What comes next for commerce when you can’t say “AI”?

September 16, 2026

Ask a room full of people working in digital commerce what will shape the future of the industry and there is one answer you can almost guarantee will come up.

So, at this year’s Sync event in Manchester, we took it off the table.

We asked attendees a simple question: What’s your hot take on the future of commerce? What’s the trend, technology or shift you think everyone will be talking about next?

There was just one rule. You couldn’t say AI.

This wasn’t a scientific survey. We collected a small number of responses from people at the event, but what interested us was how quickly some common themes started to appear.

Personalisation came up more than once. So did the return of physical customer experiences. Others talked about connected systems, mobile wallets, instant returns, human influence and the orchestration technology sitting behind increasingly complicated customer journeys.

And then there was perhaps the boldest prediction of the lot: within two years, agents will increasingly be checking out on behalf of people.

So, what do those answers tell us about where commerce could be heading?

 

Personalisation is moving beyond the website

Personalisation certainly isn’t new, but the responses at Sync suggest the conversation around it is changing.

Rather than simply recommending another product based on something a customer has viewed, the opportunity increasingly lies in connecting what we know about customers across channels and using that insight to create genuinely useful experiences.

One response described the opportunity as “personalising at scale on and offline”. That distinction matters.

The customer doesn’t necessarily think in channels. They may research on social, browse a website, visit a store, join a loyalty programme and ultimately buy somewhere else entirely. The challenge for retailers is recognising enough of that journey to make each interaction feel connected without making personalisation feel intrusive.

It is telling that personalisation remains firmly on the industry agenda. This month’s Ecommerce Expo is dedicating a session specifically to moving beyond basic personalisation towards experiences shaped by customer behaviour, context and real-time insight.

The technology may have moved on considerably, but the fundamental challenge remains the same: turning the data retailers hold into something genuinely useful for the customer.

 

Connected commerce is still unfinished business

That brings us neatly to another theme that came through at Sync: connection.

One attendee described the future as “unified systems, one access and everything in sync”, while another pointed towards always-on orchestration across different systems.

Neither sounds as shiny as the latest piece of technology, but arguably this is where some of the biggest work still needs to happen.

Recent Retail Economics research into unified commerce found that only one in five retailers believes it currently delivers a truly unified experience. More strikingly, 86% said customer expectations are evolving faster than their digital capabilities, while 40% of larger and omnichannel retailers identified legacy systems, silos and slow decision-making as barriers.

That gap is important.

Customers increasingly expect stock, loyalty, orders, returns, customer service and communication to work together regardless of where an interaction begins. Internally, however, many retailers are still dealing with legacy platforms, disconnected data and organisational silos.

Perhaps the next stage of commerce isn’t about adding another channel at all. It is about finally connecting the ones businesses already have.

 

Physical retail is becoming an experience again

Some of our responses independently pointed towards physical customer experience, and we think this is one of the more interesting predictions.

For years, conversations about the future of commerce tended to position physical and digital retail against one another. Increasingly, that distinction feels outdated.

New research from American Express and Retail Economics, reported by Retail Gazette in September, estimates that social media now influences 1.7 billion visits to UK high streets every year. Almost two-thirds of UK adults surveyed had visited a shop, restaurant or hospitality venue in the previous year because of something they had seen on social media.

Digital discovery is driving physical behaviour.

We’re seeing retailers respond to that convergence too. John Lewis recently opened a permanent content studio inside its Oxford Street store, designed to create social and video content from within the physical retail environment itself.

If convenience can increasingly be delivered digitally, physical environments have a different job to do. They can offer discovery, service, community, interaction and experiences that are much harder to replicate through a screen.

One Sync response simply predicted a “shift to physical customer experience”. We suspect they may be onto something.

 

Are shopping agents really two years away?

We banned the two-letter acronym, but unsurprisingly its consequences still found their way into our wider conversations. In fact, one attendee predicted that agents will increasingly checkout on behalf of people within two years.

That might sound like the most futuristic response we received, but developments are moving quickly. In September, Adyen published its latest guidance on agentic commerce, reporting that agent-driven traffic is already converting at two to three times the rate of standard search traffic.

