If your B2B portal has been live for six months and your best customers still email their orders to the same rep, you are where most suppliers are after launch. The platform usually works. What’s missing is B2B customer onboarding, and in most companies nobody has been given that job.

Suppliers also tend to overrate how far they have come. In a Deloitte Digital survey of 530 US B2B suppliers and 530 buyers, 72% of suppliers said their sales processes were mostly or highly automated. Only 47% of buyers said their purchasing processes were.

Launch is day 0. The 12 months after it decide whether the portal replaces the phone or becomes one more channel your team maintains. This guide covers why existing customers don’t switch on their own, a five-stage onboarding plan from go-live to month 12, how to pay reps when their customers order online, and the numbers to report to leadership.

What is B2B customer onboarding?

B2B customer onboarding is the work of moving existing business accounts from ordering by phone, email, EDI, or through a sales rep to ordering on your B2B customer portal. It covers account setup, the first online order, reasons to come back, and changes to how sales is paid. It runs for months after go-live, account by account.

Most guides that rank for this term describe SaaS onboarding: getting a new user to their first “aha” moment in software, the topic of our user onboarding best practices. A supplier’s problem is different. Your customers already buy from you, and the old way of ordering still works for them.

Our B2B eCommerce trends for 2027 put customer adoption among the biggest jobs suppliers face next year. This guide is the detailed plan for that job.

Why B2B customers don’t use a new portal

B2B customers keep ordering offline after a portal launches for five common reasons: the old way still works, the portal’s prices or stock don’t match what the rep says, their account isn’t set up, products they buy are missing online, and their rep has no reason to send them there. These are the B2B eCommerce challenges we see most after go-live.

Buyers do want to order on their own. Gartner found that 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, and Deloitte found that 65% choose purchasing channels on ease of use. The same Deloitte research shows how far suppliers are from that: buyers were six times as likely as suppliers to describe the buying process as “mostly manual,” and three times as likely to say the supplier is difficult to do business with.

The old way still works

A buyer who has emailed the same rep for years often gets a confirmed order back within the hour. Switching means a new login and searching for products they used to name in one line of an email. Unless the portal saves them time on their first order, they go back to email.

Prices and stock don’t match

A portal price that differs from the rep’s quote or the invoice undoes weeks of onboarding. Buyers call to check, and soon they stop logging in. The fix is upstream: one source for contract pricing and stock, usually the ERP, read by the portal in real time. Our guide to eCommerce ERP integration covers the patterns.

The account isn’t ready

Many launches send every customer the same invitation email and a password reset link. The buyer logs in to an empty account: no saved lists, no order history, no colleagues set up with the right approval rights. For larger customers, single sign-on removes the login problem altogether.

Products are missing

Buyers won’t move a whole reorder to a portal that only carries part of what they buy. Wainbee, the largest distributor of Parker products in Canada, had only 10% of its 600,000+ products online because supplier data arrived in CSV and XLS files with no shared structure. A Pimcore PIM connected to its ERP and supplier feeds put the full catalog online.

Read more: Case Study: Unifying Product Information with Pimcore PIM

The rep has no reason to help

If a rep’s commission depends on orders they place themselves, every order a customer places online looks like lost income. So reps keep taking orders by phone, and the portal numbers stay flat. The commission section below covers the fix.

The 5 stages of the B2B customer onboarding process

An onboarding process that works for B2B suppliers runs in five stages: choose and prepare the first accounts before go-live, set up each account in the first 30 days, place first orders together with reps in months 2–3, give buyers reasons to come back in months 4–6, and make online the default for everyone in months 7–12. These B2B customer onboarding best practices come from the B2B projects we support after launch.

Stage 1: Pick the first accounts before go-live

Don’t launch to every customer at once. Pick 20 to 50 accounts for the first wave: customers who reorder often from a stable list, buyers who already use other suppliers’ portals, and accounts whose reps are willing to help. Repeat orders are the easiest to move online, because the buyer already knows what they want.

For each account, decide before launch who owns the move (usually the rep, with support from customer service), which buyers will log in, and what the first online order will be.

Stage 2: Set up each account in the first 30 days

Treat each large account as its own small project. Before the buyer logs in for the first time, the account should already have:

• Its contract prices and payment terms, checked against the last three invoices
• Every buyer and approver, with the right roles and spending limits
• A saved list of the products they reorder most, built from their order history
• Their past orders, so they can reorder from history instead of searching

Then run a short setup call with the buyer, ideally led by their rep. Thirty minutes on a shared screen does more than any welcome email. If you run Adobe Commerce, features such as company accounts, shared catalogs, requisition lists, and quick order cover most of this, as our overview of Adobe Commerce B2B features explains.

Stage 3: Place the first orders together (months 2–3)

Ask reps to place the first online order with the buyer, either on a call or by logging in to the customer’s account and building the cart for them to approve. The buyer sees their own prices, stock, and history in the portal, and the rep stays part of the relationship.

Macron, the teamwear and sports apparel brand, gave its team a “Shop as a Customer” feature on Adobe Commerce. Support staff log in under a partner’s account and help with bulk orders and complex configurations, using the same catalog and prices the partner sees. With SAP integration for live stock and flexible ordering by SKU, CSV upload, and reorder, Macron cut order creation time by 40%.

Read more: Case Study: Macron’s B2B Platform Evolution with Adobe Commerce

Stage 4: Give buyers reasons to come back (months 4–6)

A portal that is only a cart gets used only when someone remembers to order. Give buyers reasons to log in between orders:

• Reorder prompts. Send reminders when an account’s usual reorder date passes, based on its real order history, with a one-click link to the saved list.
• Order status and documents. Tracking, invoices, delivery notes, and certificates in the portal stop the “where is my order” calls.
• Self-service for routine requests. Returns, statement downloads, and user changes the buyer can do alone.

This is also where support costs start to fall. advancedlife, Australia’s national school photography specialist, replaced five legacy systems with one platform that includes a self-service portal for schools. Schools upload rosters, correct student data, and download images without contacting the support team. The platform went live in 14 weeks, before the busiest season, and support load dropped 95% after go-live.

Read more: School Photography Commerce: Production-Ready Platform in 14 Weeks

Reorder prompts work best as a lifecycle email program triggered by order data. Our email marketing team builds these flows on top of the portal’s order history.

Stage 5: Make online the default (months 7–12)

By month 7 the first waves are ordering online and the long tail is still on the phone. Now change the defaults:

• Customer service enters phone and email orders into the portal on the customer’s account, so history and saved lists build up there.
• New customers open accounts on the portal from day one.
• Small accounts below a set order value get portal-only ordering, with a phone line for exceptions.
• Paper order forms and spreadsheet price lists are retired.

Don’t force your largest accounts. Some will keep EDI or move to punchout from their procurement system, and that still counts as digital. Deloitte found that 92% of buyers who use EDI today plan to shift partly or fully to other channels such as eCommerce or procurement systems. Later, some orders may come from AI agents through protocols such as Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, and they will need the same account prices the portal shows.

How to pay sales reps when customers order online

Pay reps on all of their accounts’ revenue, whatever channel the order comes through. If commission only counts orders the rep places, every online order costs the rep money, and they will steer customers back to the phone. Once channel no longer affects pay, reps can treat the portal as a tool that frees their time for new business.

Three commission models work in practice:

1. Account-based commission. The rep earns on every order from their accounts, online or offline. This is the simplest fix and usually the first one to make.
2. Adoption targets on top. A quarterly bonus for raising each account’s share of online orders, for example from 20% to 60% over two quarters.
3. New business weighting. A higher rate on revenue from new accounts, so time saved on order entry goes into finding new customers.

Agree on the model before go-live. Reps who learn the new rules after the launch have already decided what the portal means for them.

How to measure B2B customer onboarding

Measure B2B customer onboarding by the share of each account’s orders placed online, tracked monthly per account. Add how many invited buyers placed a first order, how many reorder online, and how much time order entry and support take. Logins and traffic alone hide the accounts that never moved.

Report these per account. A few large accounts ordering almost everything online can make the total look healthy while two hundred small accounts still order by phone, and each group needs a different next step. Macron’s results show what to look for: returning visitors grew 32.8% after its new platform launched, and order creation time fell 40%.

If you are not sure where accounts drop off, a B2B customer experience audit maps each step from login to reorder and shows which ones lose buyers.

FAQ about B2B customer onboarding

How long does B2B customer onboarding take?

In our experience, most suppliers need 6 to 12 months to move the bulk of their accounts online. The first wave of 20 to 50 accounts can be ordering online within the first three months. The long tail of small and infrequent buyers takes longer, and some large accounts move to EDI or punchout instead of the portal.

Who should own customer adoption after a B2B portal launch?

One named person should own adoption across all accounts, usually the head of eCommerce or a digital sales manager, with reps owning their own accounts. Without a single owner, adoption falls between the eCommerce team, which built the portal, and sales, which owns the customer, and neither group reports on it.

How do you get B2B customers to order online instead of calling?

Make the first online order faster than calling. Load each account’s prices, buyers, and reorder list before they log in, have the rep place the first order with them, and send reorder reminders based on their order history. Keep prices and stock in the portal identical to the rep’s quote, or customers will call to check.

What should a B2B customer portal include on day one?

On day one, a B2B customer portal needs contract prices, live stock, saved reorder lists, order history, quick order by SKU, and user roles with approvals. Order tracking, invoices, and document downloads give buyers reasons to log in between orders. Features beyond that can wait until the first accounts are ordering online.

Should B2B suppliers force customers to order online?

Not at first. Forcing large accounts usually pushes them to a competitor or to email. Start with the accounts most likely to switch, make online ordering easier than the old way, and only make it the default for small accounts once the portal has proven itself, keeping a phone line for exceptions.

What are the biggest B2B eCommerce challenges after launch?

The biggest B2B eCommerce challenges after launch are customer adoption, prices and stock that don’t match the ERP, incomplete product data, and sales compensation that rewards offline orders. Platform features are rarely the blocker. Most stalled portals work technically but have no plan or owner for moving existing customers online.

B2B customer onboarding is the second half of the project

B2B customer onboarding turns a working portal into a channel your customers use. Plan it before launch, set up accounts one by one, let reps place the first orders, give buyers reasons to come back, and change pay so reps gain when customers order online. Then measure the online share of orders per account every month. If you want help finding new buyers as well, our guide to B2B SEO covers that side.

Portal live but the phone still ringing? Tell us where your accounts are stuck, and we'll help you plan the next 12 months of adoption.

The post B2B Customer Onboarding: Getting Customers to Use Your New Portal appeared first on scandiweb.

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to a store that sells only to businesses? To a store that just launched a new theme, or to a brand with nine employees? These are the questions eCommerce teams have been asking since the law took effect on 28 June 2025, usually after a lawyer, a large customer or a vendor email raised it first.

The short answer: if your store sells to consumers in the EU, the law almost certainly covers it, wherever your company is registered. The longer answer depends on how your checkout works, how big your company is and what the first court cases have shown, and that is what the rest of this guide works through, ending with a plan to get from an audit to a published accessibility statement.

What is the European Accessibility Act?

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is an EU directive that requires certain products and services sold to consumers to be accessible to people with disabilities. For online stores, it covers the website, the mobile app, and the full path to purchase, from product pages to payment. EU countries had to turn it into national law, and those laws have applied since 28 June 2025.

The law itself is Directive (EU) 2019/882. Because it’s a directive, each country passed its own version, such as Germany’s Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) and Ireland’s S.I. No. 636 of 2023. The requirements are the same in substance. Fines, regulators and some details differ, so the market you sell into decides which version you answer to.

Besides online stores, the act covers computers and smartphones, ATMs and ticket machines, e-books, consumer banking, telecom services and parts of passenger transport. For eCommerce, the category that matters is “e-commerce services”, defined as services provided at a distance through websites and mobile apps, at a consumer’s request, with a view to concluding a consumer contract. It joins a growing list of EU rules for online checkouts, such as the new EU withdrawal button.

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to your online store?

The EAA applies to your online store if you sell to consumers in the EU, wherever your company is based. It covers websites and apps used to conclude a consumer contract. Two groups are outside it: stores that sell only to businesses, and microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total.

Stores that sell only to businesses

The directive defines a consumer as a person who buys for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession. A store that sells only to companies concludes no consumer contracts, so the e-commerce rules don’t cover it. Germany’s BFSG says it directly: a service provider under the law is one that offers a service for consumers.

The catch is how the store works in practice. If a private person can register, add to cart and pay without a business check, the store concludes consumer contracts, whatever the homepage says. Before you rely on the B2B exclusion, check that:

• Registration requires a company name and a VAT or company number that you verify
• Prices, terms and checkout are written for business buyers
• Your terms and conditions exclude sales to consumers
• Orders from private individuals are rejected or cancelled
• Any separate D2C storefront is assessed on its own

The microenterprise exemption

Article 4(5) exempts microenterprises that provide services from the accessibility requirements. A microenterprise has fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of €2 million or less. The staff limit is strict, while the financial limit is met if either figure stays at or below €2 million.

The directive has no grace period for growing out of the exemption. If you plan to hire your tenth employee, start the accessibility work before you do.

Stores based outside the EU

A UK or US store that sells to consumers in Germany or France is in scope for those customers. The UK didn’t adopt the directive, so a UK store selling only at home isn’t covered by it, although the Equality Act 2010 still requires reasonable adjustments for disabled customers. US stores have their own pressure under the ADA, where web accessibility lawsuits have been common for years.

