Voices from Commerce: Michaela Weber, SVP of Product (Payments) at Commerce, shines a light on the future of product-led platforms

Meet Voices from Commerce, a new monthly blog series spotlighting the people shaping what’s next in digital commerce. Each instalment features a Q&A with a leader at Commerce, offering fresh perspectives and practical insights that will help you keep pace within this fast-moving industry. We’re kicking things off with Michaela Weber, SVP of Product (Payments), exploring how product-led commerce intersects with the future of innovation. In this conversation, Michaela breaks down how commerce is evolving, where technology is making the biggest impact, and what businesses need to do to stay competitive in a changing landscape. 

Q: One of Commerce’s key mandates for 2026 is to become more product-led. From your perspective, what does “product-led” actually mean, and how is it different from simply building great features?

A: For me personally, it really means building and delivering with our merchants top of mind. So both building great things as you mentioned, but also giving merchants an opportunity to use more of a product, upgrade to a new tier, unlock more features, and offer a natural product growth and experience within the product. That really resonates with me.

“Being product-led means really focusing not just on feature delivery building, but also creating an opportunity for merchants to pursue their own path and naturally consume more of what they need for their store, and for Commerce's economics to be linked to that evolution.”

— Michaela Weber, SVP of Product (Payments), Commerce

Q: How does product-led thinking influence strategy, not just the roadmap?

A: Product-led growth isn’t just a framework for Commerce’s roadmap — it shapes our overall strategy. We are prioritising building products that can attract new customers and deliver immediate value, while also encouraging deeper adoption over time. That means constantly focusing on the customer experience and ensuring what we build helps our customers grow their own businesses, which in turn drives retention and expansion for Commerce.

Q: Commerce has released a number of AI-driven capabilities this year, from agentic checkout to semantic search and merchant assistants. Can you share an innovation you’re particularly proud of and explain the real value it unlocks for businesses?

A: For me, agentic checkout is key. As someone working closely in the payments space, I see how critical it is for merchants to enable seamless interactions and complete transactions directly within an agentic session. While we don't think agentic checkout is going to be a huge driver of volume in 2026, it will be a really important driver of activity as we look ahead to 2027. Retailers need to have awareness now, so they can be prepared for the impact agentic commerce will have on consumer preferences. I think that within the LLMs, you're going to see a lot of new development in terms of how they approach checkout so that  product discovery in an LLM results in product purchase conversion.

Q: From a product perspective, what's your favourite AI feature that we've implemented?

A: I’d point to the data enrichment capabilities we’re delivering through Feedonomics. AI has really reinforced the importance of high-quality product data — without it, brands won’t be discoverable in agentic search or by LLMs.

What’s powerful about this solution is how it helps standardise attributes, formats, and naming conventions, while also validating data for missing or conflicting values. It can even use generative AI to fill in gaps. Together, that creates a strong data foundation that makes products easier to find and ultimately drives better conversion.

Q: Feedonomics Surface and channel expansion are critical parts of our ecosystem and our storey. How does that innovation help businesses compete in an increasingly fragmented and AI-driven commerce landscape?

A: From what we're seeing, where Feedonomics Surface is most powerful is that it democratises the ability for merchants to list on other channels. Right now, we've got Microsoft ads, TikTok, and Pinterest all in open beta for Feedonomics Surface. But what it comes down to is being able to automate some of that time consuming product data sync optimisation, ensuring customers can distribute across those ad channels in a way that the customers don't have to hire an external firm. This gives them a taste test of what proper channel management could do for their business; expanding reach, improving data quality — all the things that we tell merchants are critical to surface your products in an increasingly fragmented world.

Q: You've spoken about making product-led growth being operational rather than aspirational. What specific changes have we made in the product experience to make Commerce easier to adopt, expand, and scale?

A: Within Commerce we have some specific areas that we're working on deploying in a PLG motion, Feedonomics Surface being one of them. The second, BigCommerce Payments, is designed to bring payments inside the control panel, giving merchants a seamless way to manage transactions, payouts, and bank account balances all in one place. Together, these products reduce friction, improve usability, and increase product stickiness — making it easier for businesses to adopt, expand, and scale on Commerce. I think both are really important offerings for businesses in the ecommerce space.

Q: The commerce market is saturated with AI and innovation claims already. How do you ensure our innovation is tied to measurable customer outcomes?

A: That’s a great question and a critical focus for us. At Commerce, we are intentional about ensuring our innovation is grounded in real, measurable outcomes for merchants, not just concepts or buzzwords.

We hold ourselves to a high bar by asking: how does this feature solve a meaningful problem? Will it help merchants grow revenue, reduce costs, or improve conversion? If we can’t clearly answer those questions, it’s not something we prioritise.

We also focus on being precise about what we’re building — moving beyond broad ideas like agentic commerce to define what that actually means in practice, including what it takes for data to be “agentic-ready.” Ultimately, it’s about delivering tangible products that ship and create real value for our merchants.

