Commerce & Coffee: Peak Season Preparation

Transcript

So welcome, everyone to Congress and Coffee. Today, our fabulous presenter Corey Gelato will be going for preparing your business for peak season. We’ve designed our webinars to be interactive, as you know, so we encourage you to ask questions in the questions box throughout the presentation. You type them in there and we’ve set aside the last 10 minutes or so for Q&A and we’re going to do our best to answer as many of those as we can. I do also want to quickly mention a couple of housekeeping items before we get started. We are presenting in Adobe Connect today and we are live. But don’t worry, this is being recorded and can be viewed on demand and shared with other members of your team at a later time. So you will get a recording of today’s event from us in an email tomorrow afternoon. I would also like to point out that at the top of your screen there’s a black bar with the icon in the hand on it. There you can drop down and find different actions that you can utilize representations of. You like what you see. You can like, you can laugh, applaud, and so on. But we’d love to see your engagement throughout the presentation. So definitely encourage you to utilize that feature. And then on the next screen, there’s a handout available for download. Corey put together a bunch of resources for us today. So definitely download that and use it as needed. There’s upcoming events, different experience like articles, so really helpful stuff. And then as we’re closing out the webinar, we have a few survey questions that are going to be at the bottom of your screen. If you could take an extra 30 seconds to fill those out. That would be greatly appreciated. So with that, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Alon Cohen and I’m a senior digital events manager here for our Customer Success Strategy team at Adobe. I’ve been with Adobe for almost six years now and spent the majority of those years organizing and hosting our customer exclusive events and then spent about two years working with Adobe’s advertising customers. And then before coming to Adobe, I spent many years at different media and advertising agencies around New York, but I am excited to be here now hosting events like this for you guys, our customers to give any questions or comments about today’s event or any of our events, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d also like to introduce our presenter for today, our Corey Gelato, our senior eCommerce strategy consultant, who hopefully almost everybody knows. Corey brings a ton of experience to us and Adobe. He has over 16 years of experience in eCommerce, advising merchants across a variety of different industries, and then almost all of that time has been with Adobe Commerce or formerly Magento. So definitely the one that we want to hear from at this session. And Corey does also strategize directly with customers to ensure that they’re maximizing what Adobe Commerce has to offer. In fact, he also hosts live in-person roundtable events. The next one is actually in L.A. next week. And then there’s another in-person roundtable in Dallas in October. So if you would like more information about that, please reach out to myself or Corey. And we can definitely put you in touch with right person to get you to one of those events. So we’re lucky to have Corey and his expertise here as a mainstay at our Commerce and Coffee. And with that, let’s jump in to these presentation right. So this is today’s agenda. We have already gone through our welcomes. We are going to kick off with getting prepared for peak season and then how to execute throughout peak a peak season and then review and reflect upon how everything went. Then Corey is going to jump into a live demo and product and we’ll follow up with Q&A. But before we get started, we would like to ask everybody a poll question. So I’m going to bring up a poll. So what is your biggest focus for this year’s peak season? Are you focusing on optimizing website performance enhancing, enhancing customer personalization, streamlining inventory entertainment, or increasing marketing and promotions? What is going to be your biggest focus this year, assuming that your peak season is the holiday season? That’s what we’re mostly focusing on. All right. It actually seems like the biggest priority for folks on the call is optimizing your website performance, which is great news because we have a behind the BR, which is another webinar session Commerce focused on optimizing your storefront, which is going to be in October, October 17th. So there’s actually a link to sign up for that in the handout, so be sure to join that since it seems like that is everybody’s priority over 70%. So All right, I’m going to hand it finally over to Corey to kick us off with the presentation. Corey, Corey, you’re on. There you go. You’re not on mute, but we can’t hear you. I’m sorry. I can’t hear you. Oh, sorry. Yep. Now I got you. Okay. So long as anybody else can hear me, too. All right. So thanks, everybody. I appreciate you joining us today. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’re already in September. I can’t believe how fast 2024 has gone so far. I’m really excited about today For the peak season prep. We always kind of do it around this time, but I always want to make sure I’m focusing on any buddy’s peak season prep. So whenever your peak season is or your peak seasons are, these are some kind of key areas that really the focus has always been on. But there’s obviously some shifts just in the atmosphere, just in the ecosystem. And so there’s been a lot of different things that are happening. So I want to kind of set the stage. I want to kind of go through a few different areas and that really was an area, get prepared, execute and obviously do a fallback, see what you did, see what could work for future prep or peak seasons, etc… So I want to start out I mean, first and foremost, what do you need? You need inventory, right? So inventory management, I look at as kind of the first and forefront of what you’re going to be doing for your peak season prep. Now, with the uncertainty of products, right, the forecasting, your demand and so forth. So one sometimes is a little bit difficult. So what I typically always say when I’m speaking to different merchants, different customers regardless, B to B, B to C or B to B side. So if you’re a B2B merchant that’s on your right now, think about it this way You are supplying potentially a B to C merchant. So you are preparing and providing products to somebody else that might be their peak season, which is maybe now, maybe it’s in April, maybe it’s in the summertime, whatever kind of that looks like for you. But it’s always something to kind of think about. So use that historical data to forecast that demand accurately. Consider trends, seasonality, current market conditions. Make sure that you stock up, ensure that you have a sufficient inventory for, let’s say, your best selling products and make sure that kind of your boarding of stock outs to, you know, think about it that way. And I think ultimately of the day it’s diversify your suppliers to have backup suppliers if you can, if that’s possible, just in case of shortages and delays. We all know things happen, right? If anything that the pandemic told us, it was that it’s just there’s so much uncertainty. So it’s to be prepared. It’s making sure that you diversify that at the same time, too. So kind of look at it from those sides. And that’s something that I always say is like that’s kind of the start of any peak season. It’s really thinking about it as