European Accessibility Act requirements for eCommerce websites

The EAA requires an online store to be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for people using assistive technology. In practice, that means accessible product information, navigation, forms, sign-in, checkout and payment, plus a public explanation of how the store meets the requirements. The directive also asks you to keep the store compliant every time it changes.

The requirements for an online store come in four parts:

• The website and app. Annex I asks for websites and mobile apps to be accessible “in a consistent and adequate way” by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust, the four principles behind WCAG.
• eCommerce specifics. The store must pass on accessibility information about the products it sells when the manufacturer provides it, and must make identification, security and payment functions accessible. Sign-in, one-time codes, CAPTCHAs and payment forms are all in scope.
• Information. You must explain how the service meets the requirements, in your terms and conditions or an equivalent document, in an accessible format. Most stores publish this as an accessibility statement.
• Ongoing conformity. You need procedures that keep the store compliant as it changes. If you find a non-conformity, you must fix it and inform the national authority.

The second point is the one store teams miss most often. A checkout can pass every page-level test and still fail at payment, because the card form is an iframe from the payment provider, the 3-D Secure challenge comes from the bank, and the CAPTCHA comes from a third vendor. The directive names identification, security and payment explicitly, so ask each provider for its accessibility conformance report and test a full purchase with a screen reader.

Product information is narrower than it sounds. You pass on what the manufacturer supplies, such as screen reader or hearing aid compatibility on electronics, in a format assistive technology can read. Well-structured product detail pages make this much easier, because the information has an obvious place to go.

There is one formal way out. If a requirement would fundamentally change your service or impose a disproportionate burden, Article 14 lets you rely on that, but only with a documented assessment that you keep for five years, renew at least every five years and share with the authority. The exception isn’t available if you received funding to improve accessibility.

WCAG 2.1 AA and EN 301 549: the standard behind the law

The EAA doesn’t name WCAG directly. The technical benchmark is the European standard EN 301 549, whose current version, V3.2.1, includes WCAG 2.1 level AA for websites. A newer version based on WCAG 2.2 was published in September 2026 but is not yet officially cited. Testing against WCAG 2.1 AA, with an eye on WCAG 2.2, is the practical target.

Automated scans show how far most websites are from that target. The WebAIM Million study of the top one million home pages, run in February 2026, found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of them, with an average of 56.1 errors per page. Six failure types account for most of them.

On an online store, those failures cluster in predictable places:

Plan for WCAG 2.2 now. Its new AA criteria include a minimum target size for buttons and links (2.5.8) and accessible authentication (3.3.8), and both affect mobile product pages and sign-in directly. When the new EN 301 549 version is cited, they become part of the benchmark.

Does a new theme make your store compliant?

A modern theme gives you a better starting point, and that’s all a theme can give. Shopify requires Theme Store themes to score at least 90 on average in Lighthouse’s accessibility audit, and a new Magento front end such as Hyvä means every template gets rebuilt, which is the cheapest moment to get accessibility right. When we replaced a Luma storefront with Hyvä for a global home brand, WCAG compliance was built into all key page templates during the redesign.

Even so, the theme is only one layer. A Lighthouse score of 90 still leaves failures that no automated test can detect, and these parts of a store are outside any theme:

• Your content: product images without alt text, PDFs, videos without captions, banners with text baked into the image
• Extensions and apps: review widgets, size guides, search and filtering modules, live chat
• Third-party scripts: cookie banners, pop-ups, payment iframes, CAPTCHAs
• Customizations: a custom mega menu or product configurator built for your store
• Everything published later: each new landing page and campaign your team adds after launch

The same applies to accessibility overlays, the one-line scripts that add a toolbar and promise compliance. They change how a page looks after it loads but leave the underlying markup as it is, so the failures that matter to screen reader users usually remain. The Overlay Fact Sheet, signed by hundreds of accessibility professionals, advises against relying on them.

Is there really a 2030 deadline?

Many guides say existing websites have until 2030 to comply. For an online store that keeps selling to consumers, that reading of the directive is wrong.

The transition in Article 32 is narrower. It lets service providers keep using products they already used before 28 June 2025, such as payment terminals, until 28 June 2030. It also lets service contracts agreed before 28 June 2025 run until they expire, for no more than five years. Neither clause pauses the requirements for a website.

Some content is outside the rules altogether. Article 2(4) excludes pre-recorded video and audio and office files, such as PDFs, published before 28 June 2025, third-party content you don’t fund, develop or control, and archived sections that haven’t been updated since that date. An old PDF size guide can stay as it is. A new one, or one you edit, needs to be accessible.

European Accessibility Act fines and enforcement

European Accessibility Act fines are set by each EU country, so they vary by market. Germany’s law allows fines of up to €100,000, and Ireland’s allows up to €60,000 and 18 months in prison on indictment. Courts can also order fixes: in June 2026, a French court gave Carrefour six months to make its website and app accessible.

Fines are only part of the risk. The directive requires penalties to come with remedial action, and every EU country must let consumers take a case to court or to a regulator. Disability organizations can join or bring those cases, which is how the first major ruling happened.

In July 2025, a French disability association sent formal notices to four grocery chains. On 4 June 2026, the court in Caen ordered Carrefour to make its website and app accessible within six months, with daily penalties for any delay. Carrefour argued that it already met 71% of the French accessibility criteria, and the court held that the store had to be fully accessible. A parallel claim against Auchan was dismissed in Lille in May 2026 and is under appeal.

How to reach EAA compliance: audit, fix, publish, maintain

Most stores reach EAA compliance in four steps:

1. Audit the store against WCAG 2.1 AA, with automated scans and manual testing of key journeys
2. Fix issues in order of risk, starting with checkout, sign-in and payment
3. Publish an accessibility statement that explains how the store meets the requirements
4. Build accessibility checks into design, content and release work so new pages stay compliant

Run an accessibility audit

A European Accessibility Act audit should follow full shopping journeys. Cover the home page, search and filters, a category page, a product page, cart, checkout, payment, account sign-in, and the pop-ups that appear along the way. Use automated tools for coverage, then test each journey with a keyboard only and with at least one screen reader, such as NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on iOS. Usability testing with people who use assistive technology shows where shoppers actually get stuck.

If you’d rather have it done for you, our accessibility audit checks the store against WCAG 2.1 AA and the EAA’s eCommerce requirements.

Fix in order of risk

Rank issues by how badly they block a purchase. How often a scanner flags them matters much less. A missing label on the card number field stops a blind shopper from buying. A decorative image without alt text doesn’t. A sensible order:

• Anything that blocks checkout, payment or sign-in
• Navigation, search and filters that keyboard users can’t operate
• Product information that screen readers can’t read, such as prices, variants and stock status
• Template-wide issues, such as contrast, headings and link text
• Individual pages and older content

Fixes in shared templates and components pay off fastest, because one change corrects every page that uses them. Contrast, focus styles and form patterns belong in the design system, which is where our UI/UX design team usually starts.

Publish your accessibility statement

Annex V of the directive sets out what you must publish: a general description of the service in accessible formats, an explanation of how it works, and a description of how it meets the accessibility requirements. It goes in your terms and conditions or an equivalent document, and most stores link an accessibility statement from the footer. A useful statement covers:

• What the store offers and how it’s structured
• How the main features work, including search, checkout and payment
• Which standard you followed, for example WCAG 2.1 AA through EN 301 549
• Known issues and the dates you plan to fix them
• A contact point for accessibility problems and another way to place an order
• The national authority that handles complaints in your main markets

The first three items come from Annex V. The last three are good practice taken from public-sector accessibility statements, and they show a regulator that you take problems seriously.

Keep it compliant after launch

The directive expects the store to stay compliant as it changes. That means accessibility checks in the definition of done for every feature, a check of every new app or extension before install, contrast and alt text rules for the content team, and a re-test of the main journeys every quarter. If your store runs on a support plan, the simplest place for these checks is release QA in your eCommerce support process.

Frequently asked questions about the European Accessibility Act

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to B2B online stores?

Not if the store sells only to businesses. The act covers e-commerce services that conclude consumer contracts, so a store with verified business accounts and no consumer sales is outside it. If private buyers can register and pay without a business check, the store concludes consumer contracts and the act applies.

What is the European equivalent of the ADA?

For private businesses, the EAA is the closest equivalent. Unlike the ADA, it lists specific products and services, points to a technical standard, EN 301 549, and requires a public explanation of how a service meets the rules. Public-sector websites fall under a separate law, the Web Accessibility Directive.

Is WCAG 2.1 AA enough for the European Accessibility Act?

For the website itself, WCAG 2.1 AA through EN 301 549 is the accepted benchmark today. The act also requires product accessibility information, accessible payment and identification, an accessibility statement, and procedures to stay compliant. A version of EN 301 549 based on WCAG 2.2 has been published, so plan for WCAG 2.2 as well.

Do accessibility overlays make a store compliant?

No. Overlays add a toolbar and change how a page looks after it loads, but they leave the underlying code unchanged, so most barriers for screen reader and keyboard users remain. Compliance comes from fixing the store’s templates, components and content.

Who checks compliance with the EAA?

Each EU country names its own authorities to check that services comply and to follow up complaints, often its consumer protection or market surveillance body. Consumers and disability organizations can also take cases to court, as the Carrefour ruling in France showed.

Does the EAA apply to UK online stores?

Yes, for their sales to consumers in the EU. A UK company selling to shoppers in Ireland, Germany or France must meet the national version of the act in each of those countries. Sales to UK customers fall under the Equality Act 2010 instead.

Make accessibility part of the next release

The European Accessibility Act makes accessibility a condition for selling to EU consumers, and the first ruling shows courts expect the whole store to work, checkout included. Confirm whether you’re in scope, audit the journeys that earn revenue, fix the checkout first and publish a statement that matches what you’ve done. We’ve done this on Magento before, from bringing Lamborghini’s store to WCAG 2.0 AA with a custom keyboard flow to building WCAG compliance into a new Hyvä storefront.

Not sure whether your store is in scope, or how long the fix list is? Send us your store URL and we'll tell you where to start.

The post European Accessibility Act for Online Stores: Who It Covers and What to Fix appeared first on scandiweb.

This guide is for one retailer in particular: the one with a store network, an online shop, and a hunch that many of its online orders could be collected across town tomorrow morning instead of waiting three days for a courier. BOPIS, short for buy online, pick up in store, is how that happens.

A customer browses your online store during their lunch break, picks a store at checkout, and grabs the order on the way home. There’s no shipping fee and no waiting for a courier. Whether it’s groceries for same-day pickup or high-demand apparel, shoppers now expect that option. Below is what BOPIS is, what it asks of your stock data and store teams, how to run it on Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopify, and where it tends to break.

Overview

• BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), also called click and collect, lets shoppers pay online and collect the order at a store, usually the same or next day.
• It works only when per-store stock is accurate and the shopper hears from you at each step: order confirmed, ready for pickup, collected.
• Magento supports store pickup natively through Inventory Management (MSI): stores become pickup-location sources, In-Store Delivery appears at checkout, and staff send a ready-for-pickup email from the order.

What is BOPIS?

BOPIS stands for buy online, pick up in store. The shopper pays on your website or app, chooses a store, and collects the order there instead of waiting for home delivery. Retailers also call it click and collect, in-store pickup or store pickup. (Search “bopis” on its own and you’ll also find a Filipino dish, which is why retail pages spell the term out.)

For retailers, in-store pickup cuts last-mile shipping costs, brings online shoppers into stores, and gives staff a chance to sell something extra at the counter. For customers, it removes delivery wait times and shipping fees and gives them control over when they collect.

The catch is operational. You need store-level inventory you can trust, a pickup process that doesn’t clog the regular checkout lines, and messages that tell the shopper exactly when to come. Retailers that skip those three end up with canceled orders and annoyed customers at the counter.

BOPIS vs curbside pickup, ship to store and BORIS

The acronyms overlap, and the difference matters for how you set up stock and staffing.

Why consumers prefer BOPIS

Shoppers choose in-store pickup for speed, cost and certainty. Many prefer it over standard shipping because they can avoid delivery delays and collect within hours of placing an order.

Consumers also like skipping shipping fees. Some retailers add pickup-only discounts or promotions to tip the choice further.

Security and flexibility matter too. With BOPIS, customers avoid the risk of lost or stolen parcels and choose a pickup time that fits their day.

How popular is BOPIS now?

BOPIS is now a standard part of how large retailers sell online, and it peaks right before holidays. Salesforce data reported by Digital Commerce 360 shows that about a fifth of online orders in the 2025 US holiday season included buy online, pick up in store, rising to about a third in the five days before Christmas, with the peak on Dec. 22.

Curbside follows the same pattern. Adobe Analytics found that 39.0% of online orders used curbside pickup on Dec. 23, up from 37.8% on the same day a year earlier. Among the Top 1000 retail chains, 85.9% offered some form of omnichannel fulfillment in 2025, such as BOPIS, curbside pickup or in-store stock status, according to Digital Commerce 360.

There is a conversion signal too. Digital Commerce 360 found that Top 1000 chains offering BOPIS converted at an average of 3.4% in 2024, against 3.1% for all Top 1000 retailers. That doesn’t prove pickup causes the lift, but it shows shoppers use it when it’s there.

How do you set up a BOPIS program?

You set up BOPIS in four parts: per-store inventory that updates often enough to trust, pickup options that are visible before checkout, an in-store process for picking and handing over orders, and customer notifications at every step. Each part has its own failure mode, so plan them together.

