Anchor Group Podcast: Episode 0
Listen on Spotify: Anchor Group Podcast, Episode 0: Optimizing B2B Ecommerce Strategies, Tools, and the Future of Headless Commerce
Podcast Transcript
Caleb (00:00)
Michael, with some of the recent BigCommerce deals, what are some of the ones that have been pretty interesting for you?
Michael Mueller (00:09)
Yeah, good question. The deals that have been interesting are the ones that have a lot of moving pieces, right? We work with, you know, some of the folks that we work with, it's not just, you know, a standup e-commerce site with just a checkout feature. There's a lot more that goes into that. It's pretty common in the world of e-commerce when we talk about things like reviews, rewards, and subscriptions, and those are things where you see the blend of e-commerce and marketing really come together when you start to get those sorts of things ingrained within your business. So it's not just simply a webpage with some products listed in a checkout. There's an incentive for customers to purchase products and to become reoccurring customers. And that's really been something that's been interesting over the past, the past couple of months here. We've been seeing much more of that, and it seems like merchant these days are, are really jumping on board with getting those things ingrained into their e-commerce store. So that's something that we've seen, and it's been. It's been fun to work on because there's software involved in that and that sort of thing.
Caleb (01:21)
What interests you about e-commerce in comparison to other types of industries? What specifically about e-commerce do you find fun?
Michael Mueller (01:31)
Yeah, I would, so e-commerce, so in my opinion, e-commerce is an amazing industry to be in, whether you're helping folks develop websites or help merchants develop websites, or if you're a merchant yourself, selling on e-commerce. Know when folks think about starting an e-commerce store or really pouring in time, energy, and resources into their e-commerce store,
A lot of times that's seen as kind of a negative in a merchant's mind or in some people's minds. But essentially what you're doing is you're broadening the, you're broadening the amount of people that you can reach with your products and with your services and just with your business as a whole. And to me, that's really exciting. So, no longer, if we take the example of a mom-and-pop shop, right? No longer are you just, you know, a corner store selling to people in your local neighborhood, your reach, not only the products you sell but also your, your factors as a company, right, can now reach people, you know, all across the country, all across the state, all across the country. And, you know, as some merchants take their stuff globally, you can also start to reach people internationally. And that's what's exciting about e-commerce is that, you know, no longer do you just need to, you know, be just in one zip code. Like you can really, your business can reach, can reach everywhere.
Caleb (02:47)
Yeah, yeah, you can focus on your audience and grow the overall audience globally. Yeah, I actually think of our internal marketing, whenever I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about how do I make it possible for people to even find us in the first place? Because that's the number one step is to be findable, be searchable, and be able to be discovered. And it's really hard because there's a lot of noise to be able to get through.
Personally, I really like more organic methods like search engine optimization and ranking high on Google. That's where I've been able to really thrive in our industry. But then there's a lot of our clients that I found that there's lots of different strategies to roll out from industry to industry. You're a business-to-consumer, a B2B, or a B2C business; you're going to focus more on
On SEO and ads, influencer marketing, and other types of referral relationships. Whereas in the business to business, that B2B space, I think that the strategies evolved maybe not focusing on SEO as much and as ad management, although people think that they should go there right away.
I think that it's a little bit better to focus on how to get more of your existing customers onto e-commerce, and being able to have an audience and be searchable is one step, one piece of the puzzle. But I think e-commerce is just massive, and the amount of strategies and to cater a strategy unique to a business. That's what I find particularly fun.
Michael Mueller (04:32)
It's amazing.
So Caleb, Caleb, let me ask you this. You've been in e-commerce for a while, right? Helping a variety of different types of merchants, either optimize your e-commerce website or get off the ground, um, started. So if you, if you had to give kind of, guess, one piece of advice or one, I guess, one, one idea, some food for thought for somebody who maybe is operating an e-commerce website and it's just doing okay. Right. It's doing okay in the year 2025, but there's a desire for the company to strengthen its e-commerce site. What would be kind of one key tip you would give that person as they try to bolster and strengthen their e-commerce website in 2025?
Caleb (05:06)
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think I would separate it into two different categories, B2C and B2B because there are very different plays in marketing strategies. The advice I would give someone that is mostly B2C versus mostly B2B, it's going to differ. So, which one should I start with?
