Top 2023 resources on build

Best build resource in 2023.
Learn more about build to improve your e-commerce strategy.

• 10 Benefits of Consistent, High-Quality Content Marketing - In this competitive B2B marketing landscape, businesses make substantial investments in building content marketing programs.Why? Content marketing has been proven to deliver resounding success.
  Topics: brand, scoring, create, build, customers, benefits, consistent, audience, business, marketing, quality, content, highquality.
• 10 Must-Learn Skills to Build a Successful E-commerce Business - If you're running an online business, these skills can help your business thrive.
  Topics: bundle, learn, marketing, ecommerce, business, email, savings, successful, mustlearn, certification, skills, build, reg, youll.
• 100ms secures $20M to power next generation of live video apps - Live video conferencing infrastructure startup 100ms, based in India and the U.S., has raised $20 million in Series A funding to power the next generation of live video apps, coming barely five months after closing a seed round. This latest round was led by Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation, with participation from Matrix Partners India […]
  Topics: startup, infrastructure, online, platforms, techcrunch, live, 20m, apps, secures, 100ms, power, video, generation, months, product, build.
• 10club raises $40 million seed funding to build Thrasio of India - 10club, a six-month-old Indian startup that is building a Thrasio-like venture, said on Tuesday it has raised $40 million in what is one of the largest seed financing rounds in the South Asian market. The round was co-led by Fireside Ventures (a prominent Indian investor in consumer and hardware tech space) and an unnamed global […]
  Topics: round, ventures, indian, thrasio, funding, startup, india, raised, techcrunch, seed, build, firms, million, ecommerce, 10club, brands, raises.
• 13 New Ecommerce Books for Fall 2022 - Once a quarter we publish a rundown of new books that could help online merchants. This installment includes titles on brand building, international ecommerce, demand creation, and more.
  Topics: audience, customer, learn, brand, kindle, build, social, books, hardcover, business, digital, ecommerce, fall.
• 14 Free WordPress Plugins to Build an Email List - There's no better ecommerce revenue driver than engaged email subscribers. This rundown, for WooCommerce and WordPress merchants, we first published in 2014. Here's the latest update.
  Topics: plugins, list, plans, price, premium, build, forms, wordpress, start, create, free, email.
• 16 Effective Ways to Build Your Online Presence - The other day I was trying to find the perfect dress pant yoga pants because I wanted comfortable, professional clothing options.
  Topics: brand, create, ways, build, social, email, online, customers, content, effective, media, presence.
• 16 Of The Best eCommerce Chatbots For Your Business - Editor's Note: This post was originally published on September 8, 2019 and has been updated to reflect the growing array of chatbots for retail and ecommerce. Conversational commerce has become a formidable channel to recon with. Sales made via conversational commerce channels such as chatbots, digital voice assistants, and messaging will grow from $41 billion this year to $290 billion by 2025, according to Juniper Research. With this type of growth, any company with digital sales, regardless of industry or ecommerce business model, will need to consider weaving conversational commerce tactics into their strategy, especially chatbots. Consumers today prefer to chat with company representatives or support over chat as opposed to calling. It’s faster than email, with less of the pressure of a phone call. While not every business will have the need to enable cart and checkout functionality within chat, there are a number of other benefits to using bots, either automated or live, including reduced support time and costs, providing personalized experiences, or enabling faster sales conversations. Consumers today want quick, seamless, and frictionless experiences and chatbots are yet another channel to facilitate these needs and meet their demands. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of chat, you can learn more about what an ecommerce chatbot is and how they work in our blog here. If you’re already in search of one, keep on reading. We’ll cover 20 of the best chatbots for ecommerce businesses. Keep in mind that these aren't ranked. Which chatbot you choose will depend on your needs. Top Ecommerce ChatBot Platforms Chatfuel About: Chatfuel provides one of the most popular chatbots today. Founded in 2016, they have focused on and exceled at developing conversational bots for social media, specifically Facebook messenger and more recently, Instagram. It is a no-code, non-developer friendly tool with an easy to use drag-and-drop UI and has inbuilt NLP (via Facebook), analytics and supports automated sequencing. They currently handle over 1 billion messages a month. And can boast a number of industry leading customers, including Netflix, Lego, Levi’s and British Airways. Chatfuel pricing: They offer tiered pricing, starting with a free version for up to 50 users, full access to base-features, and Facebook Messenger and Instagram bots. After that, their Pro version is $15 a month for unlimited users, and additional features such as a Facebook ads integration, AI support for the bot, and an integration with Shopify stores or Facebook shops. They also offer agency and enterprise-style pricing. Key features: Facebook Messenger & Instagram Ready-to-use templates Images, video and audio support In-app payments via Facebook (US users only) or Stripe (international)  Analytics integrate with Dashbot.io, Botanalytics and Yandex Metrica Collect Facebook user data through forms (e.g. email addresses) Integrations with 3rd party tools like Calendly, Zapier and more Build and manage retargeting campaigns Leverages Facebook profile data for retargeting   MobileMonkey About: MobileMonkey positions itself as an “OmniChat” platform and offers bot solutions for text (SMS), Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and native web. One of the key benefits of MobileMonkey is that it allows teams to build conversations for multiple bots from one location (i.e., the core of their ‘OmniChat’ technology). They offer a drag-and-drop dialog builder, premade dialog templates, support for live chat handoff through its Zapier integration, and are currently used by brands like Toyota and VMware. MobileMonkey also has an agency partner network that can build and manage your ads and bots for you if you prefer to outsource. Pricing: MobileMonkey pricing will vary based on your business goals (agency or in-house) and offers both startup and growth editions for the latter. The growth edition promises additional integrations via their API (versus through Zapier). Supports: Natural language processing Ready-to-use dialog templates Images, video, GIFs Audience segmentation and targeting “Chat blasts” and drip campaigns Live chat takeover Zapier integrations (e.g. Slack, Salesforce, MailChimp, Hubspot, Klaviyo, Freshdesk)   Looking to commerce enable your chatbot? Join the many brands leveraging conversational commerce today. Chat with an Elastic Path expert to see how our headless solutions will help. Go to Post Octane.ai About: Octane.ai specializes in chat for Shopify and is really catered to merchants in need of conversation support for their Shopify stores. Leveraged by popular Shopify customers like GoPro, Octaine.AI has a unique ‘Shop Quiz’ feature that allows companies to personalize products and recommendations. It supports unique third-party integrations such as Yotpo and Klavio to add review context to product recommendations and targeted offers (including direct link to read reviews). Octane.ai pricing: They offer starter pricing for smaller companies that is $29 a month, with an added on cost of $0.06 for every additional engagement (bot interactions) that go above that. After that pricing gets custom. Anyone that wants to explore, has the option of starting a free trial. Supports: Natural language processing Ready-to-use dialog templates Images, video and audio Pop-up windows to build a Messenger marketing list Automated sequencing including back-in-stock alerts and cart recovery Integrates with Yotpo and Klaviyo to surface reviews in chat Integrates with JustUno to collect and sync email addresses Integrates with Yext to sync store locator data Flow XO About: Flow XO is another business-friendly chatbot tool. They offer a multi-channel conversational ai chatbot solution for ecommerce companies that can be implemented across Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, Telegram, and on your own website. You can facilitate both automated and live conversations and accept payments through chat. Their UI is clean, easy-to-use, and offers the ability to build from scratch, as well a number of pre-built templates for a variety of use cases across a number of industries including banking, entertainment, and hospitality. They also integrate with over 100 platforms, making it easy to build and customize your bot to your requirements. Flow XO pricing: Flow XO offers a fairly comprehensive starter option that is free. You get 500 interactions, 5 active bots or flows, 2 weeks of logs for tracking, and email support. The next level up is their standard plan at $19 a month, which incorporates all features, 5,000 interactions, 15 bots, 3 months of logs, 5 seats for your team, and the ability to download your user data and remove messenger branding. After that, a key pricing differentiator between Flow XO and their competitors is that that you can add on extra bots and interactions for an additional $10 or $25 a month.  