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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Beyond Buzzwords: Why eCommerce Success Isn't About Your Platform Choice with Matt Parkinson
In this episode of The FODcast, Matt Parkinson - Founder of GENE Commerce and co-founder of Shopthru and BlueFinch - cuts through the hype to share a candid, insider’s view of the Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) ecosystem.
While some in the industry claim Magento’s time has passed, Matt sets the record straight. With an estimated 8–12% market share among top-tier retailers, Adobe Commerce continues to serve businesses that need deep flexibility and control.
With two decades in e-commerce tech, Matt shares insights you won’t find on LinkedIn:
- The evolution of Magento through multiple ownership change- and why the community is its greatest strength
- What Adobe’s new SaaS approach means for developers, agencies, and enterprise brands
- The danger of trend-chasing: from PWA to MACH and why some “modern” strategies lead to complexity and debt
- Why checkout optimisation - often overlooked - can deliver double-digit conversion gains
- A look at Shopthru’s vision for embedded commerce and the future of buying at the point of discovery
Whether you’re navigating platform strategy, eyeing digital transformation, or just want a brutally honest take from someone who's seen it all, this episode is packed with practical lessons.
🎧 Tune in now!
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Hello and welcome to Season 7 of the podcast, the podcast focused on the future of digital commerce hosted by Simply Commerce. Season 7 promises to continue to bring you some of the industry's brightest minds across the globe as we unpick the sector and where it's heading From war stories to strategy and technology, deep dives to future trends we cover it all as we continue our journey to have one of the most popular podcasts in commerce. Before we start, if you enjoy our content, please do hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on, like and share on socials. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. The future of all things digital commerce. Today, I'd like to welcome Matt Parkinson. Matt's probably best known for his role as founder of Gene Commerce. However, he's also co-founder at Shopthrough and Bluefinch companies I'm sure we'll discuss in the show. Today we'll be breaking down the evolving world of Adobe Commerce, an area Matt has been associated with for more than 10 years and one which I find particularly interesting given the extreme views in the market.
Speaker 2:It's probably one of the most marmite platforms out there. Welcome, Matt. Thank you, James, Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me. I've tried to give a high level intro. Do you want to go into a little bit more detail and tell the listeners a bit more about your background and the companies?
Speaker 2:that you have co-founded. Of course. Well, I was just adding it up. I think I've been involved in Magento since day one back in 2008, so that's actually getting on to quick maths.
Speaker 1:More than 15 years, yeah, so that's a long time in various guises.
Speaker 2:So I've lived and breathed the whole life cycle from when it was conceived by Varian as a sort of competitor to very early days of S-commerce. I lived through the whole journey from eBay ownership through to private equity ownership and most recently in the last six, seven years with Adobe steering the ship and making the differentiation between Adobe Commerce and the original open source Magento platform. So we've got a whole business around the platform and you described it as Marmite. I think that's fair to say. It's certainly carved the path over that decade that others have tried to emulate and attack. Now the market is in a very different shape with lots of competing platforms too many to choose from, quite honestly but certainly Magento was one of the originals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would definitely agree with that statement. I think there's too much choice in the market and I do wonder how that's going to develop over the next two or three years, with some sort of consolidation and maybe even some that don't quite make the cut. We know there's a few that are struggling right now, particularly in the UK market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of the challenges for us as an industry and an agency trying to navigate that, both for ourselves where do we put our training? Where do we put our tooling? And also for merchants retailers where do they put their investment? What platform's going to be there in two or three years' time? What one's going to put the right investment in um make the right bets?
Speaker 1:um and not least, you know, coupled with all the other disruptions going on in the tech industry, uh, trying to navigate that over the next few years is, is, uh, is the real challenge it certainly is, and I think you touched upon a good point there around like innovation and what have you, um, and it's this conversation has probably come in, uh, quite a good time, given the software as a service release from adobe, uh, which is quite the the next evolution in this world of magento, so it's probably a good starting point. I guess we're talking about the original magento open source platform, um, the variety of ownerships that it's had. You touched upon ebay originally, um, how that's progressed to Magento 2, and then obviously, adobe Acquisition. So how have we got here? Let's start there.
Speaker 2:It's been well. It's not been a smooth trajectory. It's been a bumpy, bumpy ride. You know we've as a sector ecosystem long before Adobe took the reins. We've had to deal with many bumps in the road and I think it's a testament actually to what's.
Speaker 2:What's made Magento so successful over those years is is the, the open source and community aspect. So, irrespective of notwithstanding what, what's happened from a corporate point of view um, all that, all that noise and disruption over those years and change of ownership and different roadmaps and, you know, big feature announcements that have gone nowhere under the surface, there's been this, uh, this consistent, robust ecosystem of developers and agencies that have, I wouldn't say propped up, but endured the platform over that decade and continue to invest, and it's a bigger workforce than any one single company could have, because there is genuine admiration and love for the platform, where people are genuinely trying to solve problems and innovate. It's a living, breathing ecosystem and I think, irrespective of what's happening outside of that, that's why the platform has endured and I think it's still why, whilst whilst there's been a decline in its usage because of other platforms coming, it's still pretty prevalent. It still has a reasonable market share across the US, the UK.