Michael Mueller (05:37)
I'd start with, let's start with whatever you have the most expertise in. Is that B2B?
Caleb (05:44)
Both, but I would say I do a lot of B2B, and not a lot of people do so much B2B, so that's probably where I can add a lot of new insights, so maybe that's more valuable to the audience. Yeah, I'll start with B2B. I work in a couple of different e-commerce solutions that tackle the B2B. You know a lot more about BigCommerce than I do. And I think that's been your really clear territory that I've learned a lot from you as you share a lot of what it can do. But I work on NetSuite's e-commerce solutions to e-commerce. And that's kind of been where I've been a subject matter expert and been able to really bring a lot to the ecosystem and a lot of the strategies to apply there. I can leverage a lot of the ERP that NetSuite data to drive that user experience. And I think that's important to note that people kind of think too small when they think of e-commerce. The first thing that people need to think about is that any and all of your data that you want to be able to service to your customer can be serviced to the customer. And so start with a good way to think about what you should focus on, starting with complaints.
It's a similar strategy for myself when I'm thinking about my own personal growth goals. I start with what do I not like? What are my complaints? And that helps to surface and to show what you should be putting focus on. And for a company in the B2B space, there are sales reps, there's inside reps and outside sales reps. The outside reps are going to go and try and find new accounts and bring them in, and the inside sales reps are taking phone calls and emails, helping out with placing the orders in this B2B space. And it's actually on the inside sales that I like to focus on getting less off of their plate. You can start with customer support, or sometimes inside sales ends up being customer support, too, depending on the size of the business. But working with what are the things that people are always calling you to ask about?
Are they asking about their order status and where it's at? Are they asking about tracking information or how to place an order? Are they asking about needing to place an order? Anything in the ERP, if people are in the NetSuite ecosystem, they're really familiar with safe searches, which are like a way to query data out of NetSuite, and we can surface any safe search to the customer My Account. That means that if people are calling in to ask about something about their account for any reason, that data that the sales rep or customers support to answer that question, they're looking at data in NetSuite or in the ERP, and we can surface that into my account. And I think that's one place I would start. I've got a lot of other ideas, but do you have a question?
Michael Mueller (08:41)
Yeah. Now, yeah, something you said about the sales team, Inside sales, and the outside sales team from the different businesses you've worked with. What do you feel is the good blend that those inside sales and outside sales should be interacting with the e-commerce website? Like, do you recommend that when merchants go all in on e-commerce so that they're routing everything through their e-commerce sites? That would mean the inside sales and outside sales teams are also using the website, maybe from a mobile device when they're with customers or when they're taking a phone call. What do you see as a good blend for those different kinds of sales teams as they use an e-commerce website?
Caleb (09:34)
They should try and push all of it through e-commerce. There are plenty of opportunities to build relationships that are not placing an order. Let me take a step back and mention my overall philosophy here. One of the ways people come to me they say, I want to be able to have more leads to come so we can grow our business. We have big growth goals. However, they have six sales reps placing orders over the phone or email.
Let's do some quick napkin math for a second. So, six sales reps, let's assume your compensation, that sales rep's compensation is roughly $75,000 a year. Maybe there's a bonus or whatever on top of that, but let's just exclude that from the calculation for now. So we've got $75,000 a year times six, but what you also don't know is that the cost to business is roughly 1.4 of that salary.
That puts 75,000 times 1.4 equals roughly 100, 105,000 times six. What's that, like 640 in that range. Let's say that pretty much all of their work is placing orders. And we were able to free up 20 % of their time. And then just by being able to help change the behaviors of the customers going through the website.
That would save that company roughly $120,000 a year. The nice thing about that is that it's a behavior change for the customer, and it's totally agnostic of the e-commerce solution. So whether you're on one solution or changing to another midway and trying to optimize leads, rather than trying to do the technical SEO and the development within the e-commerce solution, you're changing the behaviors of the customer.
That is agnostic, which is nice, so that no matter what solution you jump into. So, with that insight in mind, I like to think about how I get that inside sales rep team members freed up by 20%, and that's 120,000 of ROI to work with on a recurring basis. And that 20% of the time that they just freed up can now be spent towards either reallocating resources, maybe one of those six sales reps can now be an outside sales rep, and they can generate new accounts. And that's a great way to get ROI. And it's in a lot of ways it's in the B2B space, having an outside sales rep is important to capture new accounts, even more so than the SEO. And it's just changing the way you think about it. I want more leads through the website. Well, maybe you just need to free up time from your existing team so that they can go get those leads rather than the website bringing them in. And you could do both, but there is some really noticeable ROI there. So that just lays the foundation on what your question was, which let me recall it for a second. Should they be putting people through the website? There are two people to change behavior for. There's the customer and the sales reps.
