Daily E-Commerce Pulse Report (Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash)

Top 2024 resources on technologies

Best technologies resource in 2024.
Learn more about technologies to improve your e-commerce strategy.

  • 3 Strategies for Ecommerce Sales and Growth Using the New Technologies. - Create new value offerings using blockchain and augmented reality.
    Topics: experiences, using, blockchain, growth, brands, strategies, ecommerce, ar, sales, business, online, technologies, platform.
  • 45 Emerging Technology Stats to Know in 2020 - As a writer who loves covering emerging technology and human being, I'm surrounded by technology.
    Topics: emerging, technologies, marketing, ar, voice, technology, say, devices, stats, vr, know, smart.
  • 9 Crucial Headless Commerce Trends to Watch In 2023 - The world of commerce is evolving rapidly, and brands need to keep up with the latest technologies and trends to stay ahead of the game. One of the most powerful recent commerce technologies is headless commerce. Headless commerce is a method of dividing the front-end and back-end aspects of an eCommerce platform. This strategy offers companies greater adaptability and authority over their customers’ online shopping experiences, which is crucial in today's fast-changing digital environment. In 2023, headless commerce is expected to become a mainstay of eCommerce operations, with more brands than ever adopting it to streamline their operations and boost sales. In this post, we’ll discuss nine headless commerce trends that you need to know to stay ahead of the competition and take commerce to the next level. The Evolution of Headless Commerce Headless commerce has changed over time. It started as a way to address the limitations of traditional eCommerce platforms. These platforms were often inflexible and limited in terms of customization, making it difficult for businesses to create unique and engaging shopping experiences for their customers.  With headless commerce, the front-end and back-end of an eCommerce platform are separated, allowing businesses to customize the presentation layer and integrate with other technologies more easily.  This approach also enables businesses to provide a more seamless and consistent experience across multiple channels, from desktop to mobile to social media. Headless commerce has quickly gained widespread popularity among brands looking for more flexibility and agility in their eCommerce operations. According to a study, over $1.65 billion in financing has been obtained for headless commerce in 2020 and 2021 alone. In addition, 80% of businesses that still don’t practice headless commerce plan to implement it in the next two years. In order for your business to stay competitive, it's crucial to be informed of the latest trends in headless commerce and make the most of your headless commerce strategy. 9 Headless Commerce Trends for 2023 As commerce technologies evolve, integrating headless commerce practices has become an important competitive advantage. To ensure your brand reaches its peak potential in 2023, be aware of these nine crucial headless commerce trends:  1. Mobile-first Strategy A mobile-first strategy is becoming increasingly important, regardless of your industry, in order to maximize both ease of use for your customers and revenue for your brand. With more and more consumers using their mobile devices to make purchases, it’s crucial for organizations to prioritize mobile commerce when optimizing their overall commerce strategy.  Headless commerce allows for more flexibility and customization while creating a mobile-first experience, ensuring a strong brand presence and a consistently frictionless user experience. By adopting a mobile-first strategy powered by headless commerce, you can cater to the changing needs and preferences of your customers without sacrificing back-end functionality. 2. Voice Commerce Voice commerce doesn’t rely on a traditional visual user interface to facilitate shopping. Instead, it uses voice-enabled technology, such as smart speakers or virtual assistants, to let your customers shop at any time that fits their busy schedules.  Voice commerce eliminates the need for a traditional front-end interface altogether, creating a more seamless and intuitive shopping experience. As voice-enabled technology continues to advance and become more widespread, we can expect to see an increase in the adoption of voice commerce as a headless commerce trend. 3. AI & Machine Learning AI and machine learning technologies use data and algorithms to predict customer needs and suggest relevant products or services. This results in a personalized shopping experience, boosting conversion rates and increasing personalization for the consumer.  These technologies can also automate back-end processes like inventory management and order fulfillment. AI and machine learning are quickly becoming foundational elements of both traditional and headless commerce, giving your brand a competitive edge in customer experience management as well as operations. 4. Blockchain Technologies Blockchain technologies allow for secure and transparent transactions without intermediaries like banks or payment processors. Decentralized data storage and management also ensure that data is less vulnerable to hacking or breaches.  