AWS Presents Retail and Hospitality Week: Six Unmissable Webinars for Startups

From Tuesday September 18 through Thursday, September 20, AWS experts and customers will host online talks dedicated to the retail and hospitality industry.

These discussions will provide insights on emerging trends, and will also showcase best practices for accelerating growth for aspiring customer-centric companies.

To help you navigate the week, we’ve pulled together a selection of webinars based on the stage of your startup.
Register here for any that are relevant to you. If for any reason you can’t attend, we’ll send slides and recordings following the discussion, so you can review the materials and share with your peers at your convenience.

Recommended for early stage startups.

You’re a B2C startup that’s just getting started, and want to ensure you’re setting your business up for success. Don’t miss:

• Building an E-Commerce Business on AWS
  Tuesday, September 18
  Level: Introductory | 10:00 – 10:45 BST / 11:00 – 11:45 CEST / 13:00 – 13:45 GSTThis session will review design principles and considerations when developing your e-commerce solution on AWS. Hear how Popsa, a machine learning start-up, built its e-commerce solution on AWS; and how AO.com, an online retailer of electrical goods, migrated a bespoke e-commerce platform onto AWS.

Recommended for startups that are scaling.

You’ve been operating for a few years, confident that your underlying infrastructure can support even Black Friday peaks. You’re now on a mission to drive more growth and traction for your product or service.

• Using Mobile to Engage Your Audience
  Tuesday, September 18
  Level: Deep Dive | 15:00 – 15:45 BST / 16:00 – 16:45 CEST / 18:00 – 18:45 GSTIn this webinar, you’ll learn how to reduce time-to-market when building or expanding your mobile presence with AWS services. Quickly onboard users of your ecommerce platform and manage identities and access controls. Engage and increase user retention with push notifications, messaging, analytics, and campaigns. Learn more about managing access to your APIs with a serverless back-end architecture, and test your apps on a broad array of devices to ensure quality releases.
• Accelerating Mobile App Data Synchronization and Real-Time Data Development with GraphQL
  Wednesday, September 19
  Level: Intermediate | 16:00 – 16:45 BST / 17:00 – 17:45 CEST / 19:00 – 19:45 GSTJoin AWS mobile experts for an overview of AWS AppSync, a fully managed GraphQL service, and listen as Tom Bray, Chief Architect at Ticketmaster, shares his experience of deploying GraphQL. Tom will highlight the challenges of switching from REST to GraphQL; the benefits Ticketmaster has realized; and the new capabilities that GraphQL has unlocked.

Did someone say IPO? Recommended for late stage startups.

You’ve grown from a three-person operation into a global company with hundreds of employees. You don’t call yourself a startup anymore, and you’re now competing with big players. Do you have what it takes to retain and grow your customer base, and outpace your competitors?

• Using Big Data to Build a Single View of Your Customer
  Wednesday, September 19
  Level: Intermediate | 10:00 – 10:45 BST / 11:00 – 11:45 CEST / 13:00 – 13:45 GSTA key challenge faced by startups is how to form an integrated single view of their customers across multiple retail channels to better understand purchasing behaviors and patterns. In this session, we’ll present a solution that merges web analytics data with customer purchase history based on AWS API Gateway, Lambda, and S3. Learn how to track customer purchase behaviors across channels to better predict future needs and make relevant, intelligent recommendations.
• Using Data to Delight and Retain Customers with Machine Learning
  Thursday, September 20
  Level: Deep Dive | 10:00 – 10:45 BST / 11:00 – 11:45 CEST / 13:00 – 13:45 GSTEngine recommendations give customers a shopping experience in which the most relevant products are displayed real time. By enhancing your online store’s user experience with personalized recommendations, you’ll need to select an algorithm that will help you with product discovery and to enable larger order sizes that can lead to increased sales.
• Engaging Customers with Virtual Hosts Using Amazon Sumerian
  Wednesday, September 19
  Level: Intermediate | 12:00 – 12:45 BST / 13:00 – 13:45 CEST / 15:00 – 15:45 GSTA great customer experience implies that your brand provides an engaging and personalized experience throughout the customer journey. Are you considering a virtual host to greet customers, answer common questions and introduce your company’s services and offerings? In this session, we’ll show you how Amazon Sumerian can create immersive and interactive 3D experiences by allowing you to build a scene with a host that acts as a concierge for your customers.

We hope you will be able to join AWS, AO.com, Popsa and Tickemaster for these online talks. If you’d like to discuss AWS solutions for your startup, webinars, or events, please contact us.