Top 4 Reasons Why Headless Commerce is Better for Customer Experience

As a follow up to a recent post on why top brands are abandoning monolithic ecommerce solutions, this article explores how the future of commerce is proving why a headless commerce solution is a great alternative. Leading brands find that a headless commerce solution enables them to rapidly provide innovative customer experiences.

 

1. Get the best of both worlds

Full-stack solutions force brands to adopt their capabilities across the board and thus require the business to match the solution. Opposite of that are flexible API-based / headless solutions which allow brands to utilize best of breed capabilities that match the system to the business needs.

Full-stack ecommerce systems are like the once convenient yet now extinct TV/VCR combos. The TV/VCR were an all-in-one solution that served a basic need of playing recorded media on a TV. Since the TV and VCR were shackled together, if either piece had an issue the entire combo had to be upgraded or replaced. Additionally, as the market shifted with new technologies coming in, such as the DVD, and later to internet viewing devices, the rigid nature of the TV/VCR combo solution forced it into extinction. Like the TV/VCR combo, if an ecommerce solution is shackled to the front-end experience, changes to either the commerce engine or the experience layer require changes in both systems. So with the natural progression in technology like today’s shifts towards user experience touchpoints (some that don’t even have screens) the ridged nature of the ecommerce full-stack combo will force it into extinction.

It’s the same with ecommerce.

Be ready for what is coming and don’t compromise your customer experiences by going with, or continuing to modify, your traditional ecommerce system to keep up with the pace of change. Choose a system where the content management system (CMS) is decoupled from the ecommerce system. In this situation, you achieve the best of both worlds and there is no confusion caused by functional overlap. The CMS provides the entire customer experience, and the ecommerce system provides the transactional, merchandising and back-end information needed for currency and tax regimes. Clear separation of roles and responsibilities promotes and fosters consistency and speed on both ends.

2. Make user experiences consistent

Your customers’ needs change along their buyer journey, but they should receive a consistent experience across all touchpoints no matter how or when they interact with your company. When commerce and customer experience are decoupled, all the customer experience pieces — like the user interface, urls and other UX features — are controlled in the CMS.  Here, digital creative professionals can best express the brand’s qualities and values, and marketing can manage content and present new offers without altering the ecommerce system.

3. Personalize the customer experience

People want to buy from companies who understand their personal needs and demonstrate this across all touchpoints. This extends well beyond the usual “people who bought this item also purchased…” The backend ecommerce system knows exactly what a customer has bought no matter how they made their purchases. It then fuels the personalization engines that can power the CMS, mobile apps and social channels — even POS — with custom offers made specifically for that customer. Marketing can design innovative customer experiences without disrupting the backend and without requiring an army of software developers and months of time.

4. Take advantage of agile marketing

Separating front-end CMS systems from back-end ecommerce puts marketing back in the driver’s seat. Marketing can rapidly roll out multiple sites across brands, geographies, divisions and portfolios.

For example, when entering a new geography, a new site can be set up in days, not months. Companies just have to theme the CMS once and it takes care of all the publishing. This allows you to dynamically alter strategies based on market opportunities and trends.

When designing new customer experiences, the headless commerce system can support new technologies as they arise. Marketing can rapidly onboard new channels and touchpoints. And on the backend, personalization engines and big data analytics can integrate with the commerce system to fuel unique customer experiences.

For companies with complex content and customer requirements, headless commerce presents an unprecedented opportunity to deliver consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experiences fast. For those contemplating how to incorporate emerging touchpoint technologies like the Internet of Things, bots, and wearables, headless commerce is really the only way to future-proof the customer experience.

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Consumers expect to transact with brands anywhere and at any time. And they expect top brands to know who they are no matter how they interact. Contact us to find out how our headless commerce platform can give you the ability to stay ahead of customer experience expectations and take advantage of emerging technologies.

 

The post Top 4 Reasons Why Headless Commerce is Better for Customer Experience appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Virtual Versus Augmented Reality? Which one will win out?

