Why modern digital commerce is crucial for growth

Highlights

You’ll learn about:

Why modern digital commerce matters:

• Personalization: AI-driven tools offer tailored customer experiences
• Flexibility and scalability: Adapt to market changes with modular platforms
• Integration: Connects with CRM, inventory and payment processing systems

Top trends to watch:

• Omnichannel experiences
• API-based commerce
• Customer analytics

Challenges of modern digital commerce:

• Meeting modern customer expectations
• Ensuring data security

To enhance your business operations, provide unparalleled customer experiences and drive growth, use a digital commerce platform today.

Keep reading to learn more!

Customers' expectations are volatile, like the stock market—dynamically changing. The ability of e-commerce companies to adapt to this change decides their level of success. Because of this, it’s important for companies to start using headless commerce. But what goes on behind the scenes to meet customers' demands? 

Let’s understand what modern commerce is, its components and why e-commerce companies should embrace it no matter what. 

What is modern digital commerce?

Modern digital commerce is buying and selling online using platforms like e-commerce websites and mobile internet. In other words, modern digital commerce encompasses and manages the entire lifecycle of a customer’s buying decision.

Modern digital commerce answers all your miseries, from developing customer experiences to sales, marketing and promotions to providing proper product delivery. Unlike digital commerce, modern commerce is based on microservices and real-time event-based architecture.

This platform uses modern open-source technologies to build a granular set of components and business services. It uses APIs that work together. 

Key components of modern digital commerce

Modern front-end

A modern front end is the face of your digital store because it engages your customers and provides a superior shopping experience. What’s interesting is that front-end solutions no longer rely only on frameworks like React, Angular or Vue.js. Modern front ends use digital experience platforms (DXP) for your storefront experience. These front ends improve your customers' browsing experience and ensure better performance, keeping your customers happy and reducing bounce rates.

Headless CMS

A headless content management system (CMS) separates the front and back end, providing content to the presentation layer. With a headless CMS, you manage and distribute content across many channels, including websites, mobile apps and IoT devices. Headless CMS like Contentstack offers content management features to ensure updates and maintain consistent messaging. A headless architecture enhances your digital strategy, streamlines content workflows and connects with your target audiences.

API orchestration

Application programming interface (API) orchestration integrates and manages your digital commerce platform's diverse services and systems. These open APIs give you the autonomy to orchestrate, design and offer a personalized customer experience journey. By orchestrating APIs, you can ensure smooth data flow, cut redundancies and increase efficiency. 

Microservice commerce platforms

A microservices architecture breaks down the commerce platform into smaller, independent services you can develop, deploy and scale. Using a modular approach, businesses become flexible, scalable and resilient. You can optimize and update each microservice without affecting your entire system. Platforms like Contentstack use microservices to provide scalable commerce solutions that adapt to changing business needs.

Algorithmic layer

The algorithmic layer uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to create personalized experiences, improve decision-making and increase efficiency. It taps into data analytics to suggest products your customers will love, automate inventory and predict demand. 

Why is modern commerce important?

Personalization

The more information you gather about your customers, the more you can customize your products. Digital commerce platforms can track your customer's behavior and provide information about what to offer in your advertisement campaign. These platforms use AI-driven virtual assistants and chatbots for real-time, personalized customer care.

Flexibility

Modern commerce helps you adapt to changing market conditions. For instance, you can change your strategies, product offerings and marketing approaches based on real-time data and emerging industry trends now. You can respond to customer demands and market conditions efficiently.

Scalability

These platforms help you grow your business. They provide the necessary infrastructure and tools to handle increased traffic, transactions and inventory without missing a beat. If you’re looking to expand your business, enter new markets or launch new products, you need a scalable solution. For instance, with digital commerce, your platform can handle sudden surges in sales during Christmas and Black Friday without glitches.

Integration with different systems

With modern commerce like Contentstack, you can integrate various systems. Using Contentstack’s marketplace, you can connect your e-commerce platforms with:

• CRM systems
• Inventory management
• Digital asset management (DAM)
• Digital payment solutions

Integrating with different systems streamlines operations and reduces errors and enhances the customer experience. Imagine a customer ordering a product online and then picking it up in-store without hiccups.

