Unified Commerce is a retail strategy combining multiple systems for a single view of customers, products and profits. The concept has been surrounded by decades, initially for retailers with small and medium sizes to compete with businesses.
Now it is the most prominent trends of Emmerce, with shopify, bigcommerce and many other offering solutions.
United trade
Unified Commerce combines sales, stocks and filling software across all Chaniques to a shared real -time interface for shoppers and employees, including three concepts:
- Complicable architecture,
- The first experience,
- Unity across touch points.
CompliaBle Architecture
The Component Commerce refers to the technological pile of interchangeable components connected via application programming interfaces.
“More complicated” means any part of the magazine – cash register, product search, order management – is removable without interrupted everhyting.
Modular and scalable applications are combined.
First experience
Shopify and the research company Gartner emphasizes that the united trade is “experience with” or “conducted”, which means how the customer, employee or business with systems is the key to building the magazine.
For shoppers, “Experience First” could dictate a system for browsing a product on Instagram, add it to a social trade basket, buy it a few hours later via the merchant website and pick it up in a store without losing context.
Employees have similar experience. A support representative of chatting with a customer via direct X reports can access its history of shopping in any channel and easy to check orders, revenues from trade or even dedicates to the newsletter.
Likewise, the entire Mercant marketing team benefits the first experience. The folding magazine connects all touch points of customers with a marketing allocation system and provides data for multi -touch attributes and modeling of marketing mixes.
Unity
In the united store, all systems share the only source of truth – for stocks, orders, prices, customer data, content distribution and more.
The front-end-oriented systems are consistency and connect across:
- Internet shop windows,
- Content marketing,
- Brick and mortar, location,
- Mobile app,
- Social media platforms,
- Integration of social trade,
- Marketplace,
- Customer service channels.
Back-end systems are firmly integrated for real-time visibility and coordination.
“Unified” means in real time, fully integrated and smooth across the board.
Advantage of business?
It is irony that the united trade – conceived to help and medium companies – is now attracting business companies.
Delivery of trouble-free experience in real time across each customer’s touch point and back-end is technical and embedded sources. Great retailers are more likely to have capital, utilities and operating maturity to unify the older system, developing channels of integration and investment in modular components.
Moreover, the united trade is more than accessing several APIs. This means a re -evaluation of how systems are built, how employees interact with the tools and how customer data flows safely and consists of business.
While a unified shop through shopife or bigcommerce could therefore help and medium -sized businesses, it seems that large stores even have advertising.
Real test
Despite his promise of Unified Commerce successfully achieved successfully only if he manages profits.
Take a hypothetical shopper who starts on an Instagram shopping route just to complete the purchase, by purchasing a shop from the merchant’s website.
Does it justify the profit of the integration of social media with an electronic trading platform? Increased conversion levels, reduced yields, better stock turnover and higher customer life – these are the metrics that matter.