The Power of the Right Partnerships

eCommerce is often described as a funnel, with content and discovery at the top, followed by search, product detail pages, cart, checkout, and payments at the bottom. In practice, modern commerce is less a straight line and more an interconnected ecosystem. Behind every customer interaction are critical systems working together, from content and search to product information, attribution, order management, and the broader MarTech stack that supports it all.

When Aries plans an implementation, we do not just look at individual tools. We look at how the right partners come together to support the full commerce journey. We are intentional about who we work with and why, because the strongest ecosystems are built on shared values, aligned vision, and complementary strengths. 

Here, we highlight a few of our partner pairings and explore how they work together to create more flexible, scalable, and effective eCommerce experiences.

Storyblok + Netlify

Storyblok and Netlify sit together at the foundation of the modern eCommerce experience. Whether it’s a content or marketing landing page, or a transactional page like a product detail or checkout step, every page a customer touches flows through one of these vendors. With Storyblok’s marketplace, announced at JoyConf in 2025, that foundation became much more powerful. Storyblok now allows React pages to be added directly into the CMS, eliminating the need to manually stitch URLs together or rely heavily on DevOps work behind the scenes.

This integration lets teams edit marketing pages and customer journey flows while deploying transactional React pages with a one-click Netlify install. For marketers, this creates a single, unified interface where content, customer journeys, and front-end deployment live together. Storyblok effectively becomes a true platform, making it easier to move faster without technical bottlenecks.

Why is this significant? Business-side marketers often face friction when simple website updates require data stitching, engineering involvement, or complex workflows. What leaders really want is straightforward execution: launch a form, capture and attribute the data correctly, understand where it came from, and trigger a notification without jumping through technical hoops. Storyblok’s approach helps close that gap, enabling marketers to act quickly while still supporting the organization’s underlying data and attribution needs.

Bloomreach + Talon.one

This layer of the stack is less about traditional marketing automation and more about marketing operations and workflow. It focuses on how actions, data, and decisions move through the customer journey. Once that journey is in place, Talon.One becomes essential by powering pricing, promotions, and loyalty across the entire catalog and multiple channels, from web and mobile to in-store. It allows brands to define and manage high-value customer segments and apply targeted incentives where they matter most.

Bloomreach activates that strategy by turning customer data, pricing, and promotions into real engagement. It excels at merchandising-driven search, personalized experiences, and marketing activation, like email and on-site engagement. Together, Talon.One and Bloomreach form a tightly connected marketing layer that helps optimize the site experience and deepen customer relationships.

Stripe + commercetools

We already know the view layer is often handled by platforms such as Netlify and Storyblok. However, behind that is the crucial commerce layer, composed of two major components: the catalog and the payment platform. In this setup, commercetools serves as the catalog, managing products, carts, and promotions alongside Talon.one, while Stripe acts as the payment platform. commercetools manages the “add to bag” and cart creation functionality, but requires integration with a payment platform like Stripe to enable checkout and transactions. Without it, an online store remains just a static product listing rather than a functioning storefront.

Stripe’s role in the eCommerce ecosystem has evolved beyond merely processing payments. Stripe is a software company that supports multiple payment processors and it now supports product and catalog infrastructure, particularly for AI and large language models (LLMs). Stripe’s early connection with OpenAI positioned it to facilitate transactions within OpenAI’s ecosystem. This foundational relationship opened pathways for Stripe to help other commerce platforms like commercetools to integrate their product data into LLMs. Essentially, Stripe now functions as both a payment processor and a software infrastructure provider, helping clients distribute and manage their product data across AI platforms.

Akeneo + Fluent Commerce

Before any of this works together, you need strong product information. Akeneo and Fluent Commerce are the vertical bookends of the pyramid. That’s where Akeneo comes in as the top layer; Many retailers, even those on platforms like commercetools, are limited to basic product data. Without richer product attributes or contextual knowledge about the product, it’s difficult to push meaningful data into systems like OpenAI or other advanced platforms. Akeneo addresses this by handling product attribution and enrichment, forming the foundation of effective product information management.

Akeneo operates behind the scenes, but it powers everything customers see across landing pages, product detail pages, videos, and other content. This enrichment layer ensures consistent, detailed, and usable product data across channels.

Once a customer completes a purchase at the bottom of the funnel, the process moves into order management. That layer is typically handled by Fluent Commerce. Fluent manages fulfillment and post-purchase workflows and may also integrate with Stripe as part of the underlying commerce infrastructure.