The Future of Ecommerce Marketing with John Bruno, VP of Commerce Strategy at PROS

Yeah, I think the future is going to look a lot different than the past 25 years or so. If you think back, the first e-commerce transaction was in 1994 when some guy in Philadelphia bought a Sting album from someone he knew. And sure enough, e-commerce was born. But if you look at where we’ve come since then, over the past 25 years, it’s largely been the same everywhere. You can see your product catalog navigation going across horizontally at the top of your browser, with the left-hand side displaying your data and facets for product sets, along with some rudimentary search, catalog, payments, promotions, and taxes. It’s pretty standard.

I think there’s a lot of room right now for businesses to make it their own. Not to pick on Apple or talk about them the whole time, but if you go to their website, from a B2C experience, you don’t see that standard layout. Instead, you see front-and-center displays of all their products, rich imagery, and an immersive experience where you feel drawn into the product. Then, they drop a buy button on there. So in the B2C world, I expect to see a lot more experiences like that—more immersive and product-centric.

In the B2B world, it’s really about understanding the buyer journey and making sure you’re delivering an exceptional experience along the way. When a B2B buyer logs into an e-commerce site, one of the first things they want to do is see where something they’ve purchased is. Has it been approved? What is their spend limit? When will the product be fulfilled? What are the things they order most frequently? Because the vast majority of B2B purchases are repeat orders. So, how do you streamline that process? Again, it’s about moving away from the status quo we’ve seen today and creating an experience so compelling that you’re able to cross-sell a customer into a part of your product portfolio that you haven’t sold to them before.

In B2B, it’s usually been a situation where you buy these things at negotiated rates, and everything else is list price. You have to go talk to someone. The world we see from the PROS point of view is one where all of those prices are rendered dynamically based on who you are and based on market conditions. So, the price isn’t just a list price that automatically feels unfair, but rather something you look at and say, “Yeah, that feels good,” and then you can convert and move on with your job.

Which is exactly how we talk about it, willingness to pay.

Yeah, there’s a couple of things, and I hate to point to technology first, but I think technology is going to be a key enabler here. You know, historically speaking, you know, the world in enterprise technology has kind of grown up on this notion of big purpose-built platforms to do purpose-built things, and that’s how we got into the situation that we’re in right now with, you know, every e-commerce site looking nearly identical. So I think the world is going to be driven by APIs, right? APIs and kind of this notion of composability. So you’ll have purpose-built systems to do very specific things, and how you bring those together and infuse that with the rich content and storytelling is really what I think is going to separate the pack. So a good example of that is, you know, maybe you’ll have a similar experience there, but you think about how, you know, modern companies like Tesla or Rivian have, of kind of made it all about understanding, you know, the car in every option that’s available for it to really enrich the experience. You know, picking your interior, your sound systems, your paints, your special order things you know you can look up, and 45 minutes have passed because you become so entrenched in that process. Well, what if every purchase could be that level of personalization, right? And so the ability to make something that you’re purchasing your own? I think we’re going to see more of that. I remember following along and seeing Bugaboo, the stroller company allow people to pick, you know, the material of their frame, and the limited edition canopies and all these things, we’re going to see a heightened level of immersive customer experience from that digital domain standpoint, all backed by really nice, rich content and storytelling.

Yeah. And the same holds true in the B to B world when you’re talking about outcomes, right? So if you’re a manufacturer of tools and equipment, right? So if you’re thinking about, you know, I need to cut something, I need a saw of some sort. And there’s, you know, hundreds of options available to you. Imagine the experience where instead of, you know, filtering through that left-hand side that we talked about, imagine the experience where the website actually asks you the question, what are you trying to cut through? Is it wood? Is it stone? Is it tile? And you’re like, now, it’s wood, and, you know, the experience start to narrow down from there, kind of using more of a conversational or guided interface, you know. Or do you want this to be battery powered? Or do you are you okay plugging in? It’s got to be battery powered. Everything’s battery powered these days. Well, do you think you’re fine with a three-hour battery? You need a five-hour battery, and then all of a sudden, you’re down to one product, and that’s exactly the product that you want. As a buyer, you just have so much confidence in that transaction where I’m ready to pull the trigger right then and there, because we don’t need the comparison shop.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think when it comes down to it, there are a lot of cues that the world can take from the airline industry. It might sound mundane to think, “Okay, well, I want a seat on an airplane, and it’s going to be first class, business class, or coach.” But if you look at the airline industry, there are far more fare classes than that right now. And based on who you are as an individual, there are other ancillaries you might want. Do you crave the window seat when there’s only one window seat left? What do we know about you and the driving forces behind your decision-making? In many cases, it’s starting to look like an aggregate right now. Instead of everything being an off-the-shelf product you can purchase, it’s more about assembling products and services all coming together for an offer that’s entirely unique to you.

I think if you look at what some of the airlines are doing by combining fare classes with ancillaries, it’s a good blueprint for where the rest of the world needs to go in similar scenarios. By going through that workflow or those questions, I’m learning a lot more about you. So what if I can also recommend a different kind of saw blade? Or a dual battery charger? Or a specific type of work glove that typically goes along with woodworking? I know a lot more about you, and I can start to assemble offers—not just prices, but offers that are entirely unique to the buyer based on the data I know about them. I think we’re going to start moving more in that direction.