September 2024 was anything but a quiet month here at Squashed Pixel. In between the day to day running of the agency and the chaos of kids going back to school (after 9 weeks i feel sorry for the teachers trying to reintegrate them with society) we had the pleasure of attending 2 key events for the first time.

The general take away from both events was one of positivity. The last year has been a challenging one for everyone, the tech industry in particular but things are feeling more positive across the board. As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention” and whilst it’s been a hard run for a lot of people, the maturing of AI is helping businesses become much more efficient and there is a notable rise in the strategic partnerships with everyone looking to really focus in on the strengths and specialisms.

The future is looking social.

The eCommerce Expo

The first was attended by myself (Tom Gatenby) . The eCommerce expo down at the London Excel is an exhibition combined with a huge range of talks spread across 13 different stages. Whilst we’ve been to many of these types of events before, it’s one of the first times we’ve been as a visitor rather than an exhibitor and have got to say, past the initial shock of being on the ‘wrong’ side it was great to experience the talks, the networking and the other stands without feeling like your confined to your own stand.

The exhibitors

If was great to catch up with Adam from the eCom collab club and we’re excited to get involved with their group in 2025. Likewise, it was great to catch up with some old friends and suppliers, including DotDigital, a supplier we used to work with in the early days of SquashedPixel, back when they were still DotMailer. It was great to see how far their platform has come in recent years.

As to be expected, AI was the buzzword of the event, with AI getting mentioned by pretty much every exhibitor at the event. Whilst I’ve not yet been fully converted to the idea of AI as a way of life, I can give special shout outs to Gorgias and Zowie who had by far the most impressive AI based help agents/help desk . Both impressive already and it’s great to see how much potential there is out there when AI is leveraged properly. Likewise, Amplience deserve a special shoutout, the way they’ve integrated AI into their DAM and content builder/generator is unlike anything I’ve come across before and impressively fast, even on a network being hammered by everyone at the exhibition. I’m still bitter about the loss of Google Optimise but less so after speaking with AB Tasty they were friendly enough to give me a full run through of their system and, dare I say it, much better than what Google Optimise was. It’s easy to use, low impact on site vitals and it’s reporting is hard to fault. Definitely a system we’re looking to explore some more.

As Shopify experts, we’ve always had a bias towards them as the eCom platform of choice but it’s great to see how the guys at BigCommerce and Shopline are developing their platforms, the multi store features of BigCommerce in particular are a breath of fresh air.

The talks

As exhibitors we don’t usually get to experience the talks at these events but i’m so glad I did this time. We couldn’t see every talk but the ones we did see where great. There were far too many to sum up each one individually but , my take aways were

It’s been a rough 12 months for everyone, but the future is feeling positive
Omnichannel is the new standard, you need to be everywhere your customers are
Customer Loyalty and Loyalty schemes are going to be massive in 2025 and beyond
SMS is and underused platform and well worth exploring in 2025
The potential of the ‘purple pound’ in the UK alone is worth over £274 billion
The introduction of the Equality Act in 2025 should make the Puple Pound much more accessible
People using screen readers reaaaaallly hate emojis.
Social commerce is more than a buzz word. Things like live selling are already exploding across the world.
ReCommerce is booming in popularity at the moment, fueled by the cost of living crisis and a generation less enamored by fast fashion and focussed more on quality, second hand goods.

My favourite talk of the event though was from Frankie Thorogood and about building mulit million dollar brands. Not only was the talk great but he left me with my Quote of the event - 'If you want to thrive in the Jungle, you’ve got to be unreasonable in your approach’.

I also love the fact it was inspired by Ed Sheeran.

The EU eCommerce Agency Summit

This summit was by far my favourite event of the year, run by Rachel and the team at eCommerce partnerships it’s aimed at eCommerce agencies both big and small.

The summit itself had a combination of amazing sponsors, including the headline sponsor Klaviyo, and additional sponsors of Shopify, Gorgias, Klar, Gadget, Searchspring, Rebuy and ReviewsIO to name a few, presentations and roundtable discussions and I think is the first event like this i’ve been too that was truly aimed at the agencies themselves. It was an intense few days that provided a ton of worth, insights and shared experiences which at times felt more like a therapy session than a work event.

It’s also one of the few events i’ve been too where I’ve come away feeling like we’ve made genuine friendships as well as business connections and relationships.

We also hit another key milestone in SquashedPixels history in that we got to witness the first time Claire Gatenby got up on a stage and spoke in public! I know how nervous she was behind the scenes but it was amazing to see how confident she looked on stage and how well it was appreciated by everyone else in the room. A real moment of pride for me and the Squashed Pixel team as well as a sign of things to come. You can read Claire’s experience first hand on linked in

Key takeaways

Padel is immensely fun to play but im definitely not a natural.
The future is together. Gone are the days where an agency is expected to be able to do everything in house, under the one banner.Strategic partnerships and a real focus on your own
You’re not on your own! The last 12 months have been perhaps the most demanding we’ve had since starting Squashed Pixel. It’s reassuring to hear our experiences mirrored by almost every other agency we met at the event, the reassurance of a shared experience and solution was the lifting of a great mental load.
NEST (Networking, Events, Speaking & Thought Leadership) a phrase coined by Quickfire Digitals Nathan Lomax was an eye opener and a great insight on their ongoing success.
Efficiency is something that should be the focus of every business out there, track and report on everything in order to know how to improve and scale.
AI is here to stay, whilst it’s not at the point of being all encompassing, it can be a massive driver of efficiency and provide new opportunities to help guide your clients to success.

2 Big eCommerce events, same positive outlook