There is an important caveat. In the UK and Europe, the customer generally still needs to authorise the transaction, meaning the vision of an autonomous agent finding, selecting and purchasing something without human confirmation isn’t quite the reality yet.

But the direction of travel raises much bigger questions for commerce businesses. If customers increasingly delegate parts of discovery, comparison and eventually purchasing, retailers may need to optimise not only for the person buying the product, but for the systems acting on that person’s behalf.

Product information, availability, pricing, payments and data infrastructure all become even more important in that world.

 

And perhaps the human element matters more, not less

One of our favourite responses was also one of the simplest: human influence.  As commerce becomes more automated and technology increasingly mediates the customer journey, understanding the person at the other end becomes more important, not less.

That could explain why so many of the other answers ultimately come back to customer experience.

Personalisation is about relevance to a person. Physical retail is about creating an experience for them. Unified commerce is about removing the frustration they encounter between channels. Instant returns are about making their lives easier. Even agent-led commerce ultimately depends on whether people trust technology enough to hand over part of the buying journey.

The technology may keep changing. Human expectations remain at the centre of it.

 

Final thoughts

Conversations in the room from one event certainly aren’t enough to predict the future of commerce. But they did give us an interesting snapshot of what people working in the industry are thinking about right now, particularly when the most obvious answer was deliberately taken away.

And when we look at what has been happening across retail more widely over the past few weeks, many of those predictions don’t feel particularly far-fetched.

What stood out wasn’t one breakthrough technology. It was the desire to make commerce more connected, more personal and, perhaps surprisingly, more human.

The next stage of commerce may involve increasingly sophisticated technology behind the scenes, but the businesses that get the most from it will still need to answer a much simpler question: does this actually make the experience better for the customer?

The event, run by the team at Visualsoft, was a great opportunity to get our heads up and out of the day job for a while, hear what others across the industry are seeing and thinking, and have some genuinely interesting conversations about where commerce is heading next.

There was plenty to take away from the sessions themselves, but just as much value in the conversations happening around them. A big thank you to the Visualsoft team for bringing everyone together, and to everyone who stopped by to share their hot take with us.

We suspect we’ll be revisiting a few of those predictions sooner than we think.

 

Written by:

James Hodges

Director of Client Engagement

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FODcast Takeaway: Are Ecommerce Brands Focusing Too Much on Traffic and Not Enough on Conversion?

September 10, 2026

For years, much of ecommerce growth strategy has revolved around acquisition.

Brands invested heavily in paid media, SEO, social platforms, and performance marketing in pursuit of more traffic, more visibility, and ultimately more sales. In many cases, success became heavily tied to how effectively businesses could attract new customers into the top of the funnel.

The challenge now is that customer acquisition has become significantly more expensive.

Advertising costs continue to rise, competition for attention is increasing, and many ecommerce businesses are finding that simply driving more traffic no longer guarantees sustainable growth. As a result, more brands are starting to look closely at what happens after customers actually arrive on site.

That is where conversion rate optimisation, or CRO, is becoming increasingly important.

In a recent episode of The FODcast, Adam Pearce, Co-founder of Blend Commerce, shared his perspective on how ecommerce businesses should think about conversion, customer behaviour, and long-term profitability, and why CRO is often far more commercially significant than many brands initially realise.

Why conversion rate optimisation matters more than ever

One of the clearest themes throughout the discussion was that CRO is often misunderstood.

Historically, conversion rate optimisation has sometimes been reduced to surface-level experimentation around website layouts, button colours, or isolated A/B tests. While those things can contribute to performance improvements, they rarely address the wider commercial picture on their own.

As Adam discussed, effective CRO is ultimately about understanding how customers behave, where friction exists within the buying journey, and what prevents users from taking action.

That makes conversion optimisation closely tied to overall customer experience.

A poorly structured checkout process, unclear messaging, weak product information, slow page performance, or lack of trust signals can all impact conversion rates significantly. Improving those areas not only increases sales performance, but also creates a smoother and more intuitive experience for customers overall.

In increasingly competitive ecommerce markets, those small improvements can compound quickly.

The three commercial levers behind ecommerce growth

One of the strongest frameworks discussed during the conversation was Adam’s breakdown of the three key levers ecommerce brands can pull to drive growth.

