should do. It should never be the other way around where your business needs to mend and mold itself to that. So I think one of the biggest things that I would always, and I’ve always hung my hat on since working with the platform since 2008 that I’ve really, really enjoyed. And what I’ve loved about it is that there’s no ceiling. It’s it’s endless. You, you essentially, as you grow as a as a merchant, as you evolve as your customers. Again, more importantly, as your customer experience evolves, the platform needs to be part of that evolution. And you can’t be stuck by way of whatever that technology is going to do. Y and that’s a con as well as because you can obviously go into a rabbit hole and you can you can develop, you can go into a certain direction that could be a little bit messy for you. Because the platform being open source it does, does give that opportunity. But I think of it as that way. I think the platform is really designed to grow with you. So it’s a good and a bad thing, right? As certain businesses first start out, they might be looking for something a little bit more small over scale. But I think again, that’s the that’s the power of the platform at the same time. So I don’t really like ever answering thing where it’s like it’s the same for both of these reasons of why. But again, I think it’s tough not to acknowledge something like that. But I’ll be I’ll turn this to you and I’ll let you kind of what’s your thoughts on this? It’s funny because you can tell that we cut our teeth kind of in the same world here. Corey and I had the same thought when I saw this question. Is that, to put it in one where the extensibility is both the pro and the con, because it allows you to mold the system to your purposes however you want to do that.
But at the same time, I, I see a lot of merchants who kind of overdo that sometimes thinking about the current processes or the current systems without sort of the foresight into, hey, we’re not going to have this version of the CRP forever. We may not even stay with this. This, you know, brand of ERP.
But we’re going to, you know, force, force ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce to, to match what the CRP does and how it wants to communicate. And that makes, you know, future development that much trickier, right? You’re starting from scratch with, with a brand new integration. Right. So I think, you know, again, to your point, it’s, it’s a little bit annoying to say that the same thing is a pro and a con, but I think it can be a double edged sword. And, again, it’s one of the things that I’ve loved about ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce, but it’s also one of the things that’s frustrated me in my past life when when I got a customer, you know, coming to my company for support and, you know, seeing something that was like, way over engineered for, for the purpose and didn’t have any force, you know, foresight into, like, a future, plan or development. So, Yeah, not to, not to be, again, riding your coattails here, but, I think know I’ve have the same. The same thought is all right. I mean, it’s it’s funny because we we’ve just we’ve been through the experiences. So I’m you and I work together in on the sea world to, for for quite a few years. So we were directly involved with experiences together like that, and I, I would go back to something I was asked about before, just around how the platform has evolved. And you know what we’re looking at is kind of the exciting future of the platform to, I think things like App Builder, it mean, guys, I’ll be back in the day. We had App Builder when we were on the sea side, and if we ever took accounts over from other sites or whatever, or if we work together with another site at the same time. How simple would that have been for upgrades for things that we were doing? Because you can divide and see what’s actually causing friction, what’s potentially causing issues in a much more kind of simple way and a much more kind of digestible way. But as as others would say in a, in a buzzy word type of way, in a monolithic type of atmosphere, I’m not going to say it that way. I’ll say it the way I just said it. So it’s much more simplistic. It’s much more, you know, you can digest that, you can see what’s going on, and you can do things like the upgrade compatibility tool. I just look at it like that, you know, back when we were on the agency side and what that could have looked like, I think that that kind of definitely, simplified things for sure. So, yeah, there’s a lot of that. Yeah, there’s a lot of tools I wish I had in my past life. But yeah, no use crying over spilled milk there. Can’t anymore. Not anymore. I would like to kind of pivot for just one second. So, there was a question that we had that came in, and I did want to just ask about that. So I’m not going to say the person’s name. But the question was, Will live search ever be expanded to allow us to tap into attributes, another database table is that we built custom modules off of, for the person that asked that question, can you just kind of clarify that a little bit for us? We’ll come back to it. But if you could, that would be ideal. But just kind of as an interim, let’s kind of go to that next question that we do have. So Alana, or if, just if you guys want to go to that next question, we have.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to pivot there and throw you guys off. Yeah. I’ll get, looking at this list questions I see in a B2B environment, what are some techniques for personalizing based on customer segments that might not be obvious out of the box? I’ll take the lead here, Corey. And I know you have some strong opinions about about this, and hopefully I don’t steal too much of your thunder, but, I think one of the things that, you know, when we think about personalization and we think more about sort of the user experience and like the the visual aspect of personalization, the content side of that. And, and that’s really important. And is still one of the call outs. I would, I would make here. But one of the things that we don’t often think about is, you know, the personalized, product mix or pricing. Right? So being able to leverage shared catalogs, in B2B, you know, that’s probably something people think about, you know, as far as what they’re offering. But that is a type of personalized option. And coupled with that is product pricing, whether that is through the shared catalog feature, using tiered pricing, using catalog price rules. There’s a lot of ways to sort of skin that cat. And then kind of back to, you know, several questions ago when we were talking about, you know, the mobile experience and payment methods that match that, you know, what payment methods were offering customers, when, you know, for, for our B2B customers. Right. So if they’re on terms making sure they can purchase on terms and their, their credit limit is appropriately, represented on the site, or you allow them to potentially purchase in excess of of what is, what is stored on, on ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce. Right.
