Online markets have now made a huge place in customers' purchase habits, but this doesn't come easy for eCommerce businesses. From brick and mortar POS to eCommerce POS,businesses are constantly finding ways to improve customer experience. Retail businesses online collect information from customers to provide personalization and better user experience. They use data in different digital channels for customers to provide user experience. However, bundling different platforms, different customer information, difficult customers, and providing similar user experience on all platforms is a highly difficult task for businesses. That's what unified commerce is and why Unified Commerce is crucial for eCommerce business owners.
What Exactly is Unified Commerce?
Do you want to know what a unified commerce platform is? Unified Commerce for eCommerce business refers to a way of connecting all the systems into one platform. The information from different backend channels is collected into one. Unified or omnichannel strategies bring different customer information in different platforms together. It helps brands to Sync customer interactions with brands across multiple channels such as Instagram, website, YouTube etc.
Understanding what is unified retail commerce
Unified commerce or Omni channel strategy will help you combine everything related to your E-Commerce business on one platform. The unified strategy will send customer data at one place every time a user interacts with your brand.
The reasons unified Commerce is essential for Retail Online Shopping
Better customer communication: with unified systems and Omni channel strategy the communication for the brand with the customers becomes much easier. The brands understand the customer requirement, they understand the customer's journey so whenever an order occurs within a system it helps to keep customers informed. Moreover, if a brand is planning for a promotional activity or deals discounts on special occasions they can communicate easily and take follow up of a product review or feedback instantly on emails.
Reduce staff time: a major part of e-commerce and retail is labor cost . Many retailers pay people to sell their products to customers and help their customers with the international online shopping experience. All these activities including collecting data and analyzing different channels take a lot of time. Many of these tasks can be automated and unified commerce for different digital channels help businesses to automate the stars and cut down on the large amounts of manual time and cost. Unified commerce will help your staff to make sure your customers are getting the best international shopping experience without wasting time and money on different channels.
Order fulfillment for different locations: if you have a retail store at different locations or an eCommerce platform with different warehouses, your system should be able to fulfill customer orders irrespective of location. If a customer orders a product from your website and that product is not available at one location your commerce system should be able to place the order wherever the stock is accessible and available. It will help provide shopping experience on international shopping sites and retain customers while maximizing the opportunities of sales. Unified commerce combines order fulfillment irrespective of the stock location.
Reduced errors: having a unified system or Omni channel strategy will help you reduce errors. If you are using separate commerce systems it will delay communication and data which can lead to errors. For instance, if you have a product listed on Instagram but that product is out of stock on online retail shopping sites, you might sell a customer product that is not available right now. This will lead to delay in delivery and you will lose your reputation in the market. These are some of the classic errors that can reduce your business. Having a unified system will sync everything irrespective of the platform your customer interacts with your brand. When you have an omnichannel or unified system, all product details, price, description, availability, etc will sync in a single database and distribution points. This will lead to reduced discrepancies or errors.
Real time information: If the same customer interacts differently with your brand on different digital channels, saving information if the same customer will only add excess data. It might lead to duplicate information. Moreover, saving customer’s online retail shopping statistics from different platforms when they interact with your brand can be a daunting task if it's not synced. So, when you analyze this information for making decisions or for advertisement it can cost you in terms of time, effort and money. Unified or omni channel strategies will help you manage real time data. In addition, the product data information can also be synced to avoid losing out on customers.
Track customer data effectively: Unlike a few years ago, Today's customer journey is a spider web, they interact with your brand and others differently at different platforms. Sorting out such a large amount of information for each customer is a daunting task, they can interact with your brand in different sales channels. Whether through your website, or social media channels, you need to track your customer's journey on all platforms, collect data and sort, analyze information. To provide personalization and better user experience, you need to track all the information at different platforms. This will help you improve your brand as per online retail shopping trends, and offer better products or services.
Conclusion
These above stated benefits and Trends of unified commerce for brands and retailers are creating opportunities. It reduces many unwanted errors, mistakes, and manual activities that take up a lot of time, effort, and errors. Customer behavior is now like a spider web, it changes every time, managing and managing so much data differently is hectic. Unified commerce gives you a streamlined approach to things, and provides your brand more stability and efficiency in handling things. If you have different retail stores as well as ecommerce websites, integrate unified commerce for better retail online shopping experience for your customers. Reduce your burden, lose customers, and add more efficiency, opportunities, and maximize sales for your brand. This will also allow you to retain more customers and provide better customer treatment whenever and wherever they interact with your brand.