your inventory first. Now that said, your website performance, right? No performance is a vague term, but let’s kind of take that back. Let’s let’s think about what website performance really is about here. I’m really talking about specifically the site speed itself and what you’re going to be doing. So as part of our even our blog articles around this that’s around getting ready for your peak season, it does start with your infrastructure, making sure that your application is running optimally. So things that I typically say around this and this is something that has been a reoccurrence for any sort of peak season or high traffic event that you might have as you’re preparing for something like that. It’s about load testing, perform load testing on your website to ensure it can then handle that increased traffic and ultimately, as you’re going through that load testing, right, you’re benchmarking everything. Make sure you’re optimizing your site too at the same time. So if you are seeing areas before you go into a full code phrase, if you are seeing areas that are kind of bogging your performance down, that might be something to just kind of take a look at, see what’s going on, see how you can kind of help that speed along, but also make sure that you are increase that infrastructure side. And if you’re not using things like a CDR and if you are an on prem customer or non-prime merchant, if things like a CD and making sure you have something like that in place to be able to deliver your assets or your static content at a fast pace area, that’s something to really kind of think about. So image optimization, forecasting your traffic and even your orders to. So from even from a database side, what does that that average order value or average order volume sorry look like at that point is it going to increase as well it should. Right. Ultimately that’s what you’re trying to do. So if something like that’s happening, you want to make sure you’re prepared for something like that as well. Now, obviously your user experience. So I know they kind of go hand-in-hand, right? You’re talking about website performance, you’re thinking about site speed. Obviously, part of that user experience is absolutely part of site speed. That all said, though, it is making sure from you actually your enhancements are they’re making sure that your site has a simplified navigation, make sure you’re improving that product discovery and ensure a seamless checkout experience. Consider implementing one click checkout options. Consider things like multi ship aspects. Those types of things are definitely critical for peak season. Now you if you’re peak season is holiday season, multi ship is a really, really good opportunity. If you are a business that supply and say corporate gifts even something like that which could be more in that B2B realm even something like that, thinking about a multi ship option, how does that look? How does that work? Making sure again, that area in that user experience is simplistic is definitely very key, especially when you’re in, again, peak season performance side. If your competitors are out there, let’s again not even just say it’s part of holiday season, but the competitive landscape is there. The competitive landscape is going to ensure simplicity. So you need to make sure you’re kind of again, setting the stage, if you will, for certain parts of that as well. Now, part of that, right. I know this is definitely kind of just piggybacking on that user experience, just the same thing is high performance. And realistically, the way that I always think about things is exactly that. I think about every every aspect of a business is user experience. How are we delivering user experience? What can we do exactly? So part of that is really where we kind of like fall in this supercharges in that checkout experience. So the checkout experience should not be overlooked, especially during peak season. It drives the customer experience, it reduces cart abandonment. And by giving your customers or your consumers the power to pay how they want to pay your increase in sales. And you’re also increasing brand loyalty. So one of the things I like to call out here is Payment Services, which is a native and Adobe Commerce solution that simplifies payments by providing a comprehensive, unified experience which helps merchants increase their revenue, your shopper conversion and ultimately your operation efficiency. So all of those are key aspects again, for delivering more that customer experience and making sure that you’re delivering that. Now, obviously, we’ve got to get people to the site right? Ultimately, as you’re preparing for your peak season, the things that I typically start looking at from this site is really kind of plan those campaigns early, as early as you possibly can. We all know or if we think about the holiday season, the holiday season starts a lot sooner than it used to right back in the day. You would see it as maybe in the US it was Black Friday. That’s when you’d start seeing sales kick off maybe a little bit before they’re now you’re starting to see sales start in mid-October. So you’re you’re talking about two months in advance almost of what your actual peak of the season might be. That’s when you’re starting to see people shop. So it’s planning those campaigns as early as you possibly can. The way I think about this, too, beyond just saying this is the things you should be looking at, a good question to ask yourself is what channels perform best? That is a question looking at your analytics, looking at your past historical data, what channels have performed best similar to what you’ve done for your website performance you’re essentially looking at? It’s similar to that You’re supposed to analyze that data, analyze previous peak seasons, analyze previous high trending periods and topics and specific aspects of keywords. What is that? What does that look like and where can those campaigns, where did they drive in the most conversions? Is it email? Is it SMS? Is it social media? Is it PPC? Where exactly does that drive from and how are you delivering? And it really, again, what converts the best, those are the areas typically when you’re looking at that, you’re thinking about your target audience, right? And the audience that is shopping and maybe even more specifically during that peak period, who is that audience? That might be a better question, better thought to kind of look through is is who is that? Who is that target audience versus potentially if your target audience shifts and shuffles between year over year and month over month? That’s something to kind of keep considering as you’re going through things now, customer service, right, as you’re going through this period. One of the things that’s extremely important and for your consumers, for your buyers, is that customer service side. You want to make sure that you have increase of staff if you can. You want to make sure that can handle that influx of inquiries and issues potentially consider hiring temporary staff if it’s possible. Training your current team on common peak season issues such as tracking orders, processing returns and potentially handling complaints. Ultimately, an area that you can think about is also utilizing live chat. So live chat can can offer that simplistic aspect. So remember we fall back to a few sides before that user experience. So the live chat really does help deliver that instant connection, that instant communication where somebody doesn’t have to call, they don’t have to send an email. And essentially what you could do with that is you’re going to drive that