Speaker 2:What you touched on about Adobe's announcement recently, last month, when they made the big announcement at Adobe Summit for their Adobe Commerce Cloud solution, which is effectively their response to going to your SaaS, created a bit of buzz, a bit of hype. I think ChatGPT went into overdrive, with agencies and tech providers casting their their opinions on linkedin about what this, what this means. Um, people should should try and remove that m dash out of their their posts, because it's a real tell when they haven't really given a lot of thought, just cut and paste and there you go double dash, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yes, double dash dash.
Speaker 2:If you're going to use it, fine, but at least read it and try to format it rather than just cut and paste. It just easily turns me off. So there's a lot of buzz from one extreme going this is game-changing, this is the future. Other voices saying what are they doing? This is the death of the open-source magenta. They doing um, this is the death of the open source magenta. I mean, we take a pretty nuanced uh view of this in that it's not surprising that adobe want to do this.
Speaker 2:This is what they do in terms of backifying products. They've got great heritage of doing that. And then um transformed the photoshop greatest sweet world world and taken that from a you know CD-ROM through to a SaaS business. And I think, like most big tech companies, they respond to market trends and things like Gartner and Forrester, and SaaS is the. That is the route. They can see the trajectory of some of the other bigger platforms, notably Shopify and go. We need a piece of that, piece of that pie. Saas is the route. They can see the trajectory of some of the other bigger platforms, notably Shopify and go. We need a piece of that pie.
Speaker 2:They've also done it in a way that is addressing some of the endemic challenges that Magento has faced over the years, which the new platforms do target and sell against, and those, most notably, time to market. How quickly can you spin up a site, uh, with minimal effort? Um, the ongoing cost, total cost of ownership, which is that you know wonderful phrase that everyone uh tries to own, um, and, coupled with trying to align it much more with this wider suite of DX tools, whether that be CDPs, their creative suite, their DAM, a lot of the AI content generation tools that they're bringing in and try to sort of own that unified commerce faith a little bit more. So there's valid reasons from a strategic point, what they're doing. My worry is that they do that at the expense of their existing installer base, both from an open source side of things and from their enterprise, their Adobe Commerce plan.
Speaker 2:So the way I look at it is, and I hope that they will look at it, is that it's one menu option on a suite of this ecosystem, this platform. So no other business can offer this suite of choice. So, all running off broadly the same code base, same feature set, you have the choice of complete, self-hosted, open source. If you want complete control and data ownership. You have the option to bypass it yourself or pass it yourself, host it yourself on their enterprise don't be commerce, either through their hosting solution or your own host. You still have the benefit of being able to fully customize, fully own the code base and adapt it or, if you want to completely outsource that responsibility, the infrastructure, that you can go down this full SaaS route and start to delve into, I guess, more of the microservices architecture. So what I look at it is that there's one full foundational platform, but you've got a number of choices depending on your particular business requirements, compliance, complexity, et cetera, and I hope that's how they will position that moving
Speaker 1:forward complexity, etc. But I hope that's how they will position that okay, moving forward. So I mean one one could argue then that actually, that by making this call they're future-proof in their business, given their potential customers a variety of routes to market. Uh, that's going to best suit their business compared to maybe other platforms that are aligned to microservices only, for example, and going down that pure composable or kind of Mac route.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we're going to get out of Mac, are we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure we will do yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's definitely a response to what's happening in the market. You can understand it, and one of the main points of Magento and one of the main points of Magento, the Adobe Commerce platform is that the need to update and maintain the platform yourself. So by having a SaaS option, you're basically saying don't worry, mr Business, we look after that. You can carry on.
Speaker 2:Now it's very early days and architecturally they've completely changed how we are going to extend and customize that platform. Long gone are the days in that new world where you simply take an extension, a module off the marketplace and utilize that, or you build out or extend the code yourself. Any integrations, extensions, customizations will now need to be done in this middleware tier called App Builder, utilizing sort of a low-code low-code approach. So technically very aligned with where the market's shifting, but it is a big shift and that re-engineering is not going to happen overnight. They're putting a lot of effort and a lot of focus and money behind that to to make the shift and there's a lot of uh benefits of doing that right, but it's not going to happen overnight, so it's going to be, you know, a transition over the next year or two. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So a question for you, and one just to kind of get your opinion on here. You touched upon the the loyal um, I don't say fan base of magento, right, I mean they're. The magento community has been long-standing. The open source community, which I should probably refer to, has been has been longstanding. What impact do you think going down the software as a service route might have on it? Because some would argue that the open source community is what has really kept Magento going over the last sort of five years, over this transition, as we've seen more companies look to platforms like Shopify as an example, more companies look to platforms like Shopify as an example.
Speaker 2:So Magento, really, you know, whether it be under the product ownership or even early days, adobe, lacked any real I'm getting myself in trouble lacked any real product development or innovation. I think I can say there were things that were going on on but in no way aligned with some of the investment that was happening on the other platforms. It was in a period of stasis really. Any innovation that came about was seeded by community initiatives or efforts, and I think the most notable one is obviously what Will Alma at Hoover has done with the front end Yep For years. You know the front end architecture and technology at Magento was problematic. You know it wasn't future-proof, it wasn't fast, it wasn't scalable, and you know people wasn't fast, it wasn't scalable and people got fed up with it and they wanted to use tools that they could enjoy a little bit more and move a little bit faster.