This is great as you can scale as you need to and not get stuck with a higher tier and additional bots you don't need. Supports: Facebook, Messenger, SMS, Slack, Telegram, or your own site Natural language processing Image, video, and audio 100+ integrations Accepting payments  Ready-to-use dialog templates Live chat takeover Lead capture capabilities  ManyChat About: ManyChat is another Facebook-oriented chatbot tool and supports Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, and SMS bots. It provides similar capabilities to its competitors, but supports file attachments, allows you to preview recipients’ names in a group blast, and provides analytics for subscribes and unsubscribes. ManyChat also integrates with Google’s Dialogflow framework (reviewed below) for AI and voice capabilities. ManyChat Pricing: Manychat also offers a free version that gives users access to all basic features, 1 seat, and the ability to engage with up to 1,000 contacts a month. At $15 / month per seat for their Pro version, you get access to engage with an unlimited number of customers, SMS bots, and unlimited users. Supports: Facebook Messenger Natural language processing Machine learning Ready-made templates Visual build/edit capabilities Images, image galleries, video, audio and file attachments Bot cloning Live chat takeover Analytics Collect Facebook user data through forms (e.g. email addresses) Push this data to CRM, email marketing + more through Zapier integration Automated sequencing and retargeting campaigns Analytics Botsify About: Botsify is a multi-channel chatbot solution that lets you build dialog for Facebook, your own chatbot, WhatsApp, Telegram, or SMS. Its voice features differentiate it from competitors, however Botsify lacks Facebook remarketing and campaign tools, and appears to focus more on customer service dialogs than commerce. Botsify supports team collaboration and workflows, enterprise Single Sign On and prototype preview across devices. They enable a seamless transition between AI-based bots and live chat for a better customer experience, and offer over 100 different integrations including Zapier, slack, Wordpress, and stripe for in-chat payments. A key differentiator of Botsify is their multi-lingual chatbot feature, that allows customers to translate their bots for native conversations in multiple languages. Botsify Pricing: Bostify also offers tiered pricing, but no free version. Their lowest tier starts at $40 a month and allows for 2 bots, 5,000 bot users a month, and access to all integrations, among their base features (Facebook, SMS, Website bots). Their professional tier starts at $125 a month, includes up to 5 bots / 15k users a month, and additional support including bi-weekly trainings and a personal onboarding session. After that, you need to reach out to go custom. Supports: Facebook Messenger, Slack, Alexa and your own chatbots Natural language processing Bot Translation Ready-to-use dialog templates (via Bot Store) Drag-and-drop capabilities Images, image galleries, video, audio and file attachments Team collaboration tools Live chat takeover In-chat payments via Stripe integration Analytics Unlimited user testing Integrates with Slack for internal testing Botsociety About: Botsociety is a business-friendly design tool that lets teams build live prototypes for Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Assistant and more with drag-and-drop and collaborative tools. They also give teams the ability hand their bots off to developers to customize code. It's a phenomenal tool for anyone looking to build custom bots from scratch, but they do offer pre-built templates for a variety of uses cases such as banking, or curbside pickup. Their collaborative experience, user management (the ability to assign different permissions by person), and private cloud and SSO integration makes it a great enterprise chatbot for ecommerce businesses. Botsociety pricing: Botsociety offers a starter package at no cost with access to unlimited designs and up to 20 messages per design. Their professional package can be billed monthly or annually, starting at $71 a month, and offers unlimited designs, messages, and up to 5 editors. For anything above that, you will need to contact them for enterprise pricing, which includes additional benefits such as custom integrations, SSO & custom domains, and a private cloud option.  Supports: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Alexa, Google Assistant, your own bots Voice capabilities Drag-and-drop capabilities Images, image galleries, video and audio Team collaboration tools Interactive previews Multi-lingual support Integration with backend APIs Analytics   Ada About: Ada is unique among ecommere chatbots in that it’s both a “no-IT-required chatbot” builder, but is also friendly for developers. It’s also not focused on Facebook Messenger. Ada’s sweet spot is supporting use cases that require collection of personal information within chat, such as secure customer data (with PCI, GDPR and PIPEDA compliance), and can provide replies based on customers’ orders, bookings, accounts, passwords and more. You can also segment and target visitors with proactive chat based on visitor attributes or on-site behavior. Ada also supports multi-geography brands, enabling them to deliver personalized conversations and experiences in over 100 languages. Ada pricing: For ada pricing you will need to reach out to them directly. Supports: Building your own chatbot without coding skills Publish to Facebook Messenger, WeChat/WhatsApp coming soon Multiple-language support Natural language processing Machine learning and training Drag-and-drop capabilities Images, video, GIFs Secure customer data Live chat takeover through Zendesk, LivePerson and FreshDesk integrations Analytics Proactive chat integrates with your existing APIs to push unique products, services, bookings and more Automat About: Automat offers an enterprise chatbot for ecommerce businesses looking to facilitate conversations on their website. Their bot specializes in conversational AI, and enables teams to provide personalized product recommendations through chat. Automat pricing: You will need to reach out to Automat directly for pricing. Supports: Building a bot for your website Analytics  Conversational ads and landing pages Live chat handover Ecommerce capabilities Conversational AI Bot Frameworks Dialogflow About: Dialogflow (formerly API.ai) is a Google product that leverages its speech-to-text, natural language processing and machine learning technologies. Running on Google’s Cloud Platform, Dialogflow projects can scale to hundreds of millions of users, and integrate with Google Assistant, Alexa, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Telegram, KiK, Viber, Skype, Slack and more. It also supports integration with Internet of Things such as wearables, car speakers and other smart devices. While users say publishing to Facebook is difficult with Dialogflow (you have to build this yourself), integrations with ManyChat and Botsociety (below) bridge this gap. Dialogflow lacks pre-built integrations with live help, email, reviews and other third party services, but can be custom built. Developers can use Dialogflow by making direct REST over HTTP requests, and use client libraries in C#, Go, Java, Node.js, Ruby, Python and PHP. Supports: Multi-platform publishing Voice capabilities SDKs for Internet of Things Natural language processing AI / machine learning and training Over 20 languages Analytics (Chatbase) Amazon Lex About: Lex, the AI/conversational technology behind Alexa, is now open to developers to build Facebook, KiK, Slack or Twillo chatbots (or integrate with Alexa Skills Kit). Naturally, Lex includes speech capabilities and automatic speech recognition (ASR) for speech-to-text. Lex also has pre-built connectors to Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Zendesk and Quickbooks. Thanks to Amazon’s ecommerce context, Lex has one of the most robust libraries of product-related subjects and entities, meaning less manual setup. It also have a few ready-to-use bots and supports AI training. For projects that go beyond website chatbots such as in-store kiosks and Internet of Things, you can leverage Amazon Web Services and third-party APIs, SDKs and services. Pay-as-you-go pricing makes it easy to experiment, and you’re only charged per text or speech request. Supports: Facebook, KiK, Slack, Twillo, Alexa, your own bot Voice capabilities and speech-to-text Natural language processing AI / machine learning and training Ready-to-use dialogs and ecommerce-focused entities Integration with third party tools (e.g. HubSpot, Salesforce) SDKs for Internet of Things Microsoft Bot Framework About: Microsoft Bot Framework works with Azure Cognitive Services to support complex, AI-driven use cases including adaptive cards (display real-time, contextual information on orders, bookings, etc), image and voice recognition. If you want chat that listens and speaks (even in a “branded voice”) and can identify speakers’ voices and faces, this bot’s for you. Despite these advanced capabilities you can try it for free, and pay only for what you need. Microsoft’s own LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligence Service) is used to configure your own business logic with advanced NLP and AI training capabilities. The Framework allows you to use multiple data sources (yes, Big Data!) and integrate with any channel and touchpoint. However, Microsoft’s solution is developer-heavy. Business users have no tooling to customize dialog, meaning IT must be committed to not just the initial build, but to the entire lifecycle of the bot. Supports: Pre-built dialog “blocks” Natural language processing Voice capabilities and voice recognition Branded voice Image and face recognition Adaptive cards AI / machine learning and training Big Data integration SDKs for Internet of Things Deployment to Azure Integration with Microsoft Cortana devices Analytics Pandorabots About: Pandorabots is a hosted framework to build rules-based chatbots. An AI “OG,” Pandorabots has been around since 2008, with over 1M community users worldwide. It’s based on Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) which it claims is “easy for anyone to learn, even if you aren’t a programmer.” It also offers its own professional services. For developers, SDKs are available for Java, Rube, Go, Node.js, Python and PHP. Pandorabots lacks a major feature of other frameworks -- machine learning. However, it positions this as a benefit, as machine learning tools tend to experience performance lag the more intents it keeps. Supports: Access to open source chatbot libraries Voice capabilities Big Data integration SDKs for popular programming languages IBM Watson About: Built on a neural network of 1 