E131: Elizabeth Azide

Richard:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest, Elizabeth Azide, Head of Marketing and EMEA at BigCommerce. How are we doing Elizabeth?

Elizabeth:
I'm wonderful, Richard, how are you doing today?

Richard:
I am very well, very well. Feeling really good today. So Monday morning, feeling fired up, ready for a cracking week and what a way to start the week.

Elizabeth:
Honored. Honored to kick it off with you, truly.

Richard:
Brilliant. Well, I think before we get into all things BigCommerce and all things eCommerce and platforms, et cetera, it'd be great to tell our listeners how you got into the world of eCommerce and then step us through your journey at BigCommerce.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it's a great question. So I got into eCommerce, I guess initially by way of affiliate marketing. So I was working for a digital startup for a period of time, running all things affiliate, enabling third party bloggers and content creators to monetize their content by way of pushing our products. Was really intrigued at that kind of virtuous cycle of us all kind of coming together for the purpose of achieving mutual benefit and expanding the reach of what I thought were really cool, unique products. From there, kind of stayed in that partnerships kind of vein and then realized I really want to be somewhere that I feel like is only moving forward in terms of relevance, significance, what's going to probably become ubiquitous and how can I play a role in advancing that forward. And that to me at the time meant eCommerce. So now we're in 2018, joined BigCommerce, it's been almost four and a half years now.
Came on board as a partner marketing manager, so working with partners to accelerate adoption of the platform, to help evangelize the platform and build their businesses along the way, for both technology partners and agencies, and I really enjoyed being at the center of all that. I then had a really compelling opportunity to come over to London a couple of years ago. I was formally based in Austin, Texas, where BigCommerce is headquartered and we had just kind of gotten our UK office off of the ground but still weren't quite where we needed to be in terms of marketing, support, visibility, awareness, partnerships, all of that jazz. So my boss at the time was basically like, "Hey, would you want to go and be the marketer in London for a few months?" Kind of randomly. And I was like, "Okay, sounds like a cool opportunity. Haven't really been overseas, haven't had an international experience like this, and how cool to get to make a mark on what our UK operation can be, and it's still relatively early stages."
So came over to London a couple of years ago and have gotten to, since then, take over the whole of marketing, running all things revenue marketing, so demand generation, events, our partner marketing, all things new prospect acquisition is essentially what my team covers. So been an amazing dynamic ride and we're still moving.

Richard:
Wow, what a journey. So started in affiliate marketing, I know a few people in affiliates, it aligns really well with partnerships, doesn't it?

Elizabeth:
Yes.

Richard:
Because affiliates is very much working with partners to promote a merchant's products or service, and then ultimately building that partner network. And BigCommerce are, I would say, absolutely, they are famous for their amazing partner team. They're super famous for that, I think, that's my take on it. And obviously we've been to some amazing events, which obviously you've organized and your team have organized, that BigCommerce has put together over this last few years. And essentially whenever anyone says about BigCommerce, I see it as the rocket ship of the platforms, that's how I see it. Obviously we've been working with you guys now for probably, I don't know, three plus years, really closely, and I think back then there was five people or something like that.

Elizabeth:
That's exactly right. Yeah.

Richard:
And I think last headcount, when we were at your event a couple of months ago in London, I think the number that was banded there was like 165 or something like that. And just to be clear listeners, that's just the partner team and that associated team really, isn't it? It's not the whole company headcount.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, EMEA, that's just EMEA, precisely. Yeah, the growth has been absolutely incredible. That's what's made a lot of this journey so exciting is getting the validation from the opportunity to continue to grow, we're growing because we are able to provide and maintain and offer a solution, is helping businesses to grow and our teams grow the more that we do that. So it's been really thrilling. I love the rocket ship image, I hope that we continue to be that, that's great.

Richard:
I think you see it with the clients that are adopting and taking on BigCommerce, it's just more and more and more. I mean, what would you say that, I see big brands all the time, a lot of our clients taking BigCommerce on, why are they, what would you say, why are, I know for example, Ted Baker, big brands that we've all heard of and everything in between, a lot of our listeners as well, taking and moving on and moving and replatforming to BigCommerce, what would you say, why are they choosing BigCommerce over some of the other platforms, the other options that are out there?

