2024 SaaS Platforms for eCommerce Websites

The development of SaaS solutions and platforms for eCommerce is an integral part of the industry’s recent history, with significant shifts that have empowered businesses to lower website operating costs while improving site stability, security, and performance. Ultimately, this increases customer engagement and frees up budget space for marketing to drive more traffic and sales. 

The shift from traditional on-premises applications like Magento (Adobe Commerce), WordPress, and many other legacy platforms to SaaS parallels the broader digital transformation. SaaS in eCommerce specifically has been a game changer for small to medium-sized merchants. The transformation has been marked by SaaS platforms’ ability to drive down maintenance costs while improving performance, security, and stability. Shopify and BigCommerce are leading the way in the eCommerce SaaS sector, creating industry-wide waves much like Salesforce did with its revolutionary CRM product.

The foundation of SaaS can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s, with the emergence of Application Service Providers that provided software and services over the Internet. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s, with improved internet infrastructure and the decrease in cloud computing costs, that SaaS began to flourish. Salesforce is often credited as the first successful SaaS provider, launching in 1999 and setting the stage for the popularity of SaaS across industries, including eCommerce.

Are you seeking to start selling online or for a new eCommerce website builder? InteractOne is proficient in optimizing and managing web design. Our expertise lies in eCommerce optimization and development, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for assistance. 

Evolution of SaaS in eCommerce Websites

The evolution of SaaS in eCommerce has been a game-changer for the industry, altering its very landscape. SaaS is not new to eCommerce, with the first SaaS platforms like Volusion and Yahoo Stores coming online in the late 1990s. These early offerings, however, failed to gain traction with mid to large-scale businesses due to their lack of flexibility and limited APIs. Shopify, BigCommerce, and Demandware (now known as Salesforce Commerce Cloud) entered the SaaS eCommerce arena in the mid to late 2000s. Shopify and BigCommerce were slow to grow with the mid-market since, at that time, they had limited features, APIs, and third- party ecosystems, including apps and integrations. Also at this time, most mid-market and enterprise eCommerce merchants were choosing to go with on-premises solutions that provided flexibility and performance that SaaS could not supply.

However, DemandWare took a unique approach and tailored its SaaS offering to suit apparel merchants well. With this approach, they soon became the first eCommerce SaaS platform to achieve scale in the mid-market.  

The Rise of SaaS in eCommerce

In the 2010s, BigCommerce and Shopify began to catch up with DemandWare in the mid-market as they greatly improved their APIs, native features, and third-party ecosystems. These SaaS platforms started enabling mid-market merchants with standard eCommerce B2C needs to set up online stores with relative ease and at lower costs compared to traditional on-premises solutions, like Magento or WordPress. Shopify and BigCommerce have made a significant impact by providing scalable, secure, and user-friendly platforms that are accessible to a wide range of businesses​​.

The development of SaaS solutions has not been without its challenges. A significant hurdle has been ensuring the robustness of APIs. In a SaaS model, APIs are the lifeline of the software, as they are essential for integrating various services and functionalities that eCommerce platforms need to provide a seamless user experience and create custom website functions. Unlike on-premises solutions, where developers have direct access to the core code and database, SaaS platforms require more complex and robust APIs to connect custom apps, other software applications, and data sources​​​​.

 Robust APIs are crucial because they allow eCommerce platforms to integrate with third-party services, such as payment gateways, inventory management systems, ERPs, and CRM tools. This integration is essential for creating a cohesive and efficient system that can handle the intricate processes of online retail​​.

SaaS for Managing eCommerce Website Design

As eCommerce continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, managing custom user experiences and large volumes of data becomes a critical need. SaaS solutions must be capable of providing unique user experiences (UX/UI) while handling a high number of transactions and vast amounts of data. Robust APIs allow for the management and integration of large data as well as custom UX/UI through headless solutions that separate the frontend presentation layer of an eCommerce site from the backend eCommerce functionality. Headless solutions offer greater flexibility and performance by allowing developers to create custom, highly performant user experiences empowered by SaaS backends.

This evolution towards more prevalent use of SaaS over on-premises solutions marks a pivotal shift in eCommerce. On-premises platforms, once the go-to for businesses seeking customization and control, are being outpaced by the performance, security, and ease of use offered by SaaS platforms. The SaaS model’s ability to simplify complex processes and lower the barriers to entry for online commerce is proving to be a compelling reason for its growing dominance in the market​​.

The trajectory of SaaS in eCommerce is fueled by a continuous push towards higher performance and lower costs, driven by the need to solve complex challenges and cater to the ever-evolving demands of eCommerce businesses. As the industry moves forward, the significance of SaaS platforms is likely to grow, leading to even more sophisticated solutions.

Benefits of SaaS Platforms for eCommerce Stores

When comparing SaaS to open-source solutions, several key benefits of SaaS platforms become evident:

Enhanced Website Security:

SaaS platforms typically offer better security due to their closed system architecture. This differs from on-premises, open-source platforms like Magento, where the code is accessible to everyone. Open-source solutions can be more vulnerable to security breaches because hackers can easily gain access to the source code and work to find exploitable weaknesses. Then, when patches are released for open-source code, it takes time for the community and merchants to implement the new code. Conversely, the core code of SaaS platforms is closed to the public and cannot be viewed by hackers in order to find vulnerabilities. SaaS providers continuously update and monitor their code and systems. This means they can quickly deploy new core code changes and security updates to all of their customers at once​​.  

Stability & Customization:

The microservices architecture prevalent in SaaS-powered websites contributes greatly to their stability. Customizations must be created as apps that sit outside of the core codebase and cannot override any of the SaaS core code. This architecture allows different components of an online store to be developed, deployed, and scaled independently, reducing the risk of system-wide failures. However, this can introduce limitations in customizing the core code compared to open-source solutions, where developers have complete access to modify the system at a fundamental level​​​​. For example, it is typically not possible to customize or override core features of the order workflow with SaaS eCommerce software and do things like edit order numbers, charge for shipping after order placement, or develop sophisticated B2B shipping or payment options.

Maintenance and Upgrade Development Costs:

Maintenance and upgrade development costs are generally much lower with SaaS platforms. This is because the SaaS provider manages the core code infrastructure and platforms for all of its clients in mass, which includes handling updates and maintenance of the core code. This means that as long as the SaaS application APIs are not changed (which they normally are not), third-party apps, integrations, and custom apps don’t need to be updated with every SaaS core code update. The simplicity of this model means that upgrades are often seamless and do not require extensive downtime or complex migration processes, which is a common concern with on-premises or open-source solutions​​​​.

Performance & Developer Flexibility:

SaaS platforms are designed to auto-scale, provide high performance, and are not likely to slow down under normal increased traffic loads. In other words, they are purpose-built to be scalable and efficient for all the sites on their platform. Open-source platforms like Magento may face challenges in maintaining performance since scalability depends on the hosting provider, third-party apps, and customizations. One flawed update could cause site-wide complex issues, downtime, lost sales, and costly fixes due to the monolithic nature of on-premises software, meaning apps are usually not decoupled from the core application. 

SaaS platforms also tend to offer greater developer flexibility. Since SaaS solutions are cloud-based, developers can build custom apps using various technologies without the need to understand the core architecture or manage servers. This allows for the creation of unique features and functionalities that can be integrated with the SaaS platform through APIs, whereas open-source solutions require a deeper knowledge of the core system for extensive customization​​​​.

 SaaS platforms stand out for their enhanced security, stability, cost-effective maintenance, and superior performance, along with offering developers a flexible environment for innovation without the need for in-depth infrastructure knowledge. These benefits make SaaS an attractive option for many businesses looking to leverage eCommerce solutions.

