The intersection of Commerce and Customer Engagement

Over the past decade, eCommerce has transformed significantly from a nice to have segment of some business operations, to the key driving business unit for most organizations across multiple industries today. Growing over the past decade from 5% revenue driver to roughly 10% and in some cases responsible for 25% – 30% of the entire business revenue for some Retailers and Manufacturers. It’s becoming more influential and consequential in shaping the overall business strategy for most of these Companies.

According to an eCommerce-Platforms.com Articles written in January 2, 2020. Here are the top 5 growing trends in the eCommerce space.

5 Future eCommerce Trends of 2020:

1)      Personalization and Customer Engagement

2)      AI, Assistants, and Chatbots

3)      B2B eCommerce is Exploding

4)      Interactive Product Visualization

5)      More Custom Retail Experiences

Let’s explore the first piece which is becoming more and more of a challenge for some retailers and an area of growth opportunities for others – Personalization and Customer Engagement

Personalization and Customer Experience & Engagement:

Businesses look to Digital Commerce to champion a consistent branding and shopping experience across all their channels today. Omnichannel retailers need to understand their site visitors, curate the right content and products that not only help to improve engagement, but also increase conversion. They need to serve up content that is relevant to their customers based on their demographics, geography, and psychographic (Opinion, Interest and Activities) profile. Imagine a Digital Commerce experience that intelligently serves up sandals, T-shirts etc. from high end name brands to visitors shopping from Florida’s highest income zip codes while curating winter jackets and boots to customers shopping from North Dakota and Alaska. Does your Commerce platform offer Real Time Personalization that helps to drive these engagements and conversion across all your digital channels like Web, Social, Mobile etc.?

Retailers, Distributors and Manufacturers that sell direct-to-consumer are looking to leverage a Commerce platform with complex promotion management that improves their Average Order Value (AOV) and optimizes Margin. Is there a need to deliver targeted promotion based on customer buying behavior and a unified commerce promotion that is consistent across all your channels i.e. Brick and mortar store, Web Store, Mobile store etc.? Take a look at these two scenarios, Customer A shopping on your site today for a specific product, she has been a loyal customer for over 3years and has a high LTV (Life Time Value) score but 80% of her purchases as always been with a coupon, or a promotion offer or both. Conversely, customer B with similarly high LTV is also shopping on your site for the exact same product. However, 95% of previous purchases by Customer B has been without a coupon or promotion offer.  Your eCommerce platform should empower you to dynamically serve up the same product to both customers with promotion (for Customer A) and with little or no promotion (for Customer B). The business impact is an improvement in Margins and top line revenue for your Company.

 Consider these ecommerce personalization stats:

• Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized experiences. (Monetate)
• 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences. (Epsilon)
• 44% of consumers say that they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a particular company. (Segment)
• 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. (Forrester)
• However, in another Forrester survey 53% of digital experience delivery professionals said they lack the right technology to personalize experiences.

Source: https://www.bloomreach.com/en/blog/2017/08/ecommerce-personalization.html

The eCommerce landscape is becoming very agile and rapidly adapting to the consumer buying behavior, and having processes and a Commerce solution in place to support these rapid changes is critical to business continuity.

HCL Commerce is pivotal in bridging the gap between traditional eCommerce and Customer Experience & Engagement. We are bringing capabilities that not only deliver improved metrics and growth for Line of Business Executives, but also empower Commerce and Marketing Operational Leaders to thoroughly understand their customers across all channels and deliver unique experiences that is relevant to them. Our Customers trust us to process over $100 Billion through our Commerce platform today and we are building an ecosystem of Customer base across all industries and sectors. HCL Commerce is a Cloud Native (On-premise, Public, Hybrid), Highly Scalable platform, and we are at the Intersection of Commerce and Customer Engagement.

Reach out to schedule a demo with us: Contact Us for a Demo