Complete Guide To Salesforce Commerce Cloud Implementation

Are you tired of limiting your customer reach to just your local area? With an online presence, the world is your oyster – and there’s no better way to tap into the eCommerce market than with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

According to Forbes, 20.8% of retail purchases will be made online by 2023, and the global eCommerce market is projected to reach a staggering $6.3 trillion. It’s clear that online shopping is the future, and if you want your business to thrive, you need to get on board.

Transitioning to an eCommerce site may seem daunting, but the investment is well worth the potential for exponential growth. And with Salesforce Commerce Cloud Implementation, the process is streamlined and hassle-free.

First, let’s bury all your doubts in a hatchet and walk through how Salesforce Commerce Cloud Implementation will make your business thrive and stand out.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant cloud platform that integrates your businesses with customers over multiple platforms and devices.

With Commerce Cloud, you can create personalized online experiences that keep customers coming back for more – without them even realizing it. It’s the ultimate B2B and B2C solution, giving online retailers complete control over their digital storefronts.

Powered by Artificial Intelligence and omnichannel capabilities, Commerce Cloud engages customers with your brand and helps them make informed purchasing decisions. But that’s just the beginning. It also equips businesses with a range of high-functionality tools to plan, develop, launch, and promote their online presence.

SFCC has everything you need to take your online business to the next level. From marketing and sales to content management, automation, reporting, and even predictive intelligence, every tool is present for your ease.

Exclusive Features That Salesforce Commerce Cloud Offers

1. Storefront Reference Architecture

Commerce Cloud’s Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) is a powerful framework of B2C designed for building high-quality and responsive eCommerce storefronts. With its extensive collection of customizable components, developers can create engaging online shopping experiences that are optimized for all devices.

By leveraging the capabilities of SFRA, businesses can effortlessly expand their eCommerce operations and ensure a seamless omnichannel experience for their customers.

2. Endless Aisle

Endless Aisle is a tool that simplifies the transformation of eCommerce strategies for your team. It seamlessly integrates all shopping channels to provide customers with the best possible experience. The solution unifies sales channels, allowing your store executives to access customer data and updated inventory information, resulting in a personalized experience for your customers.

You can refer here to learn the benefits of Commerce Cloud for eCommerce businesses.

By utilizing Endless Aisle, your customers can easily create wishlists, and you can optimize sales while managing in-store traffic by showcasing online offers.

3. Order Management

Efficient order management is essential for any business, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a reliable solution through its Order Management feature. This feature encompasses a range of processes and tools designed to ensure the timely delivery of products or services. This includes order creation, processing, tracking, fulfillment, and refund/return management. SFCC also provides convenient tools and integrations for payment gateway, inventory management, and shipping carriers. Also, you can automate return labels to streamline the entire order management process.

4. Content Management System

With the integration of CRM and Content Management System (CMS), Salesforce provides an easy way to deliver customized commerce solutions with quick content delivery to customers throughout their journey. The CMS offers features like content development, collaboration, approval management, and customization of personalized content for specific categories or customers.

This integration enables the speedy creation of commerce-related content, such as blog posts and promotional banners.

5. Commerce Portals

Commerce portals are online platforms that enable businesses to manage various aspects of their e-commerce operations, such as product catalogs, pricing, promotions, order management, payment processing, and customer service. These portals are typically part of cloud-based e-commerce platforms known as commerce clouds, which provide businesses with a comprehensive set of tools and services to create and manage their online stores.

6. Einstein AI

Einstein AI empowers businesses to offer personalized shopping and purchasing experiences without the need for data scientists. With its advanced predictive intelligence capabilities, Einstein analyzes customer search and purchase behavior to create a tailored journey for each individual. This means businesses can provide a unique and engaging experience for their customers, boosting customer loyalty and driving sales.

With all these features, eCommerce businesses are enjoying a stagnant growth than ever. We are not just saying; it’s all what facts and figures indicate.

How Versatile is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is versatile enough to cater to all B2B, B2C & D2C businesses, offering all three options to help optimize their online presence.

B2B commerce typically involves a smaller, more frequent customer base, it requires robust capabilities to handle large orders and inventory. This is where B2B Commerce comes in, with its powerful tools to manage customers who already know what they want.

You can also check here some common trends around Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud.

