National Business Furniture

Betsy Reuteman

Digital Commerce Authority

Putting Customers at the Center of Digital Commerce

To me, it is the depth of information customers want about a product, whether through charts, images, videos. Content is truly key! Where we used to be able to get away with a product description and a couple pictures, now a customer expects a full, robust understanding of the product and verification from other purchasers. You see this across all types of digital e-commerce sites, but especially for a higher ticket item, a customer wants to really understand all they can before they commit to a large purchase. For us as digital retailers, that means we have to find a way to replicate a showroom online and find ways to give the customer as much confidence as possible in their purchase. An equally important part to having the content is making sure it's accurate. It does no good to stuff a product page full of copy and specs if none of it is accurate or helpful to the product purchase. My time in B2B made that even clearer than my experience in B2C. In B2B, the specifications of a product can be imperative to keeping a business running, versus simply determining whether a dress hem is kneelength or mini (don't get me wrong, inseam is still an important question to solve for a customer!).

Leading as One Team

One of my first leaders always had a catchphrase of “One Team, One Dream” that he repeated often in the early fractured days of bricks vs clicks and digital transformation. I find even now years later channel conflict still rears its head and it can be a struggle to get buy-in on a full omnichannel experience. I find myself leading with the same one team mindset when introducing a new feature that may involve a potential change that could be viewed as channel conflict.

Choosing Innovation That Creates Value

It’s striking that balance between new innovation and actually useful innovation. There’s a lot of really cool technology floating around out there with really great sales teams, but not all of it is useful and not all of it enhances the experience for your customer. It’s being able to cut through the noise of a shiny object and truly get to the level of understanding of how this new feature would make it easier for a customer to buy your product. I try to think, “Is this a buzzword for a problem I’m not even sure we have or is this going to solve a problem I’m actively seeking to fix?”. Investing money in a new technology solution isn’t a guarantee it will get used or increase conversion, so it's having that understanding of how your customer shops and how they want to shop and finding solutions in that overlap.

“You can always learn about a product category, your e-commerce knowledge is universal.”

Learning from Every Digital Experience

We see constantly where technology from other industries migrates over to e-commerce and we have to be able to adapt and understand how we can apply that to a digital selling experience. It’s important to look not just at your circle of industry, but what type of digital behavior a customer is getting used to on other sites that they will eventually expect my site to have. An example I always come back to is mobile swiping. This didn’t start on e-commerce sites, but customers got so used to using that thumb-swiping motion, that they expected product images and page content to be as easy to navigate as well. I try to impart this to my team often when we’re in the ideation stages. Sometimes the best ideas and most innovative sites are in a completely different line of business.

Building a Career Without Limits

Don’t be afraid to venture into new spaces! I’ve worked on websites for apparel, insurance, plumbing and furniture and while the product is different, the customer expectations on how a website should perform are quite similar. I’m always surprised when we’re trying to solve a furniture problem and I have to bring up how we solved it for toilets. You can always learn about a product category. Your e-commerce knowledge is universal.