  • The first is encouraging customers to buy now.
  • The second is encouraging them to buy more through higher basket value or product expansion.
  • The third is encouraging them to buy again by improving retention and repeat purchasing behaviour.

What makes this framework particularly useful is that it shifts the conversation away from traffic alone and towards overall commercial efficiency.

Many ecommerce businesses still focus disproportionately on acquiring new customers while underinvesting in retention, customer experience, or average order value optimisation. Yet in many cases, the most commercially valuable gains come from improving how effectively existing traffic and existing customers convert over time.

That feels increasingly relevant in an environment where acquisition costs continue to rise and profitability is coming under greater scrutiny.

Why CRO is becoming more data-led

Another important theme throughout the conversation was the role data plays within modern conversion optimisation.

Successful CRO is rarely driven by assumptions or subjective opinion alone. The strongest optimisation strategies are typically grounded in customer behaviour, testing, and performance analysis.

As Adam discussed, that can include understanding traffic sources, analysing user journeys, monitoring drop-off points, gathering customer feedback, and testing different experiences over time. The goal is not simply to make websites look better, but to better understand how customers interact with the buying journey itself.

That requires businesses to become more comfortable with experimentation.

In many ways, effective CRO reflects a broader shift happening across digital commerce, where decision making is becoming increasingly iterative, customer-led, and evidence-based rather than purely instinctive.

Why customer experience and CRO increasingly overlap

One of the more interesting aspects of the discussion was how closely CRO and customer experience are now connected.

Historically, conversion optimisation may have been viewed primarily as a performance marketing or ecommerce function. Increasingly though, it touches almost every part of the customer journey.

Trust, usability, site speed, mobile experience, fulfilment clarity, reviews, navigation, checkout flow, and product communication all influence conversion behaviour in different ways. That means CRO is becoming far more cross-functional than many businesses perhaps previously considered.

It also means that improving conversion rates is often less about persuasion and more about reducing uncertainty or friction for customers.

The brands performing strongest in this area are often those creating experiences that feel intuitive, trustworthy, and easy to navigate rather than overly engineered around aggressive conversion tactics.

The growing importance of retention and lifetime value

Another important point raised during the conversation was the growing importance of customer retention within ecommerce growth strategy.

As acquisition becomes more expensive, businesses are increasingly recognising the commercial value of improving repeat purchase behaviour and customer lifetime value rather than relying purely on new customer growth.

That links directly back into CRO.

The customer journey does not end at checkout, and conversion

optimisation increasingly extends beyond the first purchase into retention, loyalty, upsell, and long-term engagement. The businesses approaching CRO most effectively are often those looking at the entire customer lifecycle rather than isolated conversion moments alone.

This reflects a much broader shift happening across ecommerce, where profitability, efficiency, and retention are becoming increasingly important alongside growth itself.

The capability challenge behind CRO

One of the wider themes that continues to emerge across digital commerce is the growing overlap between analytics, customer experience, ecommerce strategy, and commercial performance.

Modern CRO now sits across data analysis, UX, development, merchandising, marketing, and customer behaviour all at once. As a result, businesses increasingly need teams capable of connecting those disciplines together effectively.

From our perspective, this is another example of how ecommerce strategy is becoming increasingly interconnected. The strongest businesses are often those capable of combining technical capability with commercial understanding and genuine customer insight.

Final thoughts

What came through clearly in this conversation is that conversion rate optimisation is becoming far more strategically important than many ecommerce businesses perhaps previously realised.

As Adam highlighted, effective CRO is not simply about tweaking websites or running isolated tests. It is about understanding customer behaviour, reducing friction, improving customer experience, and ultimately building more commercially efficient ecommerce businesses.

For brands operating in increasingly competitive markets, that means thinking beyond traffic growth alone and focusing more closely on how effectively customers are actually converting, engaging, and returning over time.

Thanks again to Adam for sharing his time, insight and perspective on this topic. If conversion rate optimisation or ecommerce growth strategy is something your business is currently exploring, do take some time to listen to the full episode; link below:

Catch up with the episode here

Written by:

James Hodges

Director of Client Engagement

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FODcast Takeaway: In a World of AI, Trust Is Becoming the Real Competitive Advantage

July 28, 2026

For years, most go-to-market strategies were built around products. 

