This year, global e-commerce sales are expected to surpass $5 trillion.
This milestone speaks to the industry’s unique position at the intersection of rapid digital development and a renewed period of slower but sustained growth following the boom period spurred by a global pandemic.
If you’re looking for a platform to create (or level up) an e-commerce experience for a B2C brand, you’ll know that now, more than ever, is the time to stand out.
Here’s why Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) might be the solution you need.
The SFCC advantage
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one of the leading cloud-based SaaS e-commerce platforms. It’s known for being a robust product that can be taken out-of-the-box and leveraged to build & launch an immersive brand experience quickly.
One of the biggest advantages of SFCC is that, as an out-of-the-box solution, you only need the support of an engineering team to deploy it.
Once the storefront is live, managing the platform is easily done in-house, even if your brand doesn’t have a dedicated team of engineers.
Using SFCC also offers your brand the advantage of Salesforce’s suite of best-in-class integrations. Some of these come pre-built in, like SFCC’s AI-powered Einstein module, which delivers personalised recommendations to your customers.
Other integrations are sold separately but are well worth considering.
Mulesoft, Pardot, Salesforce CDP, and Salesforce OMS are just a few examples that can bolster your customer experience with a 360-degree view.
New customisation options for limitless innovation
Historically, SFCC depended on templates for storefronts to help brands deploy their e-commerce sites quickly.
Although SFCC offers numerous effective options for templates, the requirement posed a creative restriction for brands looking to build a custom storefront fully aligned with their identity and nuanced customer experience.
Following Salesforce’s acquisition of Mobify at the end of 2020, however, SFCC got an exciting upgrade: full customisation, powered by a headless architecture.
Headless architecture separates front-end and back-end software. Where a software update in a traditional architecture would require engineers to make changes to both the front- and back-ends, a headless architecture makes it possible to change—or even completely rebuild—one end independent of the other.
For brands using SFCC, this makes it easy to break out of a template and work with a team of engineers to build your own fully customised e-commerce storefront without compromising on the speed of deployment.
Most importantly, taking advantage of headless architecture positions your brand to innovate continuously. As digital evolves and new customer touchpoints emerge, you’re able to incorporate additional features and creative experiences quickly and affordably.
Bespoke SFCC in action
Over ten years of building upwards of 200 e-commerce sites with SFCC, we’ve seen the platform deliver customisation at speed time and time again.
This was our inspiration for creating DEPT® SFRA, an in-house storefront reference architecture for SFCC, which provides a highly capable foundation on which to build a bespoke storefront tailor fit to meet client needs.
As an out-of-the-box platform, SFCC can be launched fast.
But starting with a foundation like SFRA makes it possible to deliver modern, highly customised experiences at lightning speed. Sometimes in as little as five months, as was the case for GANT’s global e-commerce transformation, or even four, which was the timeline for the Dutch stroller company Bugaboo.
But SFCC’s customisation goes beyond meeting deadlines, too. As e-commerce undergoes a shift with new innovations in technology and a lower barrier for entry allows a plethora of new players to enter the market, providing a highly customised experience gives brands like yours a way of standing out against the noise.
Patagonia worked with us to incorporate a design system into the storefront architecture’s front end that created a balance between their world-renowned products and a purpose rooted in sustainability, taking advantage of SFCC’s headless customisation to create a flagship experience that future-proofs their brand against our rapidly changing digital world.
Providing a great e-commerce experience has been a requirement for B2C brands for some time. Now, however, is the time to use customisation to differentiate your experience from everyone else’s.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help your brand create a future-ready e-commerce experience, our team of SFCC pros are always ready to chat.
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VP eCommerce Europe