Offering them credit card payments. And if you are doing that, giving them mobile wallet options, giving them PayPal, giving them other financing, you know, third party fine financing options, right? There’s there’s a wide variety of options there. And I think again, as all buyers are B2C buyers and themselves, you know, meeting them where they’re at and where their companies at with the the methods that they prefer to use, can only serve you well in this case. So those are the ones I would call out. I don’t know, Corey, if you have any, other options or thoughts there. Yeah. So, I mean, what you call out is, is perfect.
And it’s not to say, you know, to add on or anything like that. It’s just and I would say, you know, one of the things I’ve seen really successful with merchants, that I think was a little bit where that seems much more retail, that seems much more direct to consumer, that seems much more B2C is around, like doing banners and, and content pieces. I’ve actually seen merchants that are turning towards that and starting to create different types of CTAs on their home pages, for instance, that is actually driving sales even further. Basically doing things like product, product availability and product, basically catalog aspects too. So again, what you what you’re saying is perfect because, you know, during curated catalogs, doing those types of things are definitely really, really helpful. But I think also on top of that, it is the content piece to it to it’s when somebody gets onto the site, they might not be aware of certain things that you have as a B2B type catalog aspect too. I think that that’s part of that personalization effect. So it sounds like it’s kind of contradictory and it’s the opposite direction you want to go. But I say this very often, don’t pigeonhole somebody just because they purchase one thing from you all the time. Make sure that they’re aware, but don’t be too in their face either. So it’s a very, very like, yeah, it’s a tough thing to kind of to dance around on a little bit, but that’s something to just be mindful of as you’re kind of creating those experiences that are going to be differentiated. I use the word differently there because I didn’t want to use personalization, because I know that it’s getting kind of exhausting, but to create a differentiated experience, I think it’s still important. You can create and utilize customer segments with B2B so the two can be together, right? You’re not just saying it has to be one or the other. You can categorical folks and you can group folks into specific areas for customer segmentation, even though they might have different catalogs or curated catalogs. You can create dynamic content, you can create differentiated experiences. You can create different types of hero banners based on different segments that you might have. So yeah, I think it’s what you called out. Adding on to it, I definitely think are really good opportunities for kind of those techniques to personalize that experience for, again, for B2B customers as well as for you to see. But.
Awesome. Thank you guys. We did get a response, in the Q&A pod about, your question, Corey, I’m gonna give you a second to read that. And then we’ll get back to that question and others as well. We have a couple more I’m going to. Yeah, I wanna I could I can answer I see that. So thank you for for expanding on that.
So yeah. And I kind of showcase that before a little bit too. So the product taxonomy, your attributes themselves, you can still set to be searchable. So even if it’s not you don’t have to have it as part of the description. So I’ll actually just demo that one more time. I kind of hit it before, but let me just showcase again, if this is not what you’re referring to, let me know. You could again, you can post back in the Q&A. But let me just take over and demo that one more time. Give me one second. You guys should see screen.
Technology allows me to. Okay, you should see screen momentarily. Guys. There we go. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Cool. So with the product attributes themselves, so I’ll go into just any sort of product attribute if you. So this is my specific, taxonomy. Right. So like in the Lumina fictitious business that I’m showcasing, I fitness goal and fitness type. So if you guys go into your product taxonomy you may or may not have these probably don’t have these as your, specific attributes. But with mine you can actually see I’ve already set them to be searchable. So when you’re in your, your attributes themselves, you can essentially and even if you have multiple upon multiple upon multiple options, or maybe it’s even text fields, etc., you can create this by doing that storefront properties. So you’re in this is me inside of that attribute now for fitness goal. And you could see what mine is, is it’s strength training moves weight health and wellness so forth, so on. You could see from front end side I’m doing this on the store view. I’m also adding this into things like I want to actually use this in segments. So I am using this as part of segments to what you’ll see for use in search. I have it sets and I have it as the lowest priority. So ten is the highest priority for the search within itself. But this will be part of that search criteria. So if I go into, my front end and let me just look back at that. So let’s say I want to search for I don’t know. Let’s see, let’s say something like that. So if I have products that basically are for I lose weight, that’s what would show there. Or again, what you could see here with the quest Luma Flex one, that attribute is actually on here. That is a value that’s available. So that is being utilized there. For instance, now within this storefront properties, I’m also putting that as filter bowl with results as well as using the search results layer navigation. So within the search navigation you you see that there too. So with your product taxonomy, if you set it to use in search then it absolutely will be. And assuming based on how that question was asked to that it is seen on the front end, then it’s even more applicable here. But you can even use it as it’s not seen visually from like a PDP perspective. But it can be something that could still be searched upon. So that’s a good question.