Elizabeth:
It's a great question. I think it really comes down to our ability to unify two really important things, and that's a combination of capability and speed. Being able to enable those enterprise upmarket functionalities that a lot of these established brands like your Ted Baker's and others, that they're looking for and that they're accustomed to from their previous platform, but they don't want to be burdened by how costly it can be to maintain that. They want to be able to be agile and make changes and adapt to the market and keep things progressing in a way that, again, is not burdensome to do so.
So I would say you'll hear us talk a lot about TCO, total cost of ownership, being able to maintain a best of breed eCommerce instance at a cost that is maintainable. Right now our flexible platform is what supports that. So kind of thinking, okay, you're used to open source being the only way that you can experience a lot of flexibility and unique experiences and all of that jazz. How do we bring that together in a SaaS environment, but still allows you to be customizing your experience, being flexible, having the integrations you need, but in a costly way. So those things, I think, are kind of a bundle of reasons as to why these established brands are seeing BigCommerce as the right solution for where they're trying to go.

Richard:
Because you've got literally a thousand plus, haven't you, like API integrations, which obviously you've got to stay nimble, haven't you, you restore, you're going through that growth phase. I mean, we talk about Ted Baker, but if we're taking that back down to, okay, so we've just gone from we hit the million, now we're getting to two, or two to five and five to 10 and 10 to 20, there's different requirements, there's different things that are needed. And if you've got to spend on 300 pounds here, 400 pounds there, even 800 pounds here, before you know it it becomes quite problematic, doesn't it, it starts stacking up quite ... it can be a real issue, can't it, and it can slow that pace.

Elizabeth:
It can, it can. And it can compromise your ability to invest in the areas you want to invest in, in building your brands and delivering compelling experiences that make you a memorable brand for your customers. And all those other business and marketing elements that you want to be able to dedicate time and resource to, that enables that when you don't have to give so much of it to the development, to the maintenance, all of that.

Richard:
Yeah, I love it. So I can't not ask you about SEO, that's one of my favorite topics, SEO, and PPC, but SEO particularly. Obviously BigCommerce, it's a platform we absolutely recommend, and I think I'm just going to be straight with you. What would you say are the, a couple, two or three core things that maybe aren't utilized with BigCommerce when it comes to SEO or some of the things that you see people missing with SEO on a BigCommerce stack?

Elizabeth:
Absolutely. I would say, I wouldn't be surprised if most businesses who have members of their team who are attuned to these nuances, I'm sure that they are making full utility. But for those that maybe aren't staffed well enough to be able to dedicate that detailed attention to some key SEO things, I would illuminate a couple of things. One, it's the ability to, it sounds simple, but it's important, the ability to control your URL settings Critical for you being able to show up in the searches that you want, all of that. In the BigCommerce platform, we do create them for you, or we can create them for you in a way that the platform recognizes would be most useful or accurate, but what people may not realize is that you can override that. You can manually create your own URL settings in the way that is most conducive to your business, to your strategy, to the accuracy, to the specificity, whatever it might be. That's number one.
Second thing, kind of related, is making sure that you are optimizing and specifying your post titles. For every page on your eCommerce store, you want to make sure that the language you're using, the titles, how you're naming things, those are going to be the things most likely to also be searched for. Right?

Richard:
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Elizabeth:
That's important. That's some low-hanging fruit in terms of don't just let it be whatever generic title that is easy to come up with, but really get specific and get accurate to increase those odds. Third thing also related is the H1 headers, the main header of your eCommerce pages, critical that that is not vague, one, kind of like the specificity I mentioned for the post title, and two, that you're actually using the H1 header as the format, versus just differentiating your text, like making it bold-

Richard:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
Use the H1 header because search engines actually search for the H1 header in the code and all of that, they're looking to see does the H1 header match whatever might be relevant to this search. If you're not using that in the way that you should be, you could be missing out on some visibility.