Billion Wikipedia words, Watson’s AI powers 1-800-Flowers’ GWYN (Gifts When You Need) concierge and the North Face’s voice search. Watson features an “empathy analyzer” to predict personality through text (aka sentiment analysis). While it’s an enterprise framework, it ships with a visual dialog editor for non-techies to build simple flows. SDKs are available for Java, Node.js, .NET, Python, Ruby and other popular languages, as well as Android and Salesforce. While there are a few pre-built dialog templates, expect to build most bots from scratch. Supports: One-click deployment to any platform Pre-built dialog templates 10 languages and translation Voice capabilities Speech-to-text, text-to-speech Natural language processing Machine learning and training Sentiment analysis Visual dialog editor Collaboration tools Live chat takeover Big Data integration Analytics Pypestream About: Pypstream is a build framework that serves as a conversational commerce microservice. It’s API-driven, and integrates with any web service using REST, SOAP, or legacy APIs. While Pypestream isn’t primarily focused on retail, it has some very appealing features for travel, insurance and finance that can apply to B2C and B2B commerce scenarios. Its main differentiator is encryption and privacy that supports entry and retrieval of passwords, orders and other sensitive information, and file upload which can be used for advanced support and AI-driven onboarding and verification of new accounts. For travel companies such as cruise lines, Pypestream can support in-chat bookings, activities, concierge services, loyalty points and rewards, dining vouchers, discount codes, personalized guest experiences and travel insurance. Hotels can integrate guest services, late checkout, room service, upgrades, extended stays, loyalty points and rewards, amenities, bookings, locations, concierge services and other discounts. Travelers can also spend points within chat. Pypestream’s AI maintains context throughout a chat history, which is useful for personalized experiences. It can also trigger outbound SMS notifications via event-based broadcasts. Based on the selected use cases for automation, Pypestream will extract relevant data from APIs to authenticate users, and can even trigger outbound SMS notifications via event-based broadcasts. Supports: Natural language processing Voice capabilities Design studio AI / machine learning and training Rich media and file upload Scheduling GPS / send location Data encryption In-chat payment Surveys Integration with Big Data, booking systems and more Live chat takeover SMS notifications and event-based triggers Extension to any device / Internet of Things Conversation logs Analytics What to ask yourself before choosing your ecommerce chatbot Still not sure which solution to choose? As with most tech decisions in this day, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all option so you’ll need to think carefully about your business requirements. Your chatbot solution will depend on your needs and how well their features satisfy them. If you’re still not sure about which one to pick, ask yourself a couple of the following questions: Do you need ultimate flexibility and the ability to code? Or is a drag and drop option fine? Do you have basic use cases, or do you need a complex AI to handle your customer support questions? Do you need SMS or voice-enabled commerce? Does your team need the ability to intervene with live chat? Is your business international and in need of multi-lingual support? Do you need a native website bot, or do you primarily need to focus on platforms like Messenger and Instagram? Do you need to enable a cart and checkout process in your bot? How much support will you need to onboard and implement your bot? What data will the bot collect, what do you need, and how do you plan to use it? Does the bot meet your privacy needs? What is the base cost of the platform and are there any additional fees that you need to consider? What integrations do you need and will the platform support you? Ask yourself what it is that you need and go from there. Elastic Path does not provide chatbot solutions, but if you have questions about how to commerce enable your chatbot, we can help. We provide a headless, API-first microservices solution for businesses looking to build custom, unique commerce experience. We can help enable cart & check out within your bot and enable a faster, more seamless customer experience.
  Topics: build, business, facebook, need, ecommerce, chat, data, pricing, bots, chatbot, messenger, best, chatbots, language.
• 21 Ways To Build Your Social Media Presence, Like HubSpot Marketers -  I was a lazy natural for most of my life. I had natural hair but I never took care of it in the way I should have.
  Topics: build, brand, ways, audience, brands, hubspot, youll, social, media, audiences, presence, marketers, community, content.
• 3 Easy Steps to Build Your Brand Promise [+10 examples] - If you're a decent human being, you always honor a pinky promise.
  Topics: easy, spirit, steps, promise, build, company, create, think, thats, inspire, examples, world, brand, specific.
• 4 Tweaks to Make to Your Website to Sell More - A robust online presence will become businesses' primary medium for sales in 2021.
  Topics: tweaks, information, users, customers, having, website, media, directly, page, business, build, sell.
• 5 Steps to Build an Enterprise Data Strategy, Straight From an Expert - Data can be a scary word.
  Topics: expert, data, business, strategy, going, theres, straight, enterprise, bi, build, youre, team, company, teams, steps.
• 5 Ways to Build a Positive Brand Association [+ Examples] - Whoever said "All publicity is good publicity" lied. The only truth in it is that bad publicity can bring attention to your brand and expand your reach.
  Topics: voice, positive, consumers, build, review, association, brands, traits, brand, concepts, examples, ways, threats.
• 6 Steps to Build a Single Customer View & Improve Customer Experience - Ever see those cool 360-degree cameras on red carpets at award shows?
  Topics: build, better, experience, governance, improve, customer, jazmyn, data, view, brand, steps, service, process, single.
• 9 Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns - How, exactly, should ecommerce marketers use influencers? Blog posts, social media, videos, other? We explain nine types of proven campaigns.
  Topics: sales, marketing, build, influencer, influencers, campaigns, brand, campaign, drive, types, products, example, product.
• Alloy raises $4M to build out its e-commerce automation service - Alloy Automation, a startup that was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort, announced today that it has closed $5 million across two rounds, the most recent of which brought $4 million to the company in October of 2020. The new funds were raised at a $16 million pre-money, $20 million post-money valuation, Alloy […]
  Topics: company, round, service, ecommerce, automation, 4m, build, million, capital, techcrunch, startup, alloy, raises, founders, y.
• As post-pandemic e-commerce booms, Rally raises $6M for headless checkout platform - You might have heard of “headless” content management systems, whereby you can run a CMS without being locked into a front-end platform. Well, a similar movement is coming to e-commerce. The latest incarnation of this movement is the news that “headless checkout” startup Rally Commerce Inc. has secured $6 million in seed funding. The wider […]
  Topics: merchants, headless, booms, commerce, rally, platform, ecommerce, 6m, funding, postpandemic, checkout, build, raises, platforms, techcrunch, ventures.
• Best No Code Platforms and Software for 2022 - Building new business processes used to be a complicated system of APIs, app development, and endless integrations. But we’re well into the 21st century now. There has to be a better solution for building amazing and automated business systems without… Continue reading Best No Code Platforms and Software for 2022
  Topics: build, software, marketing, youre, code, email, platforms, features, business, website, web, best.
• Brighton-based MPB snaps up $69M to build out its used camera equipment marketplace - Used-goods marketplaces, an online staple since the beginning of the internet as we know it, have really come into their own during the COVID-19 pandemic: They’ve been a place for people clearing out their domestic spaces to list items that they have that are still in good shape, making some money in the process; and […]
  Topics: items, camera, partners, 69m, marketplace, techcrunch, equipment, million, platform, vitruvian, raised, brightonbased, way, used, world, mpb, build, snaps.
• Build a Better B2B Website in 3 Steps - Today’s B2B buyers rely on digital channels through every stage of their journeys -- even long after in-person sales interactions with reps.
  Topics: best, better, help, buying, websites, buyers, build, b2b, steps, suppliers, website, customers, specific.
• Build a Thriving Ecommerce Business With Help From This Book - The 'Ultimate Guide To Shopify' is an all-in-one resource to help you start and run your own online business.
  Topics: guide, ecommerce, build, shopify, ultimate, started, resources, tools, business, start, industry, strategies.
• Calii bags $22.5M to build Latin America’s grocery shopping future - The mobile grocery app automates the supply chain, enabling customers to choose over 5,000 products delivered via a network of micro-fulfillment centers in less than two hours.
  Topics: grocery, company, products, 225m, arrambide, techcrunch, market, montemayor, bags, items, calii, savings, shopping, supply, build, americas, latin, future.
• Cannabis e-commerce startup Jane Technologies raises $100M after stellar growth - Don’t call Jane Technologies the Amazon of weed. Instead, think of Jane Technologies as the Shopify of weed, and it’s an important distinction. While other startups attempt to build a destination marketplace like Amazon, Jane Technologies is trying something more powerful. The company is building the backends for dispensaries that are quickly taking their cannabis […]
  Topics: raises, think, growth, 100m, future, startup, stellar, cannabis, technologies, jane, sales, techcrunch, ecommerce, online, build, company.