With the launch of iPhone X and ARKit, augmented reality has taken a giant leap toward becoming a mainstream technology rather than just a feature of immersive gaming apps. Both Apple (ARKit) and Google (ARCore) are making AR central to their mobile experiences. That means companies creating new digital customer experiences can start thinking about how to harness AR for ecommerce purposes. Brands can extend interactive, transactional experiences to customers wherever they are – as long as they have a mobile device in hand.

iPhone X is the thin edge of the AR wedge

Today, with the very top-end devices supporting AR, leading brands may consider matching their premium offerings with a premium customer experience. Today, ARKit works on iOS devices with A9 or later processors. However, as AR technology becomes popular and devices can accommodate it, more and more devices will incorporate it. For sellers, the idea of using AR will become more attractive.

You don’t have to stretch too far to see the future of digital stores could be a 3-D game-like shopping experience, placing the customer “inside.” TJ-Maxx’s hilarious new online store notwithstanding, these interactions probably will not mirror the in-store experience. Rather they could present items personalized to an individual in a unique 3-D environment, created especially for him or her, or for the product.

Buy a tent on a mountainside surrounded by forest?

For example, to sell outdoor equipment, a company might create a 3-D mountain scape with a stream and lush forest surrounding. The customer could place potential tents, stoves, and sleeping bags just like they would at a campsite situation. Walk around the scene and check things out from different angles. Specification and review overlays could present more information. Unique, realistic, testing could demonstrate the tradeoffs between tent weight and waterproofness. Press “heavy rain” + “wind” and the tent is tested against a storm for waterproofness, allowing people to understand better which equipment will meet their needs.

Change the environment altogether to a dry desert with Joshua trees and no water. Now select wind and sandstorm to test the same tent in those conditions. The visual representation of the tent standing up in certain conditions is a far more effective means of communicating its efficacy in different conditions than an IPL specification.

These are just hypothetical scenarios and digital agencies will be working around the clock to figure out how to present new customer experiences to leverage new AR technologies.

Never forget a face

ARKit allows developers to model a user’s facial geometry for facial recognition as well as for position and even for expression recognition. Right now, there’s no way to really judge a customer’s reaction to a product or service, unless they star or heart it, or come back to look several times. With AR, that all changes. Based on how a person is looking at the screen, or what their expression is, this in combination with personalization fueled by AI could call up their next experience.

Facial expression recognition provides a  new level of understanding “intent” for companies that they can use to assess the likelihood of a purchase and use that information to encourage or discourage that intent in real-time.

The customer doesn’t like that car? Show the vehicle from another angle, or in a different color, or in a 3D moving environment.

Buyer LOVES that coat? Show them available matching gloves and boots in their size, on their bitmoji.

In a way, you could think of digital expression recognition, in combination with AI, as a replacement for the skilled, empathic sales person who can read people well and smooth the sales process. Now developers have the tools to make this happen in augmented reality.

Virtual versus augmented reality

Which will win out? Virtual or augmented reality? North Face gave Korean customers a cool in-store VR experience with their dogsled ride via Occulus Rift headsets. The key words there are “in-store.” While VR is gaining traction, today it can’t beat the always-on mobile phone in terms of anytime, anywhere delivery. Not for now anyway do people carry around VR goggles. Nor have developers got the easy-to-use toolkits equivalents of ARKit and ARCore to make creating those experiences easier, more cost effective and timely. In the near term, AR is set to dominate customer experience.

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Immersing commerce capabilities with augmented reality or virtual reality technologies requires a flexible, extensible e-commerce platform. Learn more about Elastic Path Commerce.

 

The post Virtual Versus Augmented Reality? Which one will win out? appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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The State of APIs: a cheat-sheet infographic

Leading industry research firm, Gartner Inc., recognized API-based commerce platforms as the next-gen category of commerce evolution. But not all APIs are equal. In commerce where delivering contextual and consistent customer experiences across multiple touchpoints at scale is top priority, which API is the best fit for your unique business needs?

Hypermedia API allows companies to surface commerce interactions at any touchpoint, enabling a new level of business agility. It enables a rapid addition of new customer facing applications and connected things, including mobile devices, IoT, vehicles, point of sale, social interactions, apps, Customer Service Representative applications, appliances, etc. Hypermedia API surfaces complex business rules and requirements from multiple systems in a simple unified way.

Here’s a cheat-sheet of other APIs versus Hypermedia API to help you decide.