Richard:
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it, that I think platforms in this day and age just don't have that sort of functionality that is quite straightforward but so important. I've been doing this, getting them for 20 years, SEO and just we've been talking about title tags, metadata, H1s, URLs since then. But the reality is nine times out of 10 people come to us for help with their SEO and they haven't even got the basis in there, but maybe quite often, because it's so complicated in certain platforms to be able to change those things, URL structure, firstly, we've got that URL structure there and ultimately if it's got loads of spurious numbers at the end of it, that mean nothing, which it quite often can have if it's just a default in some systems, if you're selling, I don't know. I was going to pick a thing here, but probably not a good idea. Or how about this one, look, we've got a keep calm-

Elizabeth:
Oh nice.

Richard:
There's a good shot for our-

Elizabeth:
That's great.

Richard:
There we go. Keep calm and listen to Prince. Now if you're the beer mat company, if it just said, "Beer mat, Prince, listen," that doesn't really explain, does it, what, and 7987462 at the end of it, it's like, what's that all about? But ultimately we can have the words, keep-calm-listen-Prince, we maybe lose the and, and two, et cetera. But obviously Google crawls that page, can see the URL, and then we then go down to the description, as you say, and then we go down to the H1 and it all stacks up. It's all very relevant. It's all quite straightforward, but it is time consuming, but it needs to be done. Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth:
And bang on. And Richard, first off, you can tell that you are an expert, you've been in this game for a while, it's so, so clear. And that being said, BigCommerce does enable you to affect all the things that we've discussed. To add on to that, that's where it's critical that you have a partner like you guys, who can really take it to the next level and make sure that on top of the fundamentals, are we fully optimizing in every way possible? That's why we're so glad to have partners like you who really double down in this area.

Richard:
Thank you. Thank you. So obviously you've been at BigCommerce for four and a half years, which in eCom, in fact, 20 years in the eCom years, like dog years, isn't it? Cat years, dog years. So it's a long, long time. And obviously you'd have worked with and seen your team and worked with directly, merchants. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see stores making still? What are some of the things that our listeners need to avoid, just as a whole?

Elizabeth:
100%, this is one that shocks me as just a regular daily consumer and a professional in the space, it's when a merchant store is not optimized for mobile.

Richard:
Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth:
Critical. Day by day, mobile usage is only increasing. So many people are more commonly scrolling through stores and through commerce, through whatever it might be, on their phone than on desktop. So if you are not optimizing your website, your commerce experience for that mobile experience, you're missing out on a lot of opportunity there. Because when you think of it in terms of the work it takes for someone to even get to your site, you did your SEO, you did all of this stuff, you're doing ads, you're doing whatever it might be to get them to your storefront digitally, and then it's subpar. It's incumbent on any store owner, on any business owner to ensure that that mobile experience is seamless. That you leave no reason from a UX perspective as to why someone may not be ready to purchase, et cetera.
Google is really good at putting out reports and research. One of their recent ones has said that 62% less likely is a consumer based on a subpar mobile experience. And think of it for yourself, listeners like us, if I'm in the state where I'm prepared to take an action and it's not making it easy for me to do that, I'm a little annoyed.

Richard:
Yeah, I'm gone. I'm just gone. It's like, do you know what? I just can't be bothered, I can't be bothered, I haven't got time.

Elizabeth:
Precisely. So that's key. As far as the number one thing that I think there's still a lot of room for opportunity for a lot of eCommerce sellers, it's ensuring their site is optimized for mobile.

Richard:
Yeah, I see. It is so surprising, isn't it, that that's still an issue, and it is. What gets me is the checkout process. They maybe got it down on the categories, products, product pages, et cetera. They've now got the thing, the product in the basket and then you go to the basket and there's some popup that obscures the mobile and you can't even check out, you can't find the flipping checkout. And it's like, what are you doing? They've maybe got overcomplicated things because they've installed maybe a hot jar or something like that, but they've enabled it on mobile, on checkout, on the basket side of things. It's like, oh.

Elizabeth:
Just make it easy for me to buy. I want to buy it from you, just make it easy.

Richard:
Is there anything else you see that's quite consistently an issue? So we've got mobile.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, that's a big one from my purview. Another one is not making it easy or natural to search for products. I think search is always an area of improvement, especially if someone does know specifically what they're looking for. It's your job to ensure that those specific results accurately populate. So I think search, making sure and testing it too, making sure that you as your own business owner, go to your site and act as if you are a consumer, and you might be surprised what feels inconvenient or not quite accurate. Yeah.