SaaS Limitations in eCommerce

SaaS platforms, while revolutionary in their approach to eCommerce, do face certain challenges when meeting the complex demands of modern businesses.

Handling Extensive Inventories in Online Businesses

For businesses with large and varied product ranges, SaaS platforms can sometimes stumble. They are built for scalability but have inherent limits that can hinder the seamless management of extensive product catalogs.

Confronting Database & API Constraints

The streamlined nature of SaaS platforms means direct database manipulation is always off-limits, leading to a reliance on APIs. This dependency can introduce performance issues such as bottlenecks, particularly when scaling up operations due to rate limits and potential latency in data exchange.

Best Practices for Navigating B2B Ecommerce Site Requirements

The B2B sector often entails intricate eCommerce processes, which can be at odds with the more generic B2C-oriented design of many SaaS platforms. Complex order processing and specialized workflows required in certain B2B transactions can be tough to implement within the standard offerings of a SaaS platform.

Adapting to Sophisticated Pricing Mechanisms

SaaS solutions may also struggle with intricate pricing models that are commonplace in B2B contexts, like tiered pricing or customer-specific discounts. Such nuanced pricing strategies often demand a level of customization and flexibility that open-source platforms are inherently equipped to handle.

Product Restrictions or Bans

SaaS providers have been known to restrict the types of products they allow to be sold on their platforms. If certain types of products do not agree with a SaaS platform company’s core values, they may restrict or not allow merchants to sell those products—for example, firearms and CBD. Also, in the past, SaaS platforms have made quick decisions about certain products or types of merchants to ban from their platform and have given merchants very little and often insufficient time (i.e., two weeks) to move off their platforms.

When On-Premises, Open-Source Is the Answer

These challenges point to scenarios where on-premises open-source platforms could be more beneficial. Open-source software grants the liberty to extensively customize the system, aligning with the unique and complex requirements of a business. This can be especially important for companies that operate with highly specialized business models or those that need granular control over their eCommerce ecosystem.

In light of these considerations, businesses must carefully evaluate the capabilities and constraints of SaaS platforms against their specific eCommerce needs to determine if a SaaS or open-source solution is the right technological choice for their online strategy. Working with an eCommerce platform consultant like InteractOne, who has years of real-world experience developing solutions with SaaS or on-prem open-source software, can be critical to making the right decision.

2024 Comparison of SaaS vs Open-Source Platforms

When considering SaaS vs open-source platforms for your eCommerce needs, it’s essential to understand the core differences and how they can impact your business.

SaaS Platforms:

Pros:

• Ease of Use: SaaS platforms are known for their user-friendly interfaces and ease of setup, which can be ideal for businesses without technical expertise.
• Maintenance & Hosting: The SaaS provider manages hosting, maintenance, and updates, reducing the workload for your team.
• Security: Enhanced security is typical of SaaS platforms, given that access to their core code is closed and very protected.
• Scalability: SaaS solutions can easily scale with your business, handling increases in traffic and transactions smoothly.

Cons:

• Customization Limits: There may be restrictions on how much you can customize the platform, as you don’t have access to the source code and cannot override or change core functions
• Ongoing Costs: While maintenance costs can be lower, the subscription-based model means ongoing license expenses, which typically increase every year.
• Integration Dependencies: You will be reliant on the platform’s APIs and existing integrations, which can limit flexibility.
• Business Risk: SaaS providers can change their terms and conditions at any time and may decide to stop providing services for certain types of products (i.e., firearms) or markets (i.e., geo-political issues). 

Open-Source Platforms:

Pros:

• Customization: Complete freedom to customize the platform to your exact specifications due to access to the source code.
• Community Support: Robust communities where developers share tools, plugins, and advice can be a rich resource.
• Control: Full control over your hosting environment, security protocols, and updates.

Cons:

• Technical Expertise Required: Requires a certain level of technical skill to manage and customize effectively.
• Maintenance Responsibility: Your team is responsible for updates, security, and maintenance, which can be resource-intensive.
• Security: While you have control over security, it also means you are fully responsible for implementing and maintaining it. And don’t forget—hackers have unlimited access to the core code of your website application and are always looking for vulnerabilities to exploit.

Each type of platform has its merits and can be the best choice depending on specific business needs. SaaS platforms are generally best for businesses looking for ease of use, minimal maintenance, and scalability. In contrast, open-source platforms are ideal for those requiring deep customization and control over their eCommerce environment. 

Our Take: Picking the Best eCommerce Website Platform

The architectural robustness of SaaS solutions is a significant advancement over traditional on-premises platforms. With SaaS, the core code remains intact and unalterable, compelling businesses to innovate through the creation of independent applications for additional features and functionalities. This approach not only futureproofs your eCommerce website, but also substantially reduces maintenance and support costs.

It’s clear that SaaS platforms are becoming the preferred choice for many eCommerce businesses. They offer a streamlined, reliable foundation for businesses to build upon, ensuring that they are well-equipped for the demands of modern commerce. The move to SaaS is not just about keeping up with technology trends—it’s about embracing a structure that positions businesses for long-term success.

Choosing the Best eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store

Choosing the right platform for your eCommerce business is a critical decision that can have long-term impacts on your operation’s success. In order to make a good, well-informed decision, we recommend working with a platform specialist like InteractOne. At InteractOne, we specialize in providing development services for SaaS platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, as well as open-source platforms like Adobe Commerce, Magento, and WordPress. Transitioning to a new eCommerce platform is a significant undertaking, and we are here to guide you through every step of the process. 

Our platform consulting process includes:

Assess Your Business Needs:

Start by understanding your specific business requirements. Consider the size of your product catalog, the expected volume of sales, the geographic reach of your business, and the level of customization you need in your website design.

Technical Capabilities:

Evaluate your team’s technical skills. Some platforms are more user-friendly for non-technical users, while others might require more advanced knowledge or even developer support.

Scalability:

Think about where you see your business in the next few years. You need a platform that can scale with your business, handling increased traffic and sales without compromising performance.

Budget:

Understand the total cost of ownership of the platform, including subscription fees, transaction fees, add-ons, and any additional tools or services you might need to sell online.

Ecosystem & Integration:

Look at the ecosystem surrounding the platform. The availability of third-party apps, plugins, and integrations can greatly enhance functionality.

Support & Community:

Consider the level of support offered by the platform. A strong community and responsive customer service can be invaluable to building a great eCommerce website.

Compliance & Security:

Ensure that the platform complies with the necessary legal and security standards, especially if you operate in multiple regions with different regulations.

Futureproofing:

Choose a platform that is innovative and keeps up with eCommerce trends. This will help you stay competitive and adaptable in a rapidly changing market.

With our expertise, you can navigate the complexities of platform selection and migration for your eCommerce store. InteractOne will help you make a smooth transition to the right solution to maintain and to build an eCommerce business online. 

BigCommerce and Shopify rank among the best eCommerce platforms. They make it easy for users to create, promote, grow, and maintain profitable businesses through a unified online store. Both platforms are intuitive, offering accessible features and mobile-responsive templates. When choosing between BigCommerce and Shopify, it’s crucial to consider their distinct strengths, impacting user experience, scalability, and overall business efficiency.

This article explores why both are great but also dives into critical factors to help you decide which aligns better with your business goals. Whether you’re starting your entrepreneurial journey or steering an established enterprise, our impartial analysis provides insights to make a decision aligned with your distinct business objectives.