• Composable Commerce: Commerce’s Great Unbundling - The “great unbundling” is coming for commerce. If you’ve cut the cord on cable and subscribed to a handful of streaming services (as Ben Thompson predicted in 2017), you know how pervasive unbundling has become. Entire value chains controlled by a single vendor in the name of distribution are no longer the norm. Now, the capabilities of an entire, best-in-class company can be made available through an application programming interface, or an API, turning software into customizable building blocks. Technology is breaking apart these monoliths one industry at a time, and commerce is next in line. In many ways, commerce’s great unbundling has already begun. According to Benedict Evans in his The Great Unbundling presentation, brands like Nike are breaking up with Amazon and going direct-to-consumer (D2C) with great success. As of 2021, 40% of Nike’s revenue is D2C, and 22% is generated via Nike.com. Beyond the website alone, larger brands and branded manufacturers are waking up to the fact that merchandisable moments are everywhere: from influencers, to live shopping, to emerging channels like the metaverse. Capitalizing on these moments lies in unbundling the commerce software stack itself – making it composable and adaptable to rapid-cycle change. Let’s take a look at why this is the case. Unbundling the commerce software stack The majority of brands still run on old-world, monolithic commerce platforms. The entire value chain (in this case, the software stack) is controlled by a single vendor. Working with these monoliths requires a team of developers that understands the proprietary codebase, an ever- increasingly scarce resource. Often these legacy technologies impose complexity and add frustration for development teams – to the point where they can even deter talent who wants to move fast and innovate. When changes or integrations can take weeks or months, forget about quickly standing up a brand store in a new geography or selling into a new channel. To contrast, an unbundled, Composable Commerce model embraces LEGO-like building blocks of software connected by APIs. Instead of choosing a single vendor, brands can choose “best-for-me” components based on the requirements of the business. Developers have the ultimate flexibility to meet their business objectives, with the control to work in their preferred programming language. That means they can add to or change the components in their self-designed platform as they wish. This unbundled software model can change quickly with consumer preferences by yielding faster development and capability-driven application designs. The composable pattern: not just commerce The unbundling of the software stack isn’t happening in commerce alone. We’ve seen this movie before in the financial services industry. Fintechs like CashApp and SoFi started small, earned consumer trust, and have since stitched together composable finance ecosystems that make them function similarly to traditional banks. The key difference is that they use APIs to connect to various services (often from other vendors) and build platforms instead. APIs unlock new combinatorial opportunities that enable these companies to build trust with consumers and create a better overall experience in one domain first. These fintech companies can build upon that trust and offer additional platform capabilities to become stickier and generate greater value for their users. The companies that build components, such as Wise (formerly Transferwise) and Stripe, solve the composability problem and then present those components as rentable APIs. That way, others can connect easily to money transferring or payments services without taking on all the friction themselves. Many of these companies started at the consumer or SMB end of the market, and have since moved upstream to the enterprise. Rather than build these capabilities from scratch, financial institutions and other organizations can simply integrate them into their own platforms. Unsurprisingly, traditional financial institutions are doing just that. They’re becoming software companies by building API-first architectures made up of third-party components to replace legacy monoliths. The same can be true for larger brands and branded manufacturers in commerce. Best-for-me architectures might have started small at the SMB end of the market, but are now available to the enterprise. It couldn’t come a moment too soon. Unbundling commerce starts with the catalog One of the ways commerce companies can start to unbundle is by rethinking the commerce catalog. One of the most common challenges we hear from branded manufacturers is the “Multi” problem – or the need to sell their products in multiple geographies, across multiple channels, across multiple brands, and/or across multiple business models. The challenge, as my colleague Julie Mall writes in her blog, The eCommerce Catalog is Dead, is that monolithic ERP systems treat the commerce catalog as a tightly coupled, rigid and structured way to display information based on internal business processes. This prevents brands from adapting to customer demands or merchandising needs. She gives an example of visiting a furniture site to “shop the room,” and instead being forced to sift through every color/fabric option to find what was promoted on the original page. That’s a result of an ineffective product catalog under the covers. Another example is when a brand with an established D2C channel looks to add a B2B channel. One of the primary challenges with B2B commerce applications is each customer has their own, negotiated pricing contract with the branded manufacturer. In today’s world of commerce platform options, it’s challenging to find a solution that can serve both D2C and B2B channels and, as is the case with Salesforce, requires purchase of a second commerce platform. Then, the commerce platform’s catalog, along with its integrated ERP, fail to support the negotiated contract pricing in the B2B use case. As a result, developers must build complex custom solutions to support their B2B needs, or implement a punch-out system that directly connects into their ERP system, where they maintain separate catalogs for each customer. All the while, they’re fearing the day they need to make pricing changes across 1,000 unique catalogs in their ERP system. With Product Content Management in Elastic Path Commerce Cloud, we’ve addressed these issues by applying API- first principles and separating Products, Price Books, and Catalogs into distinct microservices, giving brands unparalleled flexibility to address the “Multi” problem. Using our Product Content Management microservices, brands can quickly create a Price Book for their existing products to begin selling in a new geography. Or, they can create specific Product selections for each of their B2B customers, with unique Price Books that reflect negotiated contract pricing – all out of the box with zero custom development work. This API-first approach to the eCommerce Catalog enables multi-channel branded manufacturers to move infinitely faster. Now, their catalog supports the way they do business across brands, geographies and channels - rather than dictating how they conduct business. Those are just a few examples of how to approach unbundling in commerce, but of course, there are hundreds or even thousands of different ways to approach breaking up a monolith. As Chris Sperandio wrote in a blog post while at Segment, an API-first approach resulted in the “Request / Response” model of the firm that is eating the traditional, monolithic value chain. If you are a branded manufacturer struggling with your own “Multi” problem, my recommendation is to start with the product catalog. This approach can help you discover what’s holding you back from creating more merchandisable moments and accelerating your business. Ready to dive into Composable Commerce? In the coming months, we’ll explore more about composable application development. How do our products provide you with the right foundation to build capability-driven commerce applications to support many brands, geographies, and channels? How can you assemble your own platform faster than you ever thought possible? How can you be ready for any future their customers demand? Follow along as we cover emerging commerce trends, and get you ready to take on your own “great unbundling.”
  Topics: commerces, great, software, catalog, b2b, unbundling, brands, build, branded, composable, companies, commerce.
• Composable Frontend Q&A with David Stover - Embracing Composable Commerce gives brands the control to customize, accelerate change and reduce TCO. But designing, integrating, and launching the frontend experience can be a daunting and overwhelming task that can take months to complete. Should you build your own frontend experience, outsource the build to an SI, or choose an all-in-one platform that comes complete with an integrated frontend experience? Unfortunately, choosing the latter with a legacy platform leads to mediocre functionality, slow site speed, a bloated frontend, and decreased customer engagement. That is why at Elastic Path we are excited to launch our Composable Frontend.  Composable Frontend eliminates these problems and de-risks the frontend build of a Composable Commerce approach.  I sat down with our Senior Director of Product Management David Stover to learn more about Composable Frontend.   Q: What is Composable Frontend?  A: Simply put, Composable Frontend is a frontend that can be composed using a simple build tool. Brands simply answer a few simple configuration questions and Composable Frontend automatically and quickly builds a reusable modular, Next.js frontend, pre-integrated with Elastic Path and best-of-breed backend vendors. Our previously announced D2C Starter Kit is one output of the Composable Frontend framework.  The frontend includes elegantly designed, ready to use (and re-use) components for the Homepage, PLP, PDP, Cart and Checkout. It currently supports EP Product Experience Manager (PXM) functionality including bundles, variations and standard product types.  Composable Frontend includes pre-built integrations to Algolia Search, EP Payments and Braintree Payments with more integrations coming soon. Brands can also rest assured that business-model specific requirements (like account management and multi-cart) for B2B are included in Composable Frontend. Q: Why did we launch this?      Q: How is Composable Frontend unique in the market?       Q: How does Composable Frontend help brands?       Q: What’s coming next for Composable Frontend?  A: We are planning on building out the customer management area which will allow customers to login and maintain their own accounts, see their order history, maintain wishlists and reorder products which had been previously ordered.  We also have additional integrations planned such as Coveo, Advanced Commerce, Shippo and more as well as giving our customers the ability to launch new commerce experiences directly from within our Commerce Manager UI.  You can learn more about Composable Frontend here.   
  Topics: qa, experience, stover, integrations, frontend, david, launch, management, commerce, composable, brands, build, product.
• Dear Entrepreneurs: We Build For You - Shopify’s mission is to make commerce better for everyone—you’ve likely heard us say it a million times. But what does that really mean? Shopify President Harley Finkelstein shares why Shopify exists.More
  Topics: harley, mission, succeed, build, entrepreneurs, million, business, purpose, dear, shopifys, shopify, world.
• Don't Build an Ecommerce Site If You Don't Have These 7 Things Covered - If handled correctly, your ecommerce platform can provide a solid basis for success.
