We were very excited to sponsor and attend Vervaunt’s Pulse Ecommerce Summit on June 8th, which brought together industry leaders, marketing experts, and digital enthusiasts in a dynamic setting to explore the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing. With over 500 attendees, the conference served as a platform to exchange ideas, uncover emerging trends, and harness the potential of innovative strategies that drive businesses forward. We spoke to our CEO Mark, our Ecommerce Project Manager Sean and our Lead Solutions Specialist Dan to find out more.
GPMD’s main highlights and insights from Ecommerce Pulse by Vervaunt:
Dan Fernandes - Lead Solutions Specialist:
Everybody seems to be experimenting or at least discussing AI to some capacity (and I mean everybody). We’ll definitely see an increase in automation processes, an embrace in creativity and a lot of testing in that area in the coming years.
There was also an interesting discussion on GA4, and it seems a general consensus that the tool still has a lot of issues to be solved. Finding an analytics advocate who can spend all his time actioning discrepancies in data, instead of just building reports and duplicating dashboards; who also happens to be a “people person”, seems to be an extremely desirable unicorn in the industry.
One of the most memorable parts of the day was the panel Shopify vs. BigCommerce vs. Centra. Centra showed that their platform has a lot of options for configuration and Shopify mentioned some surprising information like having four thousand developers and releasing a new checkout that can handle 40k checkouts per minute. Overall, however, it felt like BigCommerce won the “battle” by going on the offensive and stating that BigCommerce has the most flexibility of choice and ability to deliver.
Sean Toole - Ecommerce Project Manager:
The wide variety of opinions and wild ideas on AI and its uses makes it clear that it is on everyone's minds. Understandably this is going to be big for the ecommerce world, bringing more effective personalisation, better efficiency and automation.
On the flipside, how will this affect the creative side of the ecommerce industries? With automated content, customer support and design and its increasing utility & efficiency vs cost, it's also a scary notion for some.
The Era of Automation will need to be navigated by the fine line between the use of AI and the risk of eliminating the necessity of creative labour, rather than augmenting it.
The advent of GA4 over UA has been another subject often discussed. The key takeaway here is that GA4 is a monster of a system, and difficult to transition over to. Businesses will benefit from it, but it's a long road of discovery, and the key advice is instead of transferring years of legacy tracking, data layers and reports, to start with a more narrow mindset, and use this as an opportunity to really focus on what matters.
Finally, from a few discussions it's been mentioned that the ecommerce world is heading down a leaner tech stack route. Away from the likes of Salesforce and SAP, and toward simpler, but more intuitive and flexible platforms.
Mark Slocock - CEO:
We are entering a period of disruption from AI, it’s going to impact online retail significantly over the next 2 years.
These were my highlights and insights of the event:
- Really strong turnout from retailers, agencies and service providers and a great venue. The main theatre could handle large numbers whilst still feeling close to the action.
- For retailers to get the most from Google Bard, their product data will need to be well structured.
- Building specific automation flows in Klaviyo can be very valuable and drive significant revenue.
- For retailers that operate stores, putting in place a mechanism for collecting customer feedback from in store staff is a valuable source of information.
- Fashion brands are starting to look at subscriptions and renting clothes as a way of turning rents into a profit centre, (I love this idea)!
- Using lean processes to standardise work allows for continuous improvement and will give retailers and agencies back time.
To top it all off, the platform panel was the first time I’ve seen ecommerce platforms on the stage together. Seeing Shopify, BigCommerce and Centra talking about their platforms and roadmaps was truly memorable for me.
Photo Credits: Vervaunt