Because the sales reps also have to change their behavior if they're ever going to get the customer to use the website in order to free up that 20 % of the time. And wherever you can find opportunities to use the website, maybe you're an outside sales rep that brings up a tablet, shows them the website, and maybe helps create their first account. And we have solutions for sales rep blogging on behalf and BigCommerce has masquerade features like that, too.
So the sales rep can create their account and help them place their first order, and there's ways for us to surface the sales rep when the customer logs in with like a video link. And then the sales rep can log on behalf while being on a video call to help guide them through that shopping process. So lots of ways and reasons why you need to do it often and early to not only change the customer.
The customer behavior is influenced by how the sales rep is interacting with them. Long explanation. Hopefully, that helped.
Michael Mueller (13:59)
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it's all good.
And I couldn't agree with you more, especially in the world of B2B, as things continue to change and evolve and as the customers in the B2B world become more accustomed to placing orders online. Right? Because we've seen a wave of B2B businesses that are kind of more adopting and going head first into this e-commerce model.
One thing that I personally like about, you know, one of the platforms here at Anchor Group that we develop on, BigCommerce, is their B2B edition. And essentially what that is, is an app that you can download onto your BigCommerce account. And it gives you just with downloading that one app, what that does is it gives you a slew of B2B features or a set of B2B features, a foundation that you can work off of. And I just know on other platforms, sometimes you have to make those one office customizations, but with BigCommerce, just, it just gives you.
Those all at the same time. So that's one thing that I like, that I like about the platform and we've seen it be helpful with the change management for those B2B customers. Know, Caleb, you mentioned the sales masquerade thing, which is a feature they have on BigCommerce. So essentially what, if we're, if we're thinking about change management, right? Because improving e-commerce stores is one part of the larger puzzle of a successful business. With that sales, that sales rep masquerade, you know,
A sales rep can literally be standing next to a business partner and walking them through the steps of signing up for an account, placing an order, creating reorder lists, and that whole customer journey. The sales rep, the outside sales rep can walk them through that in person. That, talking about change management, right? That's a huge advantage in helping the investment somebody puts into an e-commerce site be that much more successful once it's ready to rock.
Caleb (15:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that is a really great feature of the B2B edition with BigCommerce. We had to, on the SuiteCommerce side, we had to build kind of our own app for it. It's an extension. You can think of it like a little app. But it's really neat that it's kind of built into that, the B2B edition of BigCommerce. One of its many, many pros, actually. I have a question for you because one of the, There's pros and cons with every solution.
Including SuiteCommerce and BigCommerce. But one of the ones that I've admired on BigCommerce was their ability to do both B2B and B2C really well. And particularly the B2C side is a lot of the ways to integrate with marketing specific tools. It's really favorable for marketing teams to have a lot of control and creativity, whether it be email marketing integrations. There are lots of integrations and also, like on an Omnichannel, what if I want to integrate my product catalog to eBay or Amazon or whatever? What options are there on BigCommerce? after you, I'm interested to hear what you say here because I know how to do it on the NetSuite side, but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on to achieve that on BigCommerce.
Michael Mueller (17:00)
Right. Yeah. And so, you know, the whole idea of omni-channel selling, right? Where you list your products on your standard website, but then you're able to integrate with software that carries those product listings from your website and puts them into other marketplaces. Like, let's be honest, that's, that's a fantastic idea, right? Because you want to maximize the amount of places where your products are surfaced in front of potential customers. And so.
Caleb (17:43)
Yeah, tie back to the audience before you're asking me about the audience or we were talking about the audience and like the maximizing the audience. I think Omnichannel feeds right into that. Yeah.
Michael Mueller (17:55)
and especially this day with when we even talk about social media, right? With all of the places where people are able to see product and people get interested in product that, know, influencers or people they in a sense follow similar lifestyles or whatever. Like there's opportunity for merchants to service their product in front of people in new ways, specifically through an omni channel selling is a way that merchants can get there.
