Ecommerce Conversations

In an era when many ecommerce platforms are migrating to large enterprise clients, Volusion is doing the opposite. It's focused on smaller and mid size companies, even startups. To discuss it all, we're joined by Volusion's founder and longtime C.E.O., Kevin Sproles.

It’s been an eventful year for Miva, the pioneering ecommerce platform. Its longtime president became C.E.O. and the company raised $18 million of private equity, which is the first such investment in Miva’s 20-year history. Rick Wilson is the former president who is now C.E.O. And he joined us to discuss Miva, independent ecommerce, and the impact of Amazon.

Magento, the ecommerce platform, launched in 2007, grew dramatically, and was acquired by eBay. When eBay divested PayPal in 2015, it also sold Magento, to a private equity firm. Magento's C.E.O. is now Mark Lavelle, a seasoned technology executive who co-founded Bill Me Later, the payment service. He joins us to discuss Magento and the state of ecommerce generally.

Given the ease with which brands and manufacturers can sell their products directly to consumers, many observers believe the future of resellers is limited. Ori Greenburg, an ecommerce veteran and now the CEO of Algopix, a market analysis platform, does not necessarily agree. He joins us today to discuss it all.

In the United States, ecommerce is mature and sophisticated. That's not the case in Saudi Arabia, where it's new and challenging. Hamza el Bayed is co-founder of Ora La Moda, a Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ecommerce apparel company.

Product reviews can play an important role in ecommerce. Something like 9 out of 10 shoppers read product reviews, and many studies over many years have shown that reviews help shoppers to make online buying decisions. To talk about ecommerce reviews, we have with us Paul Kirwin, the CEO and founder of Channel Signal, a product review monitoring analytics firm. You might know a few other companies that Mr. Kirwin has founded like 3Point5 or Experticity.

The Amazon marketplace contains nearly 500 million products, from about 2 million sellers. That's a lot of competition. In fact, being competitive on Amazon is exactly what we're going to discuss in this interview. It's with Casey Gauss, co-founder and C.E.O. of Viral Launch, a software and services platform helping brands to source, launch, and succeed on the Amazon marketplace.

Fast loading web pages are critical for conversions and general worldwide usability. Optimized images can greatly increase page speed. No one is more qualified to address optimized images than Chris Zacharias. He is the founder and C.E.O. of imgix, a real-time image-optimization platform. As an early-day YouTube developer, he created YouTube's HTML5 video player and Feather, an ultra-light version of YouTube that loads quickly in parts of the world with slow Internet connections

By some estimates, more than half of the visitors to an online store will use that store's site search to find products, and hopefully make a purchase. This fact alone makes ecommerce site search important. Since, something less than an effective site search, frankly means that you're failing to meet your customer's expectations. Today we're going to speak to Dr. Amir Konigsberg, the cofounder and CEO of Twiggle, a search engine that helps ecommerce sites, or an ecommerce site search think the way that customers think.

If you want satisfied customers, your business needs to provide a level of perceived service that's greater than your customers' expectations. For ecommerce shipping is customer satisfaction's frontline, and online sellers should aim to meet shoppers' expectations for fast and free shipping.Today we're going to speak to Nathan Jones, the president and CEO of Ship Station, a web-based software solution designed to help ecommerce retailers process, fulfill, and ship their orders.