In this headless commerce trend, blockchain integration can be used for supply chain management, smart contracts, and secure payment processing in both B2B and B2C contexts. This technology offers faster and more efficient transactions across borders and lowers fees, making it increasingly popular as a headless commerce trend for brands of all sizes. Get hands on with an Elastic Path Free Trial Start building the commerce experience your unique business demands with a free Elastic Path Commerce Cloud account. Get in touch with us and we will setup a Free Trial store for you for six weeks. Sign up for a free trial 5. Virtual Reality Shopping Virtual reality (VR) shopping gives customers a completely immersive and interactive shopping experience. Your customers can explore products in 3D, interact with them, and easily visualize their real-life use, emulating the experience of viewing products in a brick-and-mortar store.  VR shopping lets eCommerce brands showcase their products in a more engaging way, leading to more confident purchasing decisions and less buyer’s remorse. Also, VR shopping is cost-efficient, eliminating or reducing the need for physical retail space.  As the popularity of virtual and augmented reality experiences of all kinds grows, VR shopping is becoming increasingly prevalent, offering customers a unique and exciting way to shop. 6. Social Media Integration Social media integration has become a vital headless commerce trend as customers increasingly use social media to find and buy products. Integrating social media into a headless commerce strategy creates a frictionless and personalized shopping experience that meets consumers where they “live:” on their favorite social media platforms.  With this headless commerce trend, social media can now be used for more than just colorful posts and ads or for building brand awareness. Instead, customers can now also choose to buy products directly from social media platforms with just a click of a button, a quick comment, or a chat message.  This simple shopping experience reduces abandoned carts and buyer hesitation, making it simpler than ever to boost both short-term sales and long-term revenue. 7. eCommerce Microservices Overall eCommerce revenues are expected to reach $7.5 trillion by 2025. To keep up, brands and retailers are seeking new systems to stand out from the crowd. Microservices are among the top choices for large brands like Amazon, Netflix, and Etsy, and could have major benefits for your organization, too.   Microservices are an effective solution for eCommerce challenges like traffic peaks and risk-free testing of new trends and technologies. They also play well with headless commerce setups and facilitate the building of complex omnichannel systems. These advantages allow for testing the latest payment methods, voice assistants, and progressive web apps without taking significant risks. 8. Omnichannel Presence Customers today expect a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, including online, mobile, social media, and physical stores. Headless commerce enables retailers to decouple the front-end presentation layer from the back-end commerce platform, allowing them to deliver a consistent and robust user experience across all of these channels. This means that customers can start a transaction on one channel and complete it on another quickly, painlessly, with a consistent brand experience each time.  Moreover, retailers can leverage data analytics and AI to personalize the shopping experience for each customer based on their preferences, behavior, and context. By adopting an omnichannel presence, in addition to other key headless commerce trends like these, organizations can not only increase customer satisfaction and brand awareness but also drive revenue growth and competitive differentiation. 9. Adoption of API-Driven Platforms API-driven platforms provide developers with the infrastructure needed to integrate new applications and services. APIs allow your business to create a flexible architecture that can deftly adapt to changing customer demands and market conditions, leading to innovative and engaging digital experiences for customers.  This flexibility goes hand-in-hand with headless commerce’s premise of customizability. As the adoption of APIs continues to surge, so too does headless commerce integration become more prevalent. Leveraging both together is a great way to multiply and optimize the operational ease and streamlined user experience you would gain from either one or the other, creating benefits that only become more apparent with time.  Choosing the Best Headless Commerce Solution with Elastic Path The commerce industry is crowded with technologies that claim to offer a myriad of benefits with a simple setup. Deciding what technology—and which providers—to trust is far from easy.  Not sure what your business needs to stay competitive in a landscape that is tilting toward headless commerce? No problem—our experts can help you select the tools you need. Get in touch with us today to take your commerce capabilities to the next level.
    Topics: headless, technologies, brands, ecommerce, trends, shopping, commerce, crucial, experience, social, customers, media, watch.
  • A merger of two Nigerian e-commerce players is the latest bid to win Africa's largest market - Two months after it was acquired by Zinox Technologies, Konga, a major e-commerce player in Nigeria, is taking another step in its evolution.
    Topics: latest, ecommerce, bid, technologies, company, merger, market, konga, companies, players, acquired, zinox, warehouses, win, operate, yudala, largest, africas, nigerian.