B2C Commerce is more suitable for businesses with larger, diverse audiences requiring a more personalized experience to keep coming back. With the need for frequent customizations and user-specific journeys, B2C Commerce is ideal for businesses. You can experience high traffic during holidays and sales, requiring a rigid platform that can withstand the outpouring.

D2C (formerly known as B2B2C in Salesforce) is a sales model where brands sell directly to end-users via e-commerce websites, apps, or phone sales, complementing traditional retail channels. This allows companies to expand their reach, build relationships with customers and increase sales beyond retail partner limitations. Salesforce D2C Commerce Cloud also enables companies to test new products and collect first-party data for business improvement.

Some Interesting Facts About SFCC

The commerce cloud market is poised for remarkable growth in the years ahead, with a projected global market size increase from USD 11.9 billion in 2022 to USD 38.1 billion by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate of 22% from 2023 to 2028.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one of the most reliable platforms in the industry and enjoys widespread popularity across various sectors.

In terms of user base, the United States and the United Kingdom lead the way. According to Datanyze, Salesforce Commerce Cloud commands a 19% market share in the US and a 10% market share globally.

Salesforce reported total revenue of $6.34 billion in Q2 of FY22, which includes earnings from their Commerce Cloud product and other offerings. Many leading brands, such as Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Puma, and Skechers, have already chosen to utilize the platform’s capabilities.

While specific statistics for 2023 cannot be predicted, the platform is well-positioned to maintain its position as a trusted and reliable solution for businesses of all sizes.

How is Salesforce Commerce Cloud Benefitting your eCommerce Business?

Commerce Cloud presents many advantages to businesses by enabling them to scale easily and provide personalized experiences to their customers at every stage.

1. Drive Sales and Revenue Generation

Salesforce Commerce Cloud empowers businesses with agile capabilities, enabling them to expand their customer base through their online store. With its predictive intelligence and Einstein Artificial Intelligence, Commerce Cloud provides businesses with powerful tools to gather and analyze customer data, providing actionable insights.

By utilizing these tools, brands can gain valuable insights into their customer’s preferences, personalize their experiences, and automate all merchandising tasks. This creates a seamless shopping experience that improves customer satisfaction and boosts sales and revenue.

Tips to fast-track sales with Commerce Cloud.

2. Escalated Unified Experiences for each Customer

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a powerful software-as-a-service platform that delivers seamless experiences to all customers. It empowers businesses to broaden their online reach across multiple touchpoints like marketing, commerce, sales, and service and provides end-to-end support to elevate the customer journey.

3. Mobile-Friendly Store

As mobile browsing becomes more prevalent, businesses must prioritize mobile optimization to ensure they capture their fair share of the market. Fortunately, Commerce Cloud offers a mobile-first approach that empowers businesses to sell both in-store and online.

With Commerce Cloud, businesses can optimize retail stores for social media and mobile selling, while also managing product inventory digitally across various channels. This approach not only provides a seamless product experience for retailers but also enhances the shopping experience for customers.

4. Predictive Analysis

By leveraging Commerce Cloud’s analytics capabilities, ecommerce businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers’ behavior and purchasing habits. This allows them to make data-driven decisions and optimize their online store to provide a more personalized shopping experience. Additionally, predictive sorting is a powerful tool that studies customer searches and sorts results based on their behavior, providing relevant suggestions to enhance the site experience.

5. All-in-one Marketing Solution

Commerce Cloud streamlines the marketing process for eCommerce businesses by providing an array of launch promotion tools and testing them for optimized conversions, all without requiring technical expertise. This platform leverages customer data, including their search history, to recommend frequently searched or browsed products, maximizing revenue potential. With Commerce Cloud, content creation and campaign management become more accessible, allowing businesses to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Businesses That Use SFCC

It’s not just small businesses benefiting from Commerce Cloud. Some of the world’s biggest brands have also placed their trust in this powerful platform. Puma, L’Oréal, Amazon, Costco Wholesale Corporation, Cargill, and Adidas have already embraced the power of Commerce Cloud.

But it’s not just limited to big corporations. Commerce Cloud elevates digital presence for diverse industries from retail to healthcare for all retailers, distributors, and service providers.

Commerce Cloud is the smart choice for C-level executives focused on growth and retailers looking to enhance online customer experience.

Check how SFCC can help Retail businesses to grow.

Commerce Cloud Use Cases

Check out what good can Salesforce Commerce Cloud do for businesses.

Here are some real cases where Commerce Cloud has turned the conventional approaches to commerce practices and brought a significant change.

