Here at Redstage, we’re constantly working to improve every aspect of our business. From customer experience to our in-house innovation team, we have exciting developments to report for the year ahead. First I’d like to reflect on our achievements from 2018.
Quick Recap of 2018
Last year Redstage’s business transformed both digitally and physically. We launched a completely redesigned website, at the same time renovating and increasing the size of our Jersey City office. We strengthened our commitment to B2B with new content and messaging, while bringing on additional clients in aerospace, manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution. Hasan Elkomey joined the team to provide leadership for sales and partnerships, and his experience in B2B and digital transformation are driving big opportunities.
Our teams put their heads together and forged a renewed innovation practice within the company to test and drive additional client services. We held our first ever Fall Wine Tasting event and our first Tandem event, Redstage & Fulcrum Digital’s annual celebration of innovation and culture. This year, I’m proud to say we’re aiming even higher.
Sites Worked On
Global Locations
Awards Received
Redstage was ranked among the top 3 Magento B2B Developers in the world, earning us a place in the Clutch 1000 for 2018. We were also awarded the titles of Top Magento Developers, Top Shopify Developers, and Top Ecommerce Developers in New York, trophies and plaques that now hang proudly in our office.
We helped create the Mobile Optimization Initiative with PayPal, HiConversion, and Magento with the aim of closing the mobile conversion gap, and created new partner initiatives. The Redstage team continued to develop relationships with clients in the US, Brazil, Australia, India and the UK; opportunities nowpoised to blossom in the year ahead. Additionally, the team worked on 90 different sites for the year, a new annual high for our organization. Lastly, we achieved Elite BigCommerce Partner status, and look forward to working with their team in 2019.
The Year Ahead:
For 2019, we’ve planned to make customer experience, employee experience, delivery quality, and research & development our foremost focus areas. I’ll dive into our goals for developing and innovating on each below:
Increasing Quality & Expanding Practice Areas:
We’re enhancing code quality with code review automation and better processes for manual overview. Additionally, continuous integration tools will speed up the deployment process. These new tools are all part of Redstage’s Dev Ops practice, which is critical for our workflow and project success.
Innovation Lab:
Together with our parent company Fulcrum Digital, we’ve also built an innovation lab in our Jersey City office, bringing in leading edge technologies to continue our pursuit of data-driven ecommerce experimentation. The tech we’re implementing in the lab will help us provide advanced client work for the next wave of new experiences. We’ve already begun experimenting with virtual reality, voice-shopping, IoT, and hope to expand to AR, and eye-tracking.
Customer Experience:
Our team is hard at work refining our processes to enhance our customer experience. This year we will be releasing a variety of new offerings, relaunching our support plans with the goal of better tailoring our products to the needs of the market. These product bundles include baked-in tools for conversion optimization, business uptime, security, site monitoring, and more. As a result of our collaboration the past year, we’ve been named a the #1 Top Magento agency in both New York and Chicago for 2019!
Research & Development:
The innovation team is hard at work, striving to increase the amount of “Accelerators” — home-grown, reusable components that help clients get where they want to go faster at reduced costs. We are in the process of developing a partner portal, as well as additional middleware tools online retailers can use on top of their platforms.
Employee Experience:
We’ve put renewed focus on career development, learning & development skills, and implementing a learning management system to help scale up, train new employees, and grow each team’s capabilities, furthering our mission: To be a world-class B2B agency by cultivating top talent in the industry.
Industry Focus
Our increasing knowledgebase of B2B systems and operations continues to drive the company further into the manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution segments. Additionally, we’re getting more and more attention from the aerospace industry and related government agencies, creating new opportunities in the government sector.
Big Initiatives:
Transformative B2B Ecommerce: The dramatic B2B transformation in the market is our top focus, helping companies not only to develop their online presence, but redevelop the teams and skills necessary to go digital. More and more, we’re doing our best to inform B2B business about millennials’ views on B2B ordering, and the new paradigm of customer experience as a whole (Get our free Digital Sales Handbook here).
Magento 1 End of Life: With Magento ending support for the Magento 1 platform in June of 2020, we’ve started a massive awareness initiative to keep retailers informed of the opportunities of migrating to the latest ecommerce platforms and revamp their customer experience. Many retailers don’t understand that moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 isn’t a simple upgrade, but more of a full-replatforming process. Redstage and our partners are working diligently to inform the market of the impending dangers of migrating too late (Learn more here).