Speaker 2:And what Vinam and Hoover did was actually what perhaps Magento or Adobe should have done themselves have recognised that and re-architected that. Their strategy from about eight years ago was to go down the PWA route as a front-end strategy Yet another fad that fizzled. So that, in my view, was an ill-conceived approach and actually what what should have happened was pretty much what the huber guys have done re-architect the um, the native front end, and by doing that they really um injected some enthusiasm back into the back into the ecosystem, and you can see that with the uptick in terms of install base. Up until that point, it was on a downward trajectory and Hoover has turned that corner and demonstrated that with the right focus and the right technical strategy, you can solve these endemic problems and and still benefit from what really magento still uh offers, which is that uh level of customization, extensibility and scale that you still struggle to get with with any other platform yeah, and remind me.
Speaker 1:I know when we spoke previously, you gave me an interesting figure on the market share that it still holds. Was it about 8%? 10%?
Speaker 2:And again, it depends how you break this down in terms of proper retailers. So if you look at actually the long tail, how many installs are there? Woocommerce is still way out there, but actually how many of those are real relevant businesses turning over a reasonable amount? I think if you look at the top segment of reasonably about 150,000 known installs across UK and US probably Europe as well you're still looking at 12% between 8% and 12% market share in that top tier of 100,000 retailers, whilst the days have gone where it's absolute mass market, the WooCommerce days, even the long tail of Shopify a million sites they proclaim to have. When you look at the bell curve, when you're looking at quality websites, they still hold quite a market share. It just turned from mass market to more quality than quantity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's interesting because if you believe the hype you see on LinkedIn, right, you would think Magento is probably somewhere down at like 1% market share now. Um, because all all I seem to see is how they're losing customers to Shopify, to commerce tools, etc. But actually eight to twelve percent is still a substantial number in in what are three very large, uh sort of areas. Um, and, as you said, it's not just about mass market now, it's about actually quantity, it's about quality, sorry, so yeah, We've had to endure that onslaught of negativity for years, rightly so in some aspects.
Speaker 2:You know, bad workers always blame their tools. You can have poorly experiences in any platform, but I think the way I look at it is if they really believed, if they really believed Magento was insignificant, they wouldn't spend so much time trying to bash it. They would just ignore it. So I think that that to me, speaks volumes. And all these other platforms had to do something to speaks volumes. And all these other platforms had to do something to to break through um and become meaningful in market share. You know, that's really, I think, my.
Speaker 2:My view is where the you know the principles of composable mac, um and sas came from.
Speaker 2:Because it was a differentiator to the old school and it pointed out you shiny new thing over here that looked different and played to when you talked about the Marmite, played to the negatives of the platform because it was open source, it was free and everyone relatively low barrier to entry if you're a developer.
Speaker 2:People did it really badly and therefore it got a bit of reputation for security aspects because people weren't keeping up to date. Because it got a bit of reputation for security aspects because people weren't keeping up to date because there was a cost of doing it or it was slow and sluggish because people did poor jobs in implementing the technology and went off the reservation in terms of best practice. So understandably it was getting bashed for those points. So understandably it was getting bashed for those points. But in the right hands and doing the right thing, it still provides, I think, a level of flexibility and customization that allows businesses to set their own trajectory and strategy without being dictated to by by technology, which I know you've covered in some of the other you know tech before business or business before tech so it's.
Speaker 1:It almost sounds like the technology equivalent of a recruiter where you there's always someone out there that will do it for cheap. That might not do a good job, but then it tarnishes the whole industry.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah, and the platform didn't help. When they launched Magento 2, we all took a massive beating War scars, loss of investment. It's amazing that we're still here battling through and that again goes back to the testament of the power of the platform. So we had to endure that and it was the community that solved a lot of those endemic problems launched too soon, too buggy, too many performance issues, too over-engineered in certain places. But you get through that and ironically now I think the platform is so mature, so bedded in. A lot of those issues were solved many, many years ago and actually businesses that are invested in it can do incredible things.
Speaker 2:We've worked with a retailer for about seven, eight years now. They're in healthcare, adult incontinence products, brilliant business shifted probably five years ago to subscription first approach and their business has just gone from strength to strength, taken off, doubled, trebled in terms of size, because they've really focused on building features, functionality and technology that solve what they understand as their customers' problems, rather than being dictated to buy an off-the-shelf app or subscription business. And what they've done around lifetime churn rate, lifetime value really push the boundaries in subscription technology. They wouldn't be able to do that. I generally believe they won't be able to do it to the extent they can and have the control and flexibility they have on any other platform.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. I guess it kind of leads nicely on to the next question around the platforms that are solving meaningful problems today, because we've already touched upon right at the start how there is just too much choice in the market right now. Now there will be repercussions of that later down the line. Just spoken about how one of your customers has had a very successful few years trading as they were able to really solve their customers problems via the technology available to them through the Adobe commerce offering. So yeah, there's lots out there. We're not going to break them all down, but what platforms do you see as actually solving meaningful problems?