Caleb (18:00)
Yeah, it's not just Google.
Michael Mueller (18:23)
So, BigCommerce partners with a couple of different companies. So within BigCommerce, you know, of course, you can get apps and integrations to do this. Now, BigCommerce has a very close partnership with a company called Feedonomics And essentially what that does is it's it's an integration you can get for your website. It's a middleware where you, your BigCommerce products, will be sent to Feedonomics, and then the Feedonomics software can then, you know, funnel those.
Products out to through omni-channel selling funnels so that you can service in different marketplaces. Basically, to get your products in front of customers in more places than just your website. Now, this is a good option, usually in the B2C space, right? Because if we think about a B2B company, right, you might not want to see, you know, pumps, water pumps, right?
Commercial-grade water pumps surface for you as you're scrolling on, know, Instagram or something like that. But if, but so usually Omnichannel works for kind of the B2C play a little bit better. But, it, but it has proven to be very successful.
Caleb (19:37)
I think you're right, but I think you're right about it working best for the B2C. Still, I think that there is a time for it for the B2B because I have a lot of B2B customers where they are today almost entirely B2B, but B2C really interests them because it's a way for some of the B2B accounts to find them in the first place when they're just wanting to come in and purchase one thing. It's a foot in the door more than anything. So, I see it being useful for lead generation, maybe even more so than working on SEO. I don't know. Maybe, yeah. Because it's more than just Google.
Michael Mueller (20:17)
You think so more than SEO? I know. Yes, yes. In the idea of diversifying your sales channels, where you meet your customers, Google is one of those sales channels. When you go with an omni-channel selling approach, technically, you're meeting your customers through more sales channels, whether it's walmart.com, the Target marketplace. So, in a sense, you are just opening the door to more sales channels. And the cool thing about doing it through Feedonomics is that essentially you have one software that you're piping all your products into and from there it's dispersing it accordingly. That's right.
Caleb (21:01)
It's like a one-to-many feed. One Integration and then it ties to everything else. Feeds that. I have one example. Let's take an example of a refrigerator parts. I was recently ordering a refrigerator parts. So it's on my mind because I was thinking about a lot of times when I observe my behavior on how I shop with B2B and B2C.
Because it helps inform me to give. It's a really good initial gut check. So one thing I was doing was trying to find my product and I realized that there was a few areas that I was looking for. I was looking on Amazon, I was looking on eBay, because parts is common to search for on eBay, and then I would also look on Google. But those were like the three areas. So, depending on the industry, I see a product feed being particularly important because
You never know where someone goes first. What's their default? Some might be the default of eBay. Some might be the default of Amazon. Some might be the default of Google. And there might be more, too, right? So I think by that, if you only did SEO for like Google, for instance, you're hitting one-third of that crowd—only the people who end up searching Google first. And so I think that you're missing out on... where people might be searching. And you have to know your audience. Like, in that case, it's very obvious that those are three common ones, but I'm sure there's different industries where there's different default searches for people.
Michael Mueller (22:34)
Yeah. That's Right. And another thought I had hearing you mentioned how you were searching for those refrigerator parts. Another thought I had is that the omni-channel play listing your products in a whole bunch of different areas could be a really good play for a B2B business because ultimately if you're looking to acquire new customers, right? Not relying on the same 80 per same 20 % of your customers that you currently have to make 80 % of the purchases for your company. If you are looking to acquire new customers,
surfacing your products in different areas is going to be a great way to do that. Because ultimately think about if you are looking for let's say a water pump for example, right, which would be a know a b2b product, a commercial grade water pump, somebody is going to have to go online somewhere to some product feed to ultimately find a product as they're searching for it. So, the omnichannel play could be
You know, a really good idea for B2B businesses in that sense.
Caleb (23:38)
Yeah, this is the first time I've really talked out loud about the strategy, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I was thinking about it that, like, if I were a B2B e-commerce or a distributor, manufacturer, whatever, did that omnichannel approach, got kind of a one-off order, researched the customer to say, all right, well, they're actually someone who could do a lot of business. It might make sense to get a whole lot with custom pricing and different discount tiers like NetSuite offers, BigCommerce does. So what I might do is find that order and put in an extra note, like, hey, want to learn about our wholesaler account? Or I might just reach out to that person, say, hey, I'm shipping your order right now. I'm a rep from our wholesale and our larger accounts. I am happy to jump on a call and talk about what our discount tiers and to be a supplier for you. And I think it's like a nice foot in the door for a conversation because it's not a cold call. They're aware of you. They just place an order. It's clearly someone who needs the part, maybe who has the authority to place an order from the purchasing department. And it's good foot in the door.