conversion. We’re in a very fast paced world. E-commerce is a very fast paced world, so people are looking for answers right away. Another opportunity within live chat is using some sort of AI feature. So AI powered chat bots, they do provide instant assistance to customers. So if somebody asking for something specific again, you might have enough a queue page. But at the end of the day asking after a chat and that chat bot being able to direct somebody somewhere that could help drive that efficiency and that customer service, ultimately it comes down to this right after you’re getting through that experience itself and somebody does place that order. The logistics and the fulfillment side are extremely critical, right? So you’re shipping options as somebody is going through that checkout offer. Multiple shipping options include expedited shipping so that customers can go into there. We all know from from a shopper side, too, there are times that we buy things late to late and we need expedited shipping. So if you’re able to offer something such as this is expedited shipping, again, regardless of B2C, B2B, this is something that you can look at and think about. Okay, do our customers, do our buyers look are they looking for something like this? Also, it’s partnering with reliable carriers. So hopefully this was again, we’re prepping for peak season. So this is something you’re going to be really evaluated way before it kind of comes down to, because I know this, this does take time, but ensure your shipper carry you’re shipping carriers are reliable and can handle that increased volume. It’s the same thing here. I would always consider multiple carriers to avoid those types of delays and ultimately that order tracking is extremely important. So this will eliminate where you have customer service representatives that are going to need to be fielding these types of questions. One of the things within Adobe Commerce that it offer it natively offers is really kind of around that order tracking side. So there’s a widget that you can utilize that tracks orders regardless if you’re a guest customer or a registered customer. That way a customer could come back and they can say, okay, where’s my order right now currently? And by them clicking on that, they can punch their own information, find out exactly where that order is, whether it’s still in fulfillment, it’s been shipped, it’s expected delivery, etc. Those types of things are important again, to kind of think through as you’re about to prep for that peak season. Security and fraud. Yeah, I know that this is something and I laugh at it because it’s this is obviously in a lot of what we’re going through is constant. It’s not just peak season prep, but this is something that as you’re getting ready, be sure that you are ready for security and fraud, right? You want to make sure that you’re prepared for something like this. This is going to happen. This is no matter what you try to do, no matter how you do it, mitigating these types of risks. So upgrade security, ensure that your site is secure with an SSL certificate. First and foremost, the software is updated and then you have regular security audits, protect customer data and payment information. And then from a fraud side, you want to implement a fraud detection tool to monitor transactions and prevent potential fraudulent activities. So this is another area, again, if you have like a studio and if you have a in place, those types of things are really going to be able to help mitigate where you’re seeing an increase of those. And then again, from the payment side, that fraud protection side is really critical to make sure you have in place again, mostly from that brand loyalty side as well. Kind of another area of this is thinking about post sale, right? Post conversion. Post sale has happened and I’ll talk about a little bit loyalty in a second too. But really the returns and the refund side, this is something that I think is somewhat often missed in certain cases. And again, I think even from a B2B side, certain areas, certain levels, this makes a lot of sense. But, you know, one of the things that we do see typically, again, as as we from the Adobe side, we do the analysis after peak season, after the holiday season is over, that returns and refunds. We do see that there is a clear return policy that’s been adjusted. So the return or streamlining that process looks like typically that that window was extended. So if you usually allow returns for 30 days, you might extend it to 45 days, you might extend it to 60 days or something like that. But it’s also making sure that your policy is very clear. Are you getting a full refund or are you getting credit? Those types of things are definitely critical. Again, just thinking about it from your can, that seamless experience, making sure that as you’re going through that process, it’s something that a customer feels very comfortable with. They can they’re very, very clearly knowledge on what exactly they’re going to be going through through that return policy. One of the things I kind of want to call out at the end of this is really kind of that sustainability and CSR side. So really I think that we are starting to see more and more of a kind of that that big push is around again, that sustainability and the CSR side, we’re seeing charitable contributions that help drive customer loyalty, customer loyalty is critical, especially with your first interaction with the customer. It could be during your peak season, so it may even be outside of your peak season too. But depending on what your business is or something like that, it’s a good opportunity, especially if you’re trying to increase that brand loyalty. So beyond you being professional and very, very good at your products and knowledgeable about your products or your services, at the end of the day, one of the another areas that shoppers are starting to more and more appreciate is around that charitable contribution, more kind of, again, that neighborhood type feel aspect of it. So now that you’ve prepped the execution of everything as we’re starting to kind of think through this. So as you’re you think through this, you see stars are a good way to source feedback. Right? At the end of the day, you’ve increased that. You’ve looked at it from that side. Hopefully you’re analyzing, even if you have an eye chat that is in place, you’re analyzing what customers are doing. So if you see as an example, if you see an increase within that, I chat of where’s my order, what’s going out, my order, what’s my order status? Maybe something like that could kind of give you an opportunity to say, you know what, I’m going to put a nice banner that’s there at the top of the page or somewhere in my home page that basically says track order here, something like that. So those types of things are really critical. So monitoring those type of real time analytics or customer feedback is definitely important as you’re going through that process and as you’re going through your peak season. If your peak season is short period or if it’s a long dated either one, it’s important to acknowledge that feedback and see either. If you can make an adjustment during peak season, great. If not, it’s something to make sure that you roll back to that. You think back on later on down the line. And really it’s about being flexible. It’s I love the idea of kind of tracking, see what’s going on, monitoring, adapting, pivoting wherever you need to specifically as you’re getting that type of feedback. Again, the same thing with your products, right? If your products go out of stock that you are, you