Jeremy Daalder on How to Make Your Online Business Stand Out with Craft Commerce

Listen in as we celebrate the milestone of our second show with a bang, joined by the esteemed Jason Greenwood, a top voice in e-commerce for 2024. Jason shares his impressive journey through over 330 podcast appearances and his insights on the B2B commerce landscape. He generously shares stories from his recent travels across the US, tying in the personal with the professional, and the serendipity of missing the Super Bowl frenzy. 

Our dialogue takes a deep look into the specifics of B2B e-commerce platforms, the critical tools and functionalities needed for success, and the unique challenges businesses face when selecting the right technology. Jason brings to light the emerging trend of blending content with commerce and how it's transforming the B2B buying experience. Plus, don't miss out on the expansion of perspectives in the e-commerce enablement technology sector, where I discuss consulting for non-merchant clients and share my excitement for what feels like the dawn of a new era in B2B commerce.

Jason Greenwood is a major figure in the e-commerce sector and the founder of Greenwood Consulting, has been lauded as one of the top 24 e-commerce voices for 2024 by Dark Matter Commerce. With a rich background spanning over 20 years as both a merchant and a consultant, Jason's deep expertise in B2B commerce, retail tech, and trends is widely recognized. This May, his insights will reach an even broader audience as he takes the stage to speak at the B2B Online Conference in Chicago, further cementing his status as an influential thought leader in the digital commerce space. Make sure to check out Jason's The Ecommerce Edge podcast for consistent insights throughout the year.
 

In this episode:

• Jason Greenwood's expertise in B2B e-commerce evolution
• Insights from U.S. business trips and retail trends
• Digital transformation in sales processes
• Adapting legacy sales to modern online buying
• Integrating e-commerce solutions with existing business systems
• Critical B2B e-commerce platform tools and functionalities
• Content and commerce integration
• Expanding e-commerce consulting to non-merchant sectors
• Engaging with the B2B commerce community and podcast
• Reflecting on digital advancements and future B2B strategies

The Commerce Minded podcast is powered by Foster Commerce. Hosted by Foster’s Owner and CEO Stephen Callender and Director of Marketing & Business Development Elle McSharry, the show features interviews with leaders in the trenches of digital commerce who are figuring things out, experiencing triumphs, overcoming challenges, and experiencing success.

Resources:

Jason's website: https://www.greenwoodconsulting.net/

Jason's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-greenwood-digital-expert/

Jason's podcast The Ecommerce Edge on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HbftDWo3TpYjjNYzX5imh

Speaker at the B2B Online conference in May of this year: https://b2bmarketing.wbresearch.com/speakers/jason-greenwood

Honored as an influential voice in ecommerce by Dark Matter Commerce in their Top 24 Ecommerce Voices 2024: https://www.darkmattercommerce.com/news-post/dark-matter-commerce-presents-the-top-24-ecommerce-voices-2024/

Stephen Callender on LinkedIn

Elle McSharry LinkedIn

Foster Commerce

Hello Commerce Minded friends! After a lengthy hiatus of nearly five years, we're back and better than ever. Join me, Stephen Callender and Elle McSharry from Foster Commerce as we welcome Paul Babb from Maxon to the show. Paul reveals how Maxon achieved a staggering 50% market share while maintaining that crucial human touch in client relationships.

In this episode:

• Paul’s experiences at Capital Records that led to the 3D industry
• The “Who’s That Paul” game, “Trees of Mystery”, and Starbucks around the world
• Maxon's early days, growth and market expansion
• Building community, relationships, and promoting success
• Bezos, customer satisfaction, and data
• Maxon and Nemetschek
• Strategies for marketing to creatives
• Website development challenges and future goals after Maxon
• Building successful client-company relationships

The Commerce Minded podcast is powered by Foster Commerce. Hosted by Foster’s Owner and CEO Stephen Callender and Director of Marketing & Business Development Elle McSharry, the show features interviews with leaders in the trenches of digital commerce who are figuring things out, experiencing triumphs, overcoming challenges, and experiencing success.