Richard:
Yeah, it's probably like 50/50 I think, in terms of is there even a search? If there isn't, oh, if there is, sorry, how good is it? Is it dynamic? But then I think also as the merchant, as the listener, listen in the marketing guys and the owners that are listening right now, using that search data to then inform decisions on if you're getting 50 people search a particular product, but it's maybe not coming up, hang on, maybe you should be selling that product. Or you may be already sell it, but the wrong product's coming up, so a little adjustment in your search. Or actually it's telling you where to spend your time on your copy, your content. Okay, we're getting a lot of activity over here. Let's get the content team, the agency, whoever you're working with, to spend that time on those products that are getting searched for. Because first, you've got to have that search box and then does it work correctly? There's obviously some quite potentially clunky search options out there, but it's making sure what is that experience?

Elizabeth:
Bang on, bang on, 100%.

Richard:
So you guys talk a lot, a lot, lot, lot about multi storefront, so I think it'd be good for you to explain what that is and the benefits to our listeners.

Elizabeth:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely, multi storefront is huge, it's been a huge value add and kind of unlocker for a lot of our larger merchants in particular. I'll put it simply, so like the name, multi storefront essentially enables you to deliver multiple store experiences from one commerce backend. Here are a couple of examples of where that use case comes into play and how some listeners might be able to relate that to their scenarios. Say you maybe manage multiple brands, that's a big one. You have different brands, different business units under your overarching entity, you're going to want to deliver customized store experiences reflective of those brands, those products, et cetera. But you don't want to necessarily have to require multiple eCommerce instances to manage those three four brands. So that's one use case. It's a multi-brand seller.
Then there's the business who maybe wants to sell to multiple segments. Maybe you have a B2C arm, but you also have a B2B business. It could be, whether it's power tools or whatever it might be, there are plenty of industries that lend themselves to selling both direct to consumer and to businesses, and MSF, multi storefront, it really helps you to do that in a streamlined, manageable way. And then another third bucket, is one of the biggest ones, is merchants who sell to multiple countries and want to distinguish those store experiences accordingly. That's big, and just a call back to Ted Baker, that's a real value for Ted Baker. When you're selling into 14 markets across the world, you want to be thoughtful and intentional in those 14 experiences. So MSF, as we call it internally, MSF, multi storefront, that also is critical for enabling that level of differentiation, geographically, experientially, et cetera.

Richard:
I mean, listeners, I would just sit and have a little think for a second, maybe a little rewind to step back one minute because I would say 50% of you listening, there's opportunity, massive opportunity, and where we're sitting in the start of a new year right now, how could you guys benefit from one of those multi store. I know when I have my eCommerce stores, we're going back a long time now, I think I finished about 10 years ago with my stores and sold that. But we had a B2B, but we had a B2C and it was very difficult to differentiate. You'd be like, well open an account and then we verify the account and then you'd log in and you see different pricing. But it was very, very clunky, I mean that was a long time ago.
But ultimately, to have that ability to differentiate both very, very clearly, but you're going into one system, you're going into one backend and you've got a very clear definition there, to be able to sell at retail pricing or direct to consumer, or if you've then got a trade arm, are you're going to add that discount in. And I think quite a lot of people are quite scared of doing that, from my experience.

Elizabeth:
You're spot on, Richard. And I'll say this bit here too. While we pride ourselves on a platform that enables compelling experiences for the shopper, we also pride ourselves on a platform that's configured to make it easy for the business user, for the team, as far as managing those experiences that you're delivering, we see those as both very, very important. Can't really just be one, if it's allowing you to really deliver amazing shopper facing experiences, that's great, but do you want to have that be extremely challenging and confusing and all of this stuff, to manage on the backend? We want to mitigate for that too, for the business teams of these eCommerce stores, so super important.

