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Unified commerce allows businesses to integrate their sales channels, business data, and other key information into one unified system. The goal is to simplify customer support and better understand how the business is performing at any point in time.
Customers may expect increasingly convenient shopping experiences. They decide when, how, and where they will engage with businesses, and often expect businesses to provide a more streamlined customer experience as soon as they start shopping.
Incorporating unified commerce into a retail and sales strategy can help businesses create a consistent shopping experience across channels, whether online, in person, or on mobile devices.
Businesses need a unified view of their customers’ behaviors and preferences, especially if they want to boost growth year-round. This is what a payment solution with omnichannel retailing capabilities can offer.
Table of contents
Unified commerce is a strategy that offers businesses a way to bring all of their sales information (customer-facing details) and processes (backend details) into a single, easy-to-navigate location.
Under this strategy, businesses may make it easy for customers to:
Importantly, unified commerce strategies may make it easy for businesses to get importantdata about their sales, pricing, and other key elements. With proper implementation, businesses will be better equipped to decide which growth and sales channels benefit their company and customers.
Think of it as a way to take the guesswork out of managing in-person payments in-store and online sales. When businesses manage everything in one location, they can align pricing strategies well.
There are four key components of a successful unified commerce strategy. Though the exact steps businesses should take to implement these components may vary, each is important to the strategy’s success.
Both the customer-facing channels and backend systems may need to integrate into one seamless system. This allows businesses to switch between customer and backend views, better interpret data, and gain information quickly.
As businesses scale and start offering different payment methods, that single system will make it easy to integrate new payments, products, and service offerings into your organization’s unified system.
The key to successful unified commerce strategies can be incorporating a business’s separate purchasing and sales channels within the unified platform. This can include the following:
By merging these channels into a single platform, businesses can monitor overall sales and gain insight into what’s working and what’s not. Over time, this could help them identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities both in-store and online.
Incorporating a business’s offerings into a unified commerce strategy may give customers a clear understanding of the products available. This helps them know if products are in stock, available in stores, backordered, or available online.
It may also give businesses the freedom and flexibility to offer products for in-store pickup and can improve inventory management by providing clear and accessible inventory information in one place.
A unified commerce system can let businesses organize and secure all of their customer interactions in a single location. This helps organizations analyze behaviors and points of concern to effectively tailor their offerings.
This helps them meet customer needs and better understand the differences between e-commerce and retail sales and customer behaviors.
Both unified and omnichannel commerce allow businesses to organize their information in a central location, but they work differently.
Unified commerce unifies everything in a business’s sales process on one platform. This includes customer interactions, the business’s inventory, all relevant sales channels, and organization-wide systems.
Omnichannel commerce unifies a business’s sales channels but doesn’t unify back-end systems. Businesses also have to switch to different systems to gain insight into customer behaviors.
Unified commerce offers businesses several unique benefits not available through other structures. This includes:
Since customers expect seamless online and in-store experiences, the need for a unified commerce approach has never been greater. Unified commerce systems can help businesses with customers who prefer to:
There are many possibilities, but the solution can be clear: Creating a unified view of a shopper across multiple channels can help businesses deliver conversion-driving shopping experiences.
Different unified commerce solutions are available, but choosing one can be tricky since the system needs to cater to the business’s needs. Here are a few key considerations to keep in mind when exploring different platforms:
Choosing the right platform can take time. But finding the right fit is possible for businesses that carefully weigh the options and assess how each platform could benefit their organization.
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Integrating technology | Upgrade outdated systems to new models and platforms. |
| Migrating data | Work with a unified commerce platform, like PayPal, that makes data migration easy. |
| Inconsistent pricing | Use a platform that updates pricing information in real time, keeping prices consistent across the board. |
Unified commerce solutions allow businesses to gain good insight into their operations without having to juggle multiple platforms and programs. Over time, this can help businesses interact well with their customers and make the buying process enjoyable for each customer who visits the store.
But some businesses might struggle to find a platform that can integrate all their operations, especially if there are plans to grow in the next few years. The platform should help drive new experiences that cater to customers’ preferences.
Finding a unified commerce system that can grow with the business and work with the types of payments and sales channels it currently accepts doesn’t have to be challenging. Accept payments in-store and online in one unified platform, and it can take the stress of tracking customer behavior out of the process.
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