Keep per-store inventory accurate

Shoppers should only be able to choose pickup at a store that actually has the item. That requires stock levels per store instead of one national number, and a sync between your store systems and your online store that runs often enough for your sales pace. Most retailers connect it through their ERP or POS, which is where an eCommerce ERP integration or a Magento-integrated POS pays off.

When stock updates lag, customers order items that aren’t on the shelf, and the store has to cancel or substitute. Retailers with many locations and fast-moving stock feel this most. Three habits help: a safety buffer per store for fast sellers, a store-level check when the order lands, and a fallback such as a nearby store or a substitute when an item is missing.

Show pickup options before checkout

A good pickup journey starts on the product page. Let shoppers pick a store, see whether the item is in stock there, and see the expected pickup time before they add it to the cart. Digital Commerce 360 counted in-store stock status on 65.5% of Top 1000 chains in 2024, so shoppers increasingly expect it.

Then keep the customer informed. A typical sequence is:

1. Order confirmation with the chosen store, its address and opening hours.
2. Ready-for-pickup message with what to bring (order number, ID, the card used) and how long you’ll hold the order.
3. Reminder if the order hasn’t been collected after a day or two.
4. Collected confirmation, which also closes the loop for returns.

Shoppers abandon pickup orders when the messages are vague or arrive late. Keep the wording consistent across the checkout page, email and SMS.

Run the in-store pickup process

Fulfilling BOPIS orders needs a defined process in the store. Set up a pickup point, such as a service counter, shelves or self-service lockers, so pickup customers don’t wait in line at the regular registers. Train staff to pick, pack and label orders quickly, and give them a scanner or tablet to see new orders and mark them ready.

The risk is that pickup volume slows down service for shoppers already in the store. Prioritize orders by promised pickup time, staff up for known peaks, and credit stores for the online orders they fulfill, so store teams don’t treat pickup as someone else’s job. Our guide on online and offline sales cannibalization covers how to set those incentives.

Add curbside, lockers and pickup slots carefully

Curbside pickup and lockers attract shoppers who want even less time in the store. Letting customers change the pickup method after ordering, or book a pickup slot, also spreads traffic across the day.

Each extra method adds work. Curbside needs real-time coordination between staff and arriving customers, and lockers need upfront investment and floor space. Add them one at a time, once the basic pickup flow runs smoothly. If you handle orders from many locations, a Magento order management system is where the routing rules for each method belong.

How to set up click and collect on Magento (Adobe Commerce)

Magento supports store pickup natively through Inventory Management, also called MSI (Multi-Source Inventory). You turn each store into an inventory source marked as a pickup location, assign those sources to a non-default stock, enable the In-Store Delivery method, and configure distance search so checkout can find the nearest store. Staff then notify the shopper from the order when it’s ready.

Inventory Management is installed with both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, according to Adobe’s inventory guide, so the native flow is available on either edition. The steps below follow Adobe’s own documentation.

How does MSI handle pickup locations?

In MSI, a pickup location is an inventory source with Use as Pickup Location set to Yes. You configure it under Stores > Inventory > Sources, and Adobe’s source settings then add a Pickup Location section to the source:

• Frontend Name: the store name shoppers see at checkout.
• Frontend Description: free text for opening hours, landmarks or parking notes. It can include images.
• Address and coordinates: country and postcode are required. Street, city, latitude and longitude make the distance search far more precise.

One rule catches many stores: the Default Source can’t be used as a pickup location. If your store runs on the single default source, you first create real sources for your stores and a new stock that includes them. Our guide to Magento inventory management explains how sources, stocks and sales channels fit together.

Turn on In-Store Delivery at checkout

In-Store Delivery is the shipping method shoppers choose at checkout. Adobe lists four prerequisites: a non-default stock and source configured as a pickup location, a configured Distance Priority Algorithm, geocodes downloaded and imported for offline distance calculation, and the Default Tax Destination Calculation settings.

You enable it under Stores > Settings > Configuration > Sales > Delivery Methods > In-Store Delivery. The settings are:

• Title: shown at checkout, “In-Store Pickup Delivery” by default.
• Method Name and Price: the label next to the rate, and an optional pickup fee.
• Search Radius: in kilometers, used when shoppers search for a store.
• Displayed Error Message: shown when pickup isn’t available for the cart.

At checkout, the shopper opens the Pick In Store tab. If Magento knows their address, it preselects the closest pickup location within the radius. If not, the shopper sees “We could not preselect pickup location based on available information” and chooses a store from the list, or searches by postcode or city.

Distance search runs on the Distance Priority Algorithm. You can use Google Maps, which needs an API key with the Geocoding and Distance Matrix APIs and may add Google charges, or offline calculation from geocodes your developers import from the command line.

Can customers pick up in store with per-store stock?

Yes. In MSI, each store source holds its own quantity per product, so pickup is tied to what that store has. Adobe’s REST tutorial for in-store pickup orders sets two conditions: all physical products in the order must be assigned to the pickup source, and all items must be in stock.

Keeping those quantities accurate is your job. The pickup-location search filters stores by which products are assigned to them. In Adobe’s tutorial, a store whose stock was moved to a warehouse still appears as a pickup location: “Although the store is out of stock locally, it can still be used as a pick-up location.” So the source quantities need a frequent sync from your ERP or POS, and orders need a store-level check before staff confirm them. If you’re connecting several systems, Magento integration services cover the sync design as well as the build.

Notify customers when orders are ready

When staff have picked the order, they click Notify Order is Ready for Pickup on the order in the Admin. The same action exists in the In-Store Pickup API as POST /V1/order/notify-orders-are-ready-for-pickup, which creates a shipment and sends the customer an email. API users need the Magento_InventoryInStorePickupApi::notify_orders_are_ready_for_pickup permission.

That endpoint is how most stores connect pickup to their store tools: when a store app or warehouse system marks an order as picked, it calls the endpoint and Magento sends the email. The native flow covers the ready-for-pickup email. Pickup reminders, SMS and “collected” messages usually come from your email or SMS platform, triggered by the order status.

Common pitfalls with Magento store pickup

Most problems we see come from setup gaps and a few version-specific bugs.

Two more points for planning. Adobe discontinued its Store Fulfillment extension in February 2024, so anything beyond the native flow (store selectors on product pages, curbside check-in, staff apps) comes from Marketplace extensions or a custom build on Adobe Commerce. And because pickup needs every item in the cart at one store, decide early what happens to mixed carts: block pickup, split the order, or transfer stock between stores.

How does local pickup work on Shopify?

Shopify calls it local pickup, or pickup in store. You enable it per location under Settings > Shipping and delivery > Pickup in store by turning on “Let customers pick up orders directly at this location,” then set an expected pickup time and the instructions that go into the Ready for pickup email, according to Shopify’s help center.

Staff click Mark as ready for pickup on the order to send that email, then Mark as picked up after collection. By default, pickup is offered only when the whole order is in stock at that location, though store transfers can move stock from other locations. Customers only see pickup locations in their own country, which matters if you’re selling in several countries, and custom pickup apps require Shopify Plus. For setups beyond the defaults, Shopify development usually means a pickup app plus a POS or ERP stock sync.

How BOPIS works in practice

Retailers across categories run BOPIS, and the best implementations share one thing: the shopper sees per-store availability before committing. Three of the examples below (Sportland, Byggmax and JYSK) are scandiweb clients, and the other two are well-known US retailers.

Sportland’s approach to in-store pickup

Sportland lets customers select their pickup store directly on the product page. As customers browse a product, they see an extra call-to-action next to the standard Add to Cart button.

Clicking it opens a store selector that shows stock availability at each Sportland store, along with opening hours and addresses. Behind it, a custom ERP integration syncs inventory, customer and order data between Sportland’s 120+ stores and its Adobe Commerce platform, and orders are ready for collection within 30 minutes at no additional delivery cost. Sportland saw +30% online sales and +20% repeat customers.

Read more: Delivering End-to-End Omnichannel Experience: Case Studies of Leading Retailers

Byggmax optimizes BOPIS with automatic store selection

Byggmax, a Nordic DIY retailer with 200+ stores, lets online customers check product availability at their local store and choose in-store pickup during checkout. Real-time inventory checks keep the stock information in front of the shopper accurate.

On mobile, Byggmax added a store selector icon to the main navigation. When tapped, a pop-up opens with the nearest store pre-filled based on the user’s location, while still allowing manual changes. The pop-up also shows opening hours and contact details.

Real-time availability and flexible pickup options at REI Co-op

Outdoor retailer REI gives customers a choice between in-store and curbside pickup throughout the shopping journey. Product pages show real-time stock levels at the selected store, and the checkout highlights expected pickup times.

REI also lets customers choose between pickup and delivery on the product page, with estimated times for both. Customers can switch stores if an item isn’t available at the one they chose first.

Target educates customers with a dedicated landing page

Target noticed that some customers didn’t know how in-store pickup worked, so it created a dedicated landing page that explains it step by step: choosing pickup at checkout, getting the pickup notification, and collecting in store or through Drive Up.

To encourage extra purchases, Target also added personalized product recommendations to that page, showing items often bought with the customer’s order.

JYSK connects online shopping with in-store convenience

JYSK Canada’s BOPIS flow starts online and leads the customer to their nearest store. An automated store locator assigns the nearest of its 50+ stores based on the customer’s location, and Adobe Commerce is connected to Microsoft Dynamics Navision, so the stock a shopper sees online matches what the store associate sees when the order arrives.

In the store, customers can use the JYSK app to find their way around, locate products on the shelf, and check stock in real time. If they decide to buy more during the visit, the app connects in-store shopping back to online orders, for example by adding items to a cart for home delivery.

scandiweb’s approach to implementing BOPIS

Every BOPIS project depends on the business: the number of stores, how stock moves between them, and what systems already hold the numbers. Across 2,100+ eCommerce projects, our process for pickup has settled into four steps.

Step 1: Requirements and UX wireframes

We start with a working session with stakeholders to agree on the pickup rules: which stores take part, how stock is synced, what happens to mixed carts, and which messages the customer gets. Where information is missing, such as store-level stock accuracy, we check the data before design starts.

Then we create high-fidelity UX wireframes for the store selector, product page, checkout and notifications. Each one carries notes on expected behavior, planned extensions and technical constraints, so usability issues show up before development.

Step 2: UX/UI designs

We turn the confirmed wireframes into final UI designs that follow your brand guidelines, consistent across desktop and mobile. The design phase includes a pattern library of interface elements and documentation of each element’s behavior.

Step 3: User testing

We test the pickup journey on desktop and mobile with real users to see where they hesitate or fail. The results go into an executive summary with task completion rates, behavior patterns and design feedback, and we adjust the designs before the build. Our CRO and UX team runs this testing.

Step 4: Implementation

With the designs approved, the team estimates the build, including the platform setup (on Magento, the MSI sources, In-Store Delivery and notifications above) and the stock integration with your ERP or POS. After stakeholder approval, development starts, and we test the full flow with real store stock before launch. For the wider picture of connecting stores and online, see our guide to unified commerce on Magento.

FAQ

What does BOPIS stand for?

BOPIS stands for buy online, pick up in store. The customer orders and pays on a retailer’s website or app, chooses a store, and collects the order there instead of waiting for delivery. It’s also called click and collect, in-store pickup or store pickup.

What is the difference between BOPIS and click and collect?

There is no real difference. BOPIS is the term US retailers use most, while click and collect is common in the UK, Europe and Australia. Both describe ordering online and collecting in a physical store, from a counter, shelf or locker.

Is BOPIS the same as curbside pickup?

No. With BOPIS, the customer walks into the store to collect the order. With curbside pickup, sometimes called BOPAC, staff bring the order out to the customer’s car. Curbside needs an arrival check-in and staff on call, so it’s usually added after basic in-store pickup works.

Does Magento support in-store pickup?

Yes. Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce include In-Store Pickup in Inventory Management (MSI). You mark store sources as pickup locations, enable the In-Store Delivery method, and configure distance search. Staff use Notify Order is Ready for Pickup to create the shipment and email the customer.

Can customers pick up in store with per-store stock on Magento?

Yes. Each store is an MSI source with its own quantities, and pickup orders need every item assigned to and in stock at that source. Magento doesn’t verify that the numbers are current, though, so per-store stock needs a frequent sync from your ERP or POS.

How does MSI handle pickup locations?

MSI treats each pickup location as an inventory source with Use as Pickup Location set to Yes. The source carries a storefront name, a description for hours or directions, and an address with coordinates for distance search. The Default Source can’t be a pickup location.

How do customers know a BOPIS order is ready?

The retailer sends a ready-for-pickup message once staff have picked and packed the order. In Magento, the Notify Order is Ready for Pickup action sends that email and creates a shipment. In Shopify, Mark as ready for pickup sends it. Reminders and SMS usually come from your messaging platform.

Does Shopify support local pickup?

Yes. Shopify lets you turn on pickup per location, set an expected pickup time, and send a Ready for pickup email from the order. By default, pickup is offered only when the whole order is in stock at that location, and customers see pickup locations only in their own country.

Got a store list, a stock feed you only half trust, and a checkout that only offers delivery? Bring all three and book a working session with our team. We’ll work out which of your stores should become pickup locations first, how often their stock needs to sync, and what your customers hear at each step.

The post BOPIS: How Click and Collect Works and How to Set It Up appeared first on scandiweb.

56% of online stores have eCommerce site search that fails to meet shoppers’ needs, according to Baymard Institute’s 2026 benchmark of Search UX on more than 170 sites and apps. One of the most common failures hits product catalogs directly: 54% of sites have problems when shoppers search with an abbreviation or a symbol, such as “usb c” or “15in”.