In this guide to Shopify vs. BigCommerce, you’ll learn: 

1. BigCommerce vs. Shopify: Differences At a Glance
2. Which one is better: Shopify vs BigCommerce?
   
3. Key Comparisons in Commerce Platforms
4. Head-to-Head Comparison
5. Ease-of-Use
6. Customization
7. Features and Integrations/Plugin ecosystem
8. SEO Capabilities
9. Pricing Comparison
10. Design and Customization
11. eCommerce Tools
12. Performance and Scalability
13. Customer Support
14. B2B Tools 
15. Which Platform Wins?

For help with all of your Shopify and BigCommerce eCommerce needs, contact InteractOne today. 

BigCommerce vs. Shopify: At a Glance

Shopify and BigCommerce are popular eCommerce platforms designed to help businesses create and manage online stores. BigCommerce offers a comprehensive set of built-in features, providing scalability and customization options suitable for businesses of all sizes. It emphasizes flexibility, making it ideal for growth-oriented companies. 

Shopify is known for its user-friendly interface and vast app ecosystem, making it easier for beginners to set up and manage their stores. Shopify is often favored by small to medium-sized businesses for its simplicity, while BigCommerce caters to those looking for robust features and scalability. Ultimately, the choice between the two depends on the specific needs and preferences of the business owner. 

Which one is better: Shopify vs BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is excellent for big stores with lots of things to sell. BigCommerce makes many features possible without needing extra changes and doesn’t charge transaction fees. Being more feature-rich, it may have a steeper learning curve due to the capacity for growth and customization features. Additionally, BigCommerce has a threshold for annual sales, after which you must upgrade to a more expensive plan. 

Meanwhile, Shopify is easier to use and provides an accessible base platform for anyone to set up a basic Shopify store. The multitude of apps in its app marketplace gives you options for customization and functionality. However, Shopify imposes transaction fees on your sales unless you use their payment portal. These charges can quickly add up for stores with high sales volumes. 

Key Comparisons in Commerce Platforms

Head-to-Head Comparison

Ease-of-Use

Shopify is often lauded for its user-centric interface and intuitive design, catering to beginners. The platform provides a straightforward setup process, customizable templates, and a large app ecosystem. 

In contrast, BigCommerce presents robust features and scalability. While it may involve a steeper learning curve than Shopify, it provides more advanced tools for customization and growth. This fully-fledged platform attracts many users for its full suite of tools and features for online success. 

Customization

Both BigCommerce and Shopify provide extensive customization options, enabling merchants to tailor their online stores to reflect their brand identity. They offer a variety of free and paid themes and templates across diverse industries. 

For users with coding experience, both platforms offer a higher level of flexibility in design and functionality. BigCommerce is recognized for its flexibility and scalability, offering a wide range of customization options for users with more technical expertise. 

Conversely, those with limited coding or design experience may find Shopify appealing due to its simple drag-and-drop feature, simplifying customization. It’s worth noting that achieving certain advanced features and customizations on Shopify may require knowledge of its proprietary coding language, Liquid. However, you can turn to Shopify’s vast library of themes and diverse app ecosystem for more straightforward customization, providing extra features and functionalities. This abundance of themes and apps offers alternatives that may eliminate the need for extensive coding experience. 

Features and Integrations/Plugin ecosystem

BigCommerce and Shopify excel in providing robust integration capabilities through their respective app marketplaces. 

Shopify’s App Store is known for its extensive and diverse offerings, spanning categories like payments, shipping, marketing, and analytics. The platform integrates with popular services such as PayPal, Stripe, and MailChimp, supported by a vibrant developer community. 

In comparison, BigCommerce, while featuring a comprehensive App Marketplace with essential integrations, distinguishes itself with notable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integrations, making it a favorable choice for larger businesses. 

Both platforms support essential functionalities like payments and shipping, but Shopify’s larger and more diverse ecosystem may be appealing to businesses of various sizes.

SEO Capabilities

Irrespective of the SaaS platform selected for your eCommerce store, its effectiveness is tied to its visibility on search engines. 

BigCommerce boasts strong out-of-the-box SEO capabilities, offering features like customizable URLs, automatic sitemaps, and responsive themes for effective mobile optimization—an essential factor in search engine rankings. 

Shopify provides an easy-to-use interface with built-in tools for optimizing meta titles, descriptions, and URLs. It supports customizable header tags and redirects, with its app ecosystem featuring various SEO apps to enhance functionality.

Both BigCommerce and Shopify enable users to edit their site’s HTML and CSS, providing robust SEO capabilities. 

Pricing Comparison

Monthly Subscription Fees

Both platforms operate on a subscription-based model. BigCommerce and Shopify have various pricing plans, starting from basic to advanced, with costs tailored to the size and needs of the business. Monthly costs range from $39 up to $399. 

With Shopify, you can choose Shopify plans that best align with your budget and goals. However, in BigCommerce, your plan depends on the online store’s annual sales. The Standard plan is designed for stores with annual sales up to $50,000, the Plus plan for those with revenue up to $180,000, and the Pro plan for stores generating up to $400,000 in annual revenue.

Transaction Fees

Transaction fees can significantly impact overall costs. BigCommerce and Shopify differ in their approach to transaction fees. BigCommerce doesn’t impose additional transaction fees on top of the subscription costs. In contrast, Shopify charges transaction fees unless users opt for their proprietary payment gateway. Consider your overall sales volume when evaluating these transaction fee structures. 

Additional Costs (Themes, Apps, etc.)

Beyond subscription and transaction fees, you can incur additional costs for themes, apps, and other add-ons. Both BigCommerce and Shopify provide a marketplace of themes and apps, some of which are free, while others come with a price tag. Understanding the necessity of these additional features and their associated costs is essential when evaluating the overall affordability of each platform.

Cost: Does Shopify Win?

Determining whether Shopify is cheaper than BigCommerce depends on various factors, such as the business’s size, sales volume, and specific needs. While Shopify may have a lower entry-level subscription fee, the transaction fees and additional costs to build an advanced Shopify website including using the Shopify app store can contribute to the overall expense. You should carefully assess your business’s requirements and preferences to determine which platform offers the best value for your investment. 

Design and Customization

When designing and customizing your online store, factor in theme variety, design flexibility, and mobile responsiveness for a site that meets both aesthetic and functional requirements. 

Themes and Templates

Both platforms provide a selection of themes and templates to help businesses create visually appealing and professionally designed storefronts. BigCommerce and Shopify offer a mix of free and premium themes, allowing users to choose a design that aligns with their brand identity and customer experience goals.

Flexibility in Design

If you have unique branding or functionality needs, the level of flexibility in design is a crucial consideration. BigCommerce is recognized for its flexibility and scalability, providing users with more technical expertise the opportunity to delve into deeper customization of themes. Conversely, Shopify caters to users seeking simpler customization with its clear-cut drag-and-drop editor, making it accessible for those with limited coding or design experience. Shopify offers an easier base, whereas BigCommerce offers more built-in features. 

Mobile Responsiveness

In an era where mobile commerce is prevalent, ensuring mobile responsiveness is vital. Both BigCommerce and Shopify prioritize mobile responsiveness in their themes and designs. This ensures that online stores are optimized for various devices, providing a seamless experience for customers browsing and purchasing on smartphones and tablets. 

eCommerce Tools

For managing your store, BigCommerce and Shopify offer tools to streamline operations and boost efficiency. 

Product Management

Efficient product management is fundamental to any online store. Both platforms have robust tools for adding, organizing, and updating product listings. You can access features like product variants, categories, and descriptions to help you showcase your products. 

Both BigCommerce and Shopify support detailed customization of product variants, ensuring flexibility. BigCommerce allows for the flexible organization of products into categories and subcategories, facilitating a structured product catalog. Shopify offers a straightforward product organization system so businesses can categorize and organize products for easy navigation.

Enhancing product presentation is prioritized, with rich options for detailed descriptions and multimedia content on both platforms. For easy management, both allow import/export of product data, with BigCommerce also supporting bulk import/export—an advantage for businesses with large catalogs. 