Speaker 2:today, so I've got to say some nice things about some of the other competitive platforms now.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately so.
Speaker 2:Only a few, though it feels quite tribal. The e-com world at the moment, the e-comm world at the moment, whichever pot you're in, you have to defend it and your platform of choice is the answer to everyone's prayers. I find it well. It's very polarizing. It's quite like the political scene at the moment. It's you have to defend it and come what may, and rather than being open and honest in terms of where their platform is fallible, so often it's rare to get a really independent perspective or viewpoint. Everyone has their favorites and I think also when retailers make that choice, there's a little bit of saving face. They don't want to admit there are problems or they've made a mistake in terms of platform selection and there's a certainly indisputable the success that Shopify's had. Yeah, so the platform landscape is really busy at the moment. Shopify is absolutely out there. You know they're doing a tremendous job. Their marketing is phenomenal. They're beating up every platform. They, you know they profess to be all things for people from, you know, mum and pop shop, starting off entrepreneur to powering the biggest uh enterprises businesses on the planet, and I I struggle to understand how, uh, that can be a reality servicing such such a broad uh broad category. But undeniable their growth. You know. Extremely low barrier to entry. Anyone can launch a store in hours.
Speaker 2:I think there is a um, uh. I don't think people talk openly and honest about the reality of it. I, you know, sometimes I liken it to the the easy gel, the um Ryanair situation. No, easy, low cost get in um, but then suddenly everything creeps up. You know they're great or offering, you know 60% of what you need for an e-commerce website. You just have to load in 20, 30 apps to uh, to pimp up your platform, to make it relevant. And that, to me, creates other challenges around management, upkeep, you know, and app creep equals cost creep and I think it's very difficult to get a real understanding of that, that total cost of ownership. When you start out, you know both with the payments, the rev share, the additions.
Speaker 2:So it's it's painted as a very easy, low cost, solve all your problems and it's done an amazing job. And there is there is a herd mentality about that. Our competitors are on it, we just hear about it all the time. Why are we not on it? Um, and you know it's, it's difficult to, it's difficult to sell against that when there is such a strong tribe, uh, a mantra out there, um, but you know, the reality is very different. You know some some horrendous stories out there. Like any platform, um, it doesn't solve all the problems and um, the thing I've got a challenge with with that is you're ending up looking and behaving like everyone else. So in the world where retailers are actually fighting for fighting through the noise and need to create a point of differentiation, why use this? So that having the same tech, having the same platform as everyone else just makes that job of differentiating your brand even more difficult?
Speaker 1:I think that's a really interesting point you make there around the brand differentiation, because one thing that we're hearing about more and more is that the if you're a clothing retailer, you're a clothing retailer, so what? What does make your brand different? And being being able to express that online is something that's really important. Now there will be many out there that they don't have a big different differentiator and actually it's about the cost of the product or whatever it might be um and for. For those businesses, you might make the argument that something like a Shopify platform is right for them. It gets them to market quickly and it's relatively low hassle and what have you. But for those that do have a genuine differentiation, you would look at a different tech stack that allows more flexibility, that allows them to communicate that with their audience as well as possible. So, yeah, I agree with that point.
Speaker 2:Amazing, amazing for startups, dtc brands, shifting boxes, undeniable for businesses that don't have big tech resources on. You know, digitally savvy, mature, they can offload that perfect. Why wouldn't you do that If you're building real IP and value into your business and try to differentiate and customize and use technology to solve your business problems? I don't think it offers the agility and flexibility that other open source platforms do. I mean again, if you're building a house, you wouldn't build a house on rented land, would you? Because you're screwed.
Speaker 2:You have your house and then the landlord on that land can change the prices, can change the terms, dig under it, change the fencing. It would just put too much risk on the platform, risk on the business, to be so vendor locked in with one platform. Now the argument is you could do that same with the code base, but at least you have ownership of that, you're not renting it and you have control. You can move it, you can adapt it, you can control, control the data. For instance, you own the data, you own the information, you own the roadmap, whereas um being dictated to by some big tech firm I think just puts unnecessary risk on a retailer okay, two analogies as part of this answer.
Speaker 1:You've got the airline one at the start, uh which I felt, which I felt was really good. Actually, just by the way, for me, those those really basic ones that just put things in a different perspective, and, like we all, we've all been stung by ryanair or easyjet, right where you get on the plane and they say, sorry, your bag's too big, oh, here's another 70 quid just to get your bag on the plane, and it's okay.
Speaker 2:It's those sorts of things that for me, then, they're like real golden nuggets yeah, that's when, um, that's when you're going to do your proper homework and research? Um, uh, too often at the moment, it's uh, you know it's presented as shock fires your answer, what's your problem? So, rather than go, what's your problem now? Uh, now let's look at the the text app. Um, it's not the answer to everything. Okay, and you, what's your problem? Now, let's look at the text app it's not the answer to everything. Okay, and you know. It's the same with other platforms as well. You know, they're just fighting for relevance. You can understand it. Every week, there seems to be another platform. That's the latest and greatest and, broadly, that's, I guess, where Matt came from. That philosophy to try and unseat some of the main players, this idea that monolithic equals bad. Therefore, you need to be all over here and I think, with all these businesses need to be careful. They're not just chasing buzzwords, they're looking at actually, um, what is a good long-term investment?
