BigSummit Explores Top Trends for Future-Proofing Ecommerce Brands for Long-Term Success

In August 2024, we launched BigSummit, our flagship thought leadership conference designed to empower ecommerce leaders. Throughout the event, we hosted several presentations that allowed industry experts to share their knowledge and insights on the ecommerce landscape. 

During our Extend and Flex: Commerce CX to Future-Proof Business presentation, Heather Hershey, IDC's Digital Commerce Research Director, reviewed the challenges businesses face in adapting to technological and structural changes, and offered insights on how to differentiate and build lasting customer relationships in a competitive market.

Here are some highlights and key takeaways from the keynote that brands can use to elevate their ecommerce presence.

Achieve customer loyalty and growth through consistency

Heather Hershey: “There are a lot of misconceptions about growth and what it takes to achieve sustainable growth. One is that there's a general misconception about the point of the customer experience. The CX is somehow a quid pro quo; if we build it, they will come. If we personalize everything within an inch of its life, people will love us and won't shop with our competitors. If we buy this loyalty app and give people points, coupons, and discounts, they won't just get hooked on those discounts and perks, they'll be loyal to us.

“There's a lot of magical thinking that goes into the marketing, and many of the technologies that follow along those lines miss the point of some of the exercises. Yes, you need loyalty because you need retention to grow, but retention is not a substitution for a growth strategy. They have to go hand in hand. One is part of the other, and the true nature of loyalty is that it is a slow process. It is a process where you have to build that trust incrementally, and if you drop the ball at any point, it's all for naught. Loyalty is the result of consistent positive interactions that build upon themselves over time. So it's really important to recognize that consistency and continuity of the customer journey needs to be very firmly established.”

Key takeaway.

Establishing customer loyalty requires consistent and positive interactions over time. Brands that focus on creating a seamless, trustworthy customer experience can strengthen relationships and drive both retention and growth. By blending loyalty efforts with a broader growth strategy, businesses can set themselves up for long-term success in today’s competitive market.

Deliver a seamless customer experience with transcendent commerce

Hershey: “A major trend is transcendent commerce. I came up with this in my thought leadership because I had issues with the unified commerce narrative. It's a very systems-oriented approach to viewing how you will execute a lot of these connected and continuous customer journeys.

“I also wasn't hearing much about the voice of the customer, and not just surveying them, but what that experience looks like. What do they think about your efforts to consolidate teams and flatten hierarchies that operate with that best-of-both-worlds approach, where perhaps you have a commerce product that gives you most of the functionality you need, but you need to integrate some best-of-breed partners for maybe a marketing app?

“Maybe you want front-end-as-a-service to integrate into it, and so there needs to be a little bit more of a comprehensive view of what that looks like from the customer's perspective. It transcends the channel, whether it's a physical or digital experience. My opinion of personalization is that it's not just about shoving recommendations in people's faces. It's not about you trying to micromanage their experiences — it's about respecting the fact that the customer owns a lot of that experience on their end. So, what you want to do is prime them to have a positive experience once they have that ball in their court.

“Transcendent commerce leverages interconnected data models across commerce domains. I really advocate for having a unified dashboard that shows you the analytics, gives you visibility into all these different systems, and provides you with actionable insights that you and your teams can then leverage to move faster and pivot to meet the capricious demands of end consumers if you're in B2C, but to also delight and thoroughly impress your B2B buyers.”

Key takeaway.

Embracing transcendent commerce is essential for delivering a truly customer-centric experience that spans both digital and physical channels. While internal optimizations like team consolidation and tool integration are important, the key is respecting the customer's control over their own journey.

By leveraging interconnected data models and using unified dashboards that provide visibility and actionable insights, brands can adapt quickly to customer needs. This enables faster decision-making and a more personalized experience, ensuring businesses impress both B2C and B2B customers. Focusing on a holistic approach to commerce helps brands create meaningful, lasting relationships that drive customer satisfaction and business growth.

Transform your CX strategy with generative AI

Hershey: “The next trend is CX SaaS convergence, and I view this as something driven by generative AI technology. 

“One of the things that should be fairly obvious to you is what generative AI does specifically in CX categories. It commoditizes content and some of those interactions and engagements. If they're not commoditized now, they will be very soon in the future, which means if you're leveraging this technology, what are you going to do to elevate the experience beyond doing the obvious with it? 

“I think one of the other things that you're going to notice is that unification narrative platforms are very in vogue and that some platforms in ecommerce and elsewhere will start absorbing more of the feature sets and capabilities typically found in other app categories — for example, email. You might have a situation where an ecommerce platform tries to become an email engine at the same time, or you might have a situation where they can auto-generate product copy for you.

