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“You look at modern social media just from the past couple years — particularly TikTok — and it's very different. The way you engage with it is very different. I believe what we're seeing at VTEX, and what I believe we're going to see more of, is commerce emulating that.” — Jordan Jewell, Analyst in Residence at VTEX
If you’re looking for someone to forecast the future of ecommerce experiences, arguably no one would be better than an analyst who has spent years observing and examining trends for one of the leading market research firms.
For more than seven years, Jordan Jewell created and built the digital commerce practice at the International Data Corporation (IDC) but has since transitioned over to the vendor side as an analyst in residence for VTEX, an enterprise digital commerce platform.
Jewell joined a recent episode of “Unpacking the Digital Shelf” called “Testing the Future of Digital Experiences Now” to share his view on current digital shelf trends and where he thinks the industry is headed next.
Jewell has spent his career doing market research and evaluating vendors, so he’s better positioned than most to understand the trends that will reshape the ecommerce experience in the coming years.
Jewell brings that knowledge and sensibility to his new role at VTEX. He says what’s lacking in the larger ecommerce vendor market is a strategic, research-driven approach and a focus on customer education.
“That was part of what I thought was missing — that research-backed [approach] or trying to educate the market versus just shoving marketing messages down people's throats, so that's what I'm trying to bring,” he says.
So far, Jewell has analyzed census data to better understand how inflation is changing buying behavior and what retail categories the current economic headwinds affect most. VTEX is using this qualitative and quantitative data to educate brands and retailers that use its software about how they can better engage customers and increase marketing return on investment (ROI).
While Jewell is focused on using data and research to empower VTEX’s customers, he’s also keeping his eye on the platforms that underpin so much of the ecommerce experience today.
He believes product information management, digital asset management, and content syndication platforms are crucial for winning on the digital shelf today.
According to an analysis Jewell conducted at IDC, digital experience platforms (DXPs) — defined as technologies that brands use to manage their product content and website experience — raised more than $2 billion from 2020 to 2021.
Despite this level of investment, Jewell says it’s still important for brands and retailers to focus on the core fundamentals. That’s where ecommerce platforms are vital.
“You have to stand out, and if your content sucks, then your whole experience sucks. It's one of the things I've found very quickly,” he says. “But at the same time, I also strongly believe that beyond the website, there are some core fundamentals every retailer or brand needs to get right if they want to succeed. If you're not getting an order to the customer on time, which is pretty common, then it doesn't matter how good your website looks.”
There are generally two sides to ecommerce: the experiential side and the operations side. Many companies tend to focus on one aspect at the expense of the other, and that largely may be a function of technology.
DXPs help companies enhance the experience side of their business, while ecommerce platforms handle the transactional side and all the nuts and bolts that make the business operate like a (hopefully) well-oiled machine.
Jewell says that companies can get the most value out of these platforms by pinpointing where they want to differentiate themselves. Dawn Foods, he notes as one example, has focused on using technology to drive digital innovation and deliver a best-in-class ecommerce experience.
“They're a great example of where, if you have a great [differentiating] tech team,... you have the talent on hand, and you know what you're biting off, you 100% should go down that route of investing in more of a composable approach where these things might be from different vendors. That's how you're trying to differentiate. In those cases, you probably have a different operational and experiential vendor or set of vendors,” he says.
Jewell adds that companies can choose several top solutions to execute different parts of their ecommerce operations, including digital experience delivery. But for most organizations, it’s more effective to have one large enterprise software platform handle both the experiential and operational sides of their business.
“You can pick and choose a couple of areas that you want to use a best-of-breed product, like a [product information management] PIM for instance,” he says, “but for most organizations, it doesn't make sense.”
Jewell also spent some time talking about headless commerce — namely, why the term should be retired.
“It insinuates that you can have commerce without a head, which you can’t. There has to be an interface. Even if that interface is just by voice, or you're talking to a smart speaker. That's a head in the terminology we're using,” he says.
Jewell says the industry often conflates the terms “headless” and “composable.” Many brands that play in the ecommerce space, including VTEX’s customers, could benefit from more education around this topic. Jewell says the easiest way to think about headless commerce is actually by framing it as “API-first commerce,” in which commerce platform providers don’t offer a front-end experience.
However you describe it, what’s clear is that brands will continue to rely on an array of integrated solutions to manage their ecommerce experience. Which solutions they choose, however, will depend on what they’re trying to differentiate on and the strategic investments they're willing to make.
Along with recasting headless commerce as API-first commerce, Jewell shared his insights on what trends he thinks will drive the future of ecommerce.
He’s particularly bullish on video, which is currently a core part of the ecommerce experience in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. In the near future, he thinks product detail pages (PDPs) will resemble modern video-driven social media platforms like TikTok more than they do legacy social media channels like Facebook.
“You look at modern social media just from the past couple years, particularly TikTok, and it's very different. The way you engage with it is very different. I believe what we're seeing at VTEX, and what I believe we're going to see more of, is commerce emulating that,” he says.
Jewell is also optimistic about live shopping, which is currently big in China but hasn’t yet taken off in the U.S.
“[There’s more than] $300 billion dollars going through live shopping and live streaming [in China]. There's something there,” Jewell says, adding that it’s time for brands stateside to rethink what ecommerce looks like.
More than 200 VTEX customers now use live shopping in 14 countries. Most, if not all, of them see higher engagement and more time spent on their websites, Jewell says, which often correlates to higher conversions and more sales.
If brands and retailers can marry live shopping with video, they may have an opportunity to use these assets to further optimize their product content — especially their PDP. Jewell admits it’ll take time for live shopping to become more prevalent in the U.S., but success will ultimately depend on each brand’s execution. Amazon, for example, experienced a swing and a miss with live shopping on Prime Day.
“I don't have the answer, necessarily, but I do think there are a lot of proof points from our customers about how it works. Every company needs to rethink ‘how can this help my business and not cost a ton of money?’ How can this be something we test and learn from? And finally, [how can this be] something we collect first-party data from?’” — Jordan Jewell, Analyst in Residence at VTEX
Whether they’re interacting with customers through a website, video, live shopping, or any other channel, brands will need to better manage their digital estate to drive improved ecommerce performance.
“Too often, you get the separation of online and offline, and maybe there's been a focus on improving online conversion, but you should also be thinking about making sales offline, and vice versa,” Jewell says. “That is the way I think every brand or retailer should be thinking about this. ‘How can I leverage every pixel to improve my sales across every channel?’”
To hear more of Jewell’s take on upcoming ecommerce trends, listen to the full episode.