A shopper who gets zero results for a product you stock can’t tell that your catalog has it. They assume you don’t, and they go back to Google. This guide covers how to find the queries that fail, why search misses products that are obviously there, which best practices fix most of it, and when AI search or Adobe Live Search is the right next step.

Overview

• Most failed searches come from four causes: shopper words that don’t match catalog words, missing product attributes, broken handling of SKUs and symbols, and visibility or stock settings.
• Your search log already lists the failing queries. Sort them by volume, fix the top 50, and recheck every month.
• AI (semantic) search matches by meaning and closes much of the synonym gap, but it can’t find an attribute your product data doesn’t contain.

What is eCommerce site search?

eCommerce site search is the search box on an online store and the engine behind it: it reads a shopper’s query, matches it against the product catalog, ranks the results, and shows filters to narrow them. Good site search returns the right product for exact names, product types, features, use cases, and misspellings as well as exact titles.

The engine is usually one of three kinds. The platform’s built-in keyword engine (OpenSearch on Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce), a platform add-on such as Adobe Live Search, or a third-party search service such as Algolia or Klevu.

Why does site search miss obvious products?

Site search misses obvious products when the words in the query don’t line up with the words in the catalog. The engine can only match the text and attributes it was given, so a product titled “Rain shell, men’s” stays invisible to “waterproof jacket” unless a synonym, an attribute, or semantic matching connects the two.

The failures fall into two groups, and each needs a different fix.

Zero-result queries

A zero-result query returns an empty page. These are the easiest to find because every search tool can report them, and the most damaging, because the shopper gets no next step. The usual causes:

• Vocabulary gap: shoppers say “sofa”, the catalog says “couch”. Shoppers say “sneakers”, the catalog says “trainers”.
• Abbreviations and symbols: “usb c”, “15in”, “3/4 sleeve”, “m4 bolt”. Tokenizers often split or drop the symbol, so the query never matches the attribute value.
• Misspellings beyond the typo tolerance: many engines allow one or two wrong characters. “Wiskey glases” may be one wrong character too many.
• Missing attributes: the shopper searches “linen shirt” and the fabric only appears in an image or a PDF spec sheet.
• Products hidden by settings: out-of-stock items excluded from search, products not assigned to the store view, or B2B products outside the shopper’s shared catalog.

Wrong-result queries

A wrong-result query returns products, just not the right ones. These are harder to spot because the log shows results, so nothing looks broken. A search for “iphone 15 case” that lists the iPhone 15 itself first, or “red dress” that shows red shoes because the word “red” appears in a shoe description, are typical examples. The causes are usually ranking: every field is weighted the same, accessories outrank main products, or a merchandising rule pins products that no longer fit the query.

How to diagnose zero-result and wrong-result queries

Diagnose site search from your own search log: export the queries, sort by volume, test the top ones by hand, label each failure with its cause, fix the cause, and test again after the next reindex. The top 50 queries are a practical place to start.

1. Collect the queries. In GA4, the site search event view_search_results records the search_term when your search URL uses one of the default parameters (q, s, search, query or keyword), as described in Google’s site search setup guide. Magento (Adobe Commerce) also keeps a search terms report in the admin, and Live Search, Algolia and Klevu each have their own dashboards.
2. Sort by volume and split the list. One list for queries with zero results, one for queries with results but no clicks or a high exit rate. The second list is where wrong-result queries show up.
3. Run each query yourself. Note what came back and what should have come back. A spreadsheet with “query, expected product, actual top 3” is enough.
4. Label the cause using the table above. The labels show which fix pays off first.
5. Fix the cause behind the query. A synonym fixes one query. A missing “material” attribute fixed in your product data fixes hundreds.
6. Retest after reindexing and keep the sheet. A monthly pass on the top 50 queries catches new gaps after catalog updates, seasonal ranges, and new brands.

If the same attribute keeps coming up as missing, the fix belongs upstream in your product data. Our guide to choosing PIM software covers where that data should be maintained.

eCommerce site search best practices

The best practices below follow the order a shopper meets them: the search box, autocomplete, the results page, filters, and the empty page. Each one fixes a failure point that shows up in search logs again and again.

Make the search box easy to find and use

Put a full, visible search field in the header of every page on desktop. On mobile, make it large enough to tap and add a submit button next to it. Baymard’s research found that 21% of sites leave out that button on mobile, which leaves shoppers unsure how to run the search. Use placeholder text that shows what people can search for (“Search by product, brand or SKU”).

Use autocomplete that corrects as people type

Autocomplete is on 80% of eCommerce sites, yet Baymard rates only 19% of them at the highest performance level. The difference is in the details: suggest queries and categories as well as products, correct close misspellings before the shopper presses enter, and keep the suggestion list short enough to scan.

Handle typos, plurals and symbols

Check how your engine treats “jean” and “jeans”, “t-shirt” and “tshirt”, “usb-c” and “usb c”. Normalize those values in the catalog and add the variants as synonyms where the engine can’t handle them. Live Search, for example, runs a second, fuzzy search with an edit distance of 1 when the exact search returns nothing, so a two-letter typo still needs help.

Build synonyms from your logs

Build synonyms from the queries shoppers actually type. Use one-way synonyms where meaning only runs one way: “laptop” should find “MacBook”, but “MacBook” shouldn’t return every laptop. Review the list every quarter, because product ranges and language change.

Weight fields and keep merchandising rules honest

Rank title, category and key attributes above long descriptions. Then review your merchandising rules: rules that pin or bury products are useful for campaigns, but an old pinned product on a high-volume query is one of the most common causes of wrong results.

Make filters match the query

After a search, show filters that fit the results: size and fit for apparel, voltage and connector for electronics. Filters that make sense for the whole catalog rarely make sense for one query. If your filter pages are also indexed by Google, decide which filter pages Google should index separately from the in-store filter experience. Our guide to Magento layered navigation covers the setup side.

Never show a dead-end no-results page

When search does return nothing, show the corrected spelling, popular categories, best sellers in the closest category, and a way to contact the team. An empty page with “No results found” ends the visit for most shoppers who reach it.

What is AI site search, and can it fix synonyms?

AI site search, also called semantic search, matches a query to products by meaning instead of by exact words. It turns product text and the query into numeric vectors and returns the products whose vectors are closest, so “something warm for rainy hikes” can find an insulated waterproof jacket even when none of those words appear in the query.

OpenSearch’s documentation describes the method: text embedding models turn each product and each query into a dense vector stored in a vector index, and search compares those vectors. Most commerce search vendors now combine this with classic keyword search. Algolia’s NeuralSearch, for example, runs vector search alongside keyword search and merges the two result sets, because keyword matching still wins on exact names and SKUs.

Can AI search fix synonyms?

Mostly, yes. Semantic search connects “sofa” and “couch” or “sneakers” and “trainers” without a hand-written synonym list, which removes most of the vocabulary-gap failures. It’s weaker in three places:

• SKUs, part numbers and model codes. These have no meaning to compare, so keyword matching has to handle them. That is why hybrid search exists.
• Brand and store language. Your own product line names, internal size codes, and B2B part names may not be close to anything the model learned.
• Attributes that aren’t in the data. If fabric, voltage or compatibility isn’t in the product record, no model can match on it. AI search makes product data gaps more visible.

What AI site search needs before it works

Clean titles, complete attributes, and descriptions written for people give the embedding model something to work with. Click and conversion data improves ranking over time. Run a holdout or before-and-after test on your top queries so you can measure the change. A demo built on the vendor’s sample catalog says little about yours.

If you want shoppers to describe a need in a full conversation, a chat-style assistant is the next step beyond the search box. Our guide to a conversational shopping assistant covers the options and costs.

Adobe Live Search: what it does and where it stops

Adobe Live Search is the SaaS search service for Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 and later. It replaces the platform’s OpenSearch storefront search, is included in the Adobe Commerce license, and adds AI re-ranking, search-as-you-type, synonyms, merchandising rules and a product listing widget. It doesn’t run on Magento Open Source.

The facts below come from Adobe’s own Live Search documentation on Experience League:

• Included in the license. Adobe describes Live Search as a SaaS service “included in your license”. The install guide lists only Adobe Commerce on cloud and on-premises, 2.4.4 or later, and OpenSearch and Live Search can’t run on the same instance. If you are weighing editions, see our comparison of Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source.
• Semantic search arrived in June 2026. According to the Live Search release notes, it “uses AI to match products by meaning and context” to cut zero-result searches on natural-language queries. It works on English catalogs only. It is on by default for Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service and has to be switched on for cloud and on-premises installs.
• AI ranking from shopper behavior. The Live Search overview describes AI-driven faceting and re-ranking based on in-session behavior. A newer setting controls how strongly that intelligent ranking weighs against text relevance.
• Typo handling is narrow. When an exact search finds nothing, Live Search runs a fuzzy search with a maximum edit distance of 1.

The boundaries and limits page is the part to read before you commit:

Is Adobe Live Search worth it, or should you switch?

Adobe Live Search is worth it for Adobe Commerce stores on a Luma-based frontend with an English catalog that fits within its synonym and rule limits, because it is already in the license and now includes semantic search. Stores that need content search, non-English semantic matching, a Hyvä or headless frontend without custom work, or more control over ranking should compare a dedicated search service.

Questions that settle the decision:

• Is the store on Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source? Open Source stores choose between tuning OpenSearch and a third-party service. Live Search isn’t an option.
• Is the catalog in English? If not, Live Search’s semantic search doesn’t apply yet.
• What is the frontend? On Luma, Live Search works out of the box. On Hyvä or headless, compare the cost of building on the Live Search API with a service that has a ready frontend for your stack.
• Do shoppers search for content? Size guides, delivery and returns queries need CMS search, which Live Search doesn’t index.
• What does your search log say? If most failures are missing attributes, switching engines won’t fix them. Fix the data first, then compare engines on your own top queries.

How a third-party search engine works on a Magento store

On Ionto’s Magento store, scandiweb redesigned all three store views for a B2B customer journey and enabled Klevu smart search and AI product recommendations as part of the same project, alongside ERP and PIM integration work.

Read more: Proactive eCommerce Support Secures a 90.2% Revenue Increase

Integrations aren’t always plug and play. On a B2B rebuild on Magento 2 with a PWA frontend, the Klevu extension had compatibility issues with the latest Magento and ScandiPWA versions. The team fixed them in both the frontend and the backend, including product resolvers that skip Magento processing when the data comes from Klevu. Budget for that kind of work when your frontend isn’t the vendor’s default.

Read more: Case Study: Rebuilding a Complex B2B eCommerce Site with Magento 2

How to measure site search performance

Measure site search with five numbers: the share of sessions that use search, the zero-result rate, the search exit rate, the refinement rate, and conversion from sessions with search compared with sessions without. Track them monthly and after every change to the engine, synonyms, or product data.

• Search usage rate: sessions with a search divided by all sessions. A sudden drop can mean the search box became harder to find after a redesign.
• Zero-result rate: searches with no results divided by all searches. This is the first number to move after synonym and attribute fixes.
• Search exit rate: searches after which the shopper left the site. High exits on queries with results point to wrong-result problems.
• Refinement rate: searches followed by another search. Some refinement is normal, but repeated rewording means the first query failed.
• Search conversion: orders from sessions with search compared with sessions without. Use it to size the business case for search work.

Set these up as a GA4 exploration on the view_search_results event, or use the dashboards in your search tool. The same numbers are where a CX optimization review starts when it ranks search fixes.

Frequently asked questions about eCommerce site search

What is eCommerce site search?

eCommerce site search is the search function on an online store: the search box, autocomplete, the engine that matches queries to products, the ranking of results, and the filters on the results page. It helps shoppers who already know what they want reach the product without browsing categories.

Why does my site search return no results for products I sell?

Usually because the shopper’s words don’t match the words in your catalog. Common causes are missing synonyms, abbreviations and symbols the engine splits, misspellings beyond its typo tolerance, attributes that aren’t in the product data, and visibility settings such as store view assignment or out-of-stock rules.

What is AI site search?

AI site search, or semantic search, matches queries to products by meaning instead of exact words. It converts products and queries into vectors and returns the closest matches, so natural-language queries like “gift for a runner” can return relevant products. Most tools combine it with keyword search for SKUs and exact names.

Can AI search fix synonyms?

AI search fixes most everyday synonyms, such as “sofa” and “couch”, without a manual list. It still struggles with SKUs, model codes, your own product line names and attributes missing from the product data, so keep a short synonym list and fix your attributes alongside it.

Is Adobe Live Search free?

Adobe Live Search has no separate license fee. Adobe describes it as a SaaS service included in the Adobe Commerce license. The real costs are setup, the frontend work if you don’t use a Luma-based theme, and the time to manage synonyms, merchandising rules and the product data the engine depends on.

Does Adobe Live Search work with Magento Open Source?

No. Adobe’s install guide lists Adobe Commerce on cloud and on-premises, version 2.4.4 or later, as the supported platforms. Magento Open Source stores can tune the built-in OpenSearch engine or add a third-party search service such as Algolia or Klevu.

Search logs show what shoppers want and can’t find. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your top queries and what’s behind the failures, talk to the team and we’ll walk through them with you.

The post eCommerce Site Search Best Practices: Fix Misses and Add AI appeared first on scandiweb.

If there’s a gap between traffic and conversion, it is almost always a homepage problem, and it is the most common reason a good-looking Magento store still underperforms.

Magento (Adobe Commerce), gives you near-total control over the homepage through Page Builder, custom themes, and frameworks like Hyvä. That freedom is exactly why so many homepages drift into decoration instead of conversion. Let’s walk through Magento homepage design section by section, with the conversion principle behind each one.

