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This Week's Featured Article: Your Store Needs a Content Layer (And ButterCMS Gets It Right)

Talk Commerce is Headed to eTail West in Palm Springs

Author

Brent Peterson
February 19, 2026

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The Talk Commerce Podcast Newsletter

Who have we been talking to lately? Focusing on conversations about eCommerce, AI, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing.

Your Store Needs a Content Layer (And ButterCMS Gets It Right)

By Brent W Peterson

Every ecommerce merchant struggles with content management because platforms like Shopify, Magento, and WordPress weren't built for it. Content is now a major revenue driver, with 43% of ecommerce traffic coming from organic search, yet marketing teams remain bottlenecked by developer dependencies and limited built-in editors.

The solution is a headless CMS, which separates content from presentation and delivers it anywhere via API. Among options like Contentful, Strapi, and Sanity, ButterCMS is highlighted as particularly practical for mid-market merchants, with a free tier and paid plans from $71 to $359 per month with unlimited users.

The benefits are significant: marketing teams can publish independently, content becomes reusable across channels, and switching ecommerce platforms no longer means losing your content investment. This aligns with the composable commerce movement, using best-in-class tools for each function rather than forcing one platform to do everything poorly. Your ecommerce platform sells products; your content deserves its own system.

Our Latest Episode:

AI Alone Can't Run Your Business with Robert Rand 

Robert Rand, Chief Partnership Officer at iPaaS.com, joins Talk Commerce to deliver a reality check on AI in business. When asked if AI agents can run an entire business, his answer is a firm no — comparing AI-reliant entrepreneurs to someone who read WebMD overnight and thinks they're a doctor. While AI adds tremendous value as a supplement, it can't replace real professional expertise. Robert shares examples of AI-only approaches creating disasters with mission-critical data and breaks down the difference between basic automation tools like Zapier and enterprise-grade integration platforms. Listen to the full episode now.

Talk Commerce is Headed to eTail West in Palm Springs 

Every year, eTail West brings together the sharpest minds in ecommerce and retail for some of the most actionable conversations in the industry.

From customer acquisition and retention to AI, personalization, and the evolving digital shelf, eTail consistently delivers real-world strategies from the practitioners and brand leaders who are making it happen. It is less about hype and more about what is actually working.

Brent sits down with Sam Buckingham, Global Digital Product and Site Experience Director at KEEN Footwear on Wednesday, February 25 at 2:40 PM (Track 1) for a session called “Loyalty in the Palm of Their Hand: Maximizing Engagement Through Apps, Cards, and Beyond.”

The conversation digs into how brands are rethinking loyalty beyond points and punch cards. Specifically:

- Building loyalty triggers at different points of the customer journey (not just at checkout)
- Letting customers access rewards however they want, whether that’s an app, a digital wallet, or a physical card
- Measuring which platforms are actually driving engagement versus just existing

Loyalty programs used to live in one place. Now they need to live everywhere the customer is. Sam and the team at KEEN have been doing interesting work on this, and Brent plans to get into what’s actually working versus what just looks good in a pitch deck.

Talk Commerce will be on-site at eTail West 2026 from February 23 to 26 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs in Palm Springs, and we are bringing the crew.

Our coverage will include:

  • Live podcast interviews recorded from the show floor

  • Sessions with speakers, brand leaders, and technology partners

  • Behind-the-scenes conversations about the strategies driving real commerce growth

  • Takeaways you can actually use, not just big-stage buzzwords

Brent Peterson and Isaac Morey will be walking the floor and conducting quick, high-energy interviews right from the event. These are short, focused, on-the-ground conversations about what is happening in commerce right now. Think candid insights, bold takes, and the kind of perspective you only get live.

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