Yeah. Sorry to cut you off. There’s actually a follow up on that one, which is, which goes back to setting up, you know, synonyms and redirects, so. Oh yeah. Yeah. Me yeah, I see it I see that, yeah. Perfect. So to so let me kind of say the question here too.
So it’s basically asking if you can route to a specific page, based on that attribute too. So. Absolutely. So this search term redirect, sorry, just bear with me for one second. So this is underneath the SEO and search side. So you would actually do that the search term itself. So in your search term, whatever you’ve dictated here, whenever you said so if you said okay, well I want to add a new search term. My new search term is going to be let’s say that it’s weight loss. And I want to basically put them on to a specific website or a specific URL. So let’s say that I wanted them to go into and I’m just going to throw something out there. Let’s say I want them to go to this page specifically, I would put this in here and I would say that’s where I wanted this to go. I cannot say I want to display it in search terms too. So if somebody starts typing in weight, well, it would start going to that PLP. But search term redirect is still absolutely applicable with live search as well. So it’s used in Elasticsearch but still used in Live Search as well. So really good question. But I get that double down there.
Way. There’s what? There’s one more question I’m seeing in the in the pod here. Looking for some insight around, upcoming 2.4.8 release. If we can give any sort of sneaks or insights into to what that looks like. Yeah. Yes and no. So I’ll do it as a teaser explicitly.
Summit, ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Summit? Definitely. There might be some pre webinars that are before it, as well as after that, just to kind of talk through what those are going to look like. Obviously keep an eye out to for our release schedule and what that’s going to look like for 248. But definitely I would say ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Summit is really going to take everybody through exactly what those new functions, those new features are going to be. I’ll say it is one thing, some of the core functionality is going to be enhanced. Some things with products, prototypes, so forth, so, so on are really going to be enhanced even further just to kind of, again, what has evolved with product catalogs and what that looks like. So that could be obviously with Live Search, could be with product recommendations, it could just be with the core product types itself as well. But it’s exciting. I can’t say anything beyond that right now. I also don’t have much detail beyond that right now. So as our product team is going through it, us being in November right now, our release for two for a our schedule is out there. As well as what’s going to be going on in summit two. Just, just definitely keep an eye out. But it’s going to be, it’s going to be awesome. Hopefully you guys all trust me and trust the word of that.
You always trust in Corey. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right guys that that actually put us at pretty much that time here. So I’m going to go ahead and wrap up, all right. So on this screen we have a couple of resources for you. If you’d like further demos. On why to migrate from self-hosted to cloud. We have one of those for you on November 19th. That’s in the web link section. And then just a standard ecommerce demo. Also on, November 21st. Those are in your web link section as well as our past recordings. So in the second web link, link is the past event recordings. That’s where you can go to find the App Builder recording. It is behind the groove from August, so definitely check that out if that’s of interest to you.
And then we have our survey questions on the bottom. So we’d love to hear from you. This time we have an open text box. So let us know what you’d like to hear about next year as we start, adding topics for you guys. And if you have a question specific to your account that we weren’t able to address today, you can reach out to your solution account manager. You can reach out to myself or Fabian, and we can put you in touch with the correct person if you’re not sure who that is. So as a reminder, you will receive a recording of today’s event and an email from us in 24 hours from now.
And don’t forget to grab that white paper on your way out. And thank you everyone for your questions. Thank you to all the inquiry and, Fabian, for your participation today. We are excited for next year.
I hope everyone has a great season. If you are seasoning, otherwise, have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everybody. And,

Key points

  • Company Hierarchy Feature Released in the B2B 1.5 update at the end of October, it allows merchants to nest child companies within a parent company for finer control over customer interactions.

  • Website Performance Metrics Besides sales, companies should focus on conversion rate, average session duration, and bounce rate to evaluate website performance.

  • ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce Product Focus Efforts are concentrated on enhancing platform flexibility, B2B capabilities, and reducing total cost of ownership through tools like App Builder.

  • Live Search Best Practices Emphasize tracking zero search results, setting up specific search term rules, and ensuring product attributes are searchable.

  • Data Export ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Commerce allows exporting various data types, including product catalogs, customer information, and reports, to spreadsheets.

  • Pros and Cons for Medium to Large Organizations The platform’s extensibility is both a strength and a potential challenge, offering flexibility but requiring careful management to avoid over-engineering.

  • B2B Personalization Techniques Utilize shared catalogs, personalized pricing, and tailored payment methods to enhance the customer experience.

  • Upcoming 2.4.8 Release Teased enhancements to core functionalities and product types, with more details expected at ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Summit.

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