Salesforce for E-Commerce | Blog

What Is B2C E-Commerce?

B2C e-commerce is the practice of selling goods or services directly to the end consumer on a digital channel like a website or a mobile app. It lets businesses target more customers than with a brick-and-mortar store, and can even transport physical storefronts into the digital world.

What Is Salesforce B2C Commerce?

Salesforce B2C Commerce is a cloud-based B2C e-commerce platform for building and launching digitally operated storefronts. Compatible with various applications and devices, it’s optimized to provide a great shopping experience regardless of the device your customers use.

The platform also provides many value-added features like an AI (Artificial Intelligence) function that helps marketers by recommending the perfect products to customers based on their preferences.

Why Use Salesforce For B2C E-Commerce

Selling online has become a necessity in an increasingly digital world. Even if you sell through brick-and-mortar stores, you need to establish an online presence too, so your customers can research your products thoroughly before they buy.

According to GE Capital Retail Bank’s second annual Major Purchase Shopper Study, 81% of shoppers research online before visiting a store. Establishing a robust online presence creates customer confidence and can increase your sales.

Salesforce Makes Setup Easy

Setting up an online store from scratch is like reinventing the wheel. Salesforce B2C Commerce is one of the best B2C e-commerce platforms to accelerate online storefront development.

The platform offers a useful selection of tools to help you quickly set up product catalogs, design web pages, integrate payment-processing applications, provide a content-rich experience, and run campaigns and promotions. That‘s why choosing a tool like Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud for running and managing your online store is such a smart idea.

Benefits Of Choosing Salesforce B2C Commerce

Salesforce B2C Commerce is easy to set up, launch, and maintain while providing a great experience for customers to shop from your digital store. It helps you scale your business through an easy-to-use platform that integrates well with other applications, both inside and outside the Salesforce ecosystem.

Here are some of the top benefits of choosing Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud:

1. Mobile-friendly ordering: There’s a growing trend among consumers to shop using their smartphones. Mobile storefronts dominate the e-commerce industry by giving customers an easy way to order online. The Salesforce B2C platform is a mobile-first app that ensures fast page loads on mobile, with a super user-friendly storefront presentation.
2. Enhanced personalized buying experience: Salesforce for e-commerce leverages an AI-powered tool called Salesforce Einstein to improve customer experience via personalized product recommendations. With its ability to perform predictive analysis based on past purchases and customer habits, the Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud delivers improved search results and product recommendations
3. Managing end-to-end B2C business requirements: Salesforce for e-commerce doesn’t just help manage an online storefront. It also uses the Salesforce ecosystem of products to help guide the end-to-end sales journey, including marketing to the right customer, providing a smooth shopping experience, tracking the order, and post-delivery customer support. All of this happens on one platform.
4. Handling globalization: If your business is ready to sell internationally, the Salesforce e-commerce platform can help you launch your digital storefront in different countries. You can manage a separate catalog of products for each country and handle multiple languages, processes, and payment options effortlessly.
5. Effective customer support: Salesforce B2C Commerce cloud lets you offer high-end customer support through its connected CRM platform. B2C businesses often need to interact directly with consumers to address concerns over a support call or chat. The Salesforce B2C Commerce CRM platform is designed to offer fast and efficient customer support, ensuring smooth, effective business operation.

Salesforce B2C Commerce Key Features

Salesforce B2C Commerce (and business to business commerce) offers the following key features to set up a flexible and visually appealing online store for customers:

1. Digital storefront: When setting up an e-commerce website, a visually appealing storefront is a must. Designing your site is easy with Page Designer — a drag-and-drop tool that makes building pages easy with just clicks and no code. Using the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA), Salesforce B2C Commerce helps you build and launch sites quickly and easily using a mobile-first approach.
2. Multiple site management feature: For businesses selling products in multiple countries, Salesforce B2C Commerce helps create and manage additional geo-specific sites, quickly and easily. Your customers in different countries will enjoy a unique shopping experience based on their language, currency, location, and other details. Managing multiple sites and localization is easy with Salesforce B2C Commerce.
3. Merchandising and marketing tools for promoting business: B2C commerce on Salesforce comes equipped with various merchandising and marketing capabilities. Drawing on the power of AI, Salesforce B2C Commerce can help businesses provide personalized buying experiences to their customers. It provides merchandising and promotion management capabilities to quickly launch campaigns and promotions on your storefront. Merchandisers also have access to Salesforce CMS to help create content-rich experiences for shoppers.
4. Single platform service: Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud enables businesses to operate efficiently across multiple channels. This lets companies simultaneously manage more than one brand. From product management to sales and marketing, everything is accessible in one place.
5. B2C Commerce APIs: Salesforce B2C Commerce offers APIs (Application Programming Interface) to connect with third-party applications like social media extensions for Instagram and Facebook. You can use them with applications like ERP systems, payment processing systems, and order management systems. Using headless architecture, you can build and scale your digital storefront faster and with a lower total cost of ownership.