Inventory Tracking: BigCommerce or Shopify?

Prevent stockouts or overstock situations through accurate inventory tracking. BigCommerce and Shopify equip users with inventory management tools, allowing businesses to monitor stock levels, receive low-stock alerts, and efficiently manage their product inventory to meet customer demand. 

Order Processing for Fuller Carts

Smooth order processing is essential for delivering a positive customer experience. BigCommerce and Shopify offer a wide range of integrated payment gateways so businesses can choose options that suit their preferences and regions. Shopify has the added option of using Shopify Payments as an integrated solution for seamless transactions. There are also tools for subscription management, order fulfillment, tax calculation, and multi-channel selling. 

Marketing: Learn More About Shopify and BigCommerce Tools

Abandoned cart recovery is available on both platforms, with BigCommerce offering it as a standard feature and Shopify making it optional. This allows businesses to send automated reminders to customers who still need to complete their purchase. BigCommerce has promotional banners to engage customers and drive sales, while Shopify offers customizable promotional pop-ups for effective marketing. 

BigCommerce integrates with WordPress to combine content flexibility with eCommerce capabilities. It strongly focuses on SEO capabilities, offering customizable URLs, automatic sitemaps, and responsive themes. The embedded blog feature facilitates content creation and SEO optimization. 

On the other hand, Shopify includes a powerful blogging platform for businesses to publish and manage content seamlessly for improved SEO and customer engagement. It offers customizable meta titles, descriptions, and URLs to optimize content. 

For email marketing, BigCommerce integrates with various platforms for targeted campaigns and effective customer communication. In contrast, Shopify provides built-in email marketing features, offering customizable email templates and the capability to sync with popular email marketing services for comprehensive campaigns. 

Both BigCommerce and Shopify support selling on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, they provide robust tools for tracking website performance, customer behavior, and sales data, empowering businesses to shape informed marketing strategies based on comprehensive analytics and reporting features. 

Performance and Scalability

The performance and scalability of your eCommerce platform are pivotal for providing a seamless and responsive shopping experience. 

Page Load Speed 

Page load speed directly impacts user experience and search engine rankings. Both BigCommerce and Shopify prioritize fast-loading pages. They use content delivery networks (CDNs) and optimize images to enhance page load speeds, ensuring customers can navigate and make purchases swiftly.

Server Reliability

The reliability of the server hosting your online store is critical to prevent downtime and ensure consistent accessibility. BigCommerce and Shopify invest in robust server infrastructure, minimizing the risk of server-related issues. Both platforms strive to provide reliable hosting solutions to keep online stores operational. 

Scalability for Growing Businesses

As businesses grow, the scalability of the chosen platform becomes paramount. BigCommerce and Shopify are designed to scale with companies of varying sizes. They offer different pricing plans and infrastructure to accommodate increasing product catalogs, higher traffic volumes, and the evolving needs of growing online businesses. 

Customer Support

The quality of customer support can significantly impact the overall experience of using an eCommerce platform. 

If you encounter any issues or have questions, Shopify and BigCommerce provide multiple avenues for assistance. You can get 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone. This ensures that users from different time zones and regions can access help whenever needed. These support teams can communicate directly with support representatives for more personalized assistance. 

BigCommerce and Shopify also have comprehensive Help Centers that serve as a knowledge base. Users can find answers to common questions, tutorials, and guides to navigate the platform effectively. The Help Center covers topics ranging from setup to troubleshooting technical issues.

You can also find help through the BigCommerce and Shopify communities, where users can interact with each other, share experiences, and seek advice. This community-driven support system allows users to learn from the community’s collective knowledge and find solutions to specific challenges.

B2B Tools 

Both platforms have features or functionalities that cater specifically to B2B needs. 

BigCommerce and Shopify share some common B2B features:

• Customer groups and pricing lets merchants offer personalized pricing based on customer segments, such as order volume or loyalty.
• Custom price lists accommodate negotiated pricing for different B2B clients.
• Bulk ordering and discounts let users set up tiered pricing or discounts based on quantity, which can encourage larger purchases.
• Quote management lets customers request quotes for bulk orders, and merchants create, send, and manage quotes within the platform.
• Account management tools such as order history tracking, shipment tracking, and account management functionalities.

The BigCommerce platform has a few additional key B2B features:

• Purchase order (PO) system that lets B2B customers submit purchase orders directly through the online store, streamlining the ordering process for wholesale transactions.
• B2B shipping and tax features, including the ability to set up custom shipping options and handle complex tax scenarios.
• Customizable checkout processes, including multiple payment options and integration with payment gateways that support B2B transactions.

Meanwhile, some Shopify relies on third-party apps or customizations let merchants set up credit terms for their B2B customers. This can include options for net payment terms, helping businesses manage their cash flow.  

Does InteractOne Prefer Shopify? Or does BigCommerce Win?

In the end, both BigCommerce and Shopify have distinct strengths and considerations for businesses looking to establish or enhance their eCommerce presence. Differences in features and functionality mean that the choice between both platforms depends on the specific needs and preferences of your business. 

If you prioritize flexibility, scalability, and have technical expertise, BigCommerce may be the ideal choice. For user-friendly customization, a vast app ecosystem, and potential cost savings on transaction fees, Shopify wins. 

With experience with both platforms, InteractOne can help you to make the choice between Shopify and BigCommerce by determining which features you really need. We analyze your requirements to identify which platform aligns with your interests. Leveraging our expertise, we provide an unbiased opinion to guide you in deciding which platform is a better fit for your business. Whether you are looking to build a Shopify store or BigCommerce store, we can help you to make the right decision. InteractOne provides an unbiased comparison of Shopify or BigCommerce. Contact us today to get started.

As a business person, you’re used to factoring costs. Materials, packaging costs, shipping, services, marketing and labor costs – the list goes on. Opportunity cost doesn’t show up on balance sheets, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Poorly directed or half-hearted investment in your product data feeds can miss the mark on a stream of revenues – lost opportunity. How can you know if you’re missing out?

First off, let’s define what we mean by investment. We’re talking about money you spend on outside feed services and subscriptions, of course, but equally you should consider your time – even if your team size is limited and you consider those costs “built-in.” 

Deceptively Simple

Product data feeds can seem like an easy win – a fairly simple and relatively low-cost way to tap into the biggest marketplaces – Amazon, WalMart, Google, Facebook. Like pay-per-click, you can put it on simmer or crank it up to boil, right? Not really. In reality, your market sector and your catalog size are the two biggest determinants of how you might best approach a product data feed strategy. All-in looks very different for a mass-market merchant versus B2B and niche merchants.

Although your platform might promote it this way, your eCommerce platform also does not determine your product data feed approach. It can make things easier or harder, but it shouldn’t set you on a path. Defaulting, and limiting yourself, to your platform’s way of connecting to channels might be leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.

Also contrary to the impression you might get, spend is not the biggest determining factor of success. Neither is picking the “right” feed platform. The single biggest indicator of future success is the state of your catalog data: Is it complete and richly attributed? Do you have the tools in place to improve and create new variants? This is where you need to invest.

Strategies for exploiting product data feeds can be grouped into three categories – one of which will probably be a best fit for your particular business and market position.

Manual Feeds

Manual product feeds work just like they sound – you choose the channels and upload a file. A manual feed can be absolutely the best tactic if your catalog is small, static, or unusual in some other way that precludes you from automating.

The main advantage can be transparency – you know exactly what’s being fed because you’re doing it. You also determine where and when you feed your data, affording you full control. Generally done in house, manual feeds also can convey a cost advantage.