Speaker 1:isn't that what businesses do, though? Right, we've seen it before, we saw it with headless, we even sort of pwa like you mentioned, like I feel like, if you put aside, well, I feel like we all know, all know, that companies shouldn't chase buzzwords, yet they all do it.
Speaker 2:They all do it. Yeah, I mean we lost. I mean the Mac thing, you know. I mean we lost out, we didn't subscribe.
Speaker 2:I felt it was very much an ideology, a philosophy that was great in principle, sold flexibility, but actually what it delivered was just complexity. So the reality on the world was very different to how it was presented and that has just led to an inordinate amount of technical debt, lost investment, lost money. Amount of technical debt, lost investment, lost money. It was, I think, a little bit of short-term thinking. I think when it was presented to me that you know you could have this amazing ecosystem of lots of different services, tech platforms, all interconnecting, all operating seamlessly in this amazing utopia, and then you just get bored with your CMS and all you have to do is unplug it and plug a new one in. What a load of nonsense. We know that that just doesn't happen in real life. There's a serious amount of work and investment in there. You've then got a myriad of API endpoints that require upkeep, and everyone offers another point of failure.
Speaker 2:You know it didn't feel, didn't feel sensible. It felt like everyone was piling into it because it was a fad, a new height. It gave too much, uh, too much control to cios, ctas, making those decisions around the business decision and sometimes we saw this on a couple of occasions sometimes purely to further self-interest careers and resumes, rather than actually what was right for the business. People move on. Businesses are therefore left in this situation where they've got huge amounts of technical debt. We saw it through PWA, we saw it through Headless, we saw it through, and now we saw it through the Mac Alliance. Saw it through headless, we saw it through, and now we saw it through the, the mac alliance and some of these new tech platforms diving into this short-term thinking that technology is the answer is actually just go back to what problems you're solving and be mindful of that.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, do you, do you not think that you touched upon a comment, exactly what you said about, about cto putting too much power in the hands of a cto, and I know you. You supplement that by saying that actually, it maybe just put some more power behind their resume. But as someone that's technically minded yourself, you've spotted the obvious flaws in this process, right. Ie, there's lots of points of failure. Now is is it actually is it possible to have something that's actually as um as easy to do as they said it was? But why is the cto in this organization not flagging that themselves? That surely that should be the first thing they think of. Is as okay. Is this actually possible, yes or no? Like how many? Now? How many points of failure do we now have all these kind of uh issues that you've just touched upon? That's the cto's job to be flagging that at the start and not to just say, cool, this is going to be easy, let's do it. Or am I being a bit?
Speaker 2:naive there? No, you're not. I'm not going to generalise because there's many different rationales and again, the philosophy very easy to sell, makes a lot of sense. So it's easy to put that, that good business case together. Um, I think, um, you also don't want to be the the one person um the challenger I guess go against it yeah yeah, emperor's clothing, um, isn't it?
Speaker 2:uh, and if the world's going, this is, this is the latest, greatest new, and you're like, well, not, you're gonna have to defend that position just as much as the other position to your board or the shareholders. So there was definitely that, um, and you've seen it in the recruitment business. I'm sure you know the surge in terms of developers into one platform, one technology, and then just drops off a cliff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure when have they gone. And then that does a disservice to us as a sector and industry in e-commerce because people lose faith and trust. Yeah, and we've been victim. Some of the worst decisions we've made in terms of investment and tech over the years have been to upset my development team to dev led new technology, new programming language, new approach yeah, that sounds great. Invested into it before it's bedded in, tried and tested and ultimately you end up over-engineering rather than actually looking at actually can we solve that problem easily without too much heartacheache? So it goes back to uh, whether you call it digital transformation or innovation, actually going back to solving the problems solving the problem.
Speaker 1:So repeat, repeat theme in all of my conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know it's a bit of it is a bit of a cliche, um, but yeah, um, there's this notion that there's some silver bullet doesn't, doesn't, doesn't work. Ultimately, it shouldn't matter what the tech behind it. If you've got the right people, the right focus, the right skills and right attitude, um, you can solve the problems and you know what it just really reminded me of.
Speaker 1:Right then, when you mentioned the silver bullet phrase, I think it's like everything in life. As humans, we're looking for that silver bullet just to solve everything. If you, if you remove the technology conversation and look at fitness or losing weight, right, everyone's chasing the how can I lose weight the quickest. Reality is actually, if you just have a controlled diet and you exercise, you're going to lose weight as long as you're in a calorie deficit. But people don't want that because it's boring. What they want is to take a pill or to inject something and suddenly they're a stone lighter. Do you know what I mean? And it's the same with fitness you don't want to enjoy the journey of getting fitter, you just want to be able to hit your end goal within a couple of days.
Speaker 1:And I literally just thought of that then. But it makes sense. We were always chasing like what? How it can happen immediately? And actually what we need to realize is there very rarely is a quick fix. You might get some good results, but actually it's not going to be long term, um, and anything that offers a silver bullet is probably going to be, uh, in too good to be true yeah, I think it's a really good analogy.