Michael Mueller (24:35)
Yeah. So think about, think about that, what you just described in combination with kind of what we talked about earlier about just optimizing an e-commerce presence in general to kind of maximize the use. Right. Cause if that salesperson who you just said, you know, reached out to that new, new customer, right? If that salesperson was still bogged down with managing orders over the phone instead of having them funnel through the e-commerce website, then there's a chance that new customer.
Doesn't get enough time and attention needed to become a recurring customer. So I think that's how we can even just from this conversation alone, right? We can see how optimizing an e-commerce website for B2B functionality, going through the change management project is going to free up a merchant to be able to, to captivate and create net new customers that could be recurring customers, especially in the B2B world.
Caleb (25:43)
Yeah, if I'm a sales rep that has 20 % more time, maybe I haven't learned how to do outbound sales yet. I just know how to like look at data in NetSuite. What I could do is say, all right, I'm going to make a sales search or a query to look at what are the customers who do not have an account, maybe no terms established. Find me all the customers with no terms established, have placed one or two orders in the last two years, and then get that list and start researching people who have ordered from you in the past that don't have a full wholesale account. And then that could be your initial target list that you're like, all now I 20 % more time, why not start with this existing customers and those one-off orders before going to do that outbound? And it's a great way to, probably one of the first things you wouldwant toa do is to target that list of existing, maybe more B2C customers, research them to see if they are with a company that may have greater needs.
Target them initially with that freed-up time while you learn how to do more outbound sales. So, I think it's a great way to create more accounts.
Michael Mueller (26:45)
Yeah, and that's just one way that a merchant could be successful.
Caleb (26:52)
Yeah, one of many strategies. I have probably like two dozen strategies off the top of my head, I could go into.
Michael Mueller (26:57)
Right. And there's, there's always, you know, new strategy, and they granted, let's be honest like they are going to vary depending on the industry, depending on the size of the business, even just depending on the size of a sales team or if there is a sales team present, right. But nonetheless, there's, there's ways to be creative, to help maximize an e-commerce website, to get the most out of the ROI that you've been explaining. To benefit the business and benefit the customers.
Caleb (27:30)
You mentioned the login on behalf of the masquerade. What are some of the other B2B-related features of BigCommerce?
Michael Mueller (27:41)
Yeah, great question. Essentially when you get BigCommerce B2B edition, it, it removes the my account function of the BigCommerce website. It inserts a thing about it as like an updated my account, basically a buyer. I'm sorry. It inserts. It inserts a business portal that you can log into and there is going to be the set of features.
That many B2B businesses need. For example, like managing orders, managing invoices, managing quotes, you're going to be able to do that all within that buyer portal login. Now, additionally, the cool thing about BigCommerce B2B Edition is that you can set buying roles based on the company. So technically, if you have a manager who has the purchasing power, yet you need somebody who is
Underneath them to be able to create an order to put things into a cart and then simply send it to that manager for approval. There are workflows like that that are already pre-established that are really easy to set up. The cool thing is that, like, the foundation's there for you. All it is is just downloading it and then, you know, putting in the right information and connecting it. So you don't have to do any custom work for those sorts of workflows. And that ultimately ends up saving companies who need those workflows, it saves them time and money, right? Because they don't need to pay for that customization or for some company to come in and do that customization.
Caleb (29:20)
That's really cool. SuiteCommerce doesn't have that feature and I get asked on it and we have to end up just building it for them individually. And I do like, that's pretty nice that not only does the masquerade but that maybe call it delegated purchasing comes included with BigCommerce, that B2B. Okay, and then I assume you can set pricing tiers.
Michael Mueller (29:34)
Right. Yeah, so some of that standard e-commerce functionality, like pricing tiers, you can set within BigCommerce along with different pricing tiers for all customers. If you need customer specific pricing, BigCommerce has a functionality to do that as well. And so, which, quite honestly, that is pretty standard amongst most of the e-commerce platforms out there. So that's not, as we think about some of those other... dominant ones in the industry that's not necessarily new, but what BigCommerce, the edge that BigCommerce brings is that the company, BigCommerce is able still to give a lot of attention to their merchants. And so I was actually speaking with, somebody who were working with here at anchor group the other day, and they mentioned that they were able, they were having a complex scenario. needed specific requirements, some kind of intense specific requirements on their website. And they needed to make sure that BigCommerce was going to be able to meet the needs, right? From like the software, platform, limitations perspective. They needed, they needed to make sure the requirements could happen. And so when I was, when I was chatting with this guy, he said that they were actually able to get BigCommerce leadership and on a call just to touch base with them. And what that showed me and what that showed this person is that BigCommerce values their customers, right? They and they truly want their customers to be very successful. And, so when you work with a company like BigCommerce, not only are you going to be able to reach out to them and get help, but but the leadership there actually cares for the merchants that are on their platform. And I thought that was, that was really special. And I haven't, there's not many times you hear about that, you know, working in the agency world like we do. There's not many times you hear about the leadership of one of the leading e-commerce platforms, you know, speaking with merchants about their and just taking that much attention to detail. So I thought that was cool. Yeah.
Caleb (31:51)
Yeah, I love headless and the idea of headless commerce. I think of a few things when I think of e-commerce is: there's phases of growth and needs. I personally like SuiteCommerce a lot when someone has SuiteCommerce and is just getting their foot into the e-commerce space.
Change a lot of behaviors. There's lots of stuff that you can't just set up a site and assume it's done. You got to change a lot of behaviors of your internal team members and sales reps. Then but, I, and I love like BigCommerce is like the next phase above that as you're expanding all your marketing. And then on top of that, I love like that next threshold of e-commerce maturity and going to headless. Can you talk to me like I'm two? Because Headless can. Be pretty confusing. Talk to me like I'm two. What is headless? Just a simple explanation.
Michael Mueller (32:58)
Yeah. So headless commerce is buzzworthy these days for good reason. Headless commerce essentially decouples the front end of your website from the back end of your website. So if you do a headless commerce through BigCommerce, what that means is you're managing the operational side of things from the BigCommerce portal, right? From there, you're able to see your orders, your products, your inventory.
Caleb (33:05)
Yeah.
Michael Mueller (33:27)
customer segmentations, all that good stuff that's critical for the operational side of your business. Now that is decoupled, meaning that is split apart from the front end of your website. And that's what headless, you know, in a sense, that's exactly what it means. Right. You have a, your See you So essentially that's what it means is, is your backend is decoupled from your front end. And so the front end of your website, what the customers actually see, you're able to get extremely creative with that. And so, in a sense, BigCommerce has what's called stencil, right? Which is like their native page builder. And that's where the backend and that front end themed, is intertwined together. And you manage that all from the from your BigCommerce account. Headless you have a totally separate independent front end that are able to connect through APIs, the backend to that headless architecture on the front end. So it's buzzworthy because of how new it is. It really is the leading edge of e-commerce. And honestly, at this point, many companies have been using it. And the evidence is there that if a merchant or if a business wants to be on the leading edge, it is worthwhile to go with headless commerce. There's a bigger upfront cost, right? Because it's not a cookie cutter solution necessarily.
Caleb (34:53)
Is it the software that is more expensive?
Michael Mueller (34:56)
So it's a combination of things. So when you go with headless commerce, you're not just, well, if you go with a BigCommerce business, you're paying for your BigCommerce license. And as part of that, can, part of that is included in the theme. You might be able to pay for a one-time theme, right? But then that's all included. The management of that is all included within your BigCommerce license. With headless commerce, you pay for the BigCommerce license, but then you also pay for all the different software.
Systems that you need to create the headless front end of your website. So all the different software that you need to create that theme, you would need to pay for and manage and make sure is running together like a well-oiled machine. And so, usually,
Caleb (35:41)
So can you give me like, so like I know the cost of the BigCommerce and the B2B edition normally. If I were to do headless, it like $100,000 more? Is it like $50,000? Is it like, give me an idea? Is it, I mean mostly on the software side.
Michael Mueller (35:58)
Yeah, so that is a great question. Just like, you know, software, at the end of the day, are products, right? And just like when we buy products, there's usually a low tier, middle tier, and high tier, just in regards to the architecture of the software, the features it has. And so some headless websites, right, will run you, you know, about a hundred K, but you can, I mean, you can blow the doors off of that number and pick, you know, the more expensive software options out there in order to have
Caleb (36:29)
Because I guess it depends on like whatever because the back office licensing is the same the BigCommerce licensing. The only differential there is whatever you decide to replace the front end with, which is You're basically your choice your, your front end of choice and the hosting for that.
Michael Mueller (36:35)
Stays exactly the same. That's exactly right.
So where headless commerce really comes into play and where it is very valuable is for businesses that have complex products, right? Or a complex product customization flow. Think like a CPQ sort of scenario. Because a lot of times if you take that CPQ software and embed it within a BigCommerce stencil theme, it bogs down the webpage speed.
Most of the time. Whereas if you're able to do it in the headless environment, you can legitimately build it differently so that no longer are you getting bogged down by needing to customize products in a specific way on a website. Instead, a good developer is able to build it in such a way that you don't lose out on any of the speed because headless commerce should be lightning-fast. If it's built correctly, should be lightning-fast compared to like your standard BigCommerce stencil website; not to say stencil websites are bad. They're great for many, many businesses. Still, if you want to be on the leading edge and if you have the internal team or if you're willing to pay for the external resources to maintain and uphold that leading edge within that software stack you use for headless commerce, then it's a really good option.
Caleb (38:10)
Like, how big of a company, there are different sizes of companies. Like, when I start saying when someone's ready for NetSuite, I rarely tell people that they should. At five million, it's like really hard to swallow still. But it can make sense sometimes. At 10 million, it starts to make a lot of sense. It's still expensive. At 20 million, it's like you missed a lot of opportunities.
To get a lot of ROI, you got to do it now. You can't be dragging along without a go to ERP for much longer. So they're going to fall way behind. So it's tough because you're managing your cash flow and making business decisions around it. And I think that five to 10 million is the about right appropriate time for NetSuite. It's also hard to swallow for a company to do that.
Caleb (39:08)
That because ERP is more expensive. And now on top of that, you're going to have e-commerce solutions and probably around that same range as when SuiteCommerce and BigCommerce and other options make sense too as you evolve. What about headless? Like what, how much in annual revenue where it's just like a, what, what is that a clean cutoff line where it'd be rare for people under that mark to need it?
Michael Mueller (39:35)
Yeah, so the big name brands you see out there, right? True Enterprise, where we're talking 100 million plus. Would be rare for, I would, at this point, where we are in the e-commerce landscape, I would consider it to be very rare that a company that's doing 100 plus million in annual revenue would not be on headless. If e-commerce is...
Caleb (40:00)
Okay, so at 100 million, you gotta be looking at headless at that point.
Michael Mueller (40:04)
Oh, 100 million for sure. If e-commerce is going to be a mainstay of your business and if you're channeling sales through there, then yeah, at 100 million, you're.
Caleb (40:12)
I suppose 100 million could mean a couple different things. It doesn't mean 100 million through a website, I suppose. So.
Michael Mueller (40:20)
Not necessarily through the website, where we see the shift, once again, at this point, Headless is fast moving right now in regards to just the adoption rate. More and more companies are getting comfortable with it. More and more development companies are getting comfortable with it and willing to talk with their customers or prospects about it. But I would say right now if you're doing 50 million in sales annually, you should at least think about headless commerce just because of all the benefits it can bring you. Now it's a little bit of a, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg sort of scenario, because you could say, Hey, we want to hold off on a headless e-commerce site to really be on the leading edge until our sales hit X or approach it the other way. We want to go to headless commerce because right now we're here and we want to get to X. Right. And so
Caleb (40:54)
Yeah, like true growth goals. If you're a 50 million not planning to grow outside of inflation, well, you probably got bigger problems. You got to think bigger.
Michael Mueller (41:19)
Right. That's exactly right. Now, also with headless commerce, I would advise that if you want to adopt that model, if you're currently on something else and you want to go the headless route, your internal team should be hungry for it. Cause it's in the, I mean, in the world of tech and the world of e-commerce, headless commerce is exciting, and it's new, and it's evolving. And even as we look at BigCommerce, you know, every quarter, they're coming out with new updates to their platform to make it easier to leverage headless commerce. And so, if you're going to adopt headless commerce, your internal team should be excited about it and hungry for that. They need a champion. Exactly. And also, let's be honest, in most cases, it's going to take a little bit more work to maintain than a normal than a normal theme on, on BigCommerce.
Caleb (41:55)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you need a champion. You need some champions. Yeah.
Michael Mueller (42:17)
And so that's why your team also needs to be hungry for it. But if you have a team that's hungry for it and excited and willing to champion it, then it can be a really, really successful endeavor to take on for a business.
Caleb (42:27)
But it gives them like that, the ability to customize and think of creative things to implement and be unique from their competitors. And it gives them wicked fast page speeds, like blown out of the water, just how fast. Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Michael Mueller (42:35)
Yeah. Like super fast. Yeah. And that's a good point because as I've said, Headless commerce, you know, it's a buzzword now because it's new and it's exciting, but there'll come a time when many, companies have adopted it. So, if a company's even thinking about headless commerce, now's a good time to hop on the bandwagon and roll with it because, in my opinion, it's been proven up to this point. And as long as you have a good team of developers, developing it for you and strategizing about what specific software you're using and how it's going to maximize your business. Now is a good time because that is going to be a differentiator factor for your business. If you wait.
Caleb (43:21)
I wonder, I think maybe five years ago, I've come across companies who spent, like, they were probably 500 million in annual revenue, and they spent easily two million on a headless commerce. And I think about now, five years later, I think it's so much less than that. And that's why it's achievable at a 50 million in annual revenue company. I wonder, five years from now, if that, like if that moves from, because that went from a $500 million company for it to be, it was valuable for them then, now we're saying that it's achievable for a budget of a $50 million company five years from now, I bet it gets back to like that 10 to 20 million in annual revenue achievable to implement BigCommerce headless. I wonder, have you heard anything about, how is it progressing?
Michael Mueller (44:19)
Yeah, so what BigCommerce is hoping to do and what they're in the process of doing and if you sit in on their quarterly meetings, they talk about this, right? And that's essentially they want to make it as seamless of a process to have your storefront or a merchant storefront on headless. They want to make that process feel the same as it currently does building on the stencil platform.
Now, essentially, what that means is that BigCommerce is creating partnerships and buying smaller companies or acquiring them, right? Acquiring smaller companies within the industry in order to be able to help them build out that functionality within BigCommerce. So that if we want to start a store today, we could log on and pick, you know, the stencil theme, which is, you know, the older version of a theme, or we could simply go the headless route. And from there, they're trying to give merchants and set it up so that merchants literally can just within the couple of clicks, be able to spin up a headless environment to get that leading edge. So, you know, BigCommerce is working hard on it. And as they continue to find success with that, you know, I think your thoughts, right. That price, the cost of spinning up a headless website and doing a very good job with it, you know, that, that cost is going to come down.
Caleb (45:35)
Hmm, yeah, that's pretty exciting. I like that. I think that it shows innovation.
Michael Mueller (45:37)
Super exciting. Yeah. And it shows, it shows buy-in, you know, and it shows that they want, they, they not only just want to sign up customers for their platform, but they want their customers to be wildly successful on their platform. And so they're investing BigCommerce as a company is investing, you know, their time, energy and resources into the leading edge of e-commerce in order to best serve their customers. And to me, that's exciting. Like if I'm going to, if I'm going to invest, my company's time, energy, and resources. I want to make sure it's with a company that has my best interest in mind and is going to be here for years and years to come.
Caleb (46:16)
Yeah. Well, I thought that this was a great conversation today, and it was just like a nice back-and-forth bit. It gives me a chance to learn more and more about BigCommerce and these little conversations, too, and just have some dialogue and think out loud. I'm a think out loud type of person and there are some ideas that I hadn't really weighed heavily which was thinking about some of the lead generation ideas with Omnichannel and how to... Think of strategies to make it effective for B2B. So even discussions, open discussions, help me think of those ideas out loud. So I thought it was fun. Yeah.
Michael Mueller (46:52)
It's helpful. It's helpful for sure.
BigCommerce Certified Partner, Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner
As both a BigCommerce Certified Partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, Anchor Group is ready to handle BigCommerce and NetSuite projects alike! Whether you already have one platform and are looking to integrate the other, are considering a full-scale implementation of both platforms or simply need support with ongoing customizations, our team is ready to help answer any questions you might have! Get in touch!