know, are your best sellers. In that case, maybe think about that product went out of stock. But here’s another product that’s very similar or if you know that product’s going to come back in stock before your peak season is over, is it an opportunity to back orders? Is an opportunity to do a restock alert, something like that, which are again, both native capabilities within a platform is an opportunity. Ultimately at the end of your peak season. This is kind of what I was hitting on before, but it’s around that review and reflecting, right? So it’s looking back at your peak season and ultimately using it for the future, for your future peak season. So just as we were talking about in the beginning of this, around preparing, thinking about it this way, your postseason reflection or your post peak area that you’re reflecting back on what worked, what didn’t work, what worked, okay, Those are things to really kind of think of and consider. So after that peak season’s over review that performance reviewed across the board too. So how was your operations? How was your shipping? How is your logistics? How is your payment options? What drove more payments than anything else? What drove conversions? What products sold better, what products were not as good? Those types of things are really areas to ask yourself and ultimately, how can you retain customers? So if you are, let’s say you’re a business that you know, your life cycle is maybe every three years that a customer is going to purchase from you that could help you, that could give you a good opportunity when they might purchase. Now, if it’s a little bit more often than that, that’s another opportunity. How can you retain those customers? Is there are ways to approach them from an email service, whatever it might look like, wherever your target audience? Again, going back to what channels work the best, how can you kind of retarget them in the future? How can you bring them back here to your to your business and to your brand and make it sure that they come become that loyalists essentially so that’s an area that’s an opportunity that post that peak season, there is opportunities to continue that that delivery and continue that conversion. All right. With all that, I love to jump into a demonstration here. So let me start sharing screen one second. I’ll let you know when you’re good. Thank you. And you should start seeing now. Once again, it’s loading stuff. All good. Perfect. Awesome. All right. So I want to take you through a few different things and I’ll kind of set the stage for everybody just so you kind of get some good information of just where I’m going to go here. So I want to start with preparing the content side of my site. So I’ll walk you through my business quickly. We’re going to go through staging content now, beyond staging content, I’m going to talk about widgets and they’re going to talk about dynamic content. So for those that are personalizing that experience, kudos to you. Everyone’s doing it. I know that that’s on you right now, but we’re going to go through that aspect. I want to walk through some other things with widgets too, with like shipping expectations, mini cart promos, etc. We’re going to go through a catalog price rule. What go through merchandise merchandizing, obviously. So within merchandise, we’re going to talk about stock options displaying out of stock products, doing X threshold type things. We’re also going to do some multi shipping gift options and some guest checkout. So we’re going to run through a lot in the next probably about 20 minutes. So just kind of hold on and hopefully I’m not too fast here. So let me set the stage. Those of you that have been on this before, you know, my my brand, but my fictitious brand here. LUMA We focus on different fitness aspects. So we focus on runners. We focus on yoga, we focus on weightlifters, and we focus on the general fitness enthusiast. So ultimately my targets are that area. So my peak season, I have a few of them. This one, I’m really focused towards the holiday season. So for mine that you’re going to see today, it’s going to be geared towards that holiday season. I’ve already started prepping my site knowing that I’m probably about three weeks out from my business starting to kick off into that holiday season. So I’m already starting to get that ready. I’m showing you just the front end for a second because right now I have nothing that’s focused towards that and anything that’s focused towards holiday season just yet. This is my homepage specifically right now. I’m not logged in. You can actually see my rotator at the top giving somebody reward points, etc. and I’m going to change that. I want you guys to see as I change that because I’m preparing for my peak season and I’m going to showcase that more from that holiday aspect. You’re going to see how I’m going to kind of shift this a little bit and go into different areas. So with that, let’s kind of jump into the admin side. So where I want to start first and foremost is that home page. That’s why I kind of wanted to showcase it first and foremost. So my homepage, I’m just going to kind of go into my pages. You’re going to go specifically into my new homepage. So everybody I’m sure knows how to get to there. You can already see automatically right away that my schedule changes are here. So one really cool thing that I’ve set up with mine is that I have everything evolved around this 2024 holiday season. So what do I mean by that? I have a category that’s going live, which is my holiday sale. I also have my content page going and then I have dynamic blocks that are also getting scheduled to go live during that exact same period. So on my homepage currently right now I have different basically hero banners and I have products that are changing. So if you are a fitness enthusiast that is a weightlifter, if you are a yoga enthusiast, if you are a runner, I basically interchanged that main hero banner out that you saw on the front end. So I’ll just quickly go back to that. This banner that’s right here. Then nothing happens until you move. This is basically my general, right? I don’t have a segmented customer yet. I don’t have too much information on them just yet. So I do the same thing with my peak season because I’m essentially going to retarget you as you come back to my site too. So if you view the product, if you’ve touched a product, if you’ve gone to a category, I basically am going to shift you into different segments based off of that. So I kind of come back here. I wanted to show you what my page currently looks like. So this is my content page. Currently. You can see exactly what I just mentioned around that hero banner that’s at the top there. Remember that nothing happens. So you move that dynamic block rotator changes that content out, that content piece out based on customer segments. So personalization is absolutely important still during your peak season, especially if you have specific peak seasons that are around that target, right? Let’s say it’s not just gifting and it is around a specific person that purchases during the specific time. That is something that is extremely critical to ensure that you do have that dynamic kind of content, that dynamic again, personalized effect essentially. So with mine, again, we could see here I’m starting my November eight, I was a few weeks off what I said before, but I’m starting my November 8th and I’m ending mine on December 30th because then as soon as Jan one hits, I’m going to go into a full kind of like, Hey, we’re fitness January 1st. You know, it’s time to start your New Year’s resolution, etc., etc… That’s