One of the world’s largest retailer of high-end audio, audiophile music, and accessories, Music Direct needed a robust ecommerce solution that would deliver an exceptional customer experience while delivering modern capabilities to support and grow its business. Having worked with Music Direct for several years, BlueBolt understood the challenges the company faced and recommended re-platforming from DNN to BigCommerce, the leading Open SaaS e-commerce platform for fast-growing and established brands.
Music Direct’s new website delivers the best in breed functionality through BigCommerce’s contemporary and extensible ecommerce platform. BigCommerce is the catalyst for merchants of all sizes to build and grow their businesses online, with sophisticated enterprise-grade functionality, customization, and performance with simplicity and ease-of-use.
“We are thankful to our long-time digital agency and partner, BlueBolt, for advising us every step of the way, and delivering on time and on budget. Their deep knowledge in both the B2B and B2C ecommerce space was the foundation of what made this project successful,” shared Jim Davis, President at Music Direct. “We are excited for the new, modern capabilities that implementing BigCommerce has delivered. They will make our team more effective and drive ROI.”
The transition from DNN to BigCommerce delivered a comprehensive array of ecommerce tools, including a modern ecommerce platform with B2B and B2C capabilities; the flexibility for marketers to update their own content without IT developers; and the ability to scale instantly, without having to prepare in advance for sales and high traffic days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
“We are very thankful for our partnership with Music Direct and BigCommerce,” shared Dave Risner, CEO and Co-Founder to BlueBolt. “We are incredibly excited to be a part of Music Direct’s next chapter of growth as it leverages the powerful BigCommerce platform to expand its business.”
About BlueBolt
BlueBolt is an award-winning, full-service digital agency. The BlueBolt team is diverse, exceptionally talented, and offers unparalleled consulting on technology projects. BlueBolt’s members are distributed across the USA, yet able to serve digital marketing and ecommerce solutions worldwide. For more information on BlueBolt, please visit blueboltsolutions.com or send email to: hello@bluebolt.wpenginepowered.com.
All trademarks belong to their respective companies.
Veteran agency, BlueBolt Inc., customizes Shopify Plus checkout features to offer flexible customer payment options, kicking off Grand Caliber’s Big 12 Football Championship Game promotions.
Chicago (11/28/2022) – Full service, digital agency, BlueBolt Inc., announced today that they greatly improved the shopping experience for customers of luxury watch dealer, Grand Caliber, by implementing more flexible payment options. These new payment solutions kick off in advance of Grand Caliber’s Big 12 Football Championship Game sponsorship this weekend.
Grand Caliber is an esteemed watch dealer specializing in delivering highly prized brands and rare pieces. Their selection of top-of-the-line watches includes brands the most discerning collector would cherish, including Rolex, Patek Philippe and Cartier. Known for their impeccable service and ability to source the rarest of watches, Grand Caliber wants their website to offer every amenity to their guests, starting with offering several new, flexible payment options including Cryptocurrency and deposits for wire transfer in addition to their already existing credit card, Google pay, Meta pay and PayPal options.
“The only thing more unique than the watches our clientele loves is the method of payment they prefer,” shares Jimmy Choo, Chief Executive Officer at Grand Caliber. “Offering these new payment options shows our dedication to our clients. Crypto and other flexible methods of payment give our clients the ability to quickly secure their desired watch with a deposit as soon as it’s available, while arranging for preferred methods of payment to complete the transaction.”
“We are excited to launch these new curated payment options in conjunction with Grand Caliber’s sponsorship of the Big 12 Football Championship Game,” shares Jason Lichon, President and Chief Operations Officer at BlueBolt Inc. “Extended payment options are table stakes to delivering a relevant and frictionless checkout experience for Grand Caliber’s customers.”
“I am thankful to the BlueBolt team,” shares Choo. “It’s exciting to work with great partners, like BlueBolt, that have great technical Shopify Plus expertise and a shared passion for delivering the best possible outcomes.”
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About BlueBolt Inc.
BlueBolt is an award-winning, full-service digital agency. The BlueBolt team is diverse, exceptionally talented and offers unparalleled consulting on technology projects. BlueBolt’s team members are distributed across the USA, yet drive unparalleled digital marketing and ecommerce solutions worldwide. For more information on BlueBolt, please visit https://bluebolt.wpenginepowered.com or send email to: hello@bluebolt.wpenginepowered.com.
Veteran digital agency partners with BigCommerce to deliver exceptional ecommerce experiences.
Chicago (Nov. 14, 2022) – BlueBolt, Inc. announced today it was named a BigCommerce Certified Agency Partner. An award-winning, full service digital agency, BlueBolt further solidifies its ecommerce expertise with this key partnership.