What makes a Magento homepage convert?

A Magento homepage converts when every section moves a visitor one step closer to a product, a category, or a reason to trust you. The page is like a junction that routes different visitors toward the path that fits them.

Most first-time visitors do not know your catalog, sizing, or your reputation. The homepage has to establish all three quickly, then get out of the way. 

It also helps to anchor your design in proof rather than taste. If you want a reference set before you start wireframing, our roundup of the best Magento websites shows how leading brands handle the same sections covered below.

How to design a Magento homepage, section by section

Work top to bottom, and treat each section as a conversion zone with one job. The order below reflects how a visitor reads the page and where attention drops off.

1. Start with the hero that passes the three-second test

The hero is the band of content a visitor sees before scrolling. Its only job is to answer, within roughly three seconds, what you sell and why it matters. A vague lifestyle image with no words fails that test, no matter how beautiful it looks.

A strong Magento hero carries four elements: 

• A clear headline naming the category or promise
• Short subheadline that adds proof or specificity
• One primary call-to-action button (keep the button text concrete, such as “Shop the range” rather than “Discover”)
• A supporting visual that shows the product in context. 

In Page Builder, you can build this with a banner row and a button block. With a Hyvä theme, the hero is usually a templated section your developer wires to a CMS block so marketing can swap it without a deploy. 

2. State your value proposition right under the fold

Directly below the hero, give visitors a reason to choose you over the alternative one click away. This is usually a short strip of three or four benefits: free returns, fast delivery, a guarantee, or a differentiator only you can claim.

Keep each point to a few words paired with a simple icon. The goal is quick reassurance. It reduces the perceived risk of buying from a brand the visitor may not know yet.

3. Route shoppers with featured categories

Featured categories beat featured products on most homepages, because a first-time visitor rarely wants the one item you chose to spotlight. They want a fast route into the part of the catalog that fits them.

Show three to six category tiles with clear labels and representative imagery. For stores with seasonal or campaign priorities, this is where you steer demand. Reserve a featured-products block for genuine bestsellers or new arrivals, and pull it dynamically so it stays fresh without manual edits.

4. Earn trust with social proof

Social proof tells a hesitant visitor that other people have already bought and were happy. On the homepage, that means review scores, customer counts, recognizable brand or press logos, and short testimonials placed where the eye naturally lands after the category section.

Baymard Institute usability research finds that surfacing the right reassurances on a page measurably reduces hesitation. Pages carrying one to three signal types outperform those that pile on badges. More is not better; focus beats clutter. 

5. Reinforce confidence with trust signals near decisions

Trust signals are the practical reassurances that remove friction: secure payment badges, accepted payment methods, a clear returns promise, and visible contact options. Place them near the points where doubt creeps in, such as just above the footer and inside the header utility bar.

Baymard reports that 18% of cart abandonments trace directly to concerns about payment security. A homepage that signals legitimacy early prevents that doubt from forming in the first place.

6. Make navigation and search do the heavy lifting

For large Magento catalogs, navigation is a conversion tool. A well-structured mega-menu lets visitors jump straight to intent, and a prominent, fast search bar serves the high-intent shoppers who already know what they want.

Keep the top-level menu short and scannable, group categories the way customers think rather than the way your ERP does, and make search visible by default on mobile, don’t hide it behind an icon. These visitors convert at well above site average, so do not make them hunt.

7. Close with a focused footer and a single conversion offer

The footer is where motivated visitors look for shipping terms, support, and account links, so keep it organized and complete. Add one clear conversion offer above or within it, usually a newsletter signup with a concrete reason to subscribe, such as early access or a first-order incentive. One offer, clearly stated, outperforms three competing ones.

Design the homepage mobile-first

Most of your traffic is on a phone, so the single-column mobile layout is the real homepage, and the desktop version is the variant. Designing desktop first and squeezing it down is how stores end up with buried search bars and CTAs that fall below three scrolls.

Roughly 73% of eCommerce traffic now comes from mobile devices, and 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load, according to widely cited Google mobile research. Design the stack so the hero message, the primary CTA, and search are all reachable by thumb without hunting.

Why does homepage speed matter so much for conversion?

Speed matters because every fraction of a second between the click and a usable page is a fraction of your audience deciding to leave. A beautiful homepage that loads slowly converts worse than a plain one that loads fast.

The numbers are stark. A Deloitte and Google study, “Milliseconds Make Millions,” found that a 0.1-second improvement in mobile load time increased retail conversions by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%. On the homepage specifically, heavy hero images, third-party scripts, and stacked sliders are the usual culprits. 

This is one reason many merchants moving off heavy legacy themes choose Hyvä themes, which strip Magento’s frontend down for speed.

Magento homepage section priorities

A pre-launch checklist for your Magento homepage

Before you push a redesigned homepage live, run it against this short list to catch the issues that quietly cost conversions:

• A first-time visitor can state what you sell within three seconds
• There is exactly one primary call to action above the fold
• The mobile single-column layout keeps the CTA and search reachable by thumb
• The value proposition strip names concrete benefits
• Featured categories route to real demand, refreshed without manual edits
• One to three trust signal types appear
• Largest Contentful Paint stays under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range phone
• Every section maps to a job, with nothing left as pure decoration.

When to bring in a design partner

You can build and iterate the homepage in-house when you have a designer who understands conversion, a developer comfortable in Page Builder or Hyvä, and analytics to test changes against. Bring in a partner when the redesign touches the theme architecture, when speed problems are structural, or when the homepage is part of a wider replatform.

If no developer is free for homepage changes, you can ask Ari for them in chat. Ari, the AI agent for Magento, builds banners and content blocks on a copy of your store, and a person releases them.

If you reach that point, our guide to choosing a design agency covers how to evaluate Magento-specialist teams without overpaying for a generic web shop.

Frequently asked questions

How do I edit my homepage in Magento?

In the Magento admin, go to Content, then Pages, open the page set as your home page, and edit it with Page Builder or the CMS editor. You assign which page acts as the homepage under Stores, Configuration, General, Web, Default Pages.

What should a Magento homepage include?

At minimum: a clear hero, a value proposition strip, featured categories, social proof, trust signals, strong navigation and search, and a footer with one focused conversion offer. Each section should map to a single job in the buying path.

Should I use Page Builder or Hyva for homepage design?

Page Builder gives marketers drag-and-drop control without code, which suits frequent campaign changes. Hyva is a lighter frontend framework that favors speed and is usually managed by developers. Many stores combine a Hyva theme with CMS blocks marketers can edit.

How long should a Magento homepage be?

Long enough to cover the core conversion zones and no longer. Most effective homepages run five to seven stacked sections, ending before the content turns into filler that visitors scroll past without reading.

Do homepage carousels or sliders help conversion?

Usually not. Rotating banners dilute the main message and most visitors never engage past the first slide. A single, focused hero almost always outperforms a carousel.

How many trust signals should the homepage show?

Baymard Institute research suggests one to three signal types convert best. Pages crowded with seven or more badges actually performed worse, so prioritize the proof that matters most to your buyers.

Want a homepage built to convert? Talk to our team and rethink your homepage around the buying path your shoppers actually follow.

The post How to Design a Magento Homepage That Converts appeared first on scandiweb.

If you are watching new users sign up and then disappear before the product ever clicks for them, you already know onboarding is where the leak is. People do not churn because your product is bad. They churn because they never reached the moment it became useful, and onboarding is the path to that moment.

This applies just as much to an eCommerce account or a checkout flow as it does to a mobile app: the first session decides whether someone comes back. Below are nine onboarding best practices that hold up in 2026, each with a real example and the principle underneath it, so you can apply them to a web app, a mobile app, or a store account flow.

Overview

• The job of onboarding is one thing: get a new user to first value as fast as possible. Everything else serves that.
• The numbers are unforgiving. Around 77% of users stop using an app within three days, and in Q2 2025 only about 8.4% of users completed onboarding within 30 days.
• Good onboarding can lift retention by up to 50%, which is why it is one of the highest-return fixes a product or store team can make.

What is user onboarding?

User onboarding is the guided first experience that takes someone from “just signed up” to “actively getting value.” It covers the welcome, any setup, and the first meaningful action, the point where the user understands what the product does for them. Good onboarding is not about showing every feature. It is about getting the user to one clear win quickly.

Why does user onboarding matter?

Because most people leave fast, and onboarding is the one lever that changes that. Around 77% of users abandon an app within three days of downloading it, and retention keeps falling from there: 2025 benchmarks put average day-7 retention near 6.9% on iOS and 5.2% on Android, dropping to roughly 3% by day 30. The longer since install, the fewer users remain active.

The cause is rarely the product itself. It is that users never saw the value clearly enough to come back. Fix the onboarding and the curve bends: studies have found proper onboarding can increase retention by up to 50%, and product teams that reworked their first-run experience have moved week-1 retention from 60% to 75% and week-10 from 10% to 25%.

How long should user onboarding take?

As short as it can be while still delivering the first win. Survey data has long shown most users expect to finish onboarding in under a minute, and that expectation has not softened. With completion rates as low as 8.4% within 30 days, every extra step is a place to lose people. Aim for the shortest sequence that reaches first value, and let everything else be learned in context later.

The 9 user onboarding best practices

1. Get users to first value in under a minute

Do not turn onboarding into an essay. Keep it short and pointed at the first win. The longer the sequence, the more people drop before they ever reach it. If your setup genuinely needs more steps, defer the optional ones and front-load only what is required to reach value.

2. Always let users skip

A real share of users prefer to explore on their own, by trial and error. Do not trap them. Let them skip onboarding at any step. Trip.com does this cleanly, with a skip option in the top corner of every screen, so confident users get out of the way and into the product.

3. Show what users can do, not what the product offers

Onboarding copy shapes how people perceive the product before they have used it. Keep it user-centered, not product-centered. Write about what the user can accomplish, not what the company built. The MUST app (for building movie libraries) does this well, framing onboarding around you creating your collection rather than around its feature list.

4. Lead with the value, fast

Use onboarding to make the value obvious, not to bury it under instructions. Show what the user can accomplish and why it is worth their time. Revolut’s onboarding is a strong example: it lists clear benefits, uses social proof, and keeps a visible call to action, so by the end you want to explore the app rather than escape it.

5. Engineer the “aha” moment

The aha moment is when the user first feels the product’s value for themselves. Design onboarding to reach it deliberately, not by accident. Identify the single action that makes your value click, then build the first session around getting users to it. Facetune does this by letting users feel how quickly they can edit a photo, the value lands before any commitment is asked.

6. Onboard progressively, not all at once

You do not need to teach everything in the first session. Progressive onboarding reveals features when they become relevant, instead of front-loading a carousel nobody remembers. Teach the first action now, surface the next capability the moment the user is ready for it, and let the product teach itself in context. This keeps the first run short while still helping users go deeper over time.

7. Reduce sign-up friction before you optimize the flow

The fastest onboarding is the one with fewer obstacles in front of it. Offer social or single sign-on, ask for only the data you truly need up front, and let people experience value before forcing account creation where you can. For eCommerce, this is the same logic as guest checkout: every required field before the first win is a reason to leave. Collect the rest progressively, once the user has a reason to stay.

8. Show progress with checklists and indicators

People finish what they can see themselves finishing. A short setup checklist or a progress bar turns an abstract process into a goal with a visible end, which pulls users through it. Keep the list short, order it by value, and celebrate completion. This works as well for a store account or a B2B portal setup as it does for a SaaS product.

9. Measure activation and keep iterating

Onboarding is never done. Define your activation metric, the specific first action that predicts retention, and track how many new users reach it. Then test changes against that number. This is where onboarding meets conversion rate optimization: the same discipline of measuring, hypothesizing, and testing that improves a checkout improves a first-run flow. Our A/B testing framework is a practical way to run those tests without guessing.

Onboarding beyond the app: web and eCommerce

These principles are not mobile-only. An eCommerce account flow, a first purchase, or a B2B portal setup is onboarding too, and it follows the same rules: reach first value fast, reduce friction, show progress, and measure activation. The “aha” moment for a store might be the first successful order or the first saved cart, and the same first-session design that retains app users retains shoppers. If you want the experience studied end to end, that is what a structured UX design and CX audit process is for.

FAQ

What is user onboarding?

User onboarding is the guided first experience that takes a new user from sign-up to actively getting value from a product. It covers the welcome, any necessary setup, and the first meaningful action, and its goal is to reach that first win as quickly as possible.

What makes onboarding effective?

Effective onboarding reaches first value fast, lets users skip, leads with what the user can do rather than a feature list, engineers an early “aha” moment, and is measured against an activation metric. It removes friction instead of adding instructions.

How long should user onboarding take?

As short as possible while still delivering the first win. Most users expect to finish in under a minute, and with onboarding completion rates near 8.4% within 30 days, every extra step costs you users.

Why do users abandon apps so quickly?

Around 77% of users stop using an app within three days, usually because they never saw its value clearly, not because the product is poor. Onboarding that communicates value early is the main lever for changing that.

Does onboarding apply to eCommerce and not just apps?

Yes. A store account flow, a first purchase, or a B2B portal setup is onboarding too. The same principles apply: reach first value fast, reduce sign-up friction, show progress, and measure activation.

How do you measure onboarding success?

Define an activation metric, the first action that predicts a user will stay, and track the share of new users who reach it. Then test onboarding changes against that metric using a structured A/B testing process.