Richard:
And then obviously selling internationally, whether that's just how many people are listening right now, think, yeah, do you know, we've been looking at the US, or we've been looking at Italy. And so the ability to be able to test in effect a country, and if that takes, it's like some of the stories we have internally of companies that have, they've just been UK or just US, but primarily just UK. And then they launch a segment of their products, you don't necessarily need to launch all your products, you're launching a segment, you do your research. And having that tech there in BC that can then very, very easily, and then some of the fulfillment companies and some of the courier delivery companies, that the technology that exists out there just to very easily enable your delivery options in said country and test a segment whether that's right, we're going to do 50 SKUs in Italy and be up and running very, very quickly.
It's incredible, isn't it? Well I think it's a huge opportunity for most, not all merchants obviously, but that ability does very, very easily and quickly and very cost effectively launched in a new country. And it doesn't have to be, it's not like you're launching, you don't have to launch with everything, you can launch with a segment, whether, that's, as you said, the other idea was there with a brand, so a brand in a certain country, if you think, well actually this brand isn't really available in this country, well is there a demand for it? Well, we could test it with some ads, potentially.

Elizabeth:
Absolutely. And really thinking of it too from the perspective of do you want to inadvertently limit the business that you could have access to, as far as the multi-region perspective? If you're kind of establishing yourself in your niche, you could very well be discovered in other, at least adjacent countries, or overseas, who knows. If you're doing that piece of the job well, that could be a natural outcome. But to then not have the ability to deliver an experience that an Italian visitor or a French visitor or an American visitor might feel is more natural to them, we've kind of removed them as a potential customer. So thinking where are you, as a business, are you wanting to invite those opportunities, what sorts of configurations can enable you to more seamlessly invite that?

Richard:
Yeah, exciting, exciting. So listeners, I think have a bloody good think, excuse my language, but it's have a damn good think around what other storefronts can you launch, whether that is around a specific brand only, is that a B2B, B2C, depending on which one you've got now, adding that other one in or testing a country. And then obviously the ability then to test, oh, hang on a minute, we've just done another 10% at more margin maybe, different countries, different pricing, maybe, maybe not, but ultimately an extra 10, 20% in revenue from a couple of countries. If you're sitting there listening to this and you're doing whatever you're doing, doing 10 million pounds a year, an extra million pounds a year from another country with maybe an extra 10% on it. I know it's not that quite straightforward, but to test.
So obviously BigCommerce will give you that ability to do that quite straightforward, quite straight out the box. So let's move on. So what advice would you give to retailers over the coming few months? What was your sort of take on, we're sitting in a new year, and what would you say to merchants, marketeers, eCom store owners right now?

Elizabeth:
I would say this, I would say it is probably more important now than it was before to effectively capture attention when you have it. By that I mean users may not purchase something the first time they go to your site, but they could later, and that is supported when we are intentional around personalization. So my tip for people over the next few months is personalize, personalize, personalize, it's those three things. A little bit more there, and again, speaking as a consumer too, I find that I really appreciate when storefronts do offer me personalized recommendations or recognize that I was looking at something or recognize that I have a certain kind of habit, and you start to formulate that set of data for yourself with each visit.
So if you are not being extremely intentional in serving up personalized experiences, recommendations, suggestions, all of that from the first visit all the way through, that could be a real area of opportunity for you as well. Just knowing that there's only so much time that you have to get their attention and to convert it, especially if they come back to you, how can you maximize each visit to collect useful information that will show that you are able to provide whatever the product that they're looking for, by way of that personalization. That's big. That's big.

Richard:
No, I'm completely with you. It's okay, you've got that click. It's like when you say you spend all this time trying to get the visit and then your mobile doesn't work very well. Well, okay, let's say we fixed that. Now you're on the site, you're getting those visits, it's improving those conversions, isn't it? And to improve those conversions, personalizing that experience and there's various things you can do, and obviously BigCommerce does it brilliantly, we're talking about personalized search, we touched on that, that's an element of that. But obviously seeing products based on activity, implementing SMS, integrating email, personalizing based on activity, personalizing based on browsing, personalizing based on what you put in the basket. Still not bought, but we're trying to get you over the line and we're trying to get you over the line for the second, third, four, fifth time, as opposed ... Okay. But yeah, personalization, personalization, personalization. Yeah, I love it.

Elizabeth:
There's three things right there.