“One of the interesting things that I don't ever hear anyone mention is what happens when the data you’re using to generate that content auto-cannibalizes from itself and just spits out a bunch of generic stuff that all says the same thing about your product without actually saying anything that would move the needle to make a customer feel compelled to buy. Because what comes out of these algorithms is usually very vanilla and corporate-friendly, but is that really going to compel your buyers? I think that necessitates a human in the loop still, but it does speak to the ability to converge some of these categories.

“I predict that by 2027, 65% of G2000 firms will reallocate 40% of CX spend on emerging products and skills as approved gen AI renders entire software categories obsolete. That's right. I'm predicting that entire categories of CX software will be amalgamated due to this AI emergence, which means those teams may need to be reskilled, or they will become redundant.”

Key takeaway.

Generative AI is shaking up the CX SaaS space, making content creation and customer interactions more automated and commoditized. While this tech can help unify platforms and streamline tasks, there's a risk of producing bland, generic content that doesn't engage customers. To stand out, brands still need a human touch to keep experiences personalized and meaningful. However, businesses must stay agile and be ready to shift strategies, budgets, and teams as AI continues to evolve.

Future-proof your online store with hyper-extensibility

Hershey: “The next trend is hyper-extensibility. This is something BigCommerce does very well. What a lot of this hinges on is those partnership narratives between SIs and ISPs, making it about the ecosystem of applications, not just individual apps.

“You can't predict the future because a lot of that is out of your control. The only thing that you can really know for certain is that we're all building houses on quicksand in ecommerce, so we have to make sure that those houses are future-proofed. If the ground beneath us shakes, rattles, and rolls, we move along with it. The architecture must be flexible enough that you can pivot in new directions as needed and experiment with emerging technologies as they come on the horizon.

“CX architecture has moved beyond the cloud and focuses on things like APIs a little bit more. I strongly advocate for an API-first architecture for many reasons, but one of them is because it signals to the market that this is an app built to integrate. It is made for this and can bend, flex, and extend how you need it to because integrations are expensive, painful, and time-consuming. Anything you can do to minimize that burden is a profound change for businesses.

“So what everyone really wants is that Goldilocks solution where you can build upon it as you need and not just compose in an additive fashion, but decompose — as in take things out without a bunch of technical debt if you find that you are not using them or that those feature sets are redundant.”

Key takeaway.

Building ecommerce systems with hyper-extensibility is essential for staying agile in a rapidly changing market. Beyond individual apps, the focus should be on creating a flexible, API-first architecture that allows businesses to easily integrate, expand, and pivot as new technologies emerge.

By adopting a future-proof approach, brands can minimize the pain and cost of integrations, while also maintaining the ability to experiment and adapt quickly. This flexibility ensures that companies can adjust their application ecosystems without accumulating technical debt, enabling long-term growth and innovation that keeps pace with evolving customer and business demands.

Modernize your B2B experience with a B2C-like user journey

Hershey: “B2B is finally hitting its stride and embracing ecommerce, albeit still very slowly, but it is a story in evolution. It's something that has been going on for three decades at this point. I think what's happening is that as more people get used to that B2C-style shopping experience for themselves as consumers, they start wondering why it is so tedious and time-consuming to do this in B2B. 

“Not everybody likes dealing with people in person or on the phone. If you're talking to someone who is a digital native, they will appreciate it if you set up environments for them where they can do what they need to do without having to do things that they consider painful. We found that 80% of G500 B2B multinationals will have experimented with the delivery of live or AI-guided shopping experiences as they expand into B2B2C business models. I implore you to avoid siloing them off from each other too much because that makes it harder to have that continuous and connected customer journey.”

Key takeaway.

As digital natives enter the B2B space, they increasingly expect streamlined, self-service environments that allow them to complete tasks without the friction of traditional methods like phone or in-person interactions.

To stay competitive, businesses need to experiment with new tools and technologies to elevate the shopping experience and avoid siloing their B2B and B2C strategies. A connected, continuous customer journey across both models will be key to meeting evolving customer expectations and driving future growth.

The final word

To thrive in today’s fast-paced ecommerce landscape, businesses need to embrace flexibility and innovation. By taking advantage of emerging trends and delivering seamless customer experiences, brands can meet evolving consumer demands and build lasting loyalty.

Explore the full presentation to gain deeper insights into how these strategies can help future-proof businesses and drive sustainable growth.