Best Practices For Getting The Most Out Of Salesforce B2C Commerce Platform

Creating and launching the Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud tool is only one piece of the puzzle. To get the most out of this powerful platform, it’s important to follow some best practices as recommended by Salesforce consultants. Below are the most important best practices to keep in mind when you implement and maintain your online storefront:

1. Use Page Designer, AppExchange apps, and out-of-the-box features as much as possible: Build your storefront using Page Designer and out-of-the-box features to accelerate the deployment of your online store. You’ll get good value from using as many of these features as possible since they make setup much easier than if you customized every aspect of your online store yourself. Reserve custom coding only when there are no other alternatives available.
2. Get the help of an experienced Salesforce Consulting Partner: Salesforce recommends getting the help of an experienced Salesforce Consulting Partner or Salesforce Professional Service to implement your online store. You’ll need to set up several details such as catalogs, product families, products, and prices. A Salesforce partner can guide you through the journey to make sure you don’t make costly mistakes at the outset.
3. Integrate with other AppExchange applications: Apps from the Salesforce AppExchange can provide ready-made solutions to jumpstart your B2C commerce journey. AppExchange apps can take care of processes not covered by Salesforce, such as accounting. Accounting Seed is one such powerful application, built natively on the Salesforce platform. The Accounting Seed app takes care of accounting, billing, payables, receivables, inventory management, and ERP all in one easy bundle within the Salesforce Platform.

Some Popular AppExchange Apps To Use With Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud

AppExchange apps are a very useful way to extend various functionalities of the Salesforce platform. Here are 5 apps we recommend for use with the Salesforce B2C Commerce cloud:

1. Amplience: Amplience helps plan, create, manage, and deliver content using an APO-first approach for powerful visual storytelling.
2. Avalara: Avalara is an end-to-end compliance solution to address statutory tax requirements.
3. PowerReviews: This app helps to collect, display, and syndicate reviews and other user-generated content.
4. PayPal: PayPal helps shoppers pay across desktop web, mobile web, and mobile apps, providing faster checkout experiences.
5. Accounting Seed: AccountingSeed supports back-office functions like general ledger, inventory management, accounts payable, and payroll.

Strengthen Salesforce B2C Commerce With Accounting Seed

Accounting Seed is the top-rated accounting app on the Salesforce AppExchange, combining general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fund accounting, inventory management, project accounting, configurable invoice formats, automated billing, and online payment processing into one easy-to-use platform.

The integration of Accounting Seed with Salesforce B2C Commerce makes the Salesforce tool more powerful. The B2C Salesforce e-commerce platform handles the online storefront experience, while Accounting Seed takes over the backend inventory management, ledger entries, payables, receivables, and payment recognition. It’s easier to run a B2C commerce store on Salesforce with the addition of the Accounting Seed application.

To see how smooth your B2C Commerce workflows can be, request a demo of Accounting Seed today.

Key Takeaway

Salesforce B2C Commerce is one of the leading applications that brands use to set up and launch their digital storefront. As you make the transition from physical retail to digital retail, here are a few key points to keep in mind:

1. B2C Commerce is a way for customers to buy your products or services directly online. The margin in selling direct to consumers is higher than when selling through physical retail shops.
2. The Salesforce B2C Commerce platform accelerates selling online by helping you open an online storefront. Instead of building a website from scratch, it’s easier to build your online store with SF B2C Commerce cloud.
3. Leverage the Salesforce B2C Commerce platform along with other Salesforce apps to get a 360-degree view of your customers.
4. Apps from the Salesforce AppExchange like Accounting Seed provide further value by adding billing, orders, payables, inventory management, General Ledger entry, and other capabilities to the Salesforce platform.
5. Salesforce also offers an excellent business-to-business sales platform that delivers many of the same conveniences as their B2C e-commerce solution.

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