Richard:
Yeah. So going back to your sort of merchants that you're working with, obviously literally thousands of merchants across the whole of the company. And are you seeing any themes around dealing with the sort of cost of living and what merchants are doing, the successful merchants, what sort of things they're doing? I mean, I guess personalization, that they're investing in that, but you seeing any other things with successful merchants now that are sort of, I wouldn't say embracing the cost of living, but ultimately you've got to be obviously aware of what's happening out there and try and help consumers, and are you saying any sort of themes with your successful merchants?

Elizabeth:
Absolutely, and that's maximizing omnichannel. So this is important. So while purchases might be slowing and there's the cost of living increasing and there's increased sensitivity around spend in general, all of those things, that doesn't mean that people aren't buying online though. It means that people are being more intentional, cautious and thoughtful about it, which means that you have to be very intentional and thoughtful about where you're seen and how. So that's where BigCommerce's omnichannel integrations and capabilities are really, really valuable, in terms of being the platform through which you can sell everywhere and be seen everywhere. So from my purview, what we're seeing merchants who are serious about persisting through the ups and downs, it's enabling themselves to be ubiquitous and omnichannel platforms and marketplaces support that and can augment what you might not be seeing to your own brand store or your physical store, whatever it might be, but enables you to still be seen as often as you can be.

Richard:
Yeah. So that ties in quite well actually with Feedonomics, for example, obviously that enables that, doesn't it? Obviously BigCommerce, for those that listeners that might not know, probably about 18 months ago, maybe now or 12 months ago.

Elizabeth:
It was 12.

Richard:
BigCommerce acquired Feedonomics, which enables you to have your products in a feed. But as a lot of listeners may be using eBay, Amazon, Google shopping, Feedonomics has the ability for dozens and dozens of other platforms, but also dozens and dozens of other platforms or several platforms in other countries. So when we go back to that, we're testing in a different country, we can then also test in a different country on a different country's Amazon, eBay, obviously there's lots of others out there. But yeah, omnichannel, yeah, I think it's still surprising, isn't it, and quite scary that merchants are still relying, not as many of our listeners, I'm sure they're a pretty savvy bunch.

Elizabeth:
Totally. Totally.

Richard:
But if you've only got two or three channels running, if you're sitting there thinking, well we've not tried TikTok ads yet. Well I'll tell you what, you need to try them.

Elizabeth:
Try it, try it.

Richard:
Yeah, try them. It's another channel. Another channel. Okay, is it going to get a 10 time ROAS, probably not, no. But is it going to help that touchpoint and actually the overall, I'm not saying you won't get a good ROAS from there, it depends on the merchants, there's a lot of variables that I can't in this conversation, but will it help or will it be a touchpoint for your SEO, your PPC, your Facebook, your Google, your search, your Amazon? Yes, it'll be another touchpoint and overridingly, what is your returns. So yeah, I think that's great.

Elizabeth:
Richard, you said my favorite word, which is touchpoint and maybe it's because I'm a marketer, but I am absolutely obsessed with being able to create multi-touchpoint and journeys for your customers. And not just to create them, but to recognize that they happen more so, and to empower yourselves to maximize that. Your customer is likely going to be interacting with you and exposed to you through many different ways, through search, through if you do video, through TikTok, through social, through whatever it might be, Amazon, et cetera. What you do as a brand is empower yourself to be everywhere you could possibly be seen.

Richard:
100%. I'm getting flashbacks now, I used to do quite a few talks on SEO and there was sort of a theme, it was probably four years ago and Google was like, "Oh you need at least 5.6 touchpoints." But I think it's like eight or nine now, because there's so many channels, isn't there, you wake up in the morning, think of your customer, they wake up in the morning, they're grabbing their mobile. Okay, so are you mobile optimized, you're seeing ads on mobile, they're on their social, they're on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're on Insta, obviously there's a lot of other ones as well. And then they're going, "Right, I'll just have a quick look and I'll just Google." So now they're on the Google as we know it, but the mobile version of Google and then maybe they get up, go downstairs, have their breakfast, and then they maybe pop their iPad open and now they're on an iPad.
So now what does your site look like? Then they get to work and they're on a desktop, or they've had little a look on YouTube. So hang on a minute, before lunchtime, there maybe seven or eight touchpoints and a lot of those can be via remarketing after that first touchpoint. So yeah, omnichannel obviously enables, and tech like Feedonomics, obviously there's a lot of other options out there, but Feedonomics obviously enables that, those touchpoints. So yeah.

