In 2021, it is estimated that there would be more than 2.14 million digital buyers. This shows how the e-commerce economy is rising. In order for businesses to stay afloat, one needs to have a strong marketing strategy to have an impactful digital presence. Having an online presence helps businesses to reach a wider audience without any geographical constraints, sell goods and services 24/7 without any limitations, increase their sales by using online campaigns, coupons, and other promotional strategies.

There are many SaaS providers like Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, etc, but after the introduction of eCommerce integration with the salesforce platform, salesforce commerce cloud has become the future of e-commerce. This article will give you information about the benefits of integrating eCommerce with salesforce and why is salesforce the leader in the e-commerce industry as well.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce commerce cloud supports both B2C and B2B businesses to set up their online stores seamlessly and effortlessly and also provides features that help businesses to provide the best shopping experience to their customers.

The Salesforce e-commerce cloud comes with powerful qualities that help businesses to connect with their prospective leads and turn them into customers. As the buying behavior is turning complex day by day, companies and organizations require omnichannel insights to understand and analyze the data at each and every stage of the buying process.

Salesforce e-commerce cloud has introduced an AI-powered platform which is commonly referred to as Einstein AI that comes up with built-in predictive intelligence. Einstein AI helps businesses to provide the best shopping experience to their users by giving smart information about customer behavior, buying patterns and also recognize new opportunities for expanding the business.

Features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

• Multi-Site management
• Product management
• Responsive mobile design
• Real-time reports and dashboards
• Pre-built Integrations
• Catalog management
• Campaigns management
• In-store extensions
• Customer catalog entitlements
• Comprehensive development platform
• Customer and segment-specific pricing
• Customer segmentation
• Targeted promotion management
• Native targeting and A/B testing
• Marketing and merchandise tool

Benefits of Integrating E-Commerce with Salesforce platform

Salesforce has come up with an innovative solution that combines order placement, inventory management, store operations, and other features into a single unified platform. Here a few benefits of integrating e-commerce with salesforce:

1. Added Intelligence: As people say ‘Information is wealth’. Similarly, In the 21st-century data is wealth. Companies nowadays generate huge amounts of data and the data becomes an asset only when it is analyzed and used properly. As the businesses start growing, the data that would be coming in keeps increasing.  If people start analyzing this information manually there is a high chance that you might be losing out on other opportunities.
   Salesforce eCommerce cloud provides AI-powered personalized shopping experience for customers at each and every touchpoint.
2. Marketing Tools: With salesforce commerce cloud, you can manage all your data in one place. Suppose your business is using MailChimp as an email marketing tool, google analytics for tracking the data of the users, etc, using the salesforce commerce cloud all these data can be brought into a single platform which makes different teams of the organization work collaboratively and, improving the overall efficiency.
   With the salesforce commerce cloud, you can manage and share information about various products like images, and content on multiple sites with different currencies. You can also create and launch campaigns, roll out offers and promotional codes, perform A/B testing to check for conversion at ease.
3. Mobile Optimization: It is interesting to note that 79% of smartphone users use mobile phones to make purchases online. Therefore, it is important to have a user-friendly and mobile-optimized store for your business. Even top search engines like google are ranking websites that have better page loading speeds.
   The biggest advantage of using salesforce had adopted a mobile-first approach. Salesforce commerce cloud gives users the best mobile experience. This even provides merchants to manage their inventory very easily using their mobile phones.
4. Salesforce Einstein AI:  Recently, Salesforce has come up with Einstein AI, which is an Artificial Intelligence-powered platform that gives personalized recommendations to users and totally eliminates the use of third-party apps for data analysis. Earlier retailers and merchants used third-party extensions and the failure of one extension affects the total application
   Features  of Einstein AI:
   
   1. The suggestion of best products for at all the touchpoints
   2. Give 1:1 personalized recommendations to all the customers
   3. Improve conversion rates by using data-driven approaches.
      
      According to the surveys taken by Accenture and leaders from the retail association, it is noted that 64% of the users preferred personal recommendations while shopping and 60% of the surveyed were interested to know about promotional codes and discounts.With technologies like Einstein AI, users can get recommendations and also personalized suggestions, and businesses can opt for the commerce cloud to develop relationships with the customers and regain their loyalty.
5. Omni-Channel Functionalities: Salesforce commerce cloud allows businesses to manage and streamline multiple processes. Retailers can streamline processes like inventory management, sales order management, launch campaigns, analyze user data from various social media channels, and many more just using a single platform. Salesforce CRM can also be integrated with other apps to maximize and analyze the data. Omnichannel functionalities save a lot of time and resources for businesses.
6. Customer Support: Salesforce provides one of the best in class customer support to all its users. Salesforce commerce cloud helps businesses run flawlessly by providing 24/7 support and the support offered covers various issues right from bug fixing to improving the security of the store.

Summary:

Salesforce commerce cloud is one of the most powerful eCommerce clouds and comes with many built-in features that make it easier for merchants and retailers to reach their customers and increase their sales and revenue. The decision to choose which SaaS you need entirely depends upon the requirement of your organization. If there is a lot of infrastructure involved then salesforce commerce cloud is the go-to solution for your business.