“I think the next generation of ecommerce platforms need to be able to allow you to surface your data on agentic surfaces and view your data on agentic surfaces. Looking forward, innovation needs to take into account the changing consumer trends in terms of how they shop online and how they experience and discover products — and make sure that those features are native and easy to use for your merchants.”

— Michaela Weber, SVP of Product (Payments), Commerce

Q: How do you prioritise what not to build?

A: Deciding what not to build is one of the difficult things I have to do. There’s a natural bias to try to meet the needs of every merchant and make everyone happy, but that’s not always the right approach.

We prioritise based on clear ROI and broad impact, focusing on features that deliver value to many merchants, not just a single use case.

Q: How do you decide when innovation becomes valuable?

A: It depends on what it is. One of the reasons I love payments is it's really tangible in terms of value. There’s some pretty straightforward math that enables you to quickly see the value that the products are giving to a business. So, from a value perspective, I think it's important to be able to calculate the revenue and/or potential churn avoidance for a set of merchants from a feature or product that's been shipped. 

It's not easy to calculate a value for everything, but certainly it's something that the product team is focused on. It creates a healthy tension internally, driving our teams to prioritise work based on what is going to add the most value for merchants. If we can tie innovation to tangible outcomes, that’s when it truly matters. 

Q: How do you avoid innovation theater?

A: It comes back to building real products that merchants can actually use. We focus on hands-on demos, testing, and gathering direct feedback from customers to understand whether what we’ve built is solving a real need.

With BigCommerce Payments, for example, we made a point of test-driving the product and running strong beta feedback loops so we could learn what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve.

To me, innovation theater is style without substance. Avoiding it means delivering features that merchants can actually install, use, and benefit from — not solutions that are so complex that only two merchants globally are going to have the resources needed to make them work.

Q: Innovation isn't just about a roadmap; it's also about culture. How do you motivate your team to take risks while also delivering against measurable business outcomes?

A: Smart risks are really about — and not to use a very tyred sports analogy, but —  skating to where the puck is going and taking time to think about not only current needs but future needs. Yes, maybe agentic checkout sessions are not going to be a huge driver of net-new GMV in 2026, but what about 2027 and beyond? Where do we see this going? Do we see this as an industry trend and therefore do we need to make room in the roadmap to build it? I think that's smart innovation. 

I want my team to take smart risks — ones they can take because they know our customers really well, have done the research, and have a strong hunch about customer behavior trends or what merchants are going to need. I tell them, “You’re not always going to be right, but you’re going to be right some of the time and that’s what makes it rewarding.”

Q: On your team, how do you create the psychological safety needed to get people to take the right risks?

A: I believe that psychological safety on product teams comes from a place in which we're all learning and everyone has a voice. I ask my team to let others contribute to their ideas, with the understanding there will probably be some pushback, feedback, and conversations where not everyone agrees. I’ve found this collaboration actually strengthens the product development process and helps strengthen a hypothesis. It's really leading by example, showing that I’m open to feedback, to listening to others opinions, and willing to change direction. 

One of the things that I love about product teams is that everyone comes from a slightly different place; very few people in product have worked only at Commerce. People have different experiences, they've seen different things, different places, they have different opinions on where ecommerce is going overall. Synthesising all these viewpoints is really important, but also reinforcing that everyone should come to work with an open mind, be open to feedback including criticism, and willing to admit when something isn’t on the right path. 

Q: How do you balance long-term innovation with near-term revenue goals?

A: It comes back to the notion of skating to where the puck is going and making room in your quarterly roadmap to work on strategic objectives. It comes down to balancing immediate execution with intentional investment in the future. 

I focus on delivering against clear quarterly goals that drive near-term revenue, while also reserving capacity for strategic initiatives that position us for what’s next.

That means being deliberate about making space on the roadmap for foundational work — things that may not pay off immediately but are critical to staying competitive over time.

Q: As you look ahead, what will separate truly product-led companies from those that simply claim to be product-led?

A: What will separate truly product-led companies is their ability to prove it through results. You'll see it in the financials — strong margins and efficient growth — but also in the underlying product metrics.

Product-led companies are deeply data-driven, measuring things like feature usage, activation, and retention to understand how customers are engaging with the product. At the end of the day, this is how we’ll know if the thing that we built that we thought was going to get traction does actually get traction.

The companies that can clearly connect product experience to both customer outcomes and business performance are the ones that will stand out.

To learn more about what it takes to succeed across today’s top sales and ad channels, download our guide Connected Commerce: How to Win Customers Across Every Channel.

Michaela Weber is SVP of Product (Payments) at Commerce, where she leads global payments product and strategy with a focus on delivering exceptional payment experiences for merchants ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. She brings deep fintech and payments expertise built across senior leadership roles, giving her forward-thinking insights that span across industries.