  • A merger of two Nigerian e-commerce players is the latest bid to win Africa's largest market - Two months after it was acquired by Zinox Technologies, Konga, a major e-commerce player in Nigeria, is taking another step in its evolution.
    Topics: largest, zinox, win, company, technologies, africas, operate, acquired, ecommerce, companies, latest, merger, bid, warehouses, market, konga, players, yudala, nigerian.
  • AI Is the Future: How Can Your Business Benefit - Bank of Canada director of data science Maryam Haghighi joins us for an in-depth conversation on the latest disruptive technologies, and how business owners can use and understand their customer data. More
    Topics: future, understand, benefit, ai, data, growing, science, founders, technologies, technology, impact, maryam, business.
  • - South Korean AI-based fashion-tech firm Odd Concepts has raised US$6 million in Series B funding, taking the company’s accumulated investments to about US$10 million.
    Topics: odd, funding, ai, million, korea, firm, products, concepts, fashiontech, technologies, proprietary, service, securities, raises.
  • Adobe Commerce Cloud Launches Headless Offering to Serve the High Customer Experience Needs of Enterprise Customers - Businesses are eager to embrace new commerce channels and technologies to get closer to their customers and grow conversions. Now merchants of all sizes can react to changing customer needs at speed and scale.
    Topics: experience, experiences, technologies, high, cloud, customer, scenarios, enterprise, needs, serve, launches, headless, apis, commerce, adobe, offering, customers.
  • Amazon is opening a London hair salon to test AR and other retail technologies - Amazon announced this morning it’s opening Amazon Salon, the retailer’s first hair salon and a place where Amazon aims to test new technologies with the general public. The salon will occupy over 1,500 sq. ft on Brushfield Street in London’s Spitalfields, where Amazon says it will initially be trialing the use of augmented reality (AR) […]
    Topics: technologies, techcrunch, hair, customers, products, salon, opening, london, technology, ar, amazon, test, retail, data.
  • - Amazon has pledged US$2 billion for a Climate Pledge Fund to foster sustainable technologies and services that will enable it to achieve net zero carbon.
    Topics: company, services, pledge, climate, technologies, amazon, zero, billion, pledges, size, carbon, companies, fund.
  • - How biometrics in retail can create deeper customer engagement.
    Topics: biometrics, data, stores, key, experience, building, engagement, identification, technologies, retail, customer, payments, store, credit, card.
  • Breaking Up With Your Commerce Monolith: Part 1 (Fighting the Status Quo) - When you’re looking for a commerce platform, what’s better? Endless arrays of features available natively, or composability?  Looking at the typical analyst market survey, you might think that more features are better. Otherwise, why would they ask more than 300 feature-specific questions in the vendor evaluation? Their logic: Monoliths, by definition, have more features. Ergo, monoliths are good.  However, if you’re currently stuck with a monolith, you know better than that. Monoliths are slow, hard to update, and tough to use. They hinder you from adopting the latest, best-in-class technologies, don’t support the ability to move quickly in response to market changes, and squash any ambitions of experimenting with new channels. That just won’t work if you’re trying to adapt to the latest consumer trends. Embracing a true omnichannel, digital-first strategy like McKinsey suggests requires a fundamental change in approach. Let’s look at why market pundits view more as better, and a more modern way to assemble your digital commerce experience. Why Digital Commerce Analyst Reports Fall Short Even though analyst reports have been considered the de facto standard for technology vendor evaluation for the past few decades, they’re increasingly out of step with what buyers expect today. The reports themselves were structured to reward monoliths and legacy technologies from big firms. By definition, these technologies check all the boxes when it comes to features. On composability, monoliths don’t fare as well. From microservices, to integrations, to APIs – if it were up to analyst reports, you couldn’t have both a full-featured platform and one that supports modern approaches to composability and “best for me” architectures.  Don’t be distracted by this red herring. The “more is better” logic is ultimately flawed, and suggests that you’re making some sort of sacrifice if you choose the composable path. The truth is, you don’t necessarily need every feature available to you natively if you can select the best features for you.  While that might seem intuitive, it’s a fundamental pivot in the way many people in the commerce world think. Analyst reports tend to be lagging indicators. If you’re using them to make a commerce decision, you’re doing it wrong.   Get Some Real Answers to Make a Commerce Decision Connect with an Elastic Path Expert to Answer Your Commerce Questions Contact Elastic Path Key Questions to Ask About Composable Commerce If you’re not using analyst reports, how should you navigate a commerce technology decision? There are a couple of important questions to ask the vendors you’re evaluating.  