In the quest to establish unified commerce, one of the common mistakes of retail brands is the assumption that their presence must be everywhere. They are eager to be available always to serve customers, irrespective of how or why they connect. But they end up struggling to align their channel growth with realistic business expectations. Instead, the key is to deliver connected and contextual retail experiences across the channels that customers frequent the most while enabling them to transition from one channel to another. In today’s hyper-connected marketplace, successful brands even manage to leverage customer insights from one channel to encourage customers in another.

Clearly, the changing omnichannel journey and its evolution towards unified commerce have also presented opportunities for retailers to grow their business. But without the right e-commerce platform, achieving unified commerce excellence would be next to impossible. You might find yourself in a position to engage customers across multiple channels, but these experiences are likely to be broken, intrusive, or just plain irrelevant.

“Over 86% of all software spending in retail is now focused on the concept of unified commerce” – ResearchAndMarkets.com

With a powerful e-commerce platform like Magento, though, you can create unified shopping journeys that don’t just meet customer demands – they also blow their expectations out of the water through proactive engagement.

Let’s quickly look at what Magento has to offer

  • Open Source– including a free community edition
  • Full control to customize extensions and features
  • Quick third-party integration for product inquiries/reviews, deals/discounts, advanced sorting, etc.
  • Real-time insights to keep track of orders and deliveries
  • An extensive list of in-built SEO tools
  • Dedicated security support

Powered by robust functionalities and a strong community, Magento has grown to gain 30% of the total e-commerce market share. More importantly, they have understood that the way customers shop is bound to change continually. Hence, their next-generation scalability and extended connectivity to secure third-party systems have given retailers a clear path to following a fully modernized unified commerce strategy.

How Magento empowers unified experiences

Better understand customers through social media engagement. 

Magento’s cutting-edge social media extensions aid the promotion of your brand across channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. Retailers can connect their Magento websites to social media platforms and start engaging online customers. In the process, they get access to rich customer profiles like location, interests, and anniversary/birthday dates.

Then, they can harness this data to share personalized content to the customer at the right time and in the right channel – even if it’s at the physical store.

Be more responsive across multiple browsers and devices. 

Lack of responsiveness in the online store can be the death rattle for a retail business. Customers barely tolerate uninspired browsing experiences, which means that bad UX can send them right to the competitor’s e-commerce store. With Magento, it’s simple to guarantee that the website stays responsive, irrespective of the type of devices (PC, mobiles, tablets, etc.) and the browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.) through which the customer engages with the brand.

It builds more sales momentum, too, as customers are likelier to shop and purchase when oversized images or dead links don’t hamper their navigation.

Get digital firepower to improve in-store experiences.

Magento comes packed with features that equip customers to connect the digital and the physical world to their advantage. They can leisurely explore the online store inventory and choose options like in-store deliveries, contactless curbside pickups, and preferred digital payment. If they are already at the store, the Magento-powered store makes it effortless to access loyalty accounts or avail discounts.

Magento also assists retailers to stay on top of inventory information, which puts them in a better position to fulfill customers’ expectations when they are browsing through the store shelves.

Benefits of unified commerce

  • Positively influence the browsing and purchasing habits of customers and prospects
  • Increase the level of personalization across sales and marketing campaigns
  • Accelerate the payment and checkout process
  • Get a single source of truth of product information and customer insights
  • Gain more customer mindshare – offer 24/7 support

The need for omnichannel commerce has never been in question ever since channel and device expansion took the retail world by storm in the early 2000s. However, it has led to constant confusion over how brands can deliver ROI-friendly unified experiences. Can we blame them? Every time you sneeze, another channel seems to have made its way – touting its ability to help customers and brands interact with each other. Bringing in a unified, consistent experience across these channels is the key to offering a memorable, share-worthy experience to your consumers.

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Recommended Blogs

  1. Six Reasons Why You Should Choose Magento to Launch Your Global Stores .

  2. Evolution in Unified Commerce Demands New Metrics.

 

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