what I’m going to kind of focus on. But currently for mine, if I go to preview here, this is my site as it would be as of November eight, 2024, at 12 a.m. This is what my site would look like so you could see my home page banner has changed, even though I’ve kind of kept the content the same or the text the same. I’ve changed my banner. If I keep scrolling down here, you could start seeing I’m really changing what the look and feel is based on my quote unquote peak season, which is my holiday season. So I’m gearing my assets and gearing my images towards that specifically. Now, the same thing that I said before, right? If I’m going to let’s say I go into this, I also change the navigation. You can see here as my holiday sale one, I’m going to log in here because I do want to show you this. I want to show you this from the perspective. So the really cool thing about it, I’m not sure if you use it that often or not, but if you don’t use condensation, The really cool thing about content staging is you can see the full kind of capable of everything. You could see what the experience is going to be if no matter where it is, if it’s a part of the navigation, it’s a category page. So in in mind and I’m sorry I realized I wasn’t sharing that until just now, sharing it now. So in mine you can see again my preview of this. You could see again, I’m changing the assets again. All I do is click on that preview and we’re brought to this page specifically. Now I’m logged in here, so I’m showing you something a little bit different from the front end experience. But essentially this is that experience as of November eight, 2024, right? So at midnight, this is what the experience is going to look like. We’re changing our assets out. So you could see again throughout that entire navigation around the homepage, everything has kind of change and it’s based off of what I’ve kind of set up there. So you can even see again, holiday sale here and you can see that. Thank you for being a loyal customer just as I had before. Now if I sign out, I just want to show you this from that other side. Again, this is showing you the experience as it would be on that November 8th date, essentially. So in this side, again, you can kind of see what I’m different, different types of things I’m looking at now. If I want to go back and just want to see what I have stage as my content right now, this is your content staging dashboard. So for those of you that are not aware of where this is, I’m going to show that in just a second. But this is that dashboard that basically tells you, hey, this is where, you know, this is your peak season that’s about to start. Here’s your start time, here’s your end time, Here’s your Black Friday one that’s coming up. This is your sale that’s happening. This is your 2024 holiday campaign. That’s coming up. This is your Valentine’s Day campaign that’s coming up, etc… All those different days you can really see in that. So two different ways that you saw that. So on the home page side. So if I just go back here, go to pages, I go back to that home page so you could see that one more time. My schedule changes are directly at the top there. No matter what section that I have set up, essentially you’ll be able to see that. So if I go to the category, which I’ll go to next, you’ll see this as well, it’s going to show you that these schedule changes are ready to go. Now back underneath content, that content staging dashboard is right here. So this is where you can get to that. So let me just do one thing with the category. I you want to show it to you just so you can see kind of what it looks like. So again, that front end experience you saw that that holiday page was not yet or the holiday sale was not yet there. I go to the holiday sale category. You’ll see. Here’s that’s a little change here. We can also view an edit that we could change it. We could do whatever we kind of would like with it. So I want to add something to this holiday sale right now. So I know at Current place we have the home page updates, we have the dynamic content that’s changing depending on what type of customer segment at your head on. And we also know that we’re going to change certain things with that rotator that’s at the top there. So what I’ll do on this side, what I want to kind of do is I want to actually create something in real time. So beyond just staging the content, let’s say I want to pivot, let’s say let’s pretend that we’re November and now and I want to just change something quickly. So on my current home page. So again, I’ll show this quickly, we have the sign up for an account today. We see that 20 or more points. What I want to do is instead I actually want to come back here. I’m going to go into my widgets in time. I actually already created my new rotators for the top up there in the header. So I’m going to go into this. Here’s my customer and loyalty widget that’s here, the dynamic block rotator. So I’m going to click into this. We can see I do have this set up, it’s showing up page top for all pages. So no matter where I am in the customer journey, that’s what’s going to show they’re going to go into this widget option and instead of showing just the two that I have, let me see all of my dynamic blocks. So I’m going to basically check off these ones because I don’t want to show these ones anymore. Instead, the ones that I created the 2020 for holiday registered loyalty and free shipping. And this one, I want these to start showing up. So again, right now it’s November 9th. I’m just basically doing the final touches of my quote unquote peak season release so we can see I’ve now saved this. If I go back to the front end to do quick refresh here. And basically what you’ll start seeing is you’ll see there’s there’s added a new content piece that’s in here. It’s again, it’s stacking on top of each other just because of me being logged in where you can you can kind of see what’s coming in there now. We can see that we’re having that holiday sale. I keep scrolling down here. Again, the current content that’s going to be there is what was there before. But again, we’re going to see that a little bit different if we go back to that stage content. Now, another area that I want to focus on, one of the things that I like doing setting up for mine is I like creating those promo areas. So with like mini cart, things like that, I want to showcase free shipping options. I want to showcase that you’re going to receive free shipping for certain things that you’re doing. So the thing that I want to do is I want to create essentially a new static block that is going to be aligned with my mini cart. So if I go back here just for one second, going to go back to the mini widget here and I want to show you what I currently have. So I have the mini cart promotion block that’s here. I don’t actually have anything assigned to it right now. So if I you know, again, I’ll show this really quickly, but let’s say from my front end side, let me add I’m going to add anything to my cart quickly and I’ll just kind of showcase just how I’m going to have this set up. So essentially, let’s say I want to grab these products and we could see my cart here. So again, what you could see is I have an item in my car right now, right? There’s no promo that’s here. There’s nothing that’s showcasing here. So what I want to do is I want to add a promo into this mini car and I want it to showcase during that peak season side. So again, November 8th forward. So let me kind of come back here. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to keep this live. So this is that widget that we’re going to use. I’m going have to select the block, but first I have to create that block. So let’s go in. Let’s create a new static block here. You show this in real time to show you kind of how quick I could really you could set something like this up. So I’m going to add a new block here. My new block, let’s call it holiday free shipping promo when I call this 24 and I’m going to go into Page Builder, do a quick row here. Let’s also add a image background here, and I’m going to select for my gallery. So one of the things that I do with my side. So again, depending on your business models and what you guys do, but I’m essentially using the the asset manager here, so I want to be able to select specific products. You could see I have Holiday 2020 for any holiday assets that I have for my home page are also loaded underneath here you can see all of the different assets that I do have created, but here is that free shipping, one that specifically I want to use. I’m going to grab this, I’m going to add this. I’m going to select this. Now, the only thing I want to do here is I just want to center align this. So I’m going to go into Page Builder, Center, align it, save that, and now we can kind of see just an image. That’s all I want. I don’t even need them to be clickable here. I just want to build a showcase promo. So I’m going to click out of this. Let’s save this. And now I want to go back to that widget. So again, this is not yet active. Actually. Instead of making this enabled, let’s do this a little bit differently. So I’m going to I’m going to basically disable this and let’s schedule a new update here. So this new update I’m going to assign to an existing update. So why I’m a scientist to an existing update is because we already have something scheduled. We have the 2024 holiday season that’s scheduled here. Let’s see, it starts November eight. So I want to put it as part of this scheduled update. So I’m going to select that. And the only change I’m going to do here is I’m just going to enable this block. So essentially making it active so we could see this is now activated. Now, I want to go back to that widget and within this widget. So let me go back to that idea. Here’s our mini cart promotion. Now I’m going to select that static block. So we have a bunch of static blocks that you’re going to be able to see here. Let’s grab that latest one that we have, which is that shipping expectation. Grab that and basically we’ll just save this. So the only thing that we’re doing slightly different here is we scheduled that content even though we’ve activated it within the widget. Remember, that block is not yet enabled. So even if I go to the front end right now, let’s say we go through a little bit, we click on a few different things. I go in, you could see that that’s not actually showcased in there just yet. So if I go back here now and let’s say that I take a look at my let’s do the content, we’ll do that block side. So again, here’s that BLOCK Let me just look at it quickly. We could see it’s disabled currently. Let’s look at one other piece of this. We can also see that we have it set up to be scheduled as part of that 2024. So we could do preview in a few different areas. Right. I’m actually going to go back to just one second because I think I went through that a little bit too quick. I’m going to go back to the widget. This is the block that we’re using. Somebody go back to that widget quickly. Again, you’re not scheduling on that widget or I’m not in this area. I’m scheduling as part of that static block. We can see here, here’s the static block, right? So we have our static block here. I’m actually going to look at disabled because I didn’t see disabled there. This is the one we’re doing. That’s the holiday free shipping promo. So I’m going to save and continue that one. Now, what I’ll do, instead of going through it from that static block site, I’m going to go to the pages again. I’m going to go right back to what I started with in the beginning, which is just looking at this from the preview that we’ll see as, again, we’re just coming into this as of November eight. So we’ll look at this preview. Now. What we could see is again, homepage. Everything is showcasing as it would for specifically that holiday season as of November eight. Now, if we go into that mini cart, we can now see our free shipping as well. So again, front end side, what’s currently there if we show this? So I’ll share this tab instead. You see this is what we currently have by just show you that we’re not seeing that right now. We’re not seeing that free shipping banner or anything like that. So we’ve now scheduled that to be part of that push. Right. Next thing I want to show is around shipping expectations. So I do this on my site, hopefully in some areas of your customer journey, you are noting what your shipping expectation is. So are you shipping within 3 to 5 days? Is there an expected delivery date? Something like that is definitely critical as part of that too. So what I have set up is I’ll show you my block first because it’s really straightforward. It’s the shipping expectation block that’s here. I’m going to just show you what I have. It’s really simple. Usually ships within one or two business days on every single one of my pdp’s I showcase this right now. I don’t showcase it in the sense of where I could go into every single product and adjust content. I actually am bringing this in through also a widget again. So in my case, again, this is where I would edit the actual content of it, but how I’m bringing that into the PDP, I’m going to show you my widget here. So my widget, the PDP shipping widget that I have, so I titled it, you know, you can, you can title it anything that you want to. And in my case, I’m showing this on all products and I’m showcasing it specifically in the product auxiliary info. And if I go here, show you the widget option, you’ll actually see here is that shipping expectations. That’s how I’ve selected that static block. So similar to what you just saw that I did with that promo, doing the exact same aspect here. Now in the front end, just want to show you what that looks like. So if I go in here and I go to let’s just go to this product, for instance, you can see you re right here usually ships within one or two business days. So that time bringing that into the product subsidiary side as well. So again, it’s just showcasing just a different way, different thing that you could do just from that side. And it is important from your customer experience side, they want to know when should they expect something like this. We are all wanting to know when we’re going to expect it before we even get to that checkout funnel. We want to know what that might look like. All right, now next piece. What do we kind of do around different types of things as we’re getting ready for a peak season? Right. You’re probably going to do some sort of promotion. So I’m going to do a really, really straightforward promotion here. I’m sure everyone knows how to create a promotion, but again, since we’re preparing for my peak season, I just want to show you what I would be doing in my case. So underneath my marketing tab, I’m going to go to my catalog price rule because I do want to put it on the catalog price. I want to on a specific category. I don’t want it to be part of, let’s say, my, my and my cart side. I don’t want to just showcase it. Then I want to showcase it as you’re going through. I want to be able to kind of represent it right that in there. So going here, I’m going to add a new rule. Let’s just call it exactly that 2024 holiday season catalog promotion. I’m going to not