Omnichannel experiences

Another reason why companies use digital commerce is that it offers omnichannel experiences. It creates an integrated shopping experience across various digital devices and touchpoints. Whether your customers browse online or on their mobile devices, consistent customer interactions provide a unified brand experience. Think about how shopping at a store like Apple feels the same, whether online or at a physical location. This creates higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Headless commerce uses technology to sync offline and online interactions. 

Visibility

Digital commerce helps you go everywhere your customers are while providing a targeted user experience. One way commerce architecture enhances your online visibility is by using proven search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. To enhance the visibility of your website, enhance and optimize your keywords and share quality content on your website. High visibility in search results helps customers search for your products and services.

Steps to build a modern digital commerce

With many processes, market trends and strategies to consider, where should your business start? Take these steps to build a modern digital commerce:

1. Select the right platform

When picking a commerce ecosystem, decide if you prefer a headless commerce solution or a ready-made traditional platform. A headless commerce solution separates the presentation layer from back-end components, offering discrete user experiences. In contrast, a traditional platform is an all-encompassing solution that is less complex to set up and administer.

Another thing to consider is your platform's framework. Choose a microservices architecture to make your commerce platform scalable and flexible. Microservices decompose an application into smaller, independent services that you install, deploy and even scale.

A modular approach makes your business agile since your platform can accommodate shifts in business requirements or technological advancements.

2. Develop and integrate

Implementing the core features of your digital commerce platform improves functionality and user experience. These features include:

• Product listings
• Shopping cart system
• Checkout process
• Secure payment gateways
• Security protocols

Each element enhances usability, security and customer satisfaction.

3. Content and SEO

New and useful information gets the attention of your target audience. So, create unique and targeted product descriptions and engaging blog posts. Well-researched and compelling content educates the shoppers and speaks to your credibility and expertise.

Besides the content, SEO is crucial to your site's visibility and can help you get good traffic. To improve your website’s visibility, make sure that it has the right keywords, good backlinks and a fast website design.

You earn a higher rank on the search results by correctly using SEO techniques.

4. Test and launch

Before your digital commerce platform goes live, focus on comprehensive testing to make all your elements work together. Start by testing your website’s functionality, usability, security and performance. Identify and resolve issues to prevent problems post-launch and ensure a smooth user experience.

Launch your platform once testing is complete and you have solved all the issues. To ensure your customers find your platform, market it through various marketing channels, including social media platforms, email campaigns and paid advertising. 

5. Customer engagement

To reach your target audience, use different digital marketing automation strategies like:

• SEO to improve organic search visibility
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for targeted ads
• Social media marketing to engage your audience
• Email marketing to nurture your leads
• Content marketing to provide valuable information and drive traffic.
• Data analytics to personalize customer experiences and target specific segments of your audience. 

6. Maintain and optimize

Ensure your modern digital commerce platform is updated to provide the best security and functionality. Occasionally, enrich your platform with new features, security enhancements and improvements. Track and assess key markers and consumers’ responses to the application to pinpoint areas that would benefit from enhancement.

Why use Contentstack for digital commerce transformation?

Contentstack is your one-stop solution for digital commerce transformation. Why?

Contetnstack’s headless architecture makes your business more flexible and scalable. One of the primary benefits of decoupling is that businesses can control and provide content through different channels while providing a cohesive and rich customer experience. Contentstack is what you need to stay relevant in every trend and to be ready for every new technology.

Then, there are the robust API capabilities offered by the headless architecture. Application programming interfaces (APIs) offer smooth integration with various cloud-native commerce systems. The modular approach simplifies adding new features and functionalities, ensuring innovation. As a result, businesses can offer much better customer experiences without getting bogged down by technical hurdles.

Enterprise-grade security and reliability ensure that digital commerce operations remain protected and performant. Contentstack has robust security measures that build trust and provide peace of mind.

Contentstack's user-friendly interface helps marketing and content teams manage their digital commerce strategies more easily. The intuitive platform allows non-technical users to update content without IT help.

Case study: How did Contenstack help Lessa increase its organic traffic and ensure personalization?

After eight months of research, Leesa optimized its website for speed and user experience by choosing Contentstack, a headless CMS. This change improved their SEO, increasing organic traffic by 30 times. Content management became efficient and their digital commerce platform's onload time dropped from six seconds to less than one second.

The new digital commerce system cut development time by 50% and reduced the number of developers needed by half. Personalization features enhanced customer journeys, making the site more effective than paid ads. Leesa achieved faster, personalized and SEO-optimized content delivery, boosting organic growth.

