The Make it Big Podcast

A handful of concrete data points from the proprietary survey punctuate otherwise generic ecommerce advice; the AI-search product-specificity observation is genuinely useful, but much of the runtime is filler, mutual affirmation, and platitudes that a working ecommerce operator would already know.

“Today, somebody's going to chat GPT and saying, hey, give me a list of running shoes that work for me. Which means that your, your kind of Nike Pegasus isn't really going to work anymore. You're going to need to surface something like Nike Pegasus women's size 7 running shoe, great for pavement.”

“We've seen with feed anonymous customers they've seen up to a 95% increase in return on ad spend just by optimizing their product data for digital ads.”

The episode recycles well-worn ecommerce talking points - channel diversification, AI hype caution, security-as-trust - with almost no contrarian framing or first-principles argument; the one fresher idea (product-data specificity for AI-driven search) is briefly touched and not developed.

“There is a fine line between uh, having personalization and being creepy.”

“security is trust and trust is loyalty”

Al Williams is a genuine practitioner-level executive at a major ecommerce platform with relevant operational knowledge, but he is a company insider being interviewed by a company colleague about a proprietary company report, which limits the independence and candor a high-caliber external operator would bring.

“Al is a retail expert in and also our vice president and General Manager of B2C here at BigCommerce”

“the report is such a fun, easy read and it really is rich. You can take it in any direction. So I was really glad to be able to talk about these with you today.”

The episode earns points for naming specific percentages from its own survey (71%, 48%, 95% ROAS lift, 72% from HBR) and calling out specific tools (Feedonomics, Stripe, PayPal, OneTrust), but the evidence base is almost entirely BigCommerce's own proprietary 155-executive survey, which limits independence and external validity.

“48% of retail executives are prioritizing implementation of one click or express checkout options”

“a report from Harvard Business review found that 72% of respondents that they interviewed use six or more channels to make a purchase”

A BigCommerce employee interviewing a BigCommerce VP about a BigCommerce report produces exclusively leading questions, zero pushback, and constant affirmations in place of probing follow-ups; there is no moment of productive challenge or genuine intellectual friction.

“And I know you have a lot of thoughts on that.”

“Such great insights and actionable advice from you. Thank you so much for taking the time to join the show”