Instead of: “Do you have it native?” Try: “Is this a best in class feature?” As I’ve covered in the past, API-first beats native in the new world of digital commerce. Here’s why: APIs are lightweight and can be designed to be easily extended to serve a variety of specific use cases. For complex use cases, it’s possible for developers to design these APIs to communicate with one another and streamline requests that pull related data in.  If you select an API-first commerce platform, you can expect to get the best-in-class features you need, while avoiding the typical bloat and slowdowns associated with monoliths. In addition, it allows your developers to work with the technologies they trust most. Instead of: “Aren’t composable architectures too complicated?” Try: “How can you make composability simpler for me?” Look for tools that shorten implementation timelines and reduce some of the complexity that’s traditionally associated with composable architectures. That might include the following features:  Starter kits: Give your developers a point from which to start with reference implementations of APIs and front-end components to kickstart your composable commerce application development. Check out the D2C Starter Kit we just launched.  Pre-built integrations: Instead of having to choose from nearly endless options of possible API-first commerce components, look for a platform that has pre-built integrations (e.g. a marketplace) to help you quickly find, install and configure best-of-breed software. Pre-configured payment gateways: Payments are perhaps one of the more complex parts of digital commerce, but it doesn’t have to be. Pre-configured payment gateways can get you set up to accept payments right away. Pre-Composed Solutions: Benefit from the use case-specific expertise and best practices of systems integrators to launch faster and customize on-demand. Hedging Your Bets with Composable Commerce While analysts and other industry pundits might proclaim that monoliths have a higher ability to execute, hedging your bets with a best-of-breed approach is actually far less risky. There’s no single point of failure. Components in a composable architecture can be easily changed if they’re not working, or as your requirements evolve – which allows for a cycle of continuous improvement. Today’s commerce leaders are expected to innovate, which doesn’t necessarily mean going with yesterday’s “sure bet.”  Those that want to embrace flexible, digital-first commerce know that composability is the way to go. Next up in this series, I’ll explore how to break up a monolith by covering the two typical patterns companies follow to make it happen.   
    Topics: features, better, commerce, breaking, youre, reports, questions, analyst, monoliths, composable, technologies, monolith.
  • 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.
  • Do you want to stand out in a challenging environment? Try constant training - More than a year after a mandatory transformation, we can say that the digitization of companies is already a reality.
    Topics: try, online, reality, obtain, resources, programs, technologies, allow, challenging, stand, training, companies, constant, environment, tools.
  • ECommerce Conversion Rate Optimization 2019: Best Practices - If there’s one certainty about the start of a new year, it is rife with new predictions. Made by everyone from thought leaders to corporations, predictions related to business generally forecast new trends about to hit the industry. And while the potential they offer may be exciting, the sheer volume of these predictions can be overwhelming to the average business owner. To make things easier, we've narrowed it down to the 3 most important trends that will ultimately have the greatest impact on eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization in 2019:
    Topics: voice, optimization, merchants, pay, rate, commerce, shopping, practices, technologies, ecommerce, payment, conversion, best.
  • Early Adopters Take the Lead - Adopting technology early is a challenge every business may face at some point in their growth and development. However, technology is now moving so fast that what might have seemed risky in the past might today actually be the safer bet, to stay ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition.
    Topics: technologies, talent, adopting, commerce, adopters, lead, trends, website, technology, way, pwa, early.
  • Foundations of Commerce: Grit before Glitz - The race to get a product or service in front of a customer, or the desire for a customer to...
    Topics: routes, commerce, systems, technologies, glitz, foundations, vision, product, working, customer, trade, grit, foundation, silk.
  • - Guess and Alibaba Group bring AI to the fashion world in a store of the future at Hong Kong.
    Topics: future, ai, technologies, guess, hom, store, fashion, technology, alibabas, hung, alibaba, retail, fashionai, aipowered, unveil.
  • - Thanks to 5G, mobile communication is about to experience its greatest revolution in the 12 years since Apple invented the smartphone.