BlueBolt’s partner affiliation with BigCommerce, a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform for fast-growing and established B2C and B2B brands, cements another outstanding platform/implementation partner option for brands to choose from when seeking composable, customizable ecommerce solutions.
“BigCommerce is a powerful ecommerce platform, featuring robust tools clients can utilize to maximize their revenue,” shared David Risner, CEO and Co-Founder of BlueBolt. “Our team looks forward to witnessing collective growth for our clients, especially in Business to Business (B2B) ecommerce, Direct to Consumer (D2C) and Omnichannel marketing.”
“We value the trust and confidence the BlueBolt team has in delivering high value commerce solutions to clients through the BigCommerce platform,” said Marc Ostryniec, Chief Sales Officer at BigCommerce. “Growth in our business is predicated on collaborating with great partners who have the technical expertise and strategic innovation to deliver on the promise of next generation B2B, B2C, and channel sales. BlueBolt has that talent and expertise, and we are proud to officially bring them on as a partner.”
BigCommerce Agency Partners are carefully selected to offer best-in-class technical value, astute user experience, and superior customer service. Today, tens of thousands of BigCommerce merchants look to the platform’s world-class agency partner ecosystem for support in creating differentiated shopping experiences to fuel their growth.
With both B2B and B2C shoppers becoming an increasingly younger demographic and driving ecommerce growth opportunities, it’s important to be able to offer clients a variety of ways they can reach their audiences with relevant product offerings, at scale. A veteran in the ecommerce software implementation space, BlueBolt partners with the best-of-breed ecommerce software vendors to create masterful online customer shopping experiences that aims to deliver return on investment for clients.
“It was important to BlueBolt to create an agency partnership with BigCommerce to continue to offer clients best-in-class ecommerce expertise. BlueBolt is proud to be working with the BigCommerce team,” said Risner. “It’s been great to watch BigCommerce evolve into a powerhouse in the ecommerce space – and to equally watch merchants succeed on their platform. We couldn’t be more proud about our new partnership with BigCommerce.”
About BlueBolt
BlueBolt is an award-winning, full-service digital agency. The BlueBolt team is diverse, exceptionally talented, and offers unparalleled consulting on technology projects. BlueBolt’s members are distributed across the USA, yet able to serve digital marketing and ecommerce solutions worldwide. For more information on BlueBolt, please visit blueboltsolutions.com or send email to: hello@bluebolt.wpenginepowered.com.
About BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a leading open software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce platform that empowers merchants of all sizes to build, innovate and grow their businesses online. BigCommerce provides merchants with sophisticated enterprise-grade functionality, customization and performance with simplicity and ease-of-use. Tens of thousands of B2C and B2B companies across 150 countries and numerous industries use BigCommerce to create beautiful, engaging online stores, including Ben & Jerry’s, Molton Brown, S.C. Johnson, Skullcandy, Solo Stove and Vodafone. Headquartered in Austin, BigCommerce has offices in London, Kyiv, San Francisco, and Sydney.
BigCommerce® is a registered trademark of BigCommerce Pty. Ltd. Third-party trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
The idea of an organized, digital search has come a long way since the Dewey Decimal System and your local library. Now, any search performed, such as one entered into Google or on any website, takes into account hundreds of data points (at least) in order to provide the absolute best results possible.
Boosting and improving website search results is a billion dollar industry for good reason, and many companies thrive off of providing these services. Enterprise search, while similar in nature to search engines, as it is used to catalog and provide requested results, has a different means of coming up with these results. Search parameters for internal searches within an organization are often determined by the Administrators (Marketing departments is most common, these days) and IT department, but recent developments within computer learning and AI makes it possible for the computer itself to perform auto-classifications within enterprise search. Auto-classification has the potential to revolutionize the way users within a network search for data. However, understanding the role machine learning plays in enterprise search is necessary before implementing any changes.
What is Auto Classification?
Data classification is something that has plagued networks since computers have been used to search for content and files. Outside of knowing exact file names and locations, the need to classify information has proven both desirable and challenging at the same time. Up until recently, a file needed manual classification by having a person enter the metadata. Manually entering information about every file takes time and requires someone knowledgeable enough to perform the work. It also completely depends on the individual providing the information. The tags or categories one user might assign to a file or data record may vary completely from a second user, so manually classifying files has never been an exact science. It is also a time consuming exercise and becomes a full time job for even a small business, let alone one the size of an enterprise. This is where auto-classification comes in.