activate this yet. Remember, I want to put it as part of that scheduled update as of November 8th. I am going to, in this case, use all customer groups so it’s not to anyone specific. My condition here, all I’m going to do is I actually am going to do category in the category. Remember, I had that holiday promotion one the holiday sale. When that’s coming up, I’m going to use that in my action. Let’s just do 20% off. Perfect. And I’m going to discard subsequent rules as well. In this case. So basically all I’m doing is if the category is equal to that 67, which is our holiday sale one, you’re going to get a 20% off of each of those products that are essentially there so different types you could do what you do applies a fixed, fixed amount, adjust final price to this percentage, so forth, so on. So in my case, I’m doing it as a 20% off the original price. That is available for a product, but it’s within this category. So I’ll go in. I’m going to save and continue because I am creating this net new. So now I want to actually schedule that change. So now that this this promo is ready to go, it is still disabled. We can see it’s inactive right now. I want to schedule a new update, same thing that I did with the static block before. I’m going to assign it to an existing one. We’re going to use that 2020 for holiday season and I’m going to simply go down here. So here is the actual rule. I’m going to say just activated. That’s the only adjustment I need to make right now. I’m going to save that. And now it’s also part of that preview. So same thing here. If we wanted to preview it from this side, we can do it this way too. So I know before I was going to the home page previewing it that way. We can also do it based on the stage content itself. You can go into this, you can look at the calendar, you can click on different areas to actually preview it and also share it at the same time. Our holiday sale one right here, this is the category that we’ve actually now get towards. So products that I have in here, you can actually see they’ve all been discounted. Now they’re based on that 20% off that’s available. So this promotion is activated again as of that November eight. So we see basically everything that’s available that’s in here. Now, currently, and you can see that here. So here is that holiday sale. All right, Now let me go back here. So a few different things that I want to kind of walk through. So now that we did content side, we did the promotion, we did a really kind of static block site. We got a lot of things ready to go for this. We did a catalog price rule. We stage out content, we did some widgets. I also did that around kind of just the area of what I want to do from merchandizing side, right? So we’ve talked about it before as you’re kind of getting ready. So in my case, what I want to do here is I’m going to use Adobe sensei here. I want to use the artificial intelligence to really kind of ensure that the behavior, if it changes, that it’s adapting automatically, that I don’t have to go back into this and touch this. So instead of me merchandizing my products statically and basically moving them all around manually, what I want to do in this case is I’m actually going to use live search and specifically underneath live search, I’m going to use category merchandizing. So category merchandizing for those that have not attended in the past or if you’re not aware yet, category merchandise is essentially being able to rank products by artificial intelligence. So user behavior is actually going to dictate and move products around based on a rule that you’ve set. So in my case, I want to use the holiday style one, even though I already do have these manually sorted to what I want, which is what you see here, what I’m going to do is I’m going to add a high ranking to this. I’m going to add intelligent ranking to this instead. So what I want to do in the case here is I’m actually going to use most viewed. So essentially what this will do is as customers come in here and they view it, they purchase it, anything like that, it’s going to be within the last seven business days, which you can see here. Basically, it’ll shuffle around as that changes. So if the view viewership starts changing where let’s say that the adjustable dumbbells, they start getting viewed a lot more, that will start ranking higher than what you see with the videos right now, the push up messenger bag. So again, I’ll save and publish this just so we can kind of see it. We can see it’s now been activated on here. What it essentially will do is when the time comes for that category to be activated, the ranking of that will be, as we manually stated it first. But as behavior starts touching that it’ll start changing the ranking of products so we don’t have to go back into there. Went off to keep changing things. We want to keep touching things. Essentially, we allow the artificial intelligence tool to do that for us. So really good opportunity to remember what we’re saying before. If products change, you have to adapt. Well, let this kind of do it for us. In this case. All right. Few other things that I want to show real quickly. So I’m going to show just a few configuration changes that I’m going to be doing for mine. So there’s a few different things you could do with stock options. So you can do things like allowing back orders, allowing me ex only threshold left just kind of to drive to push somebody to purchase essentially could also display products that are out of stock in new products, basically product stock alerts, things like that. So those types of things I kind of want to walk through quickly. I’ll show it to you from the front end side, too, because I’m going to make mine active now, so you’ll be able to see it. But essentially where we can kind of look here is I want to start with the inventory side. The only X threshold first. So underneath your catalog and you go store configuration, you go to catalog. And then if you go to your catalog again in inventory, underneath your inventory side, you essentially have the stock option side. So your stock option side will let you have this area where it says only X left threshold. So basically it will showcase any products with that, only X left if that threshold is met. So in my case, I’ll show you this from the front inside. So in mine, I currently have a bag that essentially is below that threshold. So remember, it’s below ten that on essentially showcasing that. So my strive bag, which is let’s grab that bag, here’s our strive bag. So our strive bag has X left, so there’s only four left that’s essentially here. So that number will change if we get another purchase that comes in here, we have three left, it will say only three left, etc. So because we’ve set that threshold. That’s what we’ll be able to see there essentially. So that’s a good opportunity for you to do this and to kind of push the envelope to drive that conversion. If somebody sees that there’s only X amount left, might push them to kind of purchase at that point in time. So let me go back here and now with the next part, I also want to say that I want to display Out-of-stock products. So displaying out of stock products, again, that is something that is native within here, again, where you could see it right here I am displaying product availability in the front end. I’m saying that I want to display out of stock products too. Yes. Now the other thing that you can do with this is beyond just doing that. Let’s say that we want to do a product alert specifically. So underneath your catalog and then catalog again, still in the store configuration, what we could