    Topics: ar, technology, technologies, retail, customers, 5g, experience, data, great, enabler, revolutionse, online, product, consumers.
  • How AI Works: The Basics You Need to Know - Artificial intelligence technology has come a long way since the days of IBM’s Deep Blue, a computer designed to play chess against humans. Nowadays, AI software can improve existing workflows, predict customer behavior, and do much more.
    Topics: realtime, using, human, know, works, data, processes, technologies, customer, technology, basics, need, ai, information.
  • IoT and data science will boost foodtech in the post-pandemic era - Leveraging data, hardware and biological solutions can help brick-and-mortar stores remain relevant and continue churning out cash.
    Topics: postpandemic, store, help, rely, customers, waste, data, techcrunch, stores, foodtech, grocers, iot, era, technologies, science, boost, brickandmortar.
  • 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.
  • Nano-warehousing provider Noyes raises 3.2 million euros - Noyes, a German provider of very small warehouses, has raised 3.8 million dollars (3.23 million euros) in seed funding. The investment comes at a time where there are many instant-delivery providers looking for storefronts that can be converted into small warehouses. The millions of euros, raised in a seed funding… Continue reading
    Topics: noyes, provider, instantdelivery, payment, technologies, million, euros, raises, whitepaper, banking, nanowarehousing, raised, warehousing.
  • Norelco Popularizes Stop-Motion Animation - When Norelco began using animated advertisements to sell their electric shavers and other personal grooming products in the 1960s, animation…
    Topics: campaigns, stopmotion, popularized, holiday, animated, familiar, norelco, animation, technologies, products, advertisement, quality, using, media.
  • Our digital future will be shaped by increasingly mobile technologies coming from China - Since the dawn of the internet, the titans of this industry have fought to win the “starting point” -- the place that users start their online experiences. In other words, the place where they begin “browsing.” The advent of the dial-up era had America Online mailing a CD to every home in America, which passed the baton to Yahoo’s categorical listings, which was swallowed by Google’s indexing of the world’s information -- winning the “starting point” was everything.
    Topics: increasingly, users, digital, future, amazon, shaped, point, technologies, retailers, model, china, mobile, coming, look, starting, google.
  • - Shoppers have listed out-of-stock items as being the number one reason for leaving physical stores without making a purchase, according to a new report. The study, conducted by Zebra Technologies, polled more than 4000 consumers in the Asia-Pacific region and showed that customers expect items seen online will be in stock – with this phenomenon […]
    Topics: store, physical, returns, shoppers, outofstocks, technologies, services, main, zebra, cent, retail, reason, abandon, study, stores.
  • Price Technologies adds product availability feature for items experiencing COVID-19 shortages - Price Technologies, the operator of the comparison shopping website Price.com and its related browser extension, is adding a feature to show product availability for a few essential items that have had supply issues caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. Products like aspirin, acetaminophen, facial tissues, hand sanitizer, ibuprofen, rice, soap, soup, toilet paper […]
    Topics: feature, shortages, price, pricecom, website, covid19, items, essential, technologies, online, experiencing, availability, techcrunch, shopping, product.
  • Puls Technologies lands $15M to provide on-demand home repair service - The average refrigerator door is opened and closed 20 times per day, but with everyone at home during the pandemic, that rose to over 100 times, sparking an increase in door repair requests.
    Topics: lands, services, service, business, repair, puls, technologies, 15m, technicians, company, million, repairs, warranty, provide, ondemand, techcrunch.
  • - Chinese courier firm SF Express has opened its first New Retail store in Chongqing.
    Topics: express, shoppers, using, products, chinese, brings, store, retail, chongqing, online, technologies, sf.
  • Shopify Is Eliminating the Climate Impact of Merchant Shipments Over BFCM - For the second year in a row, Shopify is addressing the environmental impact of the global Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) shopping weekend by purchasing enough frontier carbon removal to counteract the carbon emissions that come from shipping every single order on our platform.More
    Topics: shipments, bfcm, removal, merchant, carbon, companies, impact, world, eliminating, climate, shopify, emissions, technologies, shipping.