Auto-classification can happen 2 different ways. One method is to have a separate application to crawl the files and database records, similar to that of a search engine. Another method is to have it as integrated to the search engine as part of the crawl. Once crawled, the application evaluates the contents of the file or database content and associates the information to existing tags or creates new tags and classifications regarding the content. In this way, metadata associated to the original data is created allowing for new ways of filtering and searching. Initially, the tags may prove generic and rather basic, depending on how the evaluation process is performed as well as the quality of the content itself. As users within a network begin to interact with files and other content, and choose certain data from enterprise search results, the application can learn from these selections. This is because auto-classification takes advantage of modern computerized and machine learning techniques (machine learning is also a portion of a larger concept called artificial intelligence or AI).
Machine learning makes auto-classification superior to any possible manual input. With the ability to learn from performed searches, the enterprise search application not only can provide better tags for all users, but the software can (and will) learn the characteristics of individual users, altering search results specific for the end user through the use of personalization functionality (Opentext, 2017).
The Benefits of Auto Classification
The benefits of auto-classification are both straight forward and tangible. With auto-classification, a user or admin no longer needs to take time out of the day to input tags and classify content. This in turn boosts productivity and, at the same time, provides a more unified and consistent tagging and classification process. It makes identifying files and data throughout the enterprise network easier, so the classification of one file in Tokyo is done in a similar manor to that in New York or Santiago.
After auto classification up and running, the additional data from the auto classification allows administrators to implement filtering and faceting functionality on the search results. These filtering and faceting features allow the user to fine-tune and minimize the data in the search results, making it easier to find the information that they seek. In addition, including filters and facets for an enterprise search solution provides a more comprehensive and appealing customer experience by giving the visitor more control over the process.
Auto classification also has the capability of slashing enterprise search time by learning how a user performs searches and what kind of end search results they find most beneficial. In the same way, using machine learning to track and discover what each individual is doing in the system and personalizing the search results specifically for that user is a huge benefit in using auto classification.
The Downside to Auto Classification
Despite all the apparent benefits of auto-classification in enterprise search, there is a potentially devastating downside to the entire process. Machine learning and artificial intelligence remain in its infancy. Everything from Google’s search to digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa all depend on this technology, learning on the fly and growing smarter by the moment. This sounds great when there is enough data available to make smart decisions, but in the early days of turning the system on, this may not be the case and the ability to provide meaningful classification may be limited until more data is indexed and evaluated and the additional machine learning can be processed. Because of this, the need would arise for an administration system that allows a person to visualize and evaluate what the machine learning is suggesting before it actually gets put into “production”. Providing as an intermediate step and approving the classification that is suggested by machine learning is likely going to be necessary until the system is intelligent enough and can be trusted to make its own decisions.
Overall, machine learning and auto classification may seem like a benefit, but there could come a time when an administrator may worry about a point in which a system becomes “too smart.” Enterprise search and auto classification is not likely to be an area where doomsday scenarios are going to occur, but it makes sense to evaluate this anyway. Technological professionals are not yet predicting the events of Terminator or other apocalyptic events where computers take over the world. Elon Musk remains at the forefront of modern technology. From the Tesla lineup of vehicles to building spacecrafts and investing in green technology, Mr. Musk has an in-depth understanding of computer technology. This includes artificial intelligence and computerized learning. In early July, 2017, Elon Musk stated Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and CEO of Facebook had a very limited understanding of AI and what it could potentially do (Tech Crunch, 2017).
Musk proved to be more right than anyone would have guessed (especially so soon). Less than a week after calling out Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook had to shut down an AI bot system it had put into place because the bots had created a unique language and stopped responding to prompts from Facebook. While the episode did not harm anyone, it shows the potentially devastating impact artificial intelligence can have, if not properly kept in check (Gadgets, 2017).
Auto Classification, AI and the Kill Switch
There’s no denying how beneficial auto classification is to enterprise search. To provide the greatest benefit, auto-classification must rely on machine learning to tag and classify information as it crawls. Since this classification will be imprecise to start, a logic step is to add an administration process with the appropriate user experience to allow a person to monitor and approve and assist the automated process until the system can be trusted to categorize the content correctly on its own. In addition, this could potentially be used to control the system later if the AI gets out of hand.
In the long run however, as the recent Facebook incident has shown, it is vital to establish some sort of protocol to shut down the system, just in case the AI system progresses beyond the point of control. While all of this may sound entirely science fiction, it is quickly transforming into a reality. So for any enterprise looking into implementing this kind of technology into its enterprise search application, setting up necessary safeguards to take it off-line is a must.
Implementing any kind of change into an enterprise network often takes a considerable amount of time. With that said, manually crawling, entering information, and tagging every single data file and piece of content within a network simply is not a feasible, nor a very smart, use of time or resource. Auto-classification has the ability to improve search results and the customer experience at the same time partially through search personalization, which in turn cuts search time and boosts employee productivity across the board. As the benefits of auto-classification greatly outweighs that of manual input, the organization must install safeguards and auto shut-off capabilities to ensure IT always, now and in the future, has complete control of the network.