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A hypermedia ecommerce API isn’t like other APIs; some are less sophisticated and come with significant overhead. Brands using hypermedia APIs can innovate faster and deliver consistent customer experiences. How is your company handling ecommerce complexity? Learn more about hypermedia APIs in 10 Ways a Hypermedia Ecommerce API Leads to Developer Nirvana.

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Defining a Digital Commerce Strategy to Win: 4 Questions Every Brand Should Ask

Digital commerce has changed business forever.

10 years ago would you even imagine talking to your phone to get recommendations for dinner, getting a real-time map to the restaurant helping you avoid construction, buying something on Amazon for delivery that evening while waiting for a table, and checking in on the kids via the security cameras during dinner? The least exciting thing you can do with your mobile phone nowadays is to make a call.

Commerce today is about customer experience, relationships and consistent personalization across all devices. It’s about discovery, attachment and intimacy. Even more, it’s about being able to future proof business models you haven’t even conceived yet.

For example, what is your commerce of things strategy? When will you be launching your first social commerce experience? The companies at the top of every industry are all working on these challenges and more. They know that their future depends on being able to pivot quickly, taking advantage of new touchpoints and technologies as soon as they arrive. The question is which commerce platform to choose?

From our experience, every brand should ask four key questions:

1. Does our business demand continuous differentiation? Does your company need to continuously differentiate itself from others through a superior user experience?

   Businesses competing only on price are in a race to zero. Industry leaders differentiate their brand through customer experience. Choose an ecommerce framework that can extend to new touchpoints and leverage new technologies — one that is adaptable and scalable and that offers true enterprise-grade commerce capabilities.

2. All in one? Or build with the best? Most commerce platforms are crippled by early architecture decisions and years of piling on one off customer requirements resulting in an inflexible monolith. These are still early days in terms of commerce platform maturity. New technologies are continuously being brought to market. It might sound easy to go with a turnkey commerce platform. However, all-in-one, full-stack, or monolithic solutions don’t give you the opportunity to easily take advantage of new touchpoints or applications. Worse, they might not be flexible enough to keep up with an evolving business strategy. Their technologies are fundamentally closed; requiring costly customization projects, or are limited to a subset of third-party applications.

   Today, many Fortune-1,000 companies are taking a best of breed approach to ensure that they offer commerce experiences that no one else does. And that’s not easy because as soon as new functionality hits the market, eventually everyone gets it. Remember when no one had product recommendations? “People who bought this item also bought this?” Now, almost every retail site has that capability. Dynamic pricing is currently being used by airlines, telecommunications and entertainment. Other industries won’t be far behind.

   Gartner Group is predicting that by 2018 half of all new commerce solutions will take advantage of no less than 15 different vendor applications. The single-stack, monoliths of the computing world would have you believe that their solutions are best of breed. However, when many of the best haven’t even been invented yet, how can that be true? If a commerce platform is not open and flexible it won’t be able to adopt new technologies swiftly.

3. Is our organization looking to change its business model?

   The digital economy continues to surface disruptive business models.

   If you are looking to transform your business, then an open, API-based headless commerce platform will be a good bet for the future. API-based commerce allows your system to easily connect to any front-end marketing application or technology and any backend or legacy system.

   What’s most important is how the API works. A hypermedia API allows developers to create connections to new devices and technologies more easily by exposing resources as simple links, making it easier to develop new business experiences.



Cloud or Not? Moving to the cloud dramatically reduces computing costs. Running Elastic Path Commerce Cloud for AWS eliminates 90% of computing infrastructure and labor costs.

4. Cloud or Not?

   Moving to the cloud dramatically reduces computing costs. For example, we ran the numbers for our new Elastic Path Commerce Cloud for AWS. They showed that running in the cloud will eliminate 90% of computing infrastructure and labor costs. While that’s a compelling cost of ownership argument, there may be a technical or regulatory reason for not shifting your commerce application to a public cloud. In that case, choose a robust ecommerce platform for your on premise solution, but make sure that it provides the option to move to the cloud when constraints lift.

   There’s another reason to consider the cloud. The internet of things is going to increase the number of commerce touchpoints exponentially. If you are building customer experiences into more touchpoints, you’ll need to easily flex your computing power. Public clouds can on demand right-size the computing infrastructure you need to meet steady and peak demand.

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Questioning the pros and cons of different commerce platforms? We can help you make the right decision. Contact Elastic Path for a complimentary Discovery Session.

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