Resources:

Paul Babb LinkedIn

Maxon

Nemetschek

Stephen Callender on LinkedIn

Elle McSharry LinkedIn

Foster Commerce

In this final episode of his first season, instead of an interview, Stephen is reflecting on the revelations from his guests, in particular the episodes featuring Jeremy Daalder of Image Science and Lee Goldberg of Happy Cog. (If you haven’t tuned in to them already, they’re really worth a listen.)

He also talks about why he continues to be such a huge fan of Craft Commerce and his thoughts on the future of Craft Commerce.

On a side note—Stephen will be talking at the Dot All Conference, the official Craft CMS conference held in Montreal, September 18-20, 2019.

Key takeaways:

• The great things about Craft Commerce for developers
• How Craft Commerce are improving their offerings
• How CraftCMS compares to Shopify
• Why Craft should promote its agencies beyond the Craft partners’ page
• The importance of email marketing for ecommerce vendors

URLs/resources/social media links:

• devMode.fm with Andrew Welch
• Mailchimp
• Klayvio

Not everyone comes into website development through the same route. Today’s guest, Josh Angell, studied music production at university and in his final year lived with a bunch of nerds (his words) who were hacking away on HTML and coerced him into it. They taught him the fundamentals of HTML and he quickly realised with these new skills he could make websites for all of the bands he was in, including friends’ bands and other projects.

Having graduated from university with first class honours, he gave himself one week to make money out of music, but failed spectacularly. However this failure paved the way for his first proper job building websites, and from there he never looked back.

Key takeaways:

• How Josh went from being a music graduate to building websites
• What he learned working at Supercool
• How having a child affected Josh’s mental health and fast forwarded his career aspirations
• How his Marketplace for Craft rivals Etsy
• Why shipping isn’t a cut and paste feature
• Why you don’t want to leave your software in older versions

Resources:

• https://marketplace.angell.io/
• https://angell.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshangell/
• https://www.joshangell.co.uk/

Lee Goldberg is President at Happy Cog, an award-winning, full-service digital agency which he runs with his childhood friend, Matt Weinberg. Lee shares some golden nuggets about conversion rate optimization.

Lee and Matt were close friends since they were five. They went to elementary school together, grew up in the same town, and before they graduated high school, they had already started their business.

They tried to juggle the business with their post-graduation full-time jobs, but ultimately decided “to hell with it.” With no formal business plan, they went all out, and haven’t looked back since.

Their success has been purely organic: they realized that happy clients breed more happy clients, and they’ve been holding the same philosophy since.

Today, Happy Cog offers web development, design & branding, and digital marketing services. Tune in to hear Lee’s conversion rate optimization tips and where many businesses go wrong with their sales funnels.

Key takeaways:

• Every business and industry is different, but the fundamentals of business and marketing success are the same.
• At its core, conversion rate optimization is about removing doubt at every stage.
• It is possible to compete against the big players, but only with the right strategy.
• Content is still king and one of the best ways to reach users at the top of the funnel.
• Start by fixing the leak at the bottom of the funnel and work your way up.

Resources:

• https://www.happycog.com/

Ecommerce isn’t always glamorous. It’s hard work, and at times it can be daunting. The client relationship is something that today’s guest takes seriously, and delivering value is one of his main priorities.

Mark Dunbavan is a detail-oriented developer passionate about his builds and taking care of his clients. He believes in a flexible team structure as long as it’s effective, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he’s proud of the work he does.

Listen to hear about one of Mark’s clients, a furniture sourcer in the UK, and the kind of site he’s built for them using Craft Commerce. Mark also shares how having his first child has changed his approach to problem solving at work and overcoming the challenges of maintaining a unique and complex site.