do here is we could set what’s called product alerts. So your product alerts, you can essentially say that you want to allow product alerts when a product comes back in stock. So right now, again, I’ll show you the front end just for a second. I’m going to go into my bag side now. My bag is the one product that I believe that I have that’s out of stock right now is the push up messenger bag. So my push up messenger bag, you can see it’s currently out of stock. I have no ability to do a restock or anything like that just yet. Now, let’s go back to the back end for just a second. And now what I’ll do here instead is allow alert. When product comes back in stock, I’m going to uncheck this and I’m going to select the s here. Let’s save that config. And now let’s go back to the front end and let’s do a quick refresh here. Now we could see notify me when this product is back in stock. So now we’re able to actually do that as well. So again, if you have products that you know are going to go out of stock quickly, this might be a good opportunity beyond doing things like back orders or anything like that. All right. Last thing that I’m going to show you just quick and then we’re going to get to some questions. So last thing I want to show is just around essentially just gift options. So I know that that was something that is come up. I saw that as a question that came up during registration to let’s think about a few different things to showcase here. But gift options are also something that’s available natively within the platform. So if you go to again, stores configuration where you stay in this section and you go to sales, sales underneath your sales sales side, there’s this gift option section, a few different things that you could do. You can allow gift messages on the order level, on the item order level, you can do allowing gift wrapping. You can also do price for printed cards, things like that, like gift receipts, etc… So there’s a few different areas that you can you can really kind of showcase on that side. I’ll show you mine just from that front inside for a second. Let me just go into my cart. So with my cart currently I have it enabled. I have gift options available. I don’t have the gift messaging available, just gift options. So if you see here, you can choose a price area. Basically your paper that you want to wrap it in, you can update this. You can see that it’s allowing for $2 to basically do that gift wrapping. So this will showcase that you can see here, gift wrapping available and it’s at the item level as well. So if you have we are checking out with multiple addresses. Let’s say again, your peak season is holiday season. It’s really gift giving specific focus. This is a good opportunity where you’re allowing that at that item level. All right. I guess what actually, we’re going to just hop right over to Q&A things for you. That was like you always managed to jam so much information and to appreciate myriad of time. We always try. Praying that you do it. Great work. We do have a couple of minutes before we’re wrapping up here, so I’m going to jump right into a couple of questions. First one is what role does personalization play in standing out during the peak season and how can I be commerce for businesses in delivering tailored experiences at scale? Yeah, that’s a really good question. So we touched on it briefly, but I still think delivering, you know, what we’re seeing more and more in kind of the stats is still delivering that personalized experience, but not pigeonhole somebody into a specific area. So like using my business as an example there, I focus on different fitness areas and ultimately, I don’t want to pigeonhole somebody though, if they’re back shopping with us again in their shopping for somebody else, for instance, as just an example. So it is important though, the personalized experience, part of that personalized experience is at scale as well. So when I was showcasing, let’s say the category merchandizing and you’re merchandizing products in a specific category based on what is actual behavior on the site, and it’s at a at a mass area, that’s a great opportunity and a personalized effect, essentially, because you’re using what everybody else is doing. But where it really works, I think it’s extremely important and it also can help you deliver in the future too. So as somebody shop to potentially that first time your peak season delivering a personalized experience, you’re you’re giving them that experience that’s personalized. They are going to become more brand loyalists because of something like that. So it’s extremely critical. But at the same time, be careful, don’t pigeonhole them, don’t specifically put them into one area and that’s a. That sounds good. Thanks for that. All right. I think we have one more question here. Is it possible to offer shipping to multiple addresses in one product? Yeah. So Adobe Commerce does natively offer the multi ship to a specific cart. So if you have a cart mixed with five items and say you have five different people that you’re shopping for or you want to ship to five different locations within that mixed cart, you absolutely can. So there’s a multi shipping configuration setting underneath your stores configuration and then underneath sales there’s a shipping method that’s multi shipping underneath there you just basically would select something like that and then you can say how many addresses you allow up to. So if you’re allowing up to 100, 200, five, four, etc., you can do that. So that is a native capability within the platform we saw during the demo. Real quick, I did have it, I didn’t actually highlight it, but it is something that is native within there and something that is obviously widely popular as well. Right. I always appreciate when that is an option myself. So thank you for sharing. I think we actually managed to get to almost everything today, so I am going to go ahead and wrap this up. So on this screen you’ve got a bunch of resources for you in the Web links section. As mentioned, we have our behind the Brew session on October 17th, and that’s going to be more of a technical focus on how to optimize your commerce storefront. So definitely grab the registration link from the Web links section. It should also be in the hand out. We have links to our past recordings and upcoming events as well. And then if you would, just like a general demo of Adobe Commerce, we have an option for that. That’s the third web link there on September 26. So you can register that. We also have our one more opportunity to let us know if you’d like information on payment services that we mentioned earlier in the presentation. So if you fill out that form on the right side, we can get you more information on that. And again, Corey is going to be hosting a live in-person roundtable event next week in L.A. If that is of interest to you at the time, just reach out and we will put you in touch with the correct person. So if you do have a question that is specific to your account that we weren’t able to address today, please reach out to your solution account manager. And if you’re not sure who that is, you can reach out to me and I will put you in touch with correct person. And as a final reminder, you will receive a recording of today’s event and an email from us in about 24 hours from now. So that is all for us today. Thanks, everyone, for attending. Thank you, Cory, for the fabulous presentation, as always. And we hope everybody has a great day. Happy season to those that are going to be celebrating and we look forward to seeing you one of our future events. Have a good one, everyone.