Mobile Optimization Initiative: Redstage continues to lead the way in mobile optimization, working with a community of system integrators and merchants as we expand the initiative around the world. So far, the initiative has increased revenue per visitor by an average of 8.56% for customers who have already made it to the checkout page. With new data coming out each week from a variety of different tests, merchants now have the info they need to justify starting tests of their own. The initiative has already yielded $22 million in additional revenue across all merchants involved in the initiative. As a result of our collaborative work, it’s clearer than ever that these testing methods help merchants to capture more mobile revenue (Learn more here).
Events: We’ve put our heads together and nailed down a list of industry and platform events we’ll be attending and speaking at this year. We hope to see you there!
Northeast Ecommerce Summit (April 3-4; Atlantic City, NJ)
Design Thinking (April 16-17: Austin, TX)
Magento Imagine – (May 13-15; Las Vegas, NV)
Shopify Unite: (June 18-20; Toronto, CAN)
B2B Online: Digital Marketing Conference for Manufacturers & Distributors (April 29 – May 1; Chicago, IL)
IRCE – (Jun. 25-26; Chicago, IL)
BigCommerce: Make It Big (Aug. 6-10; Austin, TX)
As a Final Note…
I’d like to thank all of our clients, partners, and employees for your trust, dedication, and continued support of our vision. Here’s to a wonderful 2019!
The Redstage team works tirelessly to provide nothing less than exceptional solutions for our clients, continuously striving to remain among the world’s best ecommerce agencies. That said, we’re proud to announce several awards received from Clutch for 2019.
This year, Redstage was ranked the #1 Magento Development agency and the #1 Magento Design agency in New York. Additionally, we were awarded as the #1 Magento Developers in Chicago, and as one of the Top Ecommerce Development agencies in both New York and Chicago. Currently, Redstage Ranks #6 for Top B2B Magento Developers in the world.
“Not only are we proud to receive recognition for our efforts in the ecommerce industry, but we’re excited for new opportunities the platform is bringing us,” said Redstage CEO, Adam Morris. “As the #1 Magento Agency in New York and Chicago for 2019, we’re confident our team is delivering the level of service modern companies need, nationwide.”
Out of nearly 90 magento developers on Clutch, Redstage ranks #1 for best in Chicago and New York:
In contrast to awards that emphasize the caliber of a specific project, Clutch looks at a partnerships holistically. Our clients don’t just discuss the results we’ve driven for their business, but also our team’s business acumen, creativity, technical ability, and dedication to their long-term success. As one client noted, “We built a relationship and a bond with them, and the results speak for themselves.”
With the increasing importance of reviews in the buyer’s purchasing journey, Redstage is grateful to have Clutch as a long-term partner. Awards are only given to companies that can prove they go above and beyond for their clients, and Redstage will continue to strive for this high level of excellence. Thank you to Clutch, our clients, and our partners for your continued support. Get in touch with us today to receive our award-winning services.
Earlier this year, Clutch.co awarded Redstage with the titles of Top Ecommerce Developers, Top Magento Developers, and Top Shopify Developers in New York. Yesterday, Clutch.co announced Redstage’s as a Global Leader in B2B Business Services for 2018.
In the few short months since the last announcement, the hard work and determination of our teams around the world have earned us the title of “Top Global B2B Company for 2018” and we thank our clients for all of their support. Redstage is now a Clutch Global Leader, part of the Clutch Global 1000, and ranks number 2 for Top B2B Magento developers and designers in the world.
This announcement comes soon after Redstage was ranked among the Top Ten Best Ecommerce Web Design Companies by WebDesignRankings.com for the second consecutive year. Additionally, the agency has also been listed on Clutch’s sister site, The Manifest, as a Top Magento Company of 2018!
Our team is thrilled to wrap up the year with these distinguished accolades. We look forward to continuing our strong B2B practice in the year ahead! Thanks again to our clients and partners for your collaboration, trust, and positive reviews. These awards would not be possible without you. It is a pleasure and an honor to share in your success.
Today Redstage launched the agency’s exclusive extension store, featuring 36 free Magento 1 extensions! Click here to visit the extension store and browse our list of available extensions.
“This is just another example of the value clients can expect from Redstage.”Adam Morris, Redstage CEO
“We’ve built dozens of custom extensions over the course of our 10 years in business. As a thank you to everyone who helped us get this far, we thought we’d release a bunch of them for free. This is just another example of the value clients can expect from Redstage.” Adam Morris, Redstage CEO said of the store launch. “This has been a long-time coming,” CMO & Co-Founder Anthony Latona said, “I’m excited for the new offerings we have to share with Redstage’s clients, both present and future. This is just the first step for what’s in store.”