The disadvantages of manual feeds are easy to identify. You will encounter a higher cost or investment in time if you have a larger catalog. Any desired or necessary change to the catalog – even small changes – will require re-feeding the data manually. 

It’s a narrow slice, but if you have a mostly unchanging catalog of manageable size, relatively sheltered product pricing and focused in-house or retained catalog/merchandising resources, don’t dismiss manual feeds.

API Data Feeds

This might be the most alluring but potentially underperforming choice. Your catalog feeds directly to your selected channels by way of an application programming interface (API) that is built into your eCommerce software. You don’t have to schedule or execute uploads or maintain data outside of your catalog. Changes to your catalog are reflected automatically in your product data feeds. Guaranteed accuracy. Assuming you have a healthy catalog and a clean code base – the API approach is easy.

Disadvantage –  API data feeds are designed to be a hands-off approach but it might not be prudent to think of them that way. Your products are submitted to your channels exactly as they are found on your site – no customizing or optimization for the particular platform. Multi-feeds can get complex (negating one of the advantages). If your catalog doesn’t have all of the attributes that your competitors are showing on the different channels, you can have a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do to catch up. 

Product Feed Platforms

Product feed platforms such as Feedonomics or Godatafeed offer pinpoint control and flexibility over how your products will appear on each selected channel. This is potentially the most powerful path to multi-channel selling, provided you invest in continually fine-tuning your catalog. The platforms allow advanced techniques that change your product data based on conditions and rules you define, such as inserting keywords into product titles and/or descriptions on the fly. Merchants who dedicate themselves to maximizing the tool’s capabilities find they are able to convert customers they might have otherwise missed.

Analysis is critical here. Does the market for your products have the upside to warrant such an investment of resources? Or will a less intensive effort be sufficient to bring you adequate results? How competitive is your space? Managing a product feed platform has costs you’ll want to understand in context with the possible benefits.

Product Feed Apps

Product feed apps such as Xtento or Simprosys are bolt ons to platforms such as Adobe Commerce (aka Magento) and Shopify.  These apps allow you to feed major markets like the feed platforms while also providing the ability to customize your feed per channel.  While not as easy to use as the feed platforms, these apps can provide a lot of custom functionality for a fraction of the cost of using a feed platform like Feedonomic or Godatafeed.

Is Your Feed Optimized?

Whether you choose manual feeds, a product feed platform or product feed apps, you’ll strive for “optimization.”

But what does an “optimized” Product Data Feed even mean? Everybody says it, and there are plenty of services that you can pay to “get” optimization. But how do you know when your product data feeds are optimized? … when you reach your sales goal? … when you subscribe to an optimization service and pay the bill?

One element of optimization is alignment. Whether you create your product data or you get it from a manufacturer or a third party, it will rarely match up with all the fields you need for all of your channels. Your selling platform will have one set of required and optional data, Facebook will have another and Walmart yet another. Channels use your product data to award you an ad rank or quality score, which you don’t have to look at but you do have to live with! You’ll get an error message if you don’t supply the required fields, but not for the optional data. If your competitors are diligently supplying high-performing optional fields, you won’t know you’re missing out.

Quality and Currency

Another shade of meaning to “optimization” is quality and currency. Simply having data in the required fields might get you past the gatekeeper, but the content itself needs to be accurate, up-to-date and appealing to the customer. Scan your data and make sure those outlier fields – those which you don’t use on your site, but Pinterest requires, for instance – aren’t filled with placeholders or bland data. Platform-specific attributes and fields are an opportunity for you to fine-tune that specific content to that specific audience. Capitalize on these unique fields to gain a competitive advantage on each platform.

These distinctions are key when you’re deciding which route to take. If you are willing to invest in optimization, then you’ll want the flexibility that a platform, feed app or separate managed manual feeds provide. When managing your product data feeds, however, you don’t want anything coming at the consumer out of left field – remember that your products are going to be seen side by side with competing products so it’s best to hew close to standard practices. In other words, sometimes, less can be optimal.

Avoid Paralysis – Steps You Can Take Now

Whatever your situation and whatever your choice, your product data – and thus any product data feed – will benefit from a few common product feed optimization tactics:

• Build your product titles for the feed using several key attributes (color, size, gender). Not just branded terms from your catalog.
• If you sell brand name products, feature the brand name at the beginning of the product title (ie. Nike – Men’s Impact 4 Basketball Shoes …)
• Utilize existing catalog attributes to populate missing channel fields when appropriate.
• Promotional language and ALL CAPS, even if they are part of your successful branding, aren’t typically allowed in feeds and should be removed.
• The same goes for symbols or HTML artifacts that sometimes fall out of style sheets after an import.
• Save yourself some time and know which attributes/fields are and are not required for the particular channel. Know which are basic, customizable and semi-customizable and decide on a strategy before you finalize the data.

The other thing feed management providers rarely mention is data integrity. We’ve seen instances where a company subscribes to a feed platform, only to find out that their product database doesn’t play nice with the importer or feed utility. Often, this is because of core hacks and customizations on the eCommerce platform that compromise or straightjacket product data control and need to be solved first.

InteractOne approaches managing your data feed optimization the same way we approach development: One step at a time and with a close eye on the data. Small changes can make a big difference – the Pareto Principle (aka 80/20 rule) applies here – spend your resources where they’ll count most!

Contact us to learn more about how to optimize your eCommerce site.

Content generation and social commerce can be an Achilles heel for mid-market merchants. Until recently, ecommerce businesses in this bracket could get away with a heavier emphasis on advertising and more “technical” or methodical means of promotion, while maybe throwing a bone to social media. The most visible social commerce tactics were being waged only by the biggest brands. Changes are afoot that increase the relevance of User-Generated Content (UGC) for merchants of all sizes, whether consumer-focused or even in the B2B space.

The Rise of the Micro-Influencer

Remember influencers? While celebrities and their attendant sponsorships and endorsements will always be with us, their grip on consumer trust has waned in recent years.  Like media, the influence marketplace has fragmented and brought along an influx of sponsored and incentivized posting by “regular” people. Because consumer trust in traditional influencers has weakened, consumers are  showing a growing desire  for genuine content generated by relatable creators.

The content creation space is being broadened and revolutionized by consumers who are now looking for authentic content that resonates with their lives.

What is UGC? 

In short, UGC is content (ie. videos, images, podcasts, etc.) created by people instead of brands. Consumers see this type of content as more authentic and trustworthy. Think of it this way; instead of seeing an obviously scripted skincare commercial or endorsement, consumers can scroll on Tiktok or Instagram and stumble across a person who looks just like them sharing their skincare products used in their morning routine. In short, there is power in relatability that UGC is able to harness and turn into consumer trust.

How To Generate User-Generated Content

Ideally, your brand receives positive reviews without doing anything to encourage it.  But in most cases, User Generated Content is paid or incentivized. If a brand works with a great creator to produce endorsements for their products and that content is well received (it receives a high level of engagement), more people may want to try the product and make their own reviews.

When UGC is done well, your brand could get hundreds of free reviews through a sort of social media “word of mouth”. Good UGC can help fuel more UGC.

This is one of the tricky parts – merchants have to create an amazing experience that creators will want to share with their audience. Customers may do a lot of the work for you, but you still have to prime the pump. 

A few different options exist for incentivizing and encouraging your brand’s users or customers to create positive content. 

Platforms like Upwork or Fiverr allow you to hire creators. The market for user generated content is booming and there are now plenty of options for content creators who have portfolios sharing brands they have previously worked with.