After using Contentstack, Richard Bilton, Director of Technology at Lessa, said:

“It wasn’t convenient. We wanted to work with Shopify but needed the freedom to produce our content how we wanted, speed up the website, and gain flexibility.”

Read the case study here.

5 key digital commerce trends to consider

Omnichannel content and commerce

When you operate digital commerce, you must create meaningful engagement with customers in every channel. Providing the right content for the right place and time enhances brand awareness while ensuring a consistent experience across different digital channels.

API-based commerce

Today, businesses are building modular platforms rather than relying on a single monolithic commerce solution to make their systems more agile and flexible. These are the API-based commerce, which improves customer experience and business models. Through APIs, businesses integrate various services, such as payment gateways, inventory and content management systems and CRM systems, with their e-commerce platforms. A modular approach facilitates quicker market adaptation and efficient implementation of new features.

Personalization

Your customers don’t want to feel like they are one in many. They are ready to pay extra for some unique experiences, but if you provide a poor experience, these customers will shift to your competitors. Customers will engage with your store when your marketing messages meet their needs and expectations.

However, your unique experience should not be limited to one platform; focus on omnichannel experiences. Each interaction should flow into the next to understand your customer’s journey. For instance, when customers buy from your physical store, make them sign up for your digital newsletter or emails to receive promotional emails. 

Customer analytics

Data and analytics are the lifeblood of customer-centric companies. Truly enriching the customer experience requires marketers to take a step backward and examine different data types. Then, businesses need to analyze the data to extract meaningful insights from the available data. Based on the analysis, you provide customers with experiences that no one else does.

Enhanced customer understanding allows for more effective marketing, better user experiences and higher conversion rates.

Enterprise marketplace

Customers are becoming more and more demanding because they take convenience and competitive pricing for granted. Now, they want companies to understand their preferences and needs without them giving explicit explanations. That’s where an enterprise marketplace comes in.  The model offers a lucrative avenue to expand your product offerings and tap into new revenue streams. 

Challenges to modern digital commerce

Irrespective of who your target audience is, the goal of your modern digital commerce is to grow your business. The growth is a moving target, especially because the digital commerce space and industry are changing. You’re likely to encounter the following challenges:

Customer expectations

Did you know that two-thirds of commerce leaders say meeting customer expectations is harder than ever? As customers want convenience, personalization and experiences that match their unique experiences, coping with these changes is challenging. To stay agile, use a digital commerce architecture offering quick front-end changes to best use the available data. 

Data security

With online hackers using more sophisticated tools and technologies, data security is a primary concern for most modern digital commerce companies. A hacker can harm your company’s image and future growth in various ways. To make your business secure and prevent hefty fines, choose digital commerce like Contentstack, which offers robust security features to keep you out of trouble. 

Customer retention

Holding on to your customers is a top priority for every business. Why? Customer acquisition costs five to seven times more than retaining customers. Satisfying your customers is good, but they show faith in your commerce platform and your products when they return. To increase customer retention, ensure your customers have an engaging experience at every digital touchpoint. 

Cost

Inflation is the foremost challenge faced by many companies that use digital commerce architecture. Increasing margins and revenue while delivering exceptional experiences is challenging. Choose the right technology partner to reduce costs, increase customer experience and automate manual processes.

FAQs

What is a digital commerce strategy? 

A comprehensive digital commerce strategy provides a seamless user experience, effective marketing, secure transactions and scalable technology infrastructure.

What is the function of digital commerce?

The function of every digital commerce is to reach your audience through online platforms, social media and mobile apps. With digital commerce, you can make your products available 24/7, expanding your reach and increasing sales.

What is headless commerce?

Headless commerce includes website design and functionality, digital marketing strategies, data analytics, order management, customer service and efficient logistics and delivery systems.

What is the scope of digital commerce?

With digital commerce, you can:

• Expand into various markets, 
• Enhance customer engagement, 
• Improve decision-making, 
• Adapt to consumer trends and technological advancements

Learn more

Modern customers are more demanding than ever, but they know what they want and it's your job to know that as well. Using modern digital commerce, assessing your customers' interests and behavior on every digital channel becomes easier. 

If your legacy e-commerce system is handcuffing your company’s growth, it's time to embrace change. When thinking about the future of your business, talk to us today.