Speaker 2:you know you don't get you don't results overnight, do you? And when you're training or looking for too good to be true? Yeah, I think it's a really good analogy. You don't get results overnight, do you? When you're training or looking for fitness, and to get the end result you need to have an inordinate amount of discipline and focus and resilience to keep plodding on knowing where you're heading rather than the next protein shake.
Speaker 1:I see it. Someone else who's also into their fitness. I hope that went down well. It did.
Speaker 2:I've lost focus in the last couple of months, but I'm trying to get back on it. It's a really good analogy. It does come down when we take on some of these platforms um rescue jobs, if you like. Um, people are fed up and they're looking are is there, is there gross? Is only over greener, over over the bridge? And actually no, it's. It's because of the lack of focus, um lack of understanding, lack of commitment to solving the real problems and just accepting the status quo. You know we're coming in, there's a backlog of jira tickets. Why do you accept that? Why do you just roll that over and over each month?
Speaker 2:Um, we changed our, we changed our whole support business into an ecomops approach, because our ethos in Gene is around innovation and solving problems and looking at something getting really frustrating and why it doesn't work or why is it not better. And we apply that not just to client websites but actually to the agencies as well. And the support model that agencies used for the years I felt was broken. You're just selling hours. So there was no incentive to actually fix the root cause. If you had a website, you sent a. You know you found a couple of bugs. You sent them over. Sticky plaster it. Next month they come back, sticky plaster it. There's no incentive for that to be addressed in terms of root cause because the agency will find we'll just get another couple of hours burned down next month. So we've changed that Take hours out of the equation and now it's on us as an agency to make your site efficient and effective so those things don't come back. So we'll put up front effort this month to make sure that the root cause is solved, so it's not going to run out of space or there's not some log jam in the database, so that next month those problems don't come back and we don't have to spend time fixing it. So just that simple mindset shift builds a better outcome for the platform and the relationship long-term.
Speaker 2:So too often do we as an industry just sort of set back and become complacent and just go. Well, that's how it is go and go and go. And that philosophy we apply to the late. You'll notice I'm going to do a really cheeky segue into Bluefinch now, james, if that's all right. That philosophy we applied to our new business venture which is Bluefinch Commerce, which is set up with a mission of trying to solve helpful problems in the ecosystem of Magento and JBCommerce, really to counter some of the challenges that other platforms are, rightly so, making against Magento and sort of do what Hoover have done for the front end but doing it for more of the infrastructure and, I guess, the back end or the foundations of the platform.
Speaker 2:So, when we looked at it, why are we struggling to sell against Shopify? And there are broadly three main reasons. One is the time to market the ability to spin up the site without too much effort. The second one is that ongoing cost of maintenance, the total cost of ownership argument through upgrades, patching, feature releases etc. And the third one is broadly the checkout which Shopify is known for really high, converting, fast checkout. Magento's inherent Luma checkout has some challenges, to put it mildly, around performance and extensibility. So these are problems we've solved for our clients.
Speaker 2:As an agency we're like well, what we can do is package this up, package our learning up and then actually send that out and hopefully spark some enthusiasm, much-needed energy, much as the Hoover guys have done, into the world. So the first one was a patch management tool called Bluefinch Patch, which basically takes the upgrades and the security patches that come out that are released less frequently than they were, fortunately, but they're still there and that puts a strain, a resource, an effort onto business. You know you could spend, you know six to eight hours running through the latest patch update to do it. So you know $1,000 of dev time in order to do that. And that's if you've got a clean website, no problems, no compatibility issues. We've automated that and reduced that down to. You've got a clean website, no problems, no compatibility issues. We've automated that and reduced that down to a couple of minutes for no developer involvement. So it'll save a huge amount of time for merchants and agencies and effectively automates a lot of the compatibility checks, tests and QA.
Speaker 2:When Adobe released their updates on the 8th of April a couple of weeks ago Big update on various different versions we logged on in the morning. We had 30 websites ready to go, all their checks and green ticks and if you think, you know eight hours a site, 30 sites just for us. The effort of maintaining that two or three or four times a year is profound. So we've solved what adobe are trying to do with their sat offering to take that problem out of the equation. We've we've managed to come up with a solution that will tackle that for the existing 150, 200,000 user base out in the market as well.
Speaker 2:The title to market, the go to market again trying to create that SaaS element, but still have the benefit of an open source platform.
Speaker 2:So now, with our build tool, anybody non-developers can go through with a few clicks and set up, configure, bundle in other tech providers whether it be shipping, payments, marketing, automation, taxes and then deploy to a host of their choice a site. So taking out three or four weeks worth of developer effort into a couple of clicks, couple of minutes, and gets them on the right foundation to build the site. And the third one is the checkout. It's an open source checkout platform that allows merchants a table stakes platform where they can get up and running with all the digital mobile payment options, a fast, flexible framework that agencies and developers can extend on. But it gives again a really fast starting point that can mirror some of the other platforms out there. So it's a kind of a sweet empowering developer-centric solutions that solve those endemic problems. And that comes back to the philosophy of what innovation is Not trying to go. Look, let's build the next AI swanky thing over here. Actually, let's solve problems that people are feeling today with neat, elegant, easy to access solutions.
