In January 2023, Mark Adams re-joined BigCommerce as a senior vice president and general manager for EMEA. Adams previously led BigCommerce’s entry into the European market from 2018 to 2020 and established the team that’s driven EMEA growth since then.
Since listing on NASDAQ, the company has gone from strength to strength. It has extended its global reach into Scandinavia and Latin America, as well as going up-market, attracting global and luxury brands and retailers. In a wide-ranging discussion, Mark suggests that for enterprises to be growth companies, brands and retailers must seamlessly operate across channels.
Furthermore, they must find a way to achieve this cost-effectively, converting consumers on those channels. Partnering with technology vendors that have a big focus on the customer experience. Mark suggested three key areas that brands and retailers need to focus on to be successful.
1. Improving conversion rates
In the last 10 years, retailers and brands have basically just accepted a low conversion of one to two percent. In Mark’s opinion, that should be challenged. Businesses need to improve conversion rates.
Retailers need to allow consumers to find what they are looking for more easily, whenever and wherever they happen to be browsing or purchasing. Retailers and brands also need an omnichannel strategy. Ideally, one that enables the right product data sent to the right channel to convert better on those channels. Mark suggests this should be classified as a conversion problem.
2. Get better quality product data
The biggest single challenge any retailer can do is to get better quality product data. Because if brands achieve better data, this can be pushed into the search engine.
A consumer comes along and searches for products and services they need, and finds what they’re looking for straightaway. As a result, brands and retailers are much more likely to convert and increase revenue.
3. Offer a seamless checkout experience
Then thinking further down the funnel on the digital website, retailers must have fully optimised checkout options. A website that allows the consumer to checkout speedily, for example, with one click checkout.
Can the business serve the consumers wanting to transact in the marketplace or the social channel? Does the retail digital infrastructure have the integrations, product data and technology to support that omnichannel journey? That’s because consumers want the ability to purchase across a multitude of channels.