  • Shopify’s Sustainability Fund: How We’re Investing to Reverse Climate Change - One year ago, we launched Shopify’s Sustainability Fund to address a hard, irrefutable truth: there’s too much carbon in the air. Today, we’re sharing how we spent the fund’s first $5 million on the most promising and innovative solutions fighting climate change—and the visionary entrepreneurs behind them.More
    Topics: invest, carbon, removal, fund, investing, co₂, investments, climate, sustainability, technology, reverse, shopifys, change, technologies, need.
  • - Starbucks is to partner with investment company Sequoia Capital to invest in new technologies which will propel the company’s digital innovation in Mainland China.
    Topics: innovations, digital, retail, investment, starbucks, china, sequoia, launch, companies, technologies, technology, capital, plan.
  • Starbucks to launch NFTs this year, offering access to ‘unique experiences and benefits’ - Would you like an NFT with your Starbucks latte? The coffee giant this week announced its plans to enter the web3 space with the launch of its own NFT collection later this year, where the individual digital collectibles also provide their owners with access to exclusive content experiences and other benefits, it said. The company […]
    Topics: web3, digital, launch, benefits, experiences, techcrunch, offering, nfts, unique, access, business, stores, nft, company, technologies, starbucks, ceo.
  • Starship Technologies picks up €50M from the EU’s investment arm to expand its fleet of autonomous delivery robots - Starship Technologies, one of the bigger names in the world of autonomous delivery robots — those little caboose-like, boxy delivery vehicles that self-drive around cities — has been on a roll during COVID-19, providing extra (unmanned) horsepower to distribute food and other goods between stores or restaurants and consumers, at a time when consumers were […]
    Topics: million, technologies, robots, eus, picks, westgarth, grocery, starships, city, funding, fleet, starship, expand, delivery, investment, deliveries, techcrunch.
  • Study Shows Digital Commerce Maturity Among Consumer Brand Manufacturers Leads To Revenue Growth - A new report, commissioned by Adobe in partnership with 451 Research, focuses on the high-level IT trends, digital transformation pain points and opportunities, and technologies exerting influence over the digital commerce experience. It also offers a road map to achieving global digital commerce excellence. Read more.
    Topics: customer, technologies, experiences, transformation, revenue, shows, leads, consumer, maturity, commerce, study, leaders, growth, manufacturers, digital, strategy, businesses.
  • This Is a Game-Changing Move by Jumia Technologies - When little under-the-radar companies are compared to mega-corporations, it's often little more than unfounded hype.
    Topics: gamechanging, company, ecommerce, little, technologies, great, thats, unfounded, jumia, africa.
  • - Tmall and Intersport have opened a megastore in Beijing.
    Topics: megastore, technologies, retail, store, china, stores, beijing, brands, tmall, shopping, customers, intersport, open.
  • - Transport and logistics provider Toll Group has opened a US$167 million logistics hub spanning over 1 million square feet.
    Topics: chain, toll, logistics, million, city, supply, road, sitadel, group, opens, singapore, hub, technologies.
  • Walmart to sell its e-commerce technologies to other retailers - Walmart’s investments in software and retail technologies it used to transform its business from a brick-and-mortar to one that combines both in-person and online shopping will now be made available to other retailers for the first time, the company announced today. Through a strategic partnership with Adobe, Walmart will integrate access to Walmart’s Marketplace, as […]
    Topics: sell, partnership, retailers, ecommerce, pickup, walmarts, technologies, retail, techcrunch, marketplace, walmart, customers, adobe.