If your activation rate has stalled and you are not sure which onboarding step is losing people, that is a measurable problem, not a mystery. Book a UX working session and we will map your first-run flow, find where users drop, and test the fixes that move retention.

The post User Onboarding Best Practices: 9 That Work in 2026 appeared first on scandiweb.

You uninstalled MageMonkey, cleared the cache, hit Connect, and the sync still throws an error. Or every store view synced except the one that actually matters for abandoned-cart emails. If that is where you are right now, you are not doing anything wrong, the Mailchimp connector for Magento (Adobe Commerce) has a handful of well-known failure points, and the documentation for them is scattered across forum threads and old release notes.

We have set this integration up many times across client stores, hit the same walls, and worked out what reliably clears them. This guide is the short version: what the integration is in 2026, why the sync fails, how to connect a multi-store setup cleanly, and when the free connector stops being enough.

Overview

• The integration is now called Mailchimp for Adobe Commerce (formerly Mailchimp for Magento 2), a free connector that syncs customers and order data to a Mailchimp audience.
• Most “sync failed” errors trace back to one of three causes: a leftover MageMonkey install, an orphan Mailchimp store, or a multi-store setup on subdirectories rather than subdomains.
• You can only fully connect one store view per Mailchimp audience, so the real decision is which store view earns the full feature set.

What is the Mailchimp for Magento (Adobe Commerce) integration in 2026?

Mailchimp for Adobe Commerce is a free integration that adds your store’s customers and their order information to a Mailchimp audience, so you can run targeted campaigns, product retargeting, and abandoned-cart automations from purchase data. It used to be branded “Mailchimp for Magento 2” and you will still see both names in the wild, the connector and the underlying behavior are the same.

You install it from the Adobe Commerce Marketplace (it is free), or via Composer, then connect it to your Mailchimp account from the store’s admin. The setup itself is short. The friction is almost always cleanup from a previous tool or a multi-store quirk, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

Before you connect: remove MageMonkey completely

If your store has been live for years and you used Mailchimp before, you were probably running MageMonkey, the older extension. As the Mailchimp documentation states, you must uninstall MageMonkey before you can use Mailchimp for Adobe Commerce.

Here is the part the documentation skips: removing the extension files is not always enough. We have seen connections keep failing after developers removed MageMonkey, because not every path and database table was cleaned up during removal, and the leftovers caused errors. Ask your developers to confirm the database is clean, not just that the module folder is gone.

Why does the Mailchimp Magento sync fail?

When the sync fails, you usually see a generic connection error rather than a clear cause. Based on the extension developers’ guidance, that error points to one of three scenarios:

1. You have a parent scope configured.
2. You are using multi-store on the same domain under one Mailchimp account.
3. You have an orphan Mailchimp store left over from a previous connection.

The next two sections handle the orphan store and the multi-store cases, since those are the ones that send most people in circles.

An orphan store is blocking the connection

If you previously connected Magento to Mailchimp through MageMonkey, uninstalling it leaves an orphan store inside Mailchimp. That orphan blocks the new connector from claiming the store.

To clear it, log in to Mailchimp and open the Connected Sites page. You will see the connected store, and a Disconnect button in the lower-left corner that removes the orphan. If you do not see any connected account but the connection still fails, contact Mailchimp support and ask them to check for orphan stores that are blocking the connection, they can see ones the interface hides.

How do you connect a multi-store Magento setup to Mailchimp?

Mailchimp can connect several store views, but the layout of your store decides how cleanly it works. If your store views sit on separate subdomains, you are fine, you can connect all of them to your Mailchimp account. If your store views are separated by subdirectories, you cannot fully connect all of them.

In a subdirectory setup, one store view connects completely and shows up under Connected Sites. The others will still sync subscriber and order data, but they will not appear in Mailchimp and will not support Connected Site features like product retargeting, abandoned-cart emails, or Google Ads. So the data flows, but the revenue-driving automations only run on the one fully connected store view.

That makes the setup a decision, not just a configuration: pick the store view that earns the full feature set. Usually that is your highest-revenue or highest-traffic market, the one where abandoned-cart and retargeting automations pay for themselves fastest.

One more rule that trips people up: each store view (each subdirectory) must connect to a separate Mailchimp audience. Create a new audience in Mailchimp for every store view you plan to connect, then point each store view’s backend configuration to its own list.

Connection steps after the errors are resolved

Once you have cleaned up MageMonkey and disconnected any orphan stores, connect in this order:

1. Uninstall the MageMonkey extension correctly, with developer help to confirm the database is clean.
2. Open Connected Sites in Mailchimp and disconnect the old sites.
3. Go to the Magento (Adobe Commerce) backend and clear the cache.
4. In the Mailchimp extension settings, save the configuration at the default scope, do not enable the extension for the default scope, just save the configuration.
5. Switch to the store view you want to connect, enable the extension, and save the configuration there. Assign a separate audience to each store view you connect.

If you still hit an error after these steps, it is almost always an orphan store the interface is not showing, go back to step 2 and have Mailchimp support confirm it on their side.

Free connector or custom integration: which do you need?

The free connector is the right call for most stores. It syncs customers and orders, powers the standard automations, and costs nothing. You should look beyond it when one of these is true:

• You run a subdirectory multi-store and need full feature parity across markets, not just one fully connected store view.
• You want data the standard sync does not pass, such as custom attributes, loyalty tiers, or product-level segmentation rules.
• You are evaluating whether Mailchimp is even the right platform. Stores chasing predictable email revenue often move to a platform like Klaviyo, our Klaviyo migration case study covers a 4.8x email-revenue increase after one such move, and our email marketing best practices guide covers what to fix before you blame the platform.

If you need the connector to carry data it does not support out of the box, that is custom Magento integration services territory rather than a settings problem.

FAQ

Is the Mailchimp Magento integration free?

Yes. Mailchimp for Adobe Commerce (formerly Mailchimp for Magento 2) is a free connector available through the Adobe Commerce Marketplace. You only pay for your Mailchimp plan based on audience size and features, not for the integration itself.

Why is my Mailchimp Magento integration not working?

The most common causes are a partially removed MageMonkey install, an orphan Mailchimp store left from a previous connection, or a multi-store setup on subdirectories. Clean up the old install and disconnect orphan stores in Mailchimp’s Connected Sites before reconnecting.

Can I connect a multi-store Magento setup to Mailchimp?

Yes, but with limits. Store views on separate subdomains connect fully. Store views split by subdirectories will sync data, yet only one can be fully connected with retargeting and abandoned-cart features. Assign a separate Mailchimp audience to each store view.

Does the integration work with Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source?

Yes. The same connector supports Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source on supported 2.4.x versions. “Mailchimp for Magento” and “Mailchimp for Adobe Commerce” refer to the same tool after the Adobe rebrand.

What data does the integration sync?

It syncs customers and their order information into a Mailchimp audience, which powers segmentation, product retargeting, and abandoned-cart automations on the fully connected store view.

Should I use Mailchimp or move to another email platform?

Mailchimp’s free connector is fine for getting started. If email is becoming a serious revenue channel and you need deeper segmentation or automation, it is worth comparing platforms, our email marketing services team can scope that against your current setup.

Still staring at a sync error, or unsure which store view to fully connect? Send us your setup and the scandiweb team will tell you exactly what is blocking the connection. Tell us about your setup, and we will get your Mailchimp data flowing.

The post Mailchimp Magento Integration: A Pain-Free 2026 Setup appeared first on scandiweb.

A website personalization tool dynamically changes what a visitor sees on the page – headlines, hero images, product recommendations, search results – based on who they are and what they have done on the site. The part most “best in 2026” lists get wrong is that personalization tools split into four very different categories, and the wrong tool in the right category routinely beats the right tool in the wrong category. Picking the right one starts with knowing which category fits the problem you are trying to solve.

scandiweb’s CX team has deployed Klevu, Algolia, Adobe Target, Insider, Dynamic Yield, Optimizely, and VWO on client projects since 2018. The 9 tools below are the ones we actually put into production in 2025 – 2026, ranked by deployment frequency, not by marketing volume.

Overview

• Website personalization tools dynamically change on-page content based on visitor signals: location, browsing behavior, account history, audience segment.
• The Gartner-tracked personalization-engines market grew 26.1% in 2024 to $1.2 billion. Adobe, Optimizely, Dynamic Yield, and Insider are named Leaders in the 2025 / 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines – Adobe for the eighth consecutive year, Optimizely for the second, Insider newly named in 2026.
• The right tool depends on what you are personalizing, the platform you run on, your annual revenue, and who will operate it day to day. Below ~$5M GMV, start with a mid-weight experimentation tool or a specialist site-search tool. Above ~$10M GMV, an AI experience platform starts paying back.

What are website personalization tools?

Website personalization tools are software platforms that dynamically change on-page content – headlines, hero images, product recommendations, calls to action, search results, navigation – based on visitor signals like location, browsing behavior, audience segment, or account history. The goal is to replace a single static experience with many tailored experiences, lifting conversion rate and average order value.

Modern personalization tools combine four capabilities to different depths:

• Dynamic content replacement – swapping headlines, hero images, CTAs per segment.
• Behavioral targeting – reacting to scroll depth, time on page, items in cart, products viewed.
• Product recommendations – algorithmic “you might also like” and search relevance.
• Experimentation – A/B and multivariate testing to choose between personalized variants.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant tracks the AI experience platforms in Category 1 below. The other categories – experimentation tools, eCommerce site search, B2B account targeting – are tracked separately by Gartner, Forrester, and G2 because the buyer, the budget, and the use case are fundamentally different.

The four categories of website personalization tools

Most “best personalization tools” articles mix four very different product types into one ranking. Here is the split that actually matters.

Category 1 – AI experience platforms (full-experience)

Large, enterprise-priced, end-to-end platforms that personalize across web, mobile, email, and messaging from a unified customer-data layer. Use when you have meaningful traffic, multiple channels, and an in-house or agency team to run the platform. Avoid when you are below ~$5M annual revenue or your team does not have the bandwidth to operate it.

Tools in this category: Adobe Target, Dynamic Yield, Insider, Optimizely – all four named Leaders in the 2025 / 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant.

Category 2 – Experimentation and content personalization (mid-weight)

Mid-weight tools that lead with A/B testing and content variation, with personalization layered on top. Use when you want to start with experimentation and graduate into personalization. Avoid when your primary use case is search or recommendations on an eCommerce catalog – these are conversion-rate optimizers first.

Tools in this category: Optimizely (sits in both Cat 1 and Cat 2 for experimentation-led use), VWO.

Category 3 – eCommerce site search and product recommendations

Specialist tools that personalize the highest-intent surfaces on a retail site: the search bar, category pages, product detail pages. Use when you run a store with a real catalog (200+ SKUs) and on-site search is a meaningful conversion path. Avoid when your catalog is small or on-site search is not a problem.

Tools in this category: Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io, Attraqt.

Category 4 – B2B website personalization

Tools that personalize websites based on the visiting company, industry, or CRM record rather than individual behavior. Out of scope for this list (which focuses on broad eCommerce personalization), but worth flagging: Mutiny and Demandbase anchor the B2B category for teams running account-based marketing.

The 9 best website personalization tools in 2026

The table ranks the 9 tools by scandiweb’s implementation frequency on client projects – the platforms we are actually putting into production for eCommerce clients in 2025 – 2026, not the platforms with the loudest marketing.

Pricing tiers reflect 2026 public ranges plus scandiweb’s own deployment experience. Enterprise quotes are negotiated directly with vendor sales.

Personalization strategies for success

A list of tools is only useful when paired with a strategy. The biggest reason personalization programs underperform is not the tool – it is that teams turn the platform on and never define what success looks like or how they will measure it.

Setting goals and objectives

Establish clear, measurable goals before the first test fires. Vague goals (lift engagement, improve experience) produce vague outcomes. Specific goals (lift first-time-visitor conversion 12% on the category page, raise repeat-purchase rate 8% on email-led traffic within 90 days) produce decisions.

Three goal-setting rules we hold every client to:

• Tie the goal to a revenue or retention metric. Conversion rate, AOV, customer lifetime value, repeat rate. Not page-views, not time-on-site.
• Set the segment. Personalization is segment-by-segment. A site-wide goal is not measurable.
• Set the time window. Personalization needs at least 30 days per test on most accounts to clear statistical noise, many enterprise tools need 60 to 90 days.

Analyzing customer data

Customer-data analysis is what personalization runs on. The four analysis types every team needs:

• Segmentation analysis – dividing the customer base into actionable groups by demographics, browsing behavior, purchase history, or lifecycle stage. The starting point for almost every personalization test.
• Predictive analysis – using historical data and machine-learning models to forecast which customers will convert, churn, or move into a higher-value segment. Most Category 1 platforms include predictive scoring out of the box.
• Behavioral analysis – scroll depth, click patterns, cart actions, search queries. This is where Category 3 site-search tools deliver most of their value.
• Sentiment analysis – natural-language analysis of reviews, support tickets, and on-site search terms. Less commonly applied to website personalization directly but feeds the segmentation models.

scandiweb has deployed multi-market personalization on a CDP foundation (Bloomreach CDP case study), Salesforce Data Cloud-driven personalization for luxury retail (Salesforce Data Cloud case study), and omnichannel data unification for offline-and-online personalization. The pattern across all three: clean customer data is the foundation, the personalization tool is the application layer.