Selecting UGC Creators

When selecting UGC creators, it is important to choose people who align with your brand. Plan this deliberately and clearly, or you’ll risk falling into micromanagement, which will kill the campaign.  Establish clear guidelines explaining the desired content. Specific hashtags, language, imagery and goal KPI metrics for the content should be specified and should be a major part of the conversation when hiring. You will also want to specify where this content can be posted. Is this something you would like the creator to post on their personal social media channels, or will this be used only for your brand to post? Relatability and authenticity is the most important component of great UGC, so you will want to work with creators that emulate the kind of customer you hope to attract. 

Another option for generating content is to offer incentives such as discounts or giveaways to customers if they produce a positive review. This method will allow actual customers to share their experiences with your product, however it is less controllable so the specificity of the content generated can be a bit of a wild card. If this method is chosen, it is smart to monitor the content being created to ensure it stays positive and continues to align with the vision you have for your brand.

Social Commerce for B2B?

Traditional social media – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others  – isn’t always the first thought for B2B merchants. After all, you’re not selling to everyone, right? Not so fast.

The built-in community development tools on these platforms mean you can sculpt a place for your customers and attract more, drawing from their wide audience pools. Even if your products are highly specialized or technical, you might be surprised how many of your customers are looking for crowd affirmation when they’re shopping or searching for a solution. Another plus – a community doesn’t have to be enormous in order to be helpful for your business and the support required for these channels is usually minimal. 

Google my Business – Don’t neglect your Google profile because you don’t consider yourself a localized business. A pile of 5-star Google reviews will get you more mileage than that old static testimonial page on your site. In addition to Google, 3rd party review platforms like TrustPilot can provide a great space for collecting additional reviews and building customer trust. 

Consider a user/customer forum if you don’t have one already. Use crowd support to verify, augment and prove information you get from your sales and customer service groups. Even if you don’t host the forum, you should participate anywhere your products are applicable or being discussed (ie. Reddit, for sure). The information you can glean from these interactions will be super valuable – it’s like having a continuous focus group session. Businesses of all types monitor forums for product development tips, discovering problems, identifying new markets and unmet product niches. 

What to do once you have UGC? 

Once your brand receives user generated content, it should be showcased! Engage with and respond to the content that has been created. Share or link to content on your company website, social media, reviews and any other marketing channels. Leverage user reviews in advertising and marketing campaigns, and continue to foster a community of user generated content by interacting with users’ posts. 

PRO TIP: Tools like Gorgias can be incredibly helpful when it comes to monitoring your social content.

Analyze content created for your brand and do not be afraid to learn and adjust based on its feedback. Social media is constantly evolving and trends can last seconds or months. Going “viral” is many brands’ dream, but for many brands, building consumer trust through time and consistent effort is much more impactful for actual sales and conversion. When executed well, UGC can create a community of loyal customers who not only trust your brand, but actively promote it to others through their content and recommendations.m

Contact us to learn more about how to optimize your eCommerce site.

It’s not eMail yet, but SMS marketing is getting closer

What is the best way to engage with and promote your business to current and prospective customers? Your first thoughts might be direct mail, broadcast advertising and eMail. Each of these channels carry industry-accepted and expected conversion rates between .5 and 3%. There’s a reason for those low numbers: The targets of these vehicles know what to expect and their filter is on. By repeated exposure, we have all been trained to recognize (and often reject) promotional material on these channels. 

In search of lower noise tactics, many merchants have turned to SMS (simple message service or text messaging) and are seeing much higher engagement and conversion. For example, one of our  clients from the apparel space generates as much as 40% of their revenue via SMS marketing promotions. If you aren’t already using text messaging/SMS to communicate with your customers, you might be missing out. 

Why is SMS Different?

What are the active threads in your text app? Working out the details of life, meetings, events and meals with family or co-workers probably makes up the bulk of your texts. People engage with texting actively, briefly and more casually than with other communication channels. It’s a pattern of use and behavior that can only work for the most targeted, most relevant and least obnoxious promotions.

Because of how we like to use texting on our smartphones, it used to be almost taboo or below the belt to market to people via text. For a long time, SMS marketing was the domain of low quality, sometimes hilariously bad spam messages. Now, although a lot of merchants are promoting this way, it’s far from saturated, and best practices can help maintain SMS as fertile ground. 

What Should It Say?

What’s the best way to successfully run an SMS marketing campaign?

An email sometimes tells a story, promotes a brand image or is an entry point to some bigger task (like shopping, deciding and purchasing).

Text messaging your prospects or existing customers should be a lot like text messaging a person you know. You don’t (or shouldn’t) text paragraphs or lists, you text them very specific things you think they ought to know right now. A promotional SMS shouldn’t lead them into a funnel of activity, but to a very quick purchase or engagement.

Are you clearing out a limited number of a certain item that goes with another item they already bought? Let them know. Is there a deadline approaching? Remind them. This is not the medium for promoting every minor markdown or new news from your brand.  If you create too much noise (especially irrelevant noise) you’ll get canceled.

Getting around the “Promotions” Folder

The two poles of phone technology (Android and Apple) are both scurrying to make your phone’s SMS app work a lot more like your email app. Recognizing the inrush of promotional material, Apple was first to actively filter messages by default, using machine learning tech to filter texts from unknown senders into transaction and promotional folders. It remains to be seen how this will evolve, both in terms of the installed technology and on how phone users will accept or reject those settings and filters. There are still some advantages to SMS marketing if your goals and tactics are aligned.

The best way to ensure your message is seen is to get your subscribers to save your contact information. This is a crucial step and unlike with email, your recipients won’t know who is sending. Easier said than done, of course! We can’t add ourselves by default or passively; the receiver has to actively do something.

Sending a contact card makes it easier for your customer to add you, and it allows consistent brand reinforcement (you’ll spell your name correctly). The client still has to open/accept the contact card, so you’ll have to ask … but before you ask, make sure there is a simple, clear and undeniably good reason for them to do so. The messaging for this must flow from your purchase funnel, through the confirmation and follow-up emails. That’s why we always hesitate to put artificial barriers between transactional communication and promotional communication; especially with SMS marketing, they should be planned seamlessly.

A good approach won’t feel like a trap, or pointless. Weave subscription or enrollment into any other legitimate points where you could collect a customer’s or prospect’s phone number. Did they engage with your chat function? Ask them then. Did they add an item to the cart? Even before they check out, tell them you’d like to keep them informed about flash sales on other items like this one. Of course, if the customer completes a transaction, help them through the enrollment process so they can hear about new products, warranty info, offers or group buys. For B2B merchants, texting reminders, delivery updates, order alerts can make customers feel like insiders.

“Yes, send me updates.”

Once your customer has allowed you to text them, whatever you do, don’t make this a thinly-veiled proxy for “ok, spam me.” SMS calls for different tactics than other channels. If you approach your message development and CTA as if you’re broadcasting to your audience, you won’t benefit. Don’t think of this as an abbreviated email, or a billboard. This is not the vehicle for accumulating ad impressions. If your goal is a clicked link, you’re not employing the medium fully.

Personalization is more than populating their name into a field. Some SMS platforms (like Yotpo) allow merchants to develop very granular triggers and flows through the funnel, using simple prompts or even conversational automation. B2B clients especially can use these tools to great advantage, since customers generally will purchase on a predictable cycle. Further, they’ll often have complex specifications that lend themselves to guided filtering. With SMS, the interaction is the message.

All of these interactions are part of your segmentation data. The more you tailor your message, the more segments you’ll need so the tailoring fits the audience. The more tailored the message, the more relevant, actionable and effective your campaign will be. Monitor everything and react quickly. Isolate variables so you’ll know what elements led to which changes. Segmentation signals can also be collected from analytics, purchase data, demographics, geographic location and more. 