  Topics: experience, covered, dont, site, help, website, providing, customer, things, strong, products, build, customers, ecommerce.
• Egypt’s Breadfast wants to build ‘Gopuff for Africa and Middle East’, gets $26M backing - The market for food and grocery delivery across Africa and the Middle East is worth nearly $1 trillion. And Egypt, buoyed by a young and growing population, is a big market across both regions. Investors are beginning to back their picks to capture a large chunk of the nascent but fast-growing sector, mirroring how things […]
  Topics: company, gets, bread, middle, build, amin, grocery, breadfast, egypts, wants, delivery, techcrunch, egypt, backing, gopuff, east, africa.
• Eight Ways to Build a Community and Create Long-Lasting Customer Relationships - Building a brand is about more than sales. Developing a true community of followers is the true root of success. See top strategies and real-world examples.
  Topics: feel, ways, share, product, sell, points, build, products, key, customers, customer, post, community, brand.
• Employer Branding: What It Is and How To Build It for Your Business - A company's reputation matters more than ever during a job seeker's search, as 86% of workers would not apply for, or continue to work for, a company with a bad reputation with former employees or the general public. Ultimately, you spend plenty of time creating a compelling brand story surrounding your products or services, but how do you build a strong employer brand that attracts top talent? Here, we'll explore what employer branding means, examples of good employer branding, and how you can implement your employer branding strategy today.
  Topics: employees, job, company, build, page, brand, culture, employer, work, business, seekers, branding.
• Flipkart X Polygon: A Strategic Partnership To Build The Indian Web3 Landscape - The e-commerce giant in a race to overtake rival Amazon is welcoming metaverse and its players with open arms
  Topics: announced, platform, build, blockchain, indian, x, experience, landscape, users, polygon, entrepreneur, web3, partnership, strategic, company, flipkart.
• Flytrex raises $40M to build its drone-based delivery service across suburbs in the US - Flytrex, the Israeli startup working with Walmart, Chili’s, and others in North Carolina in pilots for a drone-based delivery service targeting suburban consumers, has picked up $40 million in funding to continue developing its hardware and software, as well as more business partnerships, as it awaits regulatory nods to expand its service to more markets […]
  Topics: north, hardware, bash, flytrex, delivery, customers, suburbs, carolina, build, drones, raises, service, techcrunch, services, dronebased, 40m.
• Focus on These 5 Areas If You Want to Build a Successful Ecommerce Business - Running an online business can give you the freedom to live life on your terms, but only if you know what you're doing.
  Topics: order, business, quality, build, areas, freedom, focus, successful, important, right, information, ecommerce.
• Gamitee becomes Joyned as it secures $4M for social shopping platform - Joyned turns retailer websites into mini social media platforms where shoppers can show friends their potential purchases and shop together without leaving the site.
  Topics: social, company, build, 4m, shopping, platform, secures, abraham, sales, merchants, retailers, gamitee, joyned, techcrunch.
• Germany’s Xentral nabs $20M led by Sequoia to help online-facing SMBs run back offices better - Small enterprises remain one of the most underserved segments of the business market, but the growth of cloud-based services — easier to buy, easier to provision — has helped that change in recent years. Today, one of the more promising startups out of Europe building software to help SMEs run online businesses is announcing some […]
  Topics: led, businesses, business, techcrunch, offices, online, help, xentral, run, sequoia, nabs, erp, europe, software, build, onlinefacing, services, tools, smbs.
• HDS, from the Borders and Webvan founder, raises $3M as it gears up to launch its robot-run grocery and general merchandise play - The online grocery market is poised to get a little more crowded in the next several months, with the launch of a startup led by a veteran founder who has taken big hits from Amazon in the past, but now hopes to come back swinging with the help of an army of robots. Home Delivery […]
  Topics: techcrunch, borders, grocery, system, million, robotrun, hds, online, technology, idea, raises, amazon, build, launch, general, webvan, merchandise, play.
• How CPG Brands Can Build Authentic Engagement Strategies - In 2020, nearly 55% of consumers used DTC channels to purchase CPG products or nonperishable items they use on a…
  Topics: social, soap, cpg, customer, build, brands, products, brand, product, customers, help, strategies, shoppers, engagement, authentic.
• How Can Retailers Survive a Cyberattack? Build Forgivability. - As more businesses grew their sales online during the COVID-19 pandemic, something more sinister was also growing — ecommerce fraud.…
  Topics: retailers, target, protect, responded, survive, customers, measures, cyberattack, security, information, forgivability, build, important.
• How Ecommerce Brands and Subscriptions Can Navigate the Post-Pixel World - Here are three things successful subscription and ecommerce companies are doing to come out on top in a post-pixel world.
  Topics: customer, media, postpixel, relationship, build, navigate, subscriptions, consumer, social, experience, world, ecommerce, brands, way.
• How Ecommerce Businesses Build Healthy Relationships With Customers - A customer walks up to your store. What’s the first thing you do? Ask them what they need? Show them a few choices that are trending? Let them check the store out before reaching out to them?
  Topics: customers, build, support, customer, online, improve, experience, business, relationships, provide, businesses, healthy, ecommerce.
• How Primary Colors Help HubSpot Build a CRM That Customers Love - At HubSpot, customer experience comes first. Always.
  Topics: customers, experience, product, hub, marketing, different, hubspot, customer, crm, love, primary, colors, build, team, help.
• How You Should Evolve Your D2C Brand as Digital Marketing Evolves - Just because you have data from the last couple of years, it doesn't mean you're sitting on gold.
  Topics: website, marketing, works, evolve, think, data, customers, d2c, build, digital, ads, brand, advertising, evolves.
• How to Be an Amazing Mentor in 10 Ways, according to HubSpot Managers - Take a minute to think about the best mentor you've ever had. It could be your manager, a colleague, a parent, a friend, a coach, a college professor.
  Topics: hubspot, amazing, according, mentorship, youre, build, ways, help, managers, mentor, mentee, mentees, dont, relationship, know.
• How to Become a Reseller in 3 Simple Steps (2023) - You don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you want to launch a successful business model, or even simply join the ranks of full-time entrepreneurs. All you have to do is become a successful online reseller. Of course, starting your… Continue reading How to Become a Reseller in 3 Simple Steps (2023)
  Topics: simple, customers, products, dont, youll, build, business, know, youre, need, reseller, steps.
• How to Build Brand Loyalty Through Augmented Reality - Combining AR and 3D experiences into a website is increasingly vital to foster customer engagement and brand loyalty.
  Topics: tryon, reality, 3d, video, brand, build, augmented, ar, experience, brands, retailers, virtual, loyalty, consumers, shopping.
• How to Build Your Brand With Instagram: 11 Tried-and-True Strategies - Instagram has demonstrated tremendous growth, with its community reaching over 2 billion monthly users in 2021.
  Topics: reach, brand, build, triedandtrue, share, content, followers, audience, post, social, strategies, instagram.
• How to Build a Brand for Your Dropshipping Store - Dropshippers can benefit greatly from branding their online stores. Find out how you can stand out from your competitors through this guide.
  Topics: target, products, brand, build, dropshipping, values, sure, customers, product, store, business, market.
• How to Build a Detailed Business Plan That Stands Out [Free Template] - While starting a company may seem easier now than ever before, entrepreneurs have an uphill battle from the moment they start a business. And without a clear, actionable business plan for selling, marketing, finances, and operations, you're almost destined to face significant challenges.
  Topics: detailed, free, template, company, need, business, market, street, sales, marketing, plan, stands, product, build, restaurant.
• How to Build a Market Development Strategy [Free Planning Templates] - Your business is getting by just fine – but still, the questions remain: Could you be selling more? Is there an opportunity to increase market share? Is there any way you could further your product diversification efforts?
  Topics: planning, existing, build, strategy, templates, business, company, development, plan, marketing, product, brand, market, free.
• How to Build a Marketing Technology (Martech) Stack That'll Grow With You - What will your marketing team look like six months from now? Or a year from now? How many people will you add? What new tools, systems, and data will you need? There are a lot of potential questions you can ask about the future of your business, but there is one certainty: you'll deal with more data, more people, more processes, and more complex problems as you grow.
  Topics: thatll, build, technology, martech, data, marketing, tech, need, team, tools, grow, stack, website, tool.
• How to Build a Product Ecosystem Buyers Will Want to Be In - A product ecosystem functions in a very similar way to an environmental ecosystem. Like the symbiotic relationship found in nature, a product ecosystem is when products can coexist in a way that’s beneficial for the customer (not to mention, brings in more revenue for the business).
  Topics: buyers, software, products, improve, product, ecosystem, way, customers, needs, services, valuable, build.
