Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s Summer ’24 release brings a host of new features designed to enhance your online store, improve customer experiences, and streamline your operations. Transform your online stores into a customer conversion powerhouse. From captivating aesthetics and intuitive navigation to streamlined workflows and actionable insights, the Summer ’24 Commerce Cloud empowers you to craft a seamless and engaging shopping experience that keeps your customers coming back for more.
1. Enhance Your Store’s Aesthetics with the Updated D2C Template
Revitalise your online store with the refreshed D2C Store template, designed to elevate your customers’ shopping experience. This new template features modern styling, updated fonts, and a refined colour palette to ensure a cohesive and visually appealing presentation. The refreshed layout improves product organisation, making it easier for your customers to find items and navigate the store. The Home page now includes an eye-catching banner that captures visitors’ attention, highlighting promotions or important information. This update addresses common issues like outdated designs, poor navigation, and lack of engagement, creating a more enjoyable browsing experience.
2. Upgrade to a Better Merchant Experience with the Refreshed Commerce App
Experience a more streamlined and efficient merchant experience with the refreshed Commerce app. The redesigned landing page offers a clearer view of your store’s home, with enhanced navigation that simplifies access to data and content through revamped workspaces. The new store switcher dropdown allows for effortless transitions between stores and even the creation of new ones. With quick access buttons for previewing and activating your store, you can bypass the Experience Builder and store settings for a faster setup. Summer ’24 customers will automatically receive this updated app, while existing customers can switch at their convenience.
3. Boost Search Performance with Einstein Semantic Search
Activate Semantic Search on the Commerce Einstein page to enhance your store’s search functionality. This feature intelligently accounts for synonyms, alternate spellings, abbreviations, typos, and product themes, ensuring customers find what they are looking for more efficiently. As a result, you’ll see fewer “no results found” pages, reduced bounce rates, and higher conversion rates. By improving search relevance, Semantic Search gives your customers a more satisfying shopping experience and increased sales.
4. Simplify Store Setup with Enhanced Commerce Features
Setting up your store is now faster and easier with the updated Commerce Setup Assistant and tailored guided steps. You can get your store running in under 30 minutes, with intelligent tasks that automatically mark steps as complete and allow for direct preview and activation from the new store home page.
The process now supports activation and publishing without a custom domain, so you can review your store before setting up a domain. When you’re ready, configure your custom domain and CDN for optimal performance. The setup also includes smart defaults, such as automatic guest access and integrating Salesforce Checkout for a unified payment experience.
Moreover, the one-click setup for person accounts simplifies customer management for both B2B and D2C Commerce, while the enhanced assistant offers automated setup for Payments, Order Management, Reports, Dashboards, and Omnichannel Inventory. This allows you to efficiently manage stock across all channels. Importing product data has also been improved to include attachments like PDFs and you can easily provide in-app feedback to help improve future updates.
5. Enhance Shopping Experience with Upgraded Commerce Cart and Checkout Features
The new Commerce Cart and Checkout features simplify setting up checkout services for D2C stores, enhancing the shopping flow and keeping customers engaged. With Salesforce Checkout, configure payments, taxes, and shipping effortlessly. This means you can get your checkout system up and running quickly with just a few clicks. Display clear price breakdowns, including item prices, discounts, and subtotals, enable coupon codes, and show estimated delivery dates to build shopper confidence. Additionally, the dynamic cart summary and guided checkout flow make it easier for shoppers to complete their purchases smoothly while providing them with all necessary information.
6. Optimise Search Functionality with Enhanced Commerce Search Features
The Summer ’24 release brings significant improvements to the Commerce search experience for both B2B and D2C stores. The automatic search index rebuilds every five minutes, updating the index with any new product or catalogue changes, ensuring customers see the latest and accurate details. To improve store performance, default displayable product fields like Category Description, Product Name, and Product SKU are now automatically configured (Beta). This also results in faster page load times for search, product, cart, and checkout pages. Sorting by SKU is now customisable in new D2C stores, better supporting D2C and B2B preferences. The redesigned product list page offers better navigation, filter selections, and improved sorting options. B2B stores benefit from updated responsive behaviour in the Results component, while D2C stores can now adjust column and spacing settings for product cards. These updates collectively enhance the efficiency and user experience of your store’s search functionality.
7. Transform Your eCommerce Business with Data Cloud for Commerce
Data Cloud for Commerce combines Data Cloud and CRM Analytics to deliver near real-time, actionable insights for ecommerce businesses. With intelligent dashboards for product, shopper, and inventory insights, obtain critical insights to make informed decisions that enhance revenue and efficiency. Utilise these dashboards to monitor stock status, sales, product performance, and shopper behaviour and analyse key performance indicators (KPIs), helping you optimise store performance and understand shopper preferences. The new Omnichannel Inventory Connector integrates inventory data into Data Cloud to optimise stock management and improve order fulfilment across various locations and channels.
Data Cloud for Commerce also enables personalised shopping experiences by leveraging Data Cloud segments to create detailed shopper profiles. Use these profiles to tailor content and promotions for enhanced customer engagement. The new Shopper Copilot actions for B2C Einstein Bots further offer AI-powