Driving ecommerce growth through partnership and personalization

Elevating brands to be future-ready with their ecommerce assets is a challenging task, considering how each company requires a unique vision for their digital products.

Pennsylvania-based digital agency Inverse Paradox contends that successful brands can develop robust online shopping experiences by being flexible, open to pivots, and motivated to make the customer journey as accessible as possible. 

A continuous cycle of improvement

As a specialist of platforms such as Wordpress, WooCommerce and Shopify, Inverse Paradox employs a dynamic, data-driven approach to digital assets and product launches. “We’ll continue to work with our clients on an iterative basis to make further improvements and monitor those goals to assure there’s a continuous cycle of improvement since it can often be difficult to hit the target with a first launch,” says CEO and founder Neil Harner.

And that’s a lesson for both agencies and brands: After launch, the work isn’t done, and brands would benefit substantially by continuing to test and track customer engagements using tools such as A/B testing. 

Additionally, speed to market is crucial, especially when brands need to adapt to seismic shifts in ecommerce habits, such when the pandemic struck. 

For example, Harner cites a food production brand that was predominantly distributing in grocery stores and restaurants, but looking to extend into a D2C model where their product could be delivered directly to people's homes.

Inverse Paradox was able to help the brand quickly deploy a B2C online solution using WooCommerce, extending their existing WordPress website, allowing them to pivot, extend their market reach, and develop a new channel of business by going direct to consumers.

Navigating critical challenges

What is top-of-mind for leading agencies such as Inverse Paradox, is tackling obstacles head-on. One area retailers would be best to prioritize, Harner says, is making sure their ecommerce assets meet the needs of people with disabilities and impairments. 

“Often this is a consultative and challenging process for our clients because there are adjustments that often can conflict with the brand or identity of a company or product,” notes Harner. “We’ve been able to help our clients successfully navigate these challenges at the same time respecting their brands.”

Inverse Paradox offers another lesson for an important value-add for headless commerce in general: personalization. 

As a McKinsey report notes about investing in technology to support personalizing digital products: “Top marketers are developing systems that can pool and analyze structured and unstructured data, algorithms that can identify behavioral patterns and customer propensity, and analysis capabilities to feed that information into easy-to-use dashboards.” 

The more some buyers trend towards digital channels, the more important it is for brands to integrate strategies that enable a move to headless commerce and leverage its extensive customization benefits. Shifting to a headless commerce model allows companies to deconstruct and then reconstruct their technology stack with best-in-breed options for functions like product catalog, search, and checkout solutions. 

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study Commissioned By Google noted online retailers who redesigned their websites to look and feel more like apps on mobile using a headless approach enjoyed a 35% organic traffic boost.

Power in partnerships

Bold has partnered with Inverse Paradox to improve what enterprise clients develop for their audiences. Headless architecture allows partners such as Bold the opportunity to work with Inverse Paradox in a way that emboldens both businesses.  

“Bold Checkout offers the ability to have your WordPress/WooCommerce website and a checkout experience which is fast, secure and reliable,” Harner says. “And due to this component being one of the biggest performance stressors, offloading this to Bold benefits the website as a whole.”

The result is a strategic partnership poised to deliver a commerce experience tailored to both the brand, and their customers’ individualized needs—and the innovation and adaptability required to stand out in a rapidly evolving global marketplace.