• How to Build a Sales Channel Strategy Around Your Online Store Without Losing Customers - We take a deep look into the different types of sales channels and how you can set your business up to be more resilient in the long term.More
  Topics: customers, strategy, channels, business, store, build, marketplaces, brand, sales, online, channel, losing, shopify.
• How to Build a Strong Operations Strategy for Your B2B Company - While there will always be fires to put out and short-term issues to tend to at any company, it's essential to take a step back and focus on the bigger picture. This means looking to your business operations and creating a strategy that primes your B2B organization for success.
  Topics: company, right, strong, team, build, ops, business, tools, strategy, b2b, operations, processes.
• How to Build a Website: 2 Methods, 9 Easy Steps, & 35 Amazing Tips - Studies show that 76% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person. That means having a website is as necessary for companies today as having a phone number.
  Topics: tips, content, steps, build, youre, site, amazing, website, domain, methods, cms, builder, page, hosting, easy, youll.
• How to Build an Event Website That Drives Registrations - Crafting a one-page event website that generates countless registrations takes imagination, creativity, and some good old-fashioned common sense. You don’t just want potential attendees to be interested — you want them to be inspired to learn more, click through, and to sign up and attend your brand’s event.
  Topics: event, media, drives, site, page, easy, registration, social, events, conference, registrations, build, website.
• How to Build and Maintain Workforce Resilience, According to Experts - To understand the importance of resilience in the workplace, let's start with an example.
  Topics: workforce, resilience, employees, told, experts, resiliency, employee, workplace, changes, team, teams, according, maintain, build.
• How to Build and Scale a High-Performance Marketing Team, According to Leaders Who've Done It - In 2020, I started using Headspace.
  Topics: youre, according, business, build, marketing, told, highperformance, customer, culture, whove, need, team, hire, scale, leaders.
• How to Build the Strongest Small Marketing Team - Think of a strong marketing team. Are you imagining a huge budget and a team full of qualified marketers? Well, for many businesses, that's no longer necessarily the case.
  Topics: customers, teams, data, results, team, small, strongest, build, processes, tools, business, marketing.
• How to Sell Jewelry Online and Build a Store That Shoppers Love - Jewelry is a timeless and powerful part of the human experience.  According to the International Gem Society (IGS), the earliest…
  Topics: practical, build, customer, need, business, jewelry, sell, ecommerce, brand, guide, marketing, online, shoppers, successfully.
• How to Start an Ecommerce Business: Build an Ecommerce Store - Starting an ecommerce business is as exciting as it is challenging. To help, we've put together a list of essential advice, compiled from Shopify's most popular guides and videos, on all the steps involved in getting a new online business off the ground.More
  Topics: products, marketing, need, ecommerce, store, search, product, build, start, online, business.
• How to Use Pre-Orders to Validate, Pre-Sell, and Build Hype for a Product - Pre-orders can be a versatile addition to your toolkit at whatever stage you are with your business. You can use pre-orders to validate a product idea, build hype for an upcoming launch, and improve cash flow throughout your new product development process. From the different types of pre-orders you can offer to how to effectively promote a pre-order, here's what you need to know to start selling before your stock is ready to ship.More
  Topics: build, preorders, great, product, pay, later, products, hype, preorder, app, customers, presell, crowdfunding, validate.
• India’s GlobalBees raises $150 million to build Thrasio-like house of brands - The universe of Indian firms attempting to replicate Thrasio’s success in the world’s second-largest internet market just got bigger. Three-month-old GlobalBees said on Monday it has raised $150 million in a Series A financing round led by FirstCry. Lightspeed Venture Partners also invested in the new financing round, which is $75 million in equity and […]
  Topics: raised, india, build, firms, techcrunch, house, agarwal, brands, market, globalbees, thrasiolike, debt, equity, indias, raises, million.
• Influencer Marketing – How to Build Trust with New Audiences - Ready for super-charged word-of-mouth advertising? Influencers are the new go-to for marketers, but it can be tricky. What you need to know to get started.
  Topics: build, social, influencer, trust, influencers, media, business, youre, campaign, audiences, marketing, post, engagement.
• Introducing Integrations Hub – Delivering on the Composable Commerce Promise - I’m excited to share an incredibly exciting new capability, our Integrations Hub. Composable Commerce requires integrations. Deploying a “best for me” digital commerce architecture demands the frictionless integration of many technologies — both backend and frontend. Backend integrations drive approximately 60% of the cost of an implementation budget. For a $500K implementation, that’s $300K in costs and months of work. With Integrations Hub, that cost goes back in your pocket along with time in the bank. Given the economic uncertainty every business is facing as we roll into 2023, eliminating most (if not all) of that $300K from your digital commerce project budget is likely the difference between getting the project approved by your finance team — or put on ice until next year.    Pioneering Innovation Elastic Path has been pioneering innovation in the composable, API-first commerce market for many years. We applied the core principles of a microservices architecture to the product catalog, a vital commerce capability that had remained essentially unchanged for the past two decades. The result is EP Product Experience Manager (PXM) — which unleashes a combinatorial explosion of possibility in how commerce application developers and merchandisers build, organize, and manage product catalogs across multiple channels, touchpoints, geographies, and brands. Now, we are delivering the same innovative spirit to one of the largest challenges in the Composable Commerce space — integrating with the many technologies required to build an amazing, modern digital commerce experience. As a product organization, we are maniacally focused on eliminating the complexity associated with building Composable Commerce applications, and Integrations Hub is a huge leap forward in our plan. This matters because, historically, the longest pole in any Composable Commerce implementation project has been the integrations. Based on our experience with enterprise commerce platforms, 60% percent of typical commerce implementation time and budget is spent on integrations. So many systems, so many technologies  — freedom brings responsibility and the paradox of choice.   Faster Implementation With the economic realities we are all facing in 2023, 18-24 month implementation cycles are no longer acceptable. I just finished reading Working Backwards, a fantastic book about how Amazon has created its innovation machine. One of the nuggets from the book was the core design principle of AWS — a college student in their dorm could have on-demand access to the same compute resources as the largest corporation.   With the Integrations Hub, we are delivering on a similarly disruptive idea. Composable Commerce implementations can be much easier and connecting API-first technologies to build modern commerce applications is now instant-on, simple, and fast. It’s not the James Webb telescope; no need for Scala developers here.   Most exciting of all, our Integrations Hub is available right now for use. While many vendors in the commerce market like to share plans for what they are going to build way off in some distant future, I like to ship things. Our approach is simple, lovable, complete — then ship it. Iterate. Make it better. Repeat. How Integrations Hub Works The power of Integrations Hub is in its simplicity. It follows development best practices to automate the creation of the connective tissue between applications. Most importantly, with each new integration we make available to customers in the Integration Hub, we expand the list of capabilities available to all integrations —  a virtuous cycle that increases the business value of the Hub to our customers. Let me explain how (feel free to skip ahead as we get into the details here). An integration in the Integrations Hub breaks down into the following pieces in the example below of connecting Elastic Path to a third-party Order Management System (OMS) to retrieve order information:  Triggers: Triggers can be either a Webhook or a scheduled event  -> For example, each time an order is placed, the order is updated  Actions: Particular API calls or functions within a Component  -> For example, a GET call requesting order information from the OMS Components: Mini applications that connect to an API or service and interact with it in some way.  -> For example, a OMS component is a mini application that connects to the OMS system API  Inputs: Data from a previous step’s results, configured values, such as API keys, stored data, or static data. Each action can include zero to many inputs. -> For example, the order information requested in a previous step. Steps: Integrations are made up of Steps, and each Step is made up of an Action and some kind of data Input.  -> For example, a Step called Get Order Information, which would be composed of a GET Action and an order number Input.  Within the Integrations Hub marketplace, all of this happens behind the scenes. A developer using Integrations Hub will simply input their authentication credentials, enter the correct API endpoints from the third party application, map data fields between the applications, and then go. Presto! Coveo integration configuration Coming very soon, we will extend Integrations Hub with Integration Composer, exposing all of the integration capabilities to customers to build their own integrations in a low code environment. This is where the virtuous cycle kicks into high gear. More than 1000 actions and 100+ components will be available to developers building integrations into their own internal systems or third-party applications not available in the Integrations Hub.  