Same Phone, Different Message

You’re familiar with that button in your Meta for Business that allows you to share the same post on Facebook and Instagram. Convenient, huh? This is not the case with email (or any other vehicle) and SMS. A successful text campaign will not be a shorthand version of something else. Our advice would be don’t use it at all if your approach is not dedicated to the platform!

Approaching SMS with the amount of planning and care we’ve hinted at above might seem crazy. It’s a text, right?! The thing to remember is that SMS is a much more intimate and personal channel, so additional caution and care is needed to retain engagement. Call us when you’re ready to use that to your advantage.

Contact us to learn more about how to optimize your eCommerce site.

If content is infinite, does content matter?

We’re not there yet.

It’s somewhat comforting to say that, isn’t it? But is it true? Right now, the tools exist to create 7,000-word blog posts with just a few instructions. They’re not great reads, but neither are the blog-factory posts businesses have been deploying for years; just good enough that Google can see them as semantically valid.

If that sounds bleak, that’s only an indication we are neck deep in the change stream. AI is going to affect the way we do SEO, but we don’t yet know exactly how.

Optimization Curveballs

The biggest change will be to our assumptions around SEO.

Keywords/phrases that we could effectively capitalize have always been limited. Generative AI now removes those limitations almost entirely. For early adopters, this could translate to a windfall; but in the longer term, doesn’t it just define a new base or entry point? What is missing from this conversation is how Google (or whatever comes after Google) will eventually respond to a hyper-inflated content environment. Will Google expect to see a page optimized for every variant on every imaginable longtail on every site in a market, or will it learn to ignore the background noise?

Another wildcard with unknown effects on SEO is Google’s experimentation with leveraging AI (Search Generative Experience) to transform how it provides search results. Although currently positioned as a late-comer, chasing Bing AI and ChatGPT, this trial technology looks more like Google’s future.  Will SERPs become less like a directory where we compete for top spot, and more like a committee meeting where the boss pulls your idea and puts it in their presentation? Right now, it seems that way, but we can’t really imagine Google shaking their own tree this vigorously.

What is certain is that your return on effort applied to keyword-based SEO activities will go down, as your competitive space becomes more and more saturated with AI-generated content. Said another way: You will need more content but you will get less out of it.

Adaptation in the Works

How will Google react to ensure SERPs stay relevant?  We have some hints in place already. Unsurprisingly, they are based on what SEO practitioners already know about building websites for humans.

In addition to the well-known acronym EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trust) Google has signaled increasing emphasis on a new E: Experience. When they crawl this page, before they give us a pile of gold traffic tokens, they’ll look around and decide if InteractOne should even be talking about SEO. Google will need to find other content signals on our site that indicate we’ve been involved in the strange science of internet traffic for more than a minute.

Another Google-centered bit of technology is something they’re calling “information gain.” This is a twist on the idea that content should be unique – as in not using manufacturer descriptions for your item descriptions. Information gain takes it a step further; did you bring something new to the topic? This will mean less emphasis on aggregation or “skyscrapering” tactics for your brand or for your most important keywords and phrases. Instead, this means building completely new and unique content around the products you sell. (Pssst … AI doesn’t do “new” well.)

For eCommerce merchants, information gain won’t be all about blog posts. Category and item descriptions should also get special attention to fit users’ specific, ultra-longtail searches – and their individual search history.

Off-page SEO should also make a resurgence, says Google, as AI content forces SERPs to look elsewhere for uniqueness. Off-page refers to SEO tactics found outside of a website to improve its ranking – chiefly links. Links to your site from other authoritative sites have always been a great traffic conduit; they’re going to get even more emphasis. Guest posting is another off-site tactic, but it’s also one of the most direct ways to build strong links. Social media marketing is tough to execute well, but look out because AI is making it even more cluttered.

Same Old Same Old?

Google’s reactions so far to how they and SEO can adapt to AI feels a lot like older advice from Google, promising rewards for good behavior and good user-centered pages. In the past, however, Google has fallen short of these noble goals. Instead, their algorithm awarded the traffic to gigantic pages cobbled together by the biggest brands. Skepticism aside, this time might be different because AI represents an abrupt and enormous shift in scale, not a loophole or weakness in Google’s algorithm. 

Brass Tacks

At the detail level, we still need our meta data in tidy shape, page titles that make sense, category descriptions that match what we sell. The basics may sound simple, but eCommerce businesses are fast moving and clarity isn’t always the top priority.

Google will continue to identify and “ding” obvious AI-generated content, so think of it as a first step, not a finished product. Apps already exist for Magento and Shopify that will take base info from your existing product detail page: attributions, size, color, etc. and generate description content. You still need to tweak it!

Companies who use AI to create content will risk a ranking penalty in the same way as content stuffing “always” has. If the content is junk, i.e. if it doesn’t make sense, is not at all unique, or sounds like AI, then both human visitors and Google will penalize it in their own ways. At the same time, Google says that good content that happened to start as AI-generated content won’t be penalized, and why should it be? The key difference is human involvement; always check AI-generated content, even for simple tasks. More and more, Google will be looking for unique and authoritative/expert elements in the content. 

So, What Should You Do?

Should you explore or deploy AI as an SEO tactic? In short, yes. We think it’s inevitable and probably a good thing, overall. Perhaps ironically, AI’s presence in the room could serve to clear out some of the lingering half-truths and contradictions that the practice of SEO has abided for years.

InteractOne provides internet marketing services to our clients – we have for many years – and our emphasis has always been on the techniques that you won’t have to disown three years down the road. That part won’t change, at least.

AI will always be artificial. In a competitive space like eCommerce SEO, you can use these tools for productivity, but you’ll always need human brains monitoring and managing quality, and fostering creativity.

Contact us to learn more about how to optimize your eCommerce site.

Alternative to Luma?

First released in 2021 and with more than 1,500 Magento sites now using it, Hyvä Themes is often positioned as an alternative to the default Luma theme. We think this is an oversimplification.

For one, Luma is still very much a viable option, mostly since Hyvä doesn’t yet have the wide range of module and plugin compatibility Luma offers.

The default Luma Magento theme has helped InteractOne solve a lot of problems for our clients over the years. When developed with discipline and expertise, Magento and Luma provide a migration path away from buggy, crippled customized themes. Luma also provides a viable performance path for small and new Magento merchants who can live with the standard design theme and want to minimize or eliminate developer involvement. Luma starts out acceptably light/fast, but it is not immune to bloat and compatibility issues that accumulate along with customizations, modifications, bug fixes and the layered technologies that accompany these actions. Ironically, given the wide scope of its use for many years, Luma is best when mostly left alone. It is this conundrum that motivated the Hyvä Themes’ creators. 

OK, The PWA Alternative?

Hyva is touted as an alternative to the PWA approach. PWA stands for Progressive Web Apps, which are web applications optimized to work on mobile and desktop devices. PWA for eCommerce helps you generate a more user-friendly site by allowing customers to access information regardless of their location or device. However, realizing the benefits of PWA can be fussy and expensive – involving lots of setup, testing, tweaking, monitoring and more tweaking. Hyvä employs Alpine JS to allow a flexible presentation on all platforms while clocking super fast page load, right out of the box.

Thinking About Going Headless?

Headless commerce detaches the front-end architecture and interface from the back-end commerce functionality and database. A key benefit of headless should be that changes can be made to the user experience without fear of introducing bugs to the core functionality. In reality, it’s not so much like a CMS, since most changes still require developer involvement. Because of this headless tends to be rather expensive, sometimes buggy and often difficult to maintain, leaving many marketing departments to regret going headless. 

Less is More

While they are powerful technologies, the limitations of PWA and Headless make the case for a solution like Hyvä. The vastly simpler structure of the Hyvä theme means it is an alternative to Headless and PWA – approaches that merchants adopt to solve problems around speed, flexibility and compatibility. The big difference is that both headless and PWA involve adding technology to make good things happen, whereas Hyvä Themes opts for subtraction.