The Magento 1 store includes a variety of useful extensions, helping merchants beef up their UX, supercharge their shipping, make data-driven product recommendations and more to increase sales. The plugins allow customers to shop by brand, write reviews, navigate stores easier, and calculate shipping. Check out the store to learn more!
The store launch comes as Redstage reaches the half-way point of its 10th year in business (and with Magento’s latest announcement about ending Magento 1 support, pegged for June of 2020). Known for world-class competency in Magento development, Redstage also recently launched an experimental mobile conversion optimization study. Learn more about the study and its surprising results here.
So, it finally happened. The South Dakota state government can now charge eCommerce sales tax for online businesses.
This morning the US Supreme Court announced the 5-4 ruling, overturning a 1992 decision (Quill Corp v. North Dakota) that barred states from collecting sales tax from businesses with “no physical presence” in their state. The high court ruled against Wayfair, Overstock.com, and Newegg, sending their stock price into a fall (along with that of Amazon, Etsy, Ebay and more). As a result of the ruling, many fear the gates have been opened for all 45 states that collect sales tax to use the Wayfair decision to charge Internet sales tax. When this happens, online shops will likely begin charging customers at the checkout, driving up eCommerce prices for customers.
However… Consumers are already required to report their online purchases and pay the applicable taxes. According to CNN, “Last year, states could have collected as much as $13.4 billion in additional online sales taxes, according to the General Accountability Office. Although buyers are technically supposed to add up their purchases and pay all the applicable taxes along with their regular filing, few do.” As a result, some argue this decision is fair, especially when one considers eCommerce’s massive impact on the U.S. economy.
In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “The Internet’s prevalence and power have changed the dynamics of the national economy.” He also mentioned the need for states to collect the tax as digital retail continues to explode, saying, “The expansion of e-commerce has also increased the revenue shortfall faced by States seeking to collect their sales and use taxes.” With eCommerce poised to make up 17% of US retail sales by 2022, the ruling makes sense now more than ever.
Who Wins?
The likely winners in this scenario will be states who can now collect the online sales tax (many more to come), and Amazon, who has been paying state sales taxes for years. While the decision will hurt smaller, non-monolithic eCommerce businesses, Amazon’s competition will now likely face the same tax requirements, keeping Amazon even still again, ahead of the curve.
For now, in South Dakota, the law will only apply to eCommerce sites with more than $100,000.00 in sales revenue from commerce within the state. The state now stands to gain an additional 50 million dollars in revenue annually from the tax. Lastly, as CNBC reports, “[the] states that are likely to see the biggest percentage increase in revenue are Louisiana, Tennessee, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Alabama, according to the Barclays research.”
This week, Eric Dye of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network interviewed Redstage CEO Adam Morris on the coming B2B eCommerce revolution. In this episode, the pair discuss the latest trends, market news, and strategies for companies who “NEED” to adapt to the new standards of digital commerce. Click play above to listen now or follow the link at the bottom to download the podcast. Happy listening!
Insights included in this entrepreneur interview:
1. “What does the B2B eCommerce market look like and why is B2B super hot right now?”
2.“How is B2B eCommerce different from traditional online retail?”
3.“What are the main roadblocks for companies going digital?”
Don’t forget to check out the ePodcast Network for more entrepreneur insights!
About Adam Morris
As a digital entrepreneur, Adam Morris has been working alongside Anthony Latona (Redstage’s CMO) since their university days. The duo co-founded several businesses together over the years, most recently Redstage, which started in 2008. As Morris recalls, “All of our businesses revolved around online commerce, and we’ve had a knack for being ahead of the Internet business curve. Redstage is an eCommerce agency that specializes in web design, development, strategy and support for B2B and B2C clients all over the world. As part of the Fulcrum Family of companies, we have over 700 employees on 5 continents. For the past 10 years we’ve been transforming companies through eCommerce, now focusing primarily on Magento and Shopify. With B2B eCommerce set to explode before the end of the decade, we’re ready to take on the biggest challenges facing the world’s largest companies – especially when it comes to tackling the transition to digital, something we’re quite good at.”
If you enjoyed this podcast, check out this post on MagePlaza about our developers’ biggest “B2B Pet Peeves” (the top 4 signs that a B2B site needs to upgrade).
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