The combination of Integration Hub and Integration Composer is a fundamental change in how digital commerce applications are built. Faster. Cheaper. Significantly reduced complexity. Together, they will do for commerce application development what Airtable has done for relational databases and application development, or what Coda has done for document collaboration.  And best of all, Elastic Path runs it all in the background — eliminating the need to build and manage serverless functions behind bespoke integrations. We manage the DevOps/CloudOps for all the components for Integrations Hub —  in a GDPR and SOC 2 compliant way — so customers can focus on their core competencies, building amazing digital commerce experiences.  Integrations Hub is designed for event-based integrations and is best suited for information processing that does not require an immediate response. Runtime integrations are typically Javascript scripts, run in the front-end and much easier to build and deploy.  More Than Just Third Party Integrations Our objective is to offer instant-on integrations with market-leading technologies that, based on our experience, are most frequently required to build digital commerce applications. These include search, email, OMS, marketplace syndication, PIM, CRM, SSO, promotions, shipping and fulfillment, merchandising, translations, and more.  Additionally, we are building a suite of configuration utilities that customers can load to make initial store configuration simple. Data migration is one of the largest efforts in a typical implementation project, adding significant time and costs. We’ve removed the heavy lift with our configuration utilities for store configuration, data loading and transformation, including: Store configuration orchestrator: Enable the import, export, and deletion of store configuration artifacts such as webhooks, all flow types, currencies, and more EP PXM Loaders: Enable the creation and updating of the following EP PXM elements using a canonical JSON format  Products Price books Nodes Product and node associations Inventory EP PXM Transformers: Provide a configurable mechanism to transform data from various formats to the canonical JSON format used by the EP PXM loaders Build and Test in Your Dev Store, Deploy Into Production   Elastic Path customers get access to Integrations Hub, and soon Integration Composer, in both their development and production stores. And because customers can have multiple development stores, they can build and test as many integrations as they would like, then quickly move them into production when it meets their business needs.  Moving to a Composable Commerce approach means moving faster to respond at the speed of your business. With our instant-on integrations and low code composer, you can move quickly, expanding and adjusting your digital commerce applications with unparalleled speed and agility. Opportunities for Technology Partners Integrations Hub is also a game-changer for our implementation partners. We know that 60% of the typical implementation budget is spent on backend integrations. To be honest, so much of this is just plumbing work. Necessary, but too often cumbersome and expensive when every integration requires a bespoke effort with development, DevOps, and CloudOps components to go live. By taking advantage of Integrations Hub, our partners will accelerate the unsexy work required to build a modern digital commerce application. This means more project time can be spent on the areas that improve conversions, increase average order value, and drive customer satisfaction. Most importantly, they are better able to focus on their own areas of expertise — the things that make their firm unique — which is why their clients choose them to begin with. Want to Learn More? Check out our documentation page to see how your brand can access “instant on” integrations and leverage the power of a Composable Commerce approach. Visit Documentation
  Topics: path, integrations, integration, implementation, digital, elastic, applications, commerce, hub, introducing, data, build, order.
• Is China building the metaverse? - A heated debate is going on about the race between the United States and China to dominate in AI. But perhaps the more strategic question is whether China is building the metaverse.
  Topics: ai, building, lead, vast, china, social, metaverse, techcrunch, trying, build, chinese, technologies.
• Italy’s Commerce Layer raises $16M led by Coatue for its headless commerce platform - “Headless” commerce — a set of tools that companies can use with their own customized front ends to build apps for selling goods and services — have become a huge business, not just because companies are seeing a bigger demand than ever before for people buying online, but because those companies are generally more focused […]
  Topics: techcrunch, coatue, 16m, raises, tools, platform, ecommerce, round, layer, headless, build, commerce, italys, companies, led, building.
• Jiji acquires Cars45 as it looks to build a future outside classifieds - Once heralded as disruptive marketplaces, classifieds are giving way to transactional marketplaces. Yet, some classifieds in the West like eBay have evolved with time, acquiring competition operating both models. In Africa, this occurrence is happening, in part at least, for the classifieds businesses that haven’t fizzled out. Jiji, one of the largest marketplaces for classifieds […]
  Topics: outside, jiji, acquires, looks, company, cars45, transactional, marketplace, olx, business, classifieds, africa, build, future, techcrunch, group.
• Keith Karlick Shares How to Build Engaging B2B Experiences at Make it Big 2021 - With the rise of millennial buyers, more B2B businesses are looking to create B2C-like buying experiences.  At BigCommerce’s 2021 Make…
  Topics: b2b, shares, really, expectations, keith, think, karlick, big, b2c, need, youre, build, key, things, experiences, engaging.
• La Belle Vie raises $28 million to build an online supermarket from scratch - French startup La Belle Vie announced that it has raised a $28.2 million (€25 million) Series B round led by Left Lane and Quadrille Capital, with existing investor Capagro also participating. The company operates an online grocery store in the Paris area. Online grocery delivery services and so-called quick-commerce startups are quite trendy. In fact, […]
  Topics: supermarket, order, round, million, belle, paris, online, techcrunch, company, build, products, vie, scratch, raises, la.
• Learn How to Successfully Launch a Shopify Store and Build Your Ecommerce Business - Get on board the ecommerce boom today.
  Topics: shopify, successfully, launch, build, businesses, thats, store, business, bundle, learn, sell, online, products, ecommerce, youll.
• Leveraging SMS to Build a Subscription Business - Chuckie Gregory is the founder of Club EarlyBird, a morning cocktail that makes it easy to wake up early and get stuff done. He has grown his supplement brand from $0 to $1-million in sales in less than a year through video testimonials, direct mail after purchase, and SMS messaging strategies.   In this episode, […]
  Topics: messaging, marketing, subscription, club, chuckie, testimonials, technology, morning, business, build, earlybird, leveraging, video, sms.
• Marketing for Startups: A Three-Step Guide to Creating Your Strategy - Marketing for your new startup is exciting. You’ve put time and effort into creating your product or service, and now you need to make sure your market is as hyped about it as you are.
  Topics: creating, social, guide, content, threestep, youre, startup, startups, build, strategy, helping, start, product, media, marketing.
• Nigeria’s ThankUCash secures $5.3M to build infrastructure for cash back, deals and BNPL services - Loyalty, deals and rewards services are a rarity in most African markets. The unit economics and other factors such as currency instability make such businesses hard to pull off in the region. Yet ThankUCash, a platform launched in 2018 by Connected Analytics, has managed to thrive, proving that not all is gloomy in the deals, […]
  Topics: merchants, customers, secures, thankucash, build, nigerias, cash, infrastructure, deals, buy, later, company, bnpl, pay, services, techcrunch, rewards.
• Oja bags $3.4M to build an online supermarket for ethnic products - As investors continue to pour billions into super speedy on-demand grocery delivery — trying to dislodge the dominance of traditional supermarket giants via a hyper convenience lever (whipping up some local opposition to their 24/7 dark stores and delivery methods in the process) — other entrepreneurs are spotting opportunities to slow things down a little. […]
  Topics: produce, products, app, food, supermarket, specialist, 34m, online, delivery, bags, communities, uk, oja, ethnic, build, techcrunch.
• Optimizing Your Customer Portal to Gain Loyal Shoppers - Create a unique, helpful, and completely customized My Account page on WooCommerce. See why you need one and the top features it absolutely must include.
  Topics: woocommerce, customers, add, customer, page, shoppers, change, custom, build, information, account, products.
• Orchata raises $4M, aims to build a ‘Gopuff for Latin America’ - Orchata's mobile app enables consumers in Mexico to get groceries delivered in 15 minutes with no substitutes and at supermarket prices.
  Topics: orchata, gopuff, mexico, mateen, aims, inventory, garcia, build, lewy, techcrunch, latin, delivery, building, investors, 4m, raises, america, food.
• ParcelSea raises money to build smart mailbox network - ParcelSea, a last-mile tech startup from Estonia, has raised 935,000 euros to build a smart mailbox network in Estonia and foreign markets. The Tallinn-based company wants to expand production and continue building new features and services. With ecommerce booming and contactless pickups becoming more and more popular, ParcelSea has been… Continue reading
  Topics: packages, parcelsea, smart, network, company, letters, various, wants, mailboxes, build, grocery, mailbox, raises, money.
• Payrails emerges from stealth with $6.4M led by a16z to build the OS for payments - Payments — taking and paying out money — remains a fragmented and complex area for merchants, marketplaces and others that do business with multiple parties online. As it grows — from $1.5 trillion today to $2.9 trillion by 2030 — that complexity will grow, too. Today, a startup is coming out of stealth with a […]
  Topics: stealth, techcrunch, build, a16z, system, delivery, payments, hero, os, payment, money, work, solution, solutions, led, payrails, 64m, emerges.