Businesses focused heavily on functionality, pricing, differentiation, and scale, with marketing centred on explaining why one platform, service, or solution was better than another. In many sectors, particularly within technology, that became the standard playbook.

The challenge now is that product advantages rarely stay unique for very long.

Features can be replicated quickly, pricing can be matched, and AI is accelerating the speed at which competitors can launch, market, and position similar offerings. As a result, businesses are increasingly looking for new ways to differentiate themselves in markets that are becoming more crowded and more competitive.

That is where founder-led branding and founder visibility are starting to play a much bigger role.

In a recent episode of The FODcast, we sat down with Angeley Mullins, Founder & CEO of Aetheris Ventures and Chief Growth Officer at Ninox Software, to explore the growing importance of authenticity, storytelling, and founder visibility in modern go-to-market strategy, and why businesses are starting to rethink how they build trust and connection with audiences.

Why founder visibility is becoming more important

One of the clearest themes throughout the conversation was the shift away from purely product-led messaging.

As Angeley explained, audiences are becoming increasingly resistant to generic corporate positioning and repetitive product marketing. In sectors where multiple businesses may offer broadly similar functionality, the story behind the business itself often becomes the differentiator.

That story increasingly comes from founders and leadership teams.

Founder-led branding is not simply about building a personal profile or becoming more visible online. At its best, it gives businesses a more human identity, allowing audiences to connect with the people, experiences, challenges, and thinking behind the company itself.

The conversation referenced founders openly sharing the realities of building businesses, discussing setbacks alongside successes, and creating content that feels more personal and relatable than traditional corporate messaging. That level of openness tends to resonate strongly, particularly in a market where audiences are becoming more selective about who and what they trust.

Angeley referenced founders such as Amelia, co-founder of the recruitment platform Ivee, who has built visibility not simply by promoting the product itself, but by openly sharing the realities of building the business. Rather than focusing purely on features or sales messaging, the content centres around the founder journey itself, including the challenges, uncertainty, and day-to-day realities behind scaling a company.

That kind of openness increasingly resonates with audiences who are looking for something more human and relatable than traditional corporate marketing.

Why storytelling is becoming a strategic advantage

Another major theme throughout the discussion was the growing importance of storytelling within modern go-to-market strategy.

For years, many businesses competed primarily on product features and commercial positioning. Increasingly though, those areas alone are no longer enough to sustain attention.

As AI tools continue to make content creation, product development, and messaging more accessible, the ability to communicate a compelling narrative is becoming far more valuable. Increasingly, businesses are realising that buyers are influenced not just by products themselves, but by credibility, perspective, trust, and the people behind the business.

That is changing how organisations think about marketing itself.

Angeley pointed to the growing demand for storytelling-focused roles within larger businesses as evidence of this shift. Companies are recognising that strong narrative capability is becoming a strategic asset rather than simply a brand exercise.

This feels particularly relevant in digital commerce and technology, where differentiation can disappear quickly and customer attention is increasingly difficult to maintain.

The growing demand for authenticity

One of the more interesting points raised during the conversation was the audience demand for authenticity.

Consumers and buyers alike are exposed to huge amounts of content every day, much of which follows increasingly similar formats and messaging patterns. As a result, audiences are becoming better at filtering out content that feels overly polished, overly corporate, or disconnected from real experience.

Founder-led branding works partly because it introduces a level of relatability back into the conversation.

That does not mean every founder suddenly needs to become a content creator or public personality. What it does suggest, however, is that businesses increasingly benefit from allowing customers to see the people and thinking behind the organisation itself.

In many ways, this reflects a broader shift in how trust is built. Buyers are increasingly looking for signals of credibility, consistency, and transparency before making decisions, particularly in uncertain economic conditions where risk tolerance is lower.

How AI is reshaping go-to-market teams

The conversation also explored how AI is beginning to reshape the structure of marketing and go-to-market teams themselves.

As automation becomes more sophisticated, many of the repetitive tasks traditionally associated with entry-level sales and marketing roles are likely to change significantly. Outreach, research, content generation, and operational workflows can increasingly be supported through AI-driven tools and agents.