Much lighter than a standard Magento theme

Hyvä Themes is based on a blank Magento 2 theme, not using the Luma code.  Most Magento theme developers start with the Luma code, so the finished product is – in most cases – slower than Luma.

The developers of Hyvä left out all layout.xml, .phtml files and JavaScript files. While Hyvä uses the PHP-templating system that is built into Magento, it departs from standard theme architecture, using newer lighter-weight components, such as a Javascript framework that is only ⅓ of the weight of Jquery.

Does it Cost More?

As of this writing, Hyvä charges 1,000 Euro for a one-time license. No limits are placed on the number of domains or storeviews.

While the simpler architecture of Hyvä themes should ultimately reduce programming costs, customizations and demand for favorite modules and plug-ins will impact initial build cost. Already though, Hyvä has incorporated compatibility with more than 100 popular modules and plugins and we expect 3rd party module compatibility  to grow.

One key affordability benefit of Hyvä Themes is that templates can be implemented one at a time – start with the product page and category pages, leave the checkout for later. This is where Hyvä excels.

What’s the catch?

If omnichannel drives your volume, a headless commerce approach might still be the way to go. You’ll have to balance those benefit calculations with the cost of development and ongoing maintenance.

Further, Hyvä’s checkout is still pretty young, lacking documentation at this writing. Hyvä Themes  offer the Magento One-Step checkout (based on Luma) as the preferred path for most.

So, despite a fast-growing pace of adoption, Hyvä still carries a whiff of the bleeding edge.

What does this all mean for you? 

For most of InteractOne’s clients, and most midsize e-Commerce retailers, chasing cutting edge technology can be a risky bet. Most retailers don’t have large IT teams that can research, manage and maintain the most fussy tools to keep you at full optimization. You already know that improving page load speed is beneficial, but you also have your eye on diminishing returns. Granted, twelve second page-loads were killing you. Getting to six seconds made a big improvement and dropping that to three seconds was excellent for conversion. Is your traffic and volume big enough to make the needed investment to get to 1.5 or .75 seconds justifiable?

The point is, a lot of Magento retailers haven’t made the leap to headless or PWA either because of cost or because they didn’t feel confident in managing it. Hyvä changes that decision in that it cures the speed problem with simplicity, not with another layer of technology. Hyvä Themes  isn’t a cure-all, but it sure looks like a start.

Contact us to learn more about how to optimize your eCommerce site.

Spend is Performance

This conundrum can lead to paralysis – especially as we consider the effects artificial intelligence (AI) will have … and is already having …  on eCommerce development. Should you greenlight your IT team to use AI? Or should you block AI apps until they can be further vetted for risks and security? These are real questions merchants are wrestling with and we see both approaches (aggressive and conservative) currently being employed.

AI Developer Tools Today

AI-Based Programming Assistants are already in wide use among software developers for code compilation, code debugging, and code-driven testing. Already, a few dozen tools like this exist and are being used by developers everywhere. Programming assistants can solve relatively simple but often time-consuming problems, making developers more productive and decreasing the fatigue that comes from executing repetitive tasks. 

For example, Codex is an AI tool (in Beta) from the creators of the Chat GPT system (which is itself frequently used for coding tasks) that translates natural language to code. Codex powers another similar tool, GitHub Copilot. Developers must be skilled in asking either of these AI assistants well-defined questions in order to produce helpful results. Left unchecked, AI assistants are also known to leave vulnerabilities or even create new ones. So choosing a developer whose expertise allows prudent and well-monitored use of the tools is of prime importance. 

A newer tool called AlphaCode shows amazing promise in solving more complex programming tasks, but still requires extensive problem definition, testing guidelines and outcome descriptions.

Another class of tools resembles the “auto-complete” function you frequently see in text programs and search fields. As a developer types a line of code, the AI program (Tabnine, as an example) will suggest completed code lines. The more these tools are used, the better they will become at anticipating what the developer is doing.

Wherever you have a defined outcome or set of outcomes, plus inputs for the AI to track against pattern recognition, then you have a feedback loop. AI thrives on feedback loops and is already making great use of them to provide new features and functionality for on-site search, product recommendations for personalized shopping experiences and personalization (see https://www.adobe.com/sensei.html). 

Looking Ahead

In the next 1-3 years, we believe we will see significant portions of simple development tasks nearly overtaken by AI. For example:

• The development of more “code-less” themes. These are themes for platforms like Shopify, Adobe Commerce (aka Magento) and BigCommerce that permit speedy modification and customization of the content, design and layout while no longer allowing users to edit the code. Instead, all CSS/design code changes are managed by AI. This should allow for cleaner, less bloated and more stable code because the AI will be able to quickly handle debugging and testing and won’t be relying on patching or shoehorn approaches that human developers often use to effect a change.
• Development of easier-to-use and faster design tools. Drag and drop has been around for a while, but imagine that the software will be able to anticipate and implement consistent-looking changes across the theme elements. Then, you can clean up any changes that AI didn’t get quite right on its first pass.

The Likely Path 

Software development, like many other skilled trades and professions, consists of a high percentage of tasks that follow a pattern or rely on standardized solutions. The skill and experience come into play on the details. AI adoption will most likely line up with those truths; without a doubt, AI use will be (and already is) widespread within eCommerce development but will not replace skilled programmers. That may sound naive, so we’ll put a finer point on it. Programming as a profession will definitely change as AI assistance becomes more powerful and reliable, but as long as the system needs to know exactly what problem to solve, there will be a need for highly-skilled developers and solution architects.

In the near term, AI will have much less effect on the more complex elements of website development like software architecture, database management, new feature development and advanced security.

If You Want a Job Done…

In general, like most technology-driven changes, AI integration into eCommerce programming will follow the Pareto Principle (aka 80/20 rule). Developers will get most of the benefit available from AI by using it for limited tasks. Other tasks involving more subjective inputs: (opinions, experience, preferences) would be very difficult to ask the AI to accomplish while fairly easy for a skilled human programmer to grasp. Like the use of robots in industry – AI will be used where it has a clear benefit and where it is economically feasible based on the scale of the activity.

Human developers use their native intelligence to translate expressed specifications (sometimes vague – and always contextual) into iteration attempts that must be checked by other humans (the project managers, the clients). This can be an unpredictable and sometimes arbitrary process when it comes to the details. 

What should eCommerce managers do in order to use AI to their advantage?

It is important to be on an eCommerce platform that is aggressively working to take advantage of the trending AI technologies. For instance, developers are already experimenting with codeless themes for Shopify (ie. nyla.app) that rely on AI for fast and simple design changes. Still, in an atmosphere of disruption there is potential for bad decision-making when it comes to choosing a platform. Software that relies too heavily on AI at this point may carry a load of unintended consequences – levels of maintenance and setup that would currently be highly specialized (and thus cost prohibitive) in the medium term.

More than ever, excellent and experienced guidance are your best ally. Pick an agency partner you can trust, with a track record of objectivity when it comes to platforms and tools. InteractOne doesn’t claim to be unaffiliated, but we’ve also never been shy about the strong and weak points of Magento, Adobe, Shopify, BigCommerce and all of the underpinning technology. Our role is to provide unvarnished advice, based on what we see happening in the ecosystem.

Don’t just take our word for it. Stay informed, by following industry leaders, experimenting with AI yourself, attending trade shows and seminars, etc.

Carefully review and vet new AI features before choosing to implement them on your site… don’t just use it because it has an “AI” label on it.  Do your homework to ensure the AI feature will provide a positive impact on your website.

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