Implementing targeted campaigns

Once the goals are set and the data is in, the campaigns themselves are the easy part. The three types that drive the most revenue in our client projects:

• Personalized product recommendations on cart, PDP, and category pages – typically a 6 to 12% AOV lift on the targeted segments.
• Tailored content by audience segment – different hero image, headline, CTA per segment. The biggest wins come from new-vs-returning visitor segmentation, not from elaborate persona-based variants.
• Targeted email campaigns triggered by on-site behavior – basket abandonment, browse abandonment, post-purchase upsell. Pair the Category 1/3 platform with your ESP.

Read our AI-powered personalization breakdown for the implementation patterns we use most.

How to choose a website personalization tool

To choose a website personalization tool, identify the surface you are personalizing, the platform you run on, your traffic and revenue scale, and who will operate it day to day. Most teams pick the wrong tool because they answer the surface question last instead of first.

1. What are you personalizing? Search results → Category 3 (Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io). Hero banners and content variation → Category 1 or 2 (Adobe Target, Optimizely, VWO). Full-page B2B targeting → Category 4 (Mutiny, Demandbase – out of scope here).
2. What is your commerce platform? Adobe Commerce (Magento) → native fits are Klevu, Algolia, Adobe Target, Insider. Shopify → Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io, Dynamic Yield. Custom or headless → API-first wins (Algolia, Insider, Optimizely).
3. What is your scale? Below $5M/yr → start with Category 2 or 3, not Category 1. Enterprise platforms idle without volume to learn from. Above $20M/yr → Category 1 starts paying back.
4. Who runs it? In-house growth team → tools with clean UIs (VWO, Optimizely). Agency-operated → the heavy platforms (Adobe Target, Dynamic Yield) become viable. Solo founder → Klevu or Clerk.io plug-and-play.

A starting-point recommendation by scenario

• Small-to-mid Shopify store, $1M – $5M/yr: Klevu for search and Clerk.io for recommendations, or Algolia if budget allows.
• Adobe Commerce (Magento) store, $5M – $25M/yr: Klevu or Algolia for search, Adobe Target or Dynamic Yield for content personalization.
• Enterprise omnichannel retailer: Insider or Dynamic Yield for unified experience layer, plus Algolia for search.
• Fashion or lifestyle retail with visual merchandising needs: Attraqt plus Klevu.

Understanding the ROI of website personalization

Personalization is one of the higher-ROI investments in the eCommerce stack when implemented well. Forrester’s economic study of comprehensive personalization platforms found organizations reporting roughly 3x returns and $5 million in incremental revenue (Forrester, 2025). The lift varies enormously by team maturity: the same platform produces 5% conversion-rate lift for one team and 25% for another.

Conversion rate improvement

Personalized content and product recommendations typically lift conversion rate 5 to 15% on the targeted segments in our client work, the best campaigns we run move conversion 20 to 30%. The drivers are not exotic. The gains come from showing returning visitors a different hero than first-timers, surfacing recently-viewed products on the category page, and recommending category-adjacent SKUs at the cart.

scandiweb’s work with Byggmax drove a +15% AOV increase through personalization and marketing automation – the kind of structured lift personalization delivers when the data foundation is clean.

Enhancing customer loyalty

Personalization lifts repeat-purchase rate and customer lifetime value when the experience extends past the first transaction. Personalized onboarding (the first three to six visits after the first purchase), tailored lifecycle email, and on-site experiences that recognize the returning customer all compound retention. Across the lifecycle programs we run, personalized re-engagement campaigns recover meaningful revenue: read the $1.4M recoverable revenue case for the structural pattern.

Boosting brand recognition

A coherent personalized experience across web, email, and ad channels strengthens brand recognition by making the brand feel attentive. A visitor who sees their recently-viewed product in a follow-up email, their saved cart in an ad retargeting unit, and their preferred category prioritized on their next visit experiences scandiweb’s term for it: “the brand that remembers them”. This is the harder, longer ROI measure and the hardest to quantify in a single test, but it is the one that compounds over the 18 to 36 month horizon.

What a personalization deployment actually involves

A typical website personalization deployment runs 6 to 12 weeks across four phases: discovery and use-case prioritization, technical integration, hypothesis and test launch, and ongoing optimization. Tooling decisions matter, but implementation maturity matters more.

1. Use-case prioritization (1 to 2 weeks). Which pages, which segments, what hypothesis. We start with search and category pages on eCommerce sites because that is the highest-intent surface, but the right starting point varies by client.
2. Integration (2 to 4 weeks). Tagging plan, data flow into the tool, conversion-event mapping, QA in staging. Most overruns happen here.
3. First tests (2 to 3 weeks). Launch three to five hypotheses on the most-trafficked segments. Do not try to personalize everything on day one.
4. Optimization cadence (ongoing). Monthly review of winners, losers, segment performance, and what the data tells you about the customer base.

scandiweb has deployed Klevu, Algolia, Adobe Target, Insider, Dynamic Yield, and VWO on client projects across fashion, lifestyle, retail, and B2B. The single most common reason a deployment underperforms is not the tool. It is that the team did not commit to a sustained testing cadence beyond launch.

Personalization and AI Overviews in 2026

Google’s AI Overviews now feature recommendations of personalization tools on commercial-intent queries. Tools cited in the AI Overview for best website personalization tools in May 2026 include Optimizely, Insider, Adobe Target, and VWO. The same brand-authority dynamic that compresses paid CTR now decides which platforms reach the buyer.

The implication for vendors: AEO eligibility (snippet-shaped definitions, FAQ schema, declarative key-fact sentences) is now part of go-to-market. The implication for buyers: do not treat AI Overview recommendations as exhaustive. The four tools cited above are excellent options, but they are not the only options, and the right tool for your specific use case may not show up in the AIO at all. See our AEO services for how brand sites earn AIO citations.

Frequently asked questions

What is a website personalization tool?

A website personalization tool is software that dynamically changes the content, layout, and recommendations a website shows to each visitor based on signals like location, browsing behavior, audience segment, or account information. The goal is to lift conversion rate and average order value by showing each visitor a more relevant experience.

What are the best website personalization tools in 2026?

The right tool depends on the use case. For AI-driven full-experience personalization: Insider, Adobe Target, Dynamic Yield, Optimizely (all Leaders in the 2025 / 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant). For eCommerce site search and recommendations: Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io, Attraqt. For experimentation and content personalization: VWO, Optimizely.

How much do website personalization tools cost?

Pricing ranges from ~$200/month for entry-tier experimentation tools (VWO) to $50,000 to $300,000+/year for enterprise platforms (Adobe Target, Insider, Dynamic Yield). eCommerce site-search platforms (Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io) typically sit in the $500 to $5,000/month range depending on traffic and catalog size.

Which website personalization tool integrates best with Adobe Commerce (Magento)?

Native integrations exist for Klevu, Algolia, and Adobe Target. Insider and Dynamic Yield integrate via API. scandiweb has deployed all five on Adobe Commerce (Magento) client projects since 2018.

Which website personalization tool integrates best with Shopify?

Klevu, Algolia, Clerk.io, and Dynamic Yield all have strong Shopify apps. For Shopify Plus customers, Optimizely and VWO also integrate cleanly via app or SDK.

What is the difference between A/B testing and website personalization?

A/B testing compares two or more variants of the same page to find the winner. Everyone sees one of the variants. Website personalization shows different content to different visitors based on who they are. Most modern tools do both, but the primary discipline matters: experimentation tools (VWO, Optimizely) optimize toward a single winning experience, personalization platforms (Insider, Adobe Target) optimize toward many tailored experiences in parallel.

What is the ROI of website personalization?

Most well-implemented programs deliver 5 to 25% conversion-rate lift and 6 to 12% AOV lift on the targeted segments within 6 to 12 months. Forrester’s economic study reports roughly 3x returns and $5 million in incremental revenue across implementations. The variance reflects implementation maturity more than tool choice.

Do I need a website personalization tool if I already have Google Optimize or an email marketing platform?

Google Optimize was shut down in 2023. Email marketing platforms personalize email, not the website. If your goal is dynamic on-site content, product recommendations, or AI-driven search, you need a dedicated website personalization tool.

If you are scoping a personalization platform, or trying to get more from one you already own, scandiweb’s CX team has deployed Klevu, Algolia, Adobe Target, Insider, Dynamic Yield, and VWO on client projects since 2018. Reach out for a personalization roadmap – we will tell you exactly which of these tools you should be considering for your stack and scale.

About this guide

This guide is maintained by scandiweb’s CX team, drawing on our implementation experience across client projects, the 2025 / 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines, Forrester’s economic study of personalization platforms, and public vendor documentation. Reviewed by scandiweb’s CX engineering lead.

Related reading from the scandiweb blog:

• • Bloomreach CDP case study: multi-market personalization
  • +15% AOV via personalization and marketing automation
  • Salesforce Data Cloud case study
  • Omnichannel data unification for retail personalization
  • AI-powered personalization for search, upsell, and merchandising

The post 9 Best Website Personalization Tools (Updated 2026) appeared first on scandiweb.

Acquiring a new customer can cost five to 25 times more than keeping one you already have, and a 5% lift in retention can raise profits by 25% to 95%, according to research from Bain & Company and Harvard Business Review. That math is why customer engagement is not a soft metric. It is the cheapest growth a store has. The hard part is turning a one-time buyer into someone who comes back, and then into someone who brings others. This guide covers the customer engagement strategies that work, how they build loyalty, and the metrics that tell you whether they are working.

Why customer engagement and loyalty pay

Engagement is a profit lever, not a brand nicety. Returning customers spend on average 67% more than new ones (BIA Advisory), and because you are not paying to acquire them again, more of that spend reaches the bottom line. A small retention gain compounds: keeping 5% more customers can swing profit by a quarter to nearly double over time.

The opportunity is large and customers are receptive. The Antavo Global Customer Loyalty Report 2026 found that loyalty programs measuring their return report an average 5.3x ROI, roughly nine in ten owners report a positive return, and 65.9% of consumers say using a loyalty program is now part of their daily lives. Yet more than a quarter of loyalty points in the US go unspent, a reminder that signing members up is not the same as keeping them engaged. For the full picture on the revenue side of retention, see our guide to customer lifetime value.

Engagement and loyalty are not the same thing

Engagement is how often and how meaningfully a customer interacts with your brand, like opening emails, joining a quiz, replying to a post, or reading content. Loyalty is the behavior that follows when engagement is consistent and rewarded: repeat purchases, referrals, and a willingness to choose you over a cheaper option. You build engagement to earn loyalty, and you protect loyalty by keeping engagement fresh. The strategies below do both.

Customer engagement strategies that work

No single tactic carries a program. The brands that hold attention combine several of the strategies below, then double down on the ones their data rewards.

1. Build a reward program and promote it early

A reward program gives customers a reason to come back and a reason to spend more each visit. Promote it before launch to build anticipation, then keep promoting it after launch with fresh benefits based on what members actually use. Make the value obvious on your main product pages so shoppers understand what they gain by joining, and drive sign-ups through email, social, and on-site prompts.

Amazon promotes Prime through free trials and early access to deals before major events like Prime Day, building anticipation that turns into sign-ups. After joining, members get ongoing value through free shipping, exclusive content, and special discounts.

2. Add gifts and perks that feel high value

Beyond discounts, tangible gifts and perks like extended warranties or co-branded extras can tip a purchase decision in your favor. The catch is that customers often miss perks they are entitled to, so make them visible at the point of decision. Partnering with complementary brands for exclusive, limited-edition perks adds interest without discounting your own margin.

3. Personalize with data, and make it interactive

Personalization is one of the highest-return strategies available: McKinsey finds it typically lifts revenue by 10% to 15%, with faster-growing companies earning a larger share of revenue from it than slower peers. Tailoring promotions to individual preferences makes every message more relevant, and interactive formats like quizzes both engage customers and collect the data that makes the next interaction sharper. The right tools make this practical, so see our roundup of personalization tools.

4. Engage on social media and build community

Active participation in the communities around your brand strengthens ties that discounts cannot buy. Post consistently, respond to comments, address concerns, and run live sessions or Q&As so customers feel heard. Direct conversation builds trust and surfaces insight you can feed back into products and marketing.

This is not theory for us. After sustained SEO work and active community building for a multinational consumer-electronics and home-appliance brand, scandiweb delivered strong organic gains in one region, comparing Q2 against the prior year:

• +38.3% all clicks
• +53% branded queries
• +32% non-branded queries

5. Be consistent across every channel

Customers move between your website, app, email, social, and sometimes a physical store, and they expect the experience to feel like one brand throughout. Omnichannel engagement means a cart, a wishlist, and a loyalty balance that follow the customer wherever they go, plus messaging that picks up where the last touchpoint left off. Inconsistency, like an offer in email that the site does not honor, breaks trust faster than almost anything else.

6. Offer proactive, AI-assisted support

Support is an engagement channel, not just a cost center. Self-service help centers, AI chatbots for common questions, and proactive outreach when an order is delayed all keep customers engaged at the moments that decide whether they stay. The goal is to resolve the issue before it becomes a reason to leave, and to free your team for the conversations that genuinely need a human.

7. Use conversational, two-way messaging

Email, SMS, live chat, and push notifications work best when they invite a reply rather than broadcast at the customer. A back-in-stock text, a chat that remembers the last order, or a push that lands at the right moment all turn one-way announcements into a conversation. Respect frequency and consent, since the fastest way to lose an engaged subscriber is to over-message them.

8. Lead with value-driven content

Content keeps customers engaged between purchases. How-to guides, styling ideas, setup help, and honest comparisons give people a reason to come back when they are not buying, and they build the trust that makes the next purchase easier. Useful content also feeds your other channels, giving email, social, and search something worth sharing.