What becomes more valuable in that environment is strategic thinking.

As Angeley discussed, businesses are likely to place greater emphasis on individuals capable of managing AI systems, interpreting outputs, shaping narrative, and making commercially informed decisions around messaging and positioning.

Collectively, that points towards a fairly significant shift in how businesses structure marketing and go-to-market teams over the coming years.

The capability challenge behind founder-led branding

One of the wider themes that continues to emerge across digital commerce and technology is the growing importance of adaptable talent.

Founder-led branding, storytelling, AI strategy, and go-to-market execution increasingly overlap with one another. As a result, businesses need people capable of thinking commercially, communicating clearly, and navigating rapidly evolving technology landscapes at the same time.

From our perspective, this is another example of how modern growth strategies are becoming increasingly interconnected. Technology clearly matters, but the ability to build trust, communicate effectively, and create authentic connections is becoming just as important.

That is particularly true in competitive markets where product differentiation alone is becoming harder to sustain.

Final thoughts

What came through clearly in this conversation is that founder-led branding is not simply a passing trend or social media tactic.

As Angeley highlighted, it reflects a much broader shift in how businesses build trust, differentiate themselves, and connect with audiences in increasingly crowded markets. As AI accelerates the speed of competition, authenticity, storytelling, and strategic narrative are becoming more commercially important than ever.

For businesses, that means thinking more carefully about not just what they sell, but how they communicate who they are, what they believe, and why customers should trust them.

A huge thank you to Angeley for taking the time to share her insight and perspective on this topic. If founder-led branding or modern go-to-market strategy is something your business is currently exploring, make sure you tune in – link below.

Written by:

Tim Roedel

CEO

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FODcast Takeaway: Why Retail Media Is Becoming the New Battleground for Customer Attention

July 15, 2026

Retail media is quickly becoming one of the most important areas of digital commerce, but it is also one of the most delicate to get right.

On the surface, the opportunity is obvious. Retailers sit on enormous amounts of customer and transactional data, brands are looking for more effective ways to reach increasingly fragmented audiences, and media networks create entirely new commercial opportunities within retail environments.

The challenge is that customer attention is finite.

As retailers continue to expand their media capabilities, the balance between commercial ambition and customer experience is becoming increasingly important. The businesses that navigate that balance well are likely to create meaningful long-term value. Tand, tose that don’t risk turning already crowded customer journeys into even noisier experiences.

In the latest episode of The FODcast, Dean Harris, Head of Co-op Media Network, and Anders Henricson, CEO of Grassfish, shared some really interesting perspectives on how retail media is evolving, the opportunities it creates, and the operational challenges retailers now face as media, commerce, and customer experience become more closely connected.

Why retail media strategy matters more than ever

One of the clearest themes throughout the discussion was the growing value of retailer-owned data.

Traditional advertising channels have become increasingly fragmented, while changes in privacy, tracking, and customer behaviour continue to reshape how brands reach audiences online. Retailers, however, remain in a uniquely strong position. They have direct access to customer behaviour, purchasing habits, and transactional insight at a scale many other channels simply cannot replicate.

That is what makes retail media so attractive.

As Dean discussed through the work being done within the Co-op Media Network, retailers are now able to offer brands highly targeted opportunities built around real shopping behaviour and real moments of intent. With millions of transactions taking place every week, the scale of insight available is significant.

However, what came through strongly during the conversation was that successful retail media strategy cannot simply become a race to place more advertising in front of customers.

The customer experience balancing act

One of the more interesting areas explored during the discussion was the risk of communication overload.

Customers already navigate huge amounts of messaging across digital platforms, social channels, websites, apps, email, and increasingly in-store environments too. Adding more promotional messaging into retail experiences may create new revenue opportunities, but it also increases the risk of fatigue and disengagement if not handled carefully.

That is where relevance becomes critical.

The retailers making the strongest progress in this area are typically not those creating the most noise, but those creating the most useful and contextually relevant experiences. Retail media works best when it complements the customer journey rather than interrupting it.

This feels particularly important in environments like grocery retail, where convenience, familiarity, and speed are already central to the shopping experience. Customers are rarely looking for more friction or more decision-making complexity. In many cases, the role of retail media should be to simplify decisions, not complicate them.