  • What Is The Difference Between MACH and Composable Commerce? - If you're in the commerce space, whether you're evaluating vendors or just staying up to date on the latest and greatest trends, then you've probably heard about Headless Commerce, Composable Commerce and MACH. So what are they and how do they differ?     If you're in the commerce space, whether you're evaluating vendors or just staying up to date on the latest and greatest trends, then you've probably heard about Headless Commerce, Composable Commerce and MACH. So what are they and how do they differ?   Headless Commerce Well, firstly, headless commerce is more widely known, since it was established in 2011 by Elastic Path. Its strategy of decoupling the front end of presentation layer from the back end commerce engine enables businesses to deliver continuous customer journeys across multiple touch points without that dependency on the back end slowing you down. Since then, technology has developed more to create more flexibility across these commerce journeys. And here in lies, MACH.   MACH Now MACH simply a collection of technologies wrapped up in an acronym, which stands for: Microservices APIs Cloud Native Headless Commerce    So what does MACH do? Well to understand that you will need to understand each component separately. Microservices are independently deployed packaged business capabilities that enable flexible development to be deployed quickly. APIs, are software intermediaries that allow two or more applications to talk to each other. So this is going to be crucial for accelerated development of new channels and time to market for different commerce experiences. Cloud Native simply means it's just a SaaS model commerce service that allows for elastic scalability and robust security. This means that you'll only have to deploy the capabilities that you need on demand and not your entire full suite at once. So in conclusion, MACH is simply a marketing term that brings all of these flexible technologies together.   Composable Commerce Now Composable Commerce is the approach that brings it all together. This approach equips brands with the core commerce technology, like MACH, assets like partner integrations and expert written guides, as well as full support to compose and optimize your unique commerce solution. Now, Composable Commerce is characterized by three key tenets. Business centric solutions, which include quick starts for building your solution. and business tools that grant marketing teams the control to make changes and remain competitive. Modular architecture, which leverages flexible technology such as JAMStack for your frontend, MACH for your backend and extensive developer tools. An open ecosystem, which consists of a library of assets, integration frameworks as well as full support and guidance for building your entire solution. So as you can see, it's not a direct comparison, because headless is just a small part of MACH and MACH is only a small part of what Composable Commerce enables you to do. To learn more about how you can leverage these MACH based technologies to deploy Composable Commerce, feel free to reach out to us. We'd be happy to help.
    Topics: youre, simply, mach, headless, commerce, difference, technology, technologies, flexible, composable, end.
  • What My Kids' Roblox Addiction Taught Me About the Metaverse - While business leaders are speculating about the metaverse, our kids are already living in it.
    Topics: social, z, taught, addiction, roblox, metaverse, digital, universes, brands, brand, kids, technologies.
  • Why Ecommerce Businesses Can't Afford to Stand Still During a Downturn (and What They Must Do Instead) - Here's how ecommerce businesses can take advantage of the current downturn and race ahead of the competition.
    Topics: economic, ecommerce, wait, businesses, need, organizations, transformation, technologies, downturn, succeed, platform, inflation.
  • Why Everybody Is Talking About Jumia Stock (Infographic) - The bulls think it might be the next Sea Limited or MercadoLibre. The bears see horrible profit margins and revenues going backwards.
    Topics: stock, infographic, internet, africa, thatthe, jumia, talking, everybody, technologies, trading, citron.
  • Why isn’t Elastic Path part of the MACH Alliance? - First, let’s understand what the MACH Alliance is and what it isn’t. The MACH Alliance is a marketing alliance started by commercetools to promote the acronym MACH, which they coined to refer to Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless Commerce technologies. MACH-based technologies and architectural approaches have grown in popularity in recent years as a more modern alternative to traditionally monolithic system architectures, especially in the eCommerce space where digital transformation is paramount for brands in retailers to maintain a competitive advantage. A question that we hear from time-to-time is “Given that Elastic Path offers one of the leading MACH-based commerce solution in the market, it would seem like an obvious fit for Elastic Path to be a member of the MACH Alliance - so why doesn’t Elastic Path participate in the MACH Alliance?” So we thought we would write a blog to help answer this question! There are two primary reasons we are not in the MACH Alliance: 1) Breadth of our offerings In order to address the digital commerce needs of modern brands, we offer two commerce platforms. MACH-based technologies are often a great fit, but are not always the best architectural approach based on a customer’s specific needs, so we don’t want to force customers into a specific type of architecture or deployment methodology. Instead, we aim to provide the right solution that addresses each customer’s unique requirements. Even though we believe our approach of providing multiple product offerings