• Per Diem raises $2.3M to help local businesses build subscription programs - It might be time for neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops to start thinking about a subscription business — at least according to a new Y Combinator-backed startup called Per Diem. The company is announcing today that it has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by Two Sigma Ventures. As co-founder CEO Tomer Molovinsky put […]
  Topics: help, molovinsky, raises, techcrunch, subscription, local, coffee, focused, build, programs, offer, diem, businesses, 23m, subscriptions.
• PideDirecto bags $5.25M; aims to be ‘Shopify with 30-minute deliveries’ - Since its launch a year ago, the company has grown 32% month over month, has approximately 1,000 brand clients and processed over 500,000 orders.
  Topics: fawzi, aims, build, samir, shopify, 525m, bags, brands, delivery, businesses, marketing, deliveries, marketplaces, techcrunch, company, sales, pidedirecto, 30minute.
• Prive has raised $1.7 million to build a more configurable e-commerce subscription platform - Prive, a months-old, San Francisco-based startup founded by two former Uber product managers, just raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to create what it describes as a far more customizable e-commerce subscriptions platform for D2C brands. The round was co-led by Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell at XFund and Ben Ling from Bling Capital, with […]
  Topics: prive, uber, ecommerce, offerings, techcrunch, million, build, configurable, create, subscriptions, raised, subscription, platform, right.
• Reduce Risk and Build Buzz: A Guide to Pre-Orders - Pre-orders are a store owner's best friend! Gauge product interest, improve cash flow, & boost new product excitement! It’s all possible with a single tool.
  Topics: reduce, product, learn, money, information, woocommerce, sure, risk, purchase, buzz, customers, guide, build, marketing, preorder, preorders.
• ServiceTitan acquires Aspire to move into landscaping, raises $200M at a $9.5B valuation - With a lot of us spending more time at home these days, home improvement has continued to be a booming market. Now, one of the big players in that space — ServiceTitan, which builds software that today is used by over 100,000 contractors to manage their work — is getting a little bigger. The company […]
  Topics: 200m, market, landscaping, valuation, aspire, company, areas, 95b, industry, contractors, companies, software, acquires, raises, servicetitan, techcrunch, build.
• Shogun, a front-end e-commerce page builder, nabs $67.5M as retailers look for alternatives to marketplaces - E-commerce marketplaces continue to play a major role in how consumers buy goods online and how retailers show off and sell goods to those consumers, accounting globally for 47% of all e-commerce sales. But today, one of the startups that has built technology to help retailers build and run more direct relationships — by way […]
  Topics: headless, marketplaces, ecommerce, retailers, taylor, way, shogun, look, frontend, used, merchants, customers, nabs, builder, help, page, techcrunch, build.
• Stanford engineers team up with Michelin-star chef to build modular restaurants - Mezli's prototype robot restaurant is up and running and serving customers Mediterranean-style grain bowls and side dishes from the company’s KitchenTown location in San Mateo.
  Topics: customers, gruebele, founding, michelinstar, stanford, kolchinski, team, chef, engineers, mezli, modular, restaurants, mass, company, techcrunch, build, food, restaurant.
• Sunday raises $24 million seed round to build a fast restaurant checkout flow - Meet Sunday, a new startup that is going to attract some headlines as it has raised a $24 million seed round at a $140 million post-money valuation. That’s a lot of money for a company that started just a few months ago but that’s because Sunday wants to move quickly. Sunday is getting noticed because […]
  Topics: round, going, big, million, seed, qr, mamma, checkout, theyre, raises, fast, codes, restaurants, pay, company, restaurant, france, build, flow, techcrunch.
• Thatch using $3M round to put travel creators on the map - The mobile app provides tools for travel creators to build their own travel-based businesses in order to curate, share and soon sell interactive travel guides and planning services.
  Topics: company, using, thatch, creators, seed, round, travel, techcrunch, thatchs, build, app, west, industry, 3m, map.
• The State of Social Media in 2023: How You Can Build Communities, Drive Sales, and Go Viral, According to 1,000+ Social Media Managers - There's no two ways around it: Social media is hard.
  Topics: platform, best, customer, drive, communities, platforms, according, brand, content, sales, state, marketers, social, build, viral, managers, youre, media.
• This Is How Ecommerce Can Help You Build Real Wealth - Diversifying your income is beneficial for several reasons, and it's not as difficult as you might think.
  Topics: systems, wealth, need, business, streams, way, ecommerce, help, income, think, online, build, real, right.
• Threading Together Inclusivity and Functionality to Build a 7 Figure Activewear Brand - In this episode of Shopify Masters, we chat with Nadia Tucker and Stevie Angel of Active Truth. They share how their multi million dollar activewear brand is built on inclusivity and functionality.More
  Topics: build, really, activewear, inclusivity, threading, figure, brand, product, weve, business, customers, active, great, tights, functionality, thats.
• TryNow raises $12M to bring try-before-you-buy, Prime Wardrobe as a service to online retailers - Amazon’s Prime Wardrobe has been a key way for the e-commerce giant to expand its reach selling clothing and other apparel: giving shoppers an easy way to try on several items, return what they don’t want and pay for what they keep has helped it cross the virtual chasm by bringing the online experience a […]
  Topics: retailers, technology, try, trybeforeyoubuy, trynow, wardrobe, payment, raises, shopify, service, build, prime, bring, online, ecommerce, techcrunch.
• What Are Local Citations [+ 4 Steps to Build Them for Your Business] - If you’re not sure what local citations are, don’t worry — you’ve probably come across them while looking for a new service-provider, brand, or company. For example, a few weeks ago, my sister came to town and wanted to take me out to dinner. She’s unfamiliar with the area’s local spots, so my sister took to Yelp to find a restaurant we’d both love. After scrolling through Yelp, she found a Black-owned restaurant called 7th + Grove that had rave reviews.
  Topics: search, directories, online, citations, steps, websites, submit, business, nap, build, local, information.
• What Is Brand Essence? 5 Examples - If you had to describe yourself in less than five words, what would you say? For people, these words are the foundation of a personality. But for companies, they refer to the brand essence.
  Topics: companys, company, examples, statement, brands, brand, identity, build, customers, essence, trust.
• What Is a CMS and Why Should You Care? - There are a lot of acronyms in the business world to keep straight. SEO, CRM, SERP, CDN, and CMS are just a few important ones.
  Topics: create, wordpress, content, code, build, builtin, web, care, website, site, cms.
• Why Buying Email Lists Is Always a Bad Idea (And How to Build Yours for Free) - You need people who you can email, and you need them quickly. Oh, and if you could get them pretty cheap, that'd be great, too.
  Topics: content, idea, list, optin, free, addresses, address, dont, lists, build, email, marketing, emails, buying, bad.
• Why Every Company Needs an Operating Model [+ Steps to Build One] - If you are running a business, odds are, you’ve already figured out your business model.
  Topics: need, strategy, build, steps, systems, key, value, roles, operating, business, company, needs, model.
• Why the Creator Economy is a Huge Opportunity for Marketers, According to Joe Pulizzi [+ New Data] - Over the last 18 months, the creator economy has been all the rage — and it's proven to be incredibly lucrative. In fact, as of 2022, the creator economy's market size is estimated at $104.2 billion.
  Topics: audience, marketers, build, huge, revenue, economy, joe, opportunity, according, data, working, pulizzi, creating, creators, business, youtube, content, creator.
• Wonder Brands picks up $20M, aims to build marketplace of Latin American e-commerce brands - E-commerce roll-up companies are big in the United States, and Wonder Brands wants to be that for Latin America.
  Topics: companies, company, wonder, aims, malek, luna, revenue, brands, operations, techcrunch, build, amazon, american, marketplace, picks, ecommerce, latin, million.
• Yalo raises $50M to build ‘c-commerce’ services for chat apps like WhatsApp - Facebook has long been working on raising WhatsApp’s profile as a channel for businesses to interact with (and sell to) their customers. Today, a startup that has built a suite of tools for retailers and others to build and run those services over WhatsApp and other messaging platforms is announcing growth funding to address that […]
  Topics: customers, techcrunch, services, conversational, emerging, funding, raises, messaging, yalo, chat, ccommerce, build, apps, 50m, markets, commerce, whatsapp.
• mPharma raises $35 million in round joined by Tinder co-founder’s JAM fund, Bharti executive - Ghanaian health tech startup mPharma is building a network of community pharmacies across Africa as it plans to be the go-to primary healthcare service provider for millions of people residing in the region. MPharma plans to grow its community (Mutti) pharmacies across eight markets in Africa to be the first point of care for patients. […]
  Topics: executive, jam, joined, round, pharmacies, health, techcrunch, raises, care, fund, million, services, africa, pharmacy, mpharma, build, tinder, mutti, community.