// Industry · Retail & E-Commerce

Turning visitors into customers. Turning customers into regulars.

Online retail in Germany is growing again, and the winners share two things. They make buying easy, and they make the relationship valuable. Neither comes from a single tool. Both come from systems that work together: shop, data, personalisation, loyalty. That is what we build.

Industry
Retail & E-Commerce
Segments
Online retail · Omnichannel · Marketplace sellers
Systems
Shop · PIM · CDP · Personalisation · Loyalty
Model
advise → integrate → deliver
Units
prodct [CX] × [Labs]
// The market in three numbers
83.1 billion euro
in German online retail in 2025, up 3.2 per cent and for the first time since 2021 positive in every quarter. bevh 2026 ↗
56 per cent
of online retail runs through marketplaces. Anyone thinking only of their own shop sees half the market. bevh 2026 ↗
40 per cent
more revenue from personalisation activities is what companies achieve when they master personalisation, compared with the average. McKinsey, Next in Personalization ↗
// Five situations from retail

Sentences we hear often. Perhaps yours too.

These five situations come up again and again in conversations with retailers. Every one of them can be solved. For each, we show you the lever we build, evidence that it holds, and what the topic means for everyone at the table.

// 01 · Situation

“Black Friday decides our year. And our systems wobble.”

Situation

The two weeks around Black Friday are the most important window of the year for many retailers. Traffic compresses into a few hours, and every minute counts twice: as revenue when everything runs, as loss when it does not. Holding capacity for the peak day all year is expensive. Not having it is more expensive.

Lever

Infrastructure that breathes with the load: automatic scaling for shop and services, load tests before the season, monitoring in operation. You pay for what runs. The peak day costs more than a Tuesday in February, and that is exactly right.

Relevant for
CEOPeak week is the stress test of the strategy, not of IT.
CIOScaling is an architecture decision, not an emergency measure in November.
CFOFixed capacity for the whole year is the most expensive form of safety.
// 02 · Situation

“We pay for traffic that gives up in the basket.”

Situation

Acquisition gets more expensive every year, and then it fails on the last few metres. Seven out of ten filled baskets are never bought. The reasons have been the same for years: surprise costs, too many form fields, forced account creation, missing payment methods.

Lever

A checkout built for conversion: few fields, guest ordering, transparent costs from the first step, the payment methods your customers use. Plus a testing programme that measures every change on real customers instead of deciding it in a meeting.

Relevant for
CMOEvery point of drop-off recovered is bought traffic that finally works.
CFOCheckout optimisation is the cheapest source of revenue you have.
CIOPayment methods and forms are system decisions, not design questions.
// 03 · Situation

“Every visitor sees the same shop.”

Situation

A thousand visitors, a thousand intentions, one homepage. The regular sees what the first-time visitor sees, the bargain hunter what the brand buyer sees. Every one of these visits is paid for. Most stay below their potential.

Lever

A personalisation layer across shop, app and email: recommendations that learn from behaviour, a search that understands intent, content per segment. It sits on top of your existing systems instead of replacing them.

Relevant for
CMORelevance is the difference between traffic and revenue.
CDOPersonalisation is applied data work, and it starts with the customer profile.
CEOYour biggest competitors already personalise. The question is the gap.
// 04 · Situation

“We buy revenue with discounts.”

Situation

Discount battles work while they run. Afterwards you keep customers waiting for the next code, and margins nobody can explain. Loyalty does not come from the lowest price. It comes from incentives that fit the customer.

Lever

A loyalty and promotion engine instead of blanket discounting: segmented incentives, programmes across the whole customer lifecycle, rules instead of gut feeling. Connected to shop, till and app, so every channel knows the same benefits.

Relevant for
CFODiscounts are the most visible cost centre without a cost centre.
CMOLoyalty made of points alone is bought, not earned.
CEO77 per cent of executives call loyalty a strategic priority, only 49 per cent consider their programmes effective.
// 05 · Situation

“Every system knows a piece of the customer.”

Situation

The shop knows the orders, the marketing tool knows the open rates, the till in the store knows nothing of either. For every cross-channel question someone builds a report by hand. And every personalisation, every loyalty programme and every AI idea ends in the same place: at the missing overall picture.

Lever

A data foundation that brings customer, product and transaction data together: one customer profile across all channels, one product data record for every output, ready for reports today and AI tomorrow.

Relevant for
CDOOne customer view is the prerequisite for everything that follows.
CIOA data foundation relieves every single system of work it was never built for.
CMOCross-channel customers are your most valuable, once you recognise them.
// Stakeholder Briefing · Retail & E-Commerce

Five situations.
Five individual perspectives at the table.

Digital projects in retail rarely fail on the concept. They fail because stakeholders and decision-makers ask many different questions and need different answers. Our Stakeholder Briefing gives you all five perspectives on each of these situations. So you can not only propose the topic internally, but drive it and argue for it.

THE BRIEFING FOR YOUR NEXT STAKEHOLDER ROUND.
We use your data solely to give you access to the Stakeholder Briefing and to follow up on it. Further content only with your tick.

The briefing is unlocked.

Go to the Stakeholder Briefing
// Stack

Technologies other retailers rely on.

We are technology-agnostic. Which platform fits you is something we clarify in the first conversation.

Commerce Platform · API-first

Shopware

Commerce that adapts to your business. API-first, open and at home in Germany.

Commerce Platform · SaaS

Shopify

Sell everywhere, operate nothing. Storefront, checkout, B2B, Markets and POS.

Personalization · Experience OS

Dynamic Yield

Every customer sees what fits them. Recommendations, experimentation, audiences and experience search in real time.

Loyalty & Promotion Engine

Talon.One

Loyalty and promotion across the entire customer journey. Rewards, coupons, discounts and gamification.

Data & Experience Platform

Pimcore

The data foundation for transformation, commerce and AI. PIM, DAM, CMS and CDP in one open core.

Cloud Platform · AI Infrastructure

Google Cloud

The foundation for AI that goes into production. Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery and integration.

// Clients

Projects we speak from.

The five situations above come from projects, not from papers. We show a selection publicly and the rest in conversation.

// prodct [CX] × [Labs] · Retail & E-Commerce

Let us talk about your shop. And about what is still in it.

In 30 minutes we walk through your customer journey, from the first visit to the repeat purchase. Afterwards you know which of the five situations has the biggest lever for you and where to start.