Key takeaways:

• How having a child has affected Mark’s approach to work and problem-solving
• As long as a team works together effectively, the other details don’t matter
• Mark’s client Viaduct, a UK furniture sourcer, has an interesting business model and unique set of needs
• Shipping, tax, and variants were the most complex problems to solve for this site
• The importance of keeping sites updated, despite the difficulties

Resources:

• http://www.markdunbavan.co.uk/

On today’s episode, our guest is Roger Glenn of Mach 1 Media out of Austin, Texas. He’s working on a Craft Commerce build for a furniture store, and we lay the groundwork for the most flexible, efficient, and future-proof way to set up the site.

We start by looking at the big picture and walk through the process and steps all the way down to the nitty gritty details of how to plan and implement the site in a way that makes sense to the client as well as to shoppers.

If you’re a developer who’s developing Craft Commerce stores, you’ll find this episode useful as we explore how to handle some of the complexities of multiple variants, SKUs, and manufacturers.

Key takeaways:

• How to deal with multiple large catalogues from separate manufacturers in the most efficient way possible
• Planning: have a discussion with the client and create a spreadsheet
• Looking at the way competitors are structured and the way people shop
• How to treat SKUs, dimensions, variations, attributes, and how to use channels
• How to make input on the back end easiest and the most logical for the administrators

Resources:

• Mach1Media.com

Stephen chats with Seb Dehesdin who came up with a clever multiple currency setup solution in Craft Commerce for his client’s designer clothing ecommerce site.

While Craft Commerce is a powerful platform offering businesses the ability to write the story for their brand with content and present it in a unique way for their niche, when it comes to some of the commerce-specific features merchants are asking for, there is still some room to see improvements.

Tune in to learn about the challenges of multi currency as Seb walks us through the setup, technical aspects, and customer experience flow of his solution.

Key takeaways:

• Seb’s solution is straightforward for users
• The backend setup is simple with a few minor drawbacks and workarounds
• One plugin currently exists to provide a similar solution for multi currency
• Once this feature is baked into Craft Commerce, it’s going to put them ahead of the pack
• The success and future of Commerce will be determined by how merchants start talking about it

Resources:

• BleepsandBlops.com
• @sebdehesdin
• Commerce Currency Prices by Kurious Agency

Dave Ritter has always been interested in the intersection between art and tech, and with over 10 years of ecommerce experience and a background in marketing and design, he has valuable insight to offer on the topic of choosing the right content management system for the job.

Working closely with clients throughout the iterative process of developing a successful ecommerce site and strategy, Dave knows the importance of design and brand when it comes to selling online.

Tune in to learn how Craft Commerce works for clients with an established business logic, how the intuitive backend makes it a breeze for clients to work with, and listen as Dave shares some advice for developers who may be working with Commerce for the first time.

Key takeaways:

• Craft gives you the ability to relate content with commerce
• Craft Commerce is great for clients who want software and technology to follow their business logic
• Most clients aren’t designers, but design really matters
• Clients are quick to pick up and learn the backend with Craft’s intuitive UI
• Ecommerce essentials and best practices--Dave offers some advice

Resources:

• RitterKnight.com

Today we take a sneak peek behind Snipcart developer Matt Stein’s curtain. Matt is a developer with a design background, who has recently developed the Snipcart plugin for Craft CMS. Matt talks about his motivation to create Snipcart when there were already two great ecommerce plugin options on the market currently - Commerce Pro and Commerce Lite, and gives us insight into where Snipcart sits between the two, and who should be using it.

Listen as I chat to Matt not just about his professional life as a developer, but how he achieves his work/life balance. We talk about:

Key takeaways:

• Why he chose to settle in Seattle rather than Boston after university.
• How Snipcart differs to Commerce Pro and Commerce Lite.
• Why, even though he’d been developing Snipcart since 2014, he only made it public recently.
• How he determined the cost of the plugin ($179).
• Why he’s a perpetual learner who just loves learning new things (and why his home sewn, manly reading pillow is a solid invention).
• What makes Columbus, Ohio so great.

URLs/resources/social media links:

Twitter: @mattrambles
Snipcart plugin: https://workingconcept.com/plugins/snipcart
Snipcart: https://snipcart.com
The Beer Junction: https://twitter.com/thebeerjunction