to help customers solve their digital commerce challenges is the most customer-centric approach, commercetools only wants “pure play” MACH vendors in their marketing alliance, which we find curious but totally respect – they coined the term, so they can invite whomever they want. Here is some context on our two headless commerce offerings: Elastic Path Commerce Cloud is our composable, API-first, microservices-based Headless Commerce solution (bleeding edge MACH). This product is for digitally driven branded manufacturers who need the control to go-to-market and quickly optimize across business models (B2B, B2C/ D2C, B2B2C), geos, brands, and touchpoints with ease. Some of our Elastic Path Commerce Cloud customers include Deckers Brands, Pella Windows & Doors, and Hobie Kayaks. Our other commerce platform, Elastic Path Commerce, is headless (and in fact pioneered the headless commerce market when it launched in 2011), but is not microservices-based. Elastic Path Commerce is a purpose-built Headless Commerce platform for telco, utilities companies, and those who sell regulated goods. This product gives brands the absolute control over their data and infrastructure with the ability to deploy on-premise or via private cloud. Some of our Elastic Path Commerce customers include T.Mobile and Swisscom. 2) Focus On Customer Outcomes As a company, we’re focused on empowering our customers to deliver business outcomes – because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters. Even though we offer one of the most modern MACH-based digital commerce solutions on the market, we do not see the value in promoting technology for the sake of technology. As a marketing alliance, the MACH Alliance has created some buzz in the market focused on MACH technologies, which is great, but they are not focused on providing actual solutions that help customers solve problems and deliver business outcomes. This is an important point, because even though MACH technologies offer tremendous benefits in terms of architectural flexibility and control, they also introduce additional complexity that can be very challenging for many organizations to manage. So instead of focusing on commercetools’ on the MACH Alliance marketing group, we decided instead to invest our time/energy focused on helping customers solve their most pressing digital commerce challenges to unlock new business growth. This led us to spearhead the Composable Commerce Movement. The Composable Commerce Movement is an industry-wide movement, comprised of an ecosystem of leading digital commerce technology and solution providers, such as Alogolia, Contentful, Amplience, Bloomreach, Coveo, InRiver, PayPal, FluentCommerce, Born, Bounteous, MMT Digital, Perficient, Object Edge, Nortal, Myplanet, Sutrix, TA Digital, Corra, DigiCommerce, & Hycom. Through the Composable Commerce Movement, this ecosystem of digital commerce leaders has developed a wide portfolio of pre-built solutions available in the Composable Commerce Hub, which helps brands to reduce the risk and complexity of using MACH-based technologies and empowers those brands to rapidly deliver business outcomes. This approach eliminates the need for brands and retailers to take on the burden of building and supporting MACH-based solutions themselves in order to take advantage of the flexibility benefits these modern technologies offer. With the solutions available in the Composable Commerce Hub, brands and retailers can launch “pre-built” solutions based on MACH technology in a matter of days, and then easily customize their digital commerce experiences over time. The Composable Commerce Movement is all about empowering the business, not just geeking out on the tech (which is also fun to do!). I hope this post was helpful in answering a question that we commonly receive. If interested in learning more about Composable Commerce or our industry-leading MACH-based commerce platform, just give us a shout.
    Topics: brands, composable, mach, customers, elastic, commerce, isnt, technologies, path, digital, alliance.
  • - A couple days ago, my girlfriend and I had a debate (let’s call it a discussion) about caffeine.
    Topics: problems, machine, crossroads, theres, solve, data, help, social, caffeine, technologies, technology, ai, learning, big, emerging.
  • WompMobile CEO on PWAs and AMPs - Not long ago mobile optimization could provide a competitive advantage. But as the mobile internet has grown, responsive websites are no longer optional. They are essential to doing business online. WompMobile ...
    Topics: mobile, amp, pwa, pages, ceo, amps, website, allows, pwas, web, technologies, google, wompmobile, work.
  • YC-backed Curacel unveils new API platform that enables tech-led businesses to offer insurance - Curacel, the YC-backed startup that is developing insurance infrastructure for the African market, has launched a new interface that allows digital businesses like those in retail, fintech, e-commerce and logistics to add insurance to their core products. The API-based tool, dubbed Grow, has so far been integrated with 22 tech entities across Africa including Topship, […]
    Topics: curacel, products, insurance, companies, ycbacked, market, offer, techled, businesses, unveils, infrastructure, africa, system, including, enables, technologies, platform, techcrunch.
  • - Consumers’ pursuit of more affordable prices is fueling cross-border shopping behavior, according to a consumer study conducted by Worldline in six European countries. The study reveals that approximately half of consumers regularly shop outside of their domestic markets. “The primary driver behind this behaviour are the better value and product…
    Topics: increases, consumers, shopping, payment, online, crossborder, worldline, value, technologies, shoppers, price, wallets, study, drive.