Case 1: Navigating the Hurdles of Growing Your Market Visibility

Here, the business comprises computer peripherals, manufacturing, supply, and selling of assembled computer products. Their website has all the manufactured products they deal in, and their teams manage products, pricing, and shipping-related data on legacy software. Their team needed a comprehensive all-in-one tool to manage everything from one place and eliminate the following:

Problems Faced:

• Irrelevant Product Listing: On entering some keywords not registered with the dictionary, the application shows only “Result Not Found”. They are looking forward to showing shoppers relevant product listings in these scenarios.
• Indifferent Product Recommendations: They wanted to provide more relevant recommendations to their customers based on their recent purchase history and by understanding their interests to remain engaged with them timely.
• Difficulty in mapping shipping of orders: They wanted to ship their products internationally, but their existing shipment service provider only provides services in a single city and doesn’t offer an order tracking feature, They wanted a solution where they can ship overseas and track the order status as well. Many orders were to be delivered at different locations and needed to be tracked.

Solutions Offered:

To uproot all these challenges once and for all, these were the solutions proposed and executed:

• Optimizing Search Functionality: Implemented Einstein Search Dictionaries for consuming all site searches to reveal popular terms not currently added in the dictionaries. Algorithms will help the system recommend an appropriate synonym list, guaranteeing relevant search results every time.
• Personalized Product Recommendation: Enabled Einstein Product Recommendations to eliminate the guesswork with automatically personalized merchandising on each web page. By understanding what the shoppers love and can be interested in their recent purchases on the application, perfect product recommendations along with easy and accurate product sorting and relevant search results are suggested to them.
• Integrated UPS Shipping Method: We created APIs for integrating UPS into Salesforce that import orders to UPS from Salesforce Commerce Cloud. UPS provides the shipping updates back to SFCC. It helped track the orders and manage the national and international shipping for all the locations where the order was to be delivered.

Business impact -> customer retention rate increased; helped in improving the customer experience; centralized complete sales cycle.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Pricing

While getting the Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation, pricing is an unavoidable part. Depending on your business model, you can choose the most suitable pricing and scale per your business.

Salesforce B2B Commerce has two different pricing models: Starter and Growth.

Businesses get three choices for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud: Starter, Growth, and Plus.

Is it Necessary to Involve Professionals in Salesforce Commerce Cloud Development?

There is a whole list of why a Salesforce Development Partner should be involved or hire an experienced Salesforce Developer for flawless Salesforce Commerce Cloud development.

1. Expertise in Commerce Cloud

A Salesforce development partner’s expertise in Commerce Cloud development translates to the end user receiving high-quality, robust, and scalable solutions that keep up with the latest platform trends and features. This ensures a seamless and optimal user experience.

2. Faster Time-to-Market

A Salesforce development partner can expedite your time-to-market by providing a team of developers, designers, and project managers who collaborate to deliver high-quality solutions promptly.

3. Integration with Other Systems

Integrating your Commerce Cloud platform with other systems and applications, such as ERP, CRM, and marketing automation tools, is easier with a professional Salesforce development partner. This leads to streamlined business operations and sync data across all systems.

4. Security

Partnering with a professional Salesforce developer is a creative solution to ensure data security in e-commerce. They implement state-of-the-art security measures, ensure regulatory compliance, and provide the end user with a seamless and secure shopping experience, building trust and loyalty in your brand.

5. Innovation

Staying ahead of the competition in e-commerce requires keeping pace with the latest trends and innovations. A professional Salesforce development partner can assist by providing suggestions for new features and functionalities that enhance the customer experience.

6. Training and Support

To ensure effective use of the platform, a professional Salesforce development partner offers training and support to your team. They provide ongoing assistance, ensuring swift resolution of issues and smooth platform operation.

The Future of E-Commerce is Here. Are You Ready?

As you can see, implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud can be a game-changer for your e-commerce business. By following the comprehensive guide we’ve provided and taking action, you can harness the power of this platform and create an online store that is customized, scalable, and seamless.

Imagine delivering an exceptional customer experience, standing out from your competition, and driving growth for your business!

Don’t let the initial challenges of implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud hold you back from unlocking its full potential.

With the right resources and the support of Salesforce Development Services provided by Cyntexa, you can confidently navigate the process and achieve your business goals.

So take action today and start building the e-commerce website of your dreams!