As Anders highlighted during the conversation, the physical and digital customer journey is also becoming increasingly interconnected, which raises the stakes further. Retailers are no longer simply managing isolated digital campaigns. They are managing joined-up experiences across stores, apps, loyalty programmes, ecommerce platforms, and digital touchpoints simultaneously.

Why data alone is not enough

Data may sit at the heart of retail media, but another important theme from the conversation was that access to data alone does not automatically create strong customer engagement.

Many retailers already have vast amounts of customer information available to them. The challenge lies in how effectively that insight is interpreted, operationalised, and applied across the wider business.

Understanding customer behaviour is one thing. Delivering genuinely relevant experiences from it is something else entirely.

That requires more than technology investment. It requires strong collaboration between marketing, ecommerce, customer, operations, and commercial teams, alongside clear governance around how retail media activity supports the wider customer journey.

As retail media networks continue to mature, the businesses that stand out are likely to be those capable of combining data capability with strong customer understanding and operational discipline, rather than simply increasing advertising inventory.

The governance challenge behind retail media growth

Another point that came through strongly was the importance of maintaining long-term thinking.

Retail media creates understandable commercial temptation. New revenue streams are attractive, particularly in challenging economic conditions, and there is always pressure to maximise inventory opportunities wherever possible.

The risk, however, is that short-term revenue goals begin to outweigh the long-term customer relationship.

Retailers therefore need clear frameworks around campaign quality, customer relevance, and operational oversight to ensure that retail media enhances the customer experience rather than detracting from it. Without that structure, there is a danger that the shopping journey becomes overly commercialised and ultimately less effective for everyone involved.

The retailers navigating this best tend to treat retail media as part of the overall customer experience strategy, not simply as a standalone advertising function.

The capability challenge behind retail media

One of the wider themes that continues to emerge across digital commerce is the growing importance of cross-functional capability.

Retail media now sits across ecommerce, advertising, customer experience, data, partnerships, operations, and commercial strategy. That means the talent required to manage it effectively is becoming increasingly broad and increasingly difficult to find.

Retailers need teams capable of understanding customer behaviour, interpreting data, managing commercial relationships, and balancing revenue generation with customer experience objectives. Those skillsets do not always exist neatly within traditional organisational structures.

From our perspective, this is becoming one of the defining challenges behind retail media growth. The opportunity itself is substantial, but long-term success depends heavily on having the right operational maturity and talent capability in place to support it.

Final thoughts

What came through clearly in this conversation is that retail media is evolving into something far bigger than a new advertising channel.

As Dean and Anders highlighted, the real opportunity lies in creating more connected, relevant, and useful customer experiences that work for both brands and shoppers without compromising trust or usability along the way.

For retailers, that means balancing commercial ambition with customer expectations, while also building the operational structures and talent capability required to support increasingly sophisticated retail media ecosystems.

A huge thank you to Dean and Anders for sharing their insight and experience on this topic. If retail media strategy is something your business is currently exploring, the full episode is well worth a listen.

Written by:

Tim Roedel

CEO

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Your Cart Is Fine; Your Duties Are Not: Why US Shoppers Panic At Checkout with Jamie Vaughan

January 7, 2026

Confused about what’s actually working in digital commerce right now?

You’re not alone. Between US conversion chaos, rising costs, and AI hype, it’s hard to tell what moves the needle and what’s just noise.

On this week’s episode of The FODcast, host Tim Roedel sits down with Jamie Vaughan, ex MD at Signifly, to cut through the chatter and get practical about what to fix first.

Here’s what we cover:

  • The “Donald effect” impacting US growth – and how to rebuild confidence through landed cost clarity and reassurance
  • Conversion that counts: prioritising high-impact experiments using RICE (Reach, Impact, Cost, Effort)
  • Life after cookies: why attribution and cohort analysis (with tools like Triple Whale) are now essentials
    Turning first-party data into your growth engine – not a last-ditch paid ads replacement
  • Plus, real examples, clear takeaways, and no fluff.

If you’re scaling, re-platforming, or rethinking your funnel for 2025, you’ll want to hear this one.

🎧 Listen now

 

Written by:

Tim Roedel

CEO

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