Speaker 1:That's bluefinch nice, and obviously I mean the first two kind of speak for themselves, but certainly the patches one, being a non-tech myself, goes a little bit above my head. But just the checkout one you mentioned, I mean, I've been a long-term admirer of the shopify checkout. I think it's amazing. More recently, the stripe checkout as well has stood out, as that seems to be integrated into more companies. And again, it's very similar you put your phone number in and it's got all your details auto saved. You have your. You're almost always on the website on your phone anyway. So it's the convenience is is amazing. Um, so I think, any for me, that that kind of experience needs to be the norm for retailers if they want to be able to compete. I couldn't tell you the amount of websites that I've left because the checkout has been a bit clunky and I know I'm not alone. I think that the uh, the percentage of people that leave checkouts for similar reasons is crazy high and that's just so much revenue that's dropped by retailers, right.
Speaker 2:We did a research piece about 18 months ago, full disclosure. Paypal's a big customer of ours. We've worked with them for about eight or nine years. We build a lot of their PayPal and Braintree tech for the Adobe and Braintree ecosystem and we did a research piece to look at uh checkout abandonment. And you're right, even despite all the advances in technology, user guides, experience, maturity of the ecosystem, industry stats still put checkout banner around about 70, which is which is crazy, um, and when you look at we look to particular areas like mobile um mobile wallets up by google, pay, paypal, because they they seemingly should take a lot of the uh the friction out of this out of the system.
Speaker 2:So, as a rule, if you didn't have one of those about 60 touches on your phone to rule, if you didn't have one of those about 60 touches on your phone to check out, you don't have autofill, you may put your name in 16 characters for your credit card. It all adds up step, step, step so you can you can understand why people bail and we were really taken back with the findings. So we profiled the top I think top 500 retailers in the uk um about 50, 53, I think it was only 53 had a mobile wallet, google pay, apple pay or a one-click solution, yeah, at what we deem a strategic position. So that's the top of the checkout, either in the basket cart or where shopify has it, which is before you have to fill in any details in um before before the the form fills, and we thought that was incredible, incredibly low. We were seeing as broadly accepted uh consensus that having those um, having those wallets, would increase your uh rate 15, 20 percent or what have you. So why weren't businesses doing it?
Speaker 2:and when we profiled a lot of those businesses.
Speaker 2:It came down a lot of the time to the cost, the effort, the risk of actually making that change into their checkout, whether that because their PSP didn't support it or because checkout's quite risky, people didn't want to do it, which we thought was crazy and which is why obviously Shopify has such a high conversion rate, because, out of the box, because of their links with Stripe or Shopify, it's already bundled into the solution that people use it.
Speaker 2:So we took that view. You can obviously get all of that with the Braintree work that we've done, but without the PSPs it wasn't as accessible. So we thought, okay, well, let's give out a checkout framework that gives people those table stakes, irrespective of what PSP they're using, providing the PSP has the compatibility. So you install this checkout and hopefully mirror what you've got on Shopify. You get those digital wallets in this treating position. You get a fast, highly optimized UI, but you also have the benefit that you don't get on Shopify. Unless you pay two grand a month to be able to customize that checkout, you can still have it as an open source and extend and do what you want and differentiate that round so you don't look the same as everyone else.
Speaker 2:The other benefit, as you rightly pointed out, the Shop app or the Stripe link element. With PayPal's new Fastlane technology, it's broadly the same principle. Coming to the UK, I think at the end of H2 this year, 2025, as soon as you put your email in, it will recognise that you're a paypal customer and ask you if you want to pre-populate your, your checkout. The same sort of principle. So suddenly they're going to allow mass autofill on on guest check checkouts and, as you can imagine, the paypal access to data globally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it will huge.
Speaker 2:It will have your details. So a lot of the PSPs are obviously trying to trace this. Yeah, chase this goal as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah and right. So I mean, for me it's such a I don't want to say simple area to make it sound like it's straightforward, but it's an area where I think we, as you said, the 53% of the top 500 reaches in the uk only have a digital wallet. I mean, there's a really easy area for a lot of those other retailers to be investing in, where there is a clear roi. Let's be honest there is very clear evidence that investing in a more seamless checkout process it's going to increase their roi.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it comes back to your point in why we're chasing these fads when actually a lot of the time it's the basics that still are not looked after. Oh, headless Peter Rowe, that's sort of sad. No, just speedy checkout, bigger impact than chasing some latest fad.
Speaker 1:Exactly that, exactly that. Okay. So lastly then, um, what, in your opinion, what does the future of commerce look like? Um, broad question, um, and we could probably speak about this for a long time, but let's try and keep it fairly succinct how do you see things developing over the, let's say, the next five years?
Speaker 2:uh, I think that, uh, I think no one can predict what's going to happen. Um, depending on what mood I'm in today. I think, uh, our industry school. Um, I was just going to take over everything, and then the next day, um, I'll take my family to Edinburgh and I have to. I have to use 36 tickets and the wi-fi doesn't work on the train. I think, oh, the world's got some way to catch up with technology so it depends if you read.