9. Onboard with lifecycle and trigger-based journeys

The first weeks after a first purchase decide whether a buyer becomes a repeat customer. A welcome series, a how-to-use-it follow-up, a replenishment reminder, and a win-back flow for lapsing customers all engage people at the moment that matters instead of on a generic schedule. Triggered journeys based on real behavior consistently outperform one-size-fits-all campaigns.

10. Add gamification and close the feedback loop

Challenges, streaks, badges, and tiered milestones make engagement feel rewarding rather than transactional, which is part of why tiered programs hold attention. Pair that with a real feedback loop: ask for input through surveys and reviews, then visibly act on it. Customers who see their feedback change something feel ownership, and ownership is what loyalty is made of.

Choosing a loyalty program type

A loyalty program is one of the strongest engagement strategies, but not every program fits every store. The four most common models each reward a different behavior, and many brands combine them.

• Points programs reward spend with points redeemable for discounts or products. They are simple to understand and work well for frequent, lower-value purchases.
• Tiered programs offer better benefits as customers spend more, which motivates higher lifetime value and gives members a status to protect.
• Paid memberships (like Amazon Prime) charge a fee for ongoing benefits, filtering for committed customers and creating recurring revenue.
• Referral programs reward customers for bringing in new ones, turning loyalty into low-cost acquisition.

For a deeper look at how different industries structure these, see our collection of loyalty program examples, and when you are ready to build, our step-by-step guide to setting up a loyalty program walks through the decisions. To see one built end to end on Magento, read the Holzkern reward engine case study.

How to measure customer engagement and loyalty

You cannot improve what you do not track. Use a mix of outcome metrics and leading engagement indicators:

• Repeat purchase rate is the share of customers who buy more than once, the clearest single signal of loyalty.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total expected revenue from a customer relationship. Rising CLV means your strategies are compounding.
• Retention and churn rate track the customers you keep versus the ones you lose over a period. Small gains here drive outsized profit.
• CSAT and NPS measure how satisfied customers are and how likely they are to recommend you, both early warnings before churn shows up in revenue.
• Engagement metrics like email open and click rates, program participation, and session frequency lead retention before it reaches the bottom line.

Set these up before you launch new strategies so you have a baseline, then review them on a fixed cadence and refine based on what the data shows.

Putting it into practice

Start with a written plan that names objectives, timelines, and owners across marketing and customer service, and keep it flexible enough to adjust as results come in. Connect your analytics so the metrics above are tracked from day one. Then review performance regularly, learn what works, and keep communication clear and consistent across email, social, and on-site messaging. Engagement is not a one-time campaign. It is a habit the whole team maintains.

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer engagement strategy?

A customer engagement strategy is a coordinated plan for how a brand interacts with customers across channels to build interest, trust, and repeat business, using tactics like personalization, loyalty programs, content, proactive support, and community.

What is an example of a customer engagement strategy?

A loyalty program is a common example: Starbucks Rewards lets members earn Stars on every purchase, redeem them for free items, and unlock perks, which gives customers a reason to come back and engage between visits.

What are the 3 C’s of customer engagement?

They are commonly described as consistency (a reliable experience across channels), customization (personalized, relevant interactions), and convenience (making it easy for customers to engage and buy).

Why is customer retention more valuable than acquisition?

Acquiring a new customer costs five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one, and returning customers spend about 67% more. A 5% increase in retention can lift profits by 25% to 95%, so retention is usually the cheaper path to growth.

How do you measure customer engagement?

Track repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value, and retention or churn as outcome metrics, plus CSAT, NPS, email open and click rates, and program participation as leading indicators.

Ready to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers? scandiweb designs and builds loyalty programs and the engagement experiences around them, from strategy to the storefront. Tell us what your retention looks like today and we will map the next step – explore our loyalty program accelerator.

The post Customer Engagement and Loyalty Strategies for eCommerce Brands appeared first on scandiweb.

In B2B, the eCommerce platform sits at the center of how companies buy, reorder, and manage suppliers, becoming part of the workflow itself. Research shows that most B2B buyers now prefer to complete tasks independently, without relying on sales teams, and they are willing to switch suppliers when digital channels fall short. As high as 90% of B2B customers will turn to a competitor that offers a smoother, more reliable experience, and 87% would pay more for a supplier with an excellent eCommerce portal.

The difficulty is that B2B purchasing does not follow the same logic as B2C. Orders are tied to specific business needs, often defined in advance, and involve multiple people with different roles in the decision. Buyers spend more time evaluating options and verifying details before placing an order. The process is structured, repeatable, and driven by requirements rather than exploration.

This directly affects what users expect from a platform. They need to:

• Locate exact products quickly
• Access detailed specifications without searching across multiple sources
• See pricing, stock availability, and account-specific terms accurately
• Place large or complex orders without introducing errors
• Easily reorder, and more.

When these conditions are not met, the impact is immediate and creates friction on both sides – for the customer trying to place orders, and for the B2B company trying to scale.

What breaks in most B2B platforms

The same issues appear again and again in B2B eCommerce, even when the industries are completely different. The friction tends to come from disconnected systems, weak self-service, hard-to-navigate product information, and ordering flows that take more effort than they should. These problems usually mean the platform was never shaped around how B2B customers actually buy.

Fragmented experiences

Many B2B companies grow through multiple brands, markets, catalogs, or business units. Over time, that often leads to separate sites and disconnected customer journeys. Users end up dealing with different:

• Navigation patterns
• Content structures
• Levels of product detail
• Rules depending on the brand or market.

That kind of fragmentation creates work for the customer. In our project with Ionto, the challenge was exactly this: three separate websites had to be brought into one unified platform that combined catalog and eCommerce functionality while keeping the experience consistent across brands.

Partial self-service

Not fully delivering self-service means that customers can browse, search, and maybe add products to cart, but the more important parts of the journey still sit outside the platform. Typical gaps include needing sales support for quotes, limited access to account-specific pricing, no efficient way to reorder, or too much manual handling for standard purchasing tasks.

Most B2B customers prefer self-service tools, and many will switch suppliers when the digital channel cannot support their needs.

Incomplete product information

B2B product pages have to help users verify whether something is right for a specific use case, team, order type, or requirement. When that information is too thin, too scattered, or too hard to compare, buyers need to leave the site to check documents, contact support, or confirm details internally before they can move forward.

Here’s how we’ve helped our clients enhance product information:

• Create advanced customization and quote-ready product flows for teamwear and bulk orders for Macron
• Prepare clearer product details, eco-property information, and usage tagging to support confident purchases for Enviropack 
• Improved search, product clarity, and list-view detail for users to find exact products efficiently on Cook Medical’s eCommerce portal.

Simplified ordering flows

A standard eCommerce cart is often too limited for B2B needs, as business customers deal with bulk quantities, repeat purchases, configurable items, approval logic, and account-specific conditions. Routine ordering may begin to feel slow.

B2B cart and checkout should have:

• Bulk order tables
• Quote-request options for customizable products
• Quick order functionality
• Dashboards and account tools
• Stock visibility tied to real buying decisions.

What breaks in most B2B platforms is the mismatch between the system and the workflow. When the platform mirrors how customers research, compare, configure, reorder, and manage purchasing, it starts reducing effort on both sides. When it does not, teams fall back on email, spreadsheets, and sales support to complete tasks the platform should already handle. If we look at it from this angle, the digital experience directly affects conversion and revenue.

Top B2B redesigns by scandiweb

In different industries, similar changes reflecting how B2B customers actually buy lead to measurable improvements.

1) Macron: innovative B2B experience

Macron is a global supplier of athletic apparel and teamwear, known for highly customizable products and large, structured orders.

Our goal was to design a flexible B2B platform that supports advanced product customization, bulk ordering, and personalized user journeys tailored to different business needs.

Our approach followed a user-centered process:

• Requirement gathering with stakeholders to define user journeys and key features
• UX wireframes, mapping complete user journeys for three distinct B2B user types
• Final UI aligned with the existing B2C experience to maintain visual consistency.

Design highlights

As a result, Macron’s customers can manage bulk purchases with diverse sizes and variations, access real-time stock information, and request a quote or place an order directly within the same flow. An intuitive dashboard gives quick access to key account information, while structured ordering tables reduce friction in high-volume purchasing.

• +132.5% conversion rate from direct traffic
• +14.1% transactions
• +29.8% year-over-year revenue
• +32.8% returning visitors
• Macron became a finalist for the B2B Trailblazer Award at the 2024 Meet Magento New York Ecommerce Excellence Awards.

Also read:
Macron’s B2B Platform Evolution with Adobe Commerce

2) Ionto: consolidated B2B digital experience

IONTO-COMED is a German manufacturer of professional cosmetic equipment, operating across multiple brands with distinct identities. 

Our goal was to build a unified platform from three separate websites that combines an informational catalog with full eCommerce functionality while maintaining a consistent, structured user experience.

Our approach was driven by data:

• CRO audit to assess user navigation, identify usability gaps, review the site against best UX practices, and define a new site concept
• UX wireframes outlining clear user journeys for guest and logged-in users to strengthen brand awareness and drive higher conversions
• A unified design system applied to all three brands.

Design highlights

As a result, Ionto has a fully redesigned and strategically unified multi-store platform that supports three distinct brands – IONTO, Süda, and Caremore – within a single, cohesive digital experience with consistent navigation, shared functionality, and a clear structure for product discovery and purchasing. Product pages provide detailed context for specialized items, and CMS and content pages support product discovery through educational content.

• +90.2% online revenue
• +33.4% sessions
• +100.3% add-to-cart rate
• +93.3% transactions
• +44.9% conversion rate

Also read:
Proactive eCommerce Support Secures a 90.2% Revenue Increase for Ionto

3) Enviropack: improved usability for B2B customers

Enviropack supplies eco-friendly food packaging and already had strong traffic driven by its SEO program, but lacked usability and alignment with how customers evaluate and purchase products.

Our goal was to deliver a conversion-focused website redesign to position the company as an industry leader and design new entry points that enable user journeys throughout all services.

Our approach to the user-focused redesign:

• UX audit to identify gaps and benchmark against eCommerce best practices and cross-industry references
• Wireframes defining page structure, messaging, content hierarchy, and key interactions
• Final UI aligned with brand guidelines and conversion-focused design to strengthen brand recognition, build trust, and position the company as an innovative market trendsetter.

Design highlights

As a result, Enviropack’s updated platform makes product information easier to understand and compare. Product detail pages highlight specifications, usage scenarios, and pricing logic, while visual indicators help users quickly identify relevant products. The overall structure supports smoother navigation and clearer entry points across the site, empowering customers to make confident and informed purchases.

• +22.3% average purchase revenue per user
• +20.1% average session duration
• +10.4% session conversion rate

Also read:
How AEO Helped Enviropack Become a Top AI Pick for Sustainable Packaging

4) BK Group: unified B2B security platform

BK Group distributes security systems and equipment across the Baltics, working with a wide range of products and suppliers. 

Our goal was to create a unified eCommerce platform that enables B2B functionality, keeping the experience simple and aligned with the brand. The implementation was built on the Hyvä theme, with a focus on gradual improvements.

Our approach included:

• Requirement gathering to define the scope and technical setup
• UX wireframes focused on introducing B2B-specific functionality through new extensions
• UI aligned with the existing brand identity, but refreshed to reflect a more contemporary and refined look

Design highlights

As a result, the platform introduces features designed for business users, including real-time stock visibility, structured product listing views, and navigation systems that support faster access to categories and products. Additional elements, such as user-specific watermarking, help protect sensitive pricing information.

Also read:
Merging Two Markets on Magento+Hyvä for a Multinational B2B Supplier BK Group

5) Cook Medical: B2B customer portal

Cook Medical develops minimally invasive medical devices for healthcare providers and serves customers who rely on accuracy and clarity when accessing product information. Their customer portal differs from traditional eCommerce sites by focusing on providing a catalog experience rather than driving additional purchases. It is designed to help B2B customers browse and search for specific products, catering to their unique needs and priorities.

Our goal was to design a clean, minimalist customer portal with a primary focus on search – the most business-critical and frequently used feature for their users.

Our approach combined expert review and collaborative workshops:

• UX audit to identify usability gaps and improvement opportunities
• Wireframes based on customer workshops and real usage patterns
• Final UI aligned with the brand’s style guide for a clean, minimalistic design that evokes the feeling of a laboratory or hospital environment – tidy, sterile, and highly functional, with a focus on clarity and simplicity in every interaction.

Design highlights

As a result, Cook Medical’s product listings are presented in detailed list views, exposing key information such as availability, specifications, and ordering details at a glance. Navigation supports multiple ways of finding products, whether by category, specialty, or known identifiers, creating a system that supports efficient, task-focused usage, allowing customers to find and order what they need with minimal friction.

Also read:
Dated Magento 1 Migration to a Modern Magento 2 Experience for B2B Buyers
Top 10 B2B eCommerce Websites with Great UX and Smart Features

What this means for your B2B store

B2B eCommerce improvements come from aligning the platform with how your customers search, browse, compare, configure, select, buy, and reorder. When your store supports all those actions, ordering takes less time, decisions require less back-and-forth, and customers rely less on manual support. And over time, you see higher conversions and retention, and more predictable growth.

If you are evaluating where your current platform falls short, or planning the next step in your B2B eCommerce setup or design, we can help you map out what that should look like in practice. Let’s talk about ways your B2B store can improve.

The post How Design-Led B2B Platforms Drive Revenue Growth – Top Case Studies appeared first on scandiweb.