Elizabeth:
Spot on.

Richard:
Omnichannel. Okay, so crystal ball, well maybe not crystal ball time, but I always like to try and get a little bit out of our guest. Obviously I was with some of my colleagues at the partner, big partner event a couple of months back, about three months back now. And obviously I was privy to some of the new things that are coming out for BigCommerce, which I think most of those are common knowledge now. But is there anything that you could share with our listeners that's maybe a side of BigComm or something that's come out recently or coming out at the moment, or maybe it's already out and just not talked about very much, that our listeners should be looking at?

Elizabeth:
I will talk about a couple of things. So one is that you can expect expanded functionalities around two things I've already touched on a little bit in our conversation today, multi storefront and B2B. Those are two real needle movers for enterprise businesses, for growing businesses, the ability to have a platform that can enable you to deliver robust B2B experiences and MSF, multi storefront as well, sometimes together. So you might be seeing more iterations and developments as related to those two functionalities, that will make it even easier and more powerful for our merchants to make the most of them. So that's what I can say on that bit.

Richard:
Yeah, I think the B2B side is, you guys seem to be really flying the flag for that, and I think it's great. Obviously that's more of a certain type of merchant, but it also, it should be making merchants that maybe haven't got that side to their business, think, well actually there's a partner here, there's a tech here that is geared up for that serious growth on the potential B2B side, whether you're there or you're not there yet, sort of thing. Yeah,

Elizabeth:
Spot on. And that's another value prop that we've seen resonate with people, is folks who are either B2B or B2C, but could envision a world where they might become the other two. And being able to be on a platform that could enable that evolution is huge, to not have to prepare again for another replatform or whatever it is. So really thinking what do I need now, but also what could I need, how could I evolve and could this platform suit those potential evolutions? That has been where we've resonated, I think, with merchants.

Richard:
Well, we've come to an end, Elizabeth. This is it.

Elizabeth:
Already, Richard?

Richard:
I know, it's flown by. It's been an absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. So I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you recommend to our listeners?

Elizabeth:
Oh gosh, where to begin? I'll give two, I'll give two because they're both a bit different. My number one book recommendation, which anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear, it's Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. It is an anchor text in stoic philosophy, written by Marcus Aurelius himself, stoic philosopher, Roman Emperor, et cetera. Amazing book on all things. Just owning your response to the world, owning your kind of mental peace and your emotional peace and foundation, whoever you are, whatever you navigate. Life can be challenging and chaotic, we could all benefit from being able to learn how to pull on our own inner calm to face that. So that book is one of my go-to's. I read it almost every day. I reread it a lot.
Second book, little more businessy, is called Turning the Flywheel, by Jim Collins. Jim Collins is a well-known organizational business author and writer and writes books all about how companies succeed and thrive, why some of them don't, what they can do to be on the success side. And Turning the Flywheel is a really short, digestible, I think it's like 40 pages or something like that, it's pretty small, but it's a great distilled book on the key things you want to have in place to keep your business running how you want it to be running, is the best way to describe it. Really kind of distilling what makes it unique, what drives your economic engine, what are the things that are unique to your business that help it to stand out and progress forward, and how do you repeat that? It's all about that. I recommend it.

Richard:
Brilliant. They sound like the perfect two books for where we are in the year, brand New Year ahead of us. Two great ones there for the business and there for the mental side of life and business, which is as important, isn't it, if we're not right, it's quite challenging to do the other, isn't it? So I think that's-

Elizabeth:
100%, 100%.

Richard:
Fantastic couple of options there. We'll link them both up. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast. For those that want to find out more about BigCommerce or potentially reach out to you as well, what's the best way to do that?

Elizabeth:
As far as BigCommerce goes, you can just go to our website, of course, and learn more, read more, if anything would be more useful for you to get more insight into, head to the website, also LinkedIn, and feel free to find me directly, Elizabeth Azide, I'm on LinkedIn and all the socials and all of that fun stuff.

Richard:
Fantastic. Well thanks Elizabeth, it's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to-

Elizabeth:
Thank you, Richard. I appreciate it. Talk soon.

Richard:
Bye-bye.

Elizabeth:
Bye.