Speaker 2:If you, it's a really difficult one to navigate, I think what's the phrase you? You overestimate the time it takes for change or underestimate whatever. I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on and it's quick moving, but the businesses take a while to catch up to that. Um, I think the eco system on platforms is a lot, obviously a lot more mature people are on the second or third generation iteration. There's fewer re-platformings going on and people are concentrating a bit more on that differentiation likely. So how do they cut through? I think the customer acquisition world is going to get turned up on its head fighting for traffic the old model of Google Ads versus people using AI now to search and its head fighting for traffic. You know, the old model of you know google ads versus, you know people using ai now to to search and discover products is really interesting which is obviously they've got the big, the big talk on linkedin at the minute around the chat gpt shopify connection.
Speaker 1:I mean that's been all in my news feed the last 24 hours. I need to do some more research into it, but I mean that's going to flip on its head, like you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think. I think it's really difficult to predict. I think the only advice we have internally is to remain agile and making sure we're still not chasing the fads, because fads today is technical debt tomorrow, because that's today's technical debt tomorrow. Make sure we're just keeping on with what customers' needs and expectations are. Just on the future, I mean, you mentioned another one of our businesses, which is a carve-out called Shop3.
Speaker 2:This is our nod to where we think e-commerce is going in the future. This is our nod to where we think e-commerce is going in the future. It is the mission is allowing people to buy anything anywhere and it's flipping the idea that if you want to buy a product, you have to go to a retailer website to buy that. What we're saying is we should allow you to make that transaction, that order, wherever you discover the product, whether that be in a newspaper, online, a blog, a forum, a QR code, an ad, dare I say, an AI agent. And at the moment we're targeting. We're targeting the affiliate marketing world because they are struggling with a number of endemic problems around unfair attribution through cookie tracking, through woeful conversion rate, even outside the industry norm and just at a very high level. If you, if you, you're into fitness, aren't you? So you you know. Do you know calisthenics? Do you know any calisthenics?
Speaker 1:I do. I don't do it myself, but I know of it. There you go.
Speaker 2:So you're searching for the next calisthenic bar or something generally. You end up on um hobby, hobbyist or interest application. I don't think how the cynics monthly this profit or something like that. Or you know independent best. You read the review, do the things okay. Yeah, that's it. You click the link to buy rather than getting directed out to Amazon, for instance, 40% of times in, or any other retailer. What we're doing is we're allowing you to buy that where you are on the independent or on that magazine website, by surfacing up their checkout in front of you. With one-click payments. You're buying off the retailer or to go straight into the retailer, but then you can carry on your uh minimal friction. You can carry on with your journey without being distracted and bouncing off to uh, to other websites and you know getting distracted by voucher code websites or plugins or pop-ups or having to go through the full checkout journey.
Speaker 1:So it's really solving so many challenges around cookie tracking and attribution to make sure that the publication gets their fair commission as well and it's allowing the customer to buy anything from anywhere, right, which is also linking into what we just discussed with gpt and being able to buy it through the platform. You're doing, very you're doing the same thing just through shop, through right and uh, not just not basing it through chat gpt right now, but, as you said, maybe that comes through uh, through their or other ai agents in the future, right?
Speaker 1:so yeah, any surface, any signal can now be transactable yeah, which I guess, is, as a consumer, what we want. We want as little friction. To buy something as possible, so we can buy it quickly and obviously as a brand, that's what they want, as well as to buy something as possible so we can buy it quickly and obviously as a brand, that's what they want, as well as to sell it as as quickly as possible as well.
Speaker 2:So yeah, excited, the most most valuable commodities, giving people back their time. So, um, you know, that's the premise Cut out all, all friction. Well, let's see so, okay, so bold statement then in the next five years, as consumers, we will be able to buy anything from anywhere. Big, bold statement next five years it's going to transform the landscape of e-commerce okay, love it.
Speaker 1:What's your space? What's your space nice? Well, I think that's probably a good, good place to to wrap up the conversation well, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed that one thank you for joining me, really enjoyed it. Lots of cool insights. I learned a lot. Definitely, and for me more than anything else, it's really interesting just to really break down that Adobe Commerce landscape, which we have done. I know I've been slightly confused with the evolution of the platform for a long time. I didn't realize you could still have Magento 2 and Adobe commerce. So, yeah, I've learned this conversation. I'm sure others have as well. So I appreciate your time, matt, and I did.
Speaker 2:I did think of another analogy. I didn't get it in. It's like, you know, when we were growing up, skodas were really, really crap cars, weren't they? But now they're really good cars.
Speaker 1:Are they cool?
Speaker 2:though.
Speaker 1:They're not cool, right but?
Speaker 2:you know, your MPG is there, so are the Rolls-Royces. But you're right, it's not the new shiny, cool Shopify.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. Yeah, I think I prefer the airline comparison. I'll be honest. But there we go.
Speaker 2:Nice thanks again, we'll see how many people are pissed off.
Speaker 1:But yeah, thanks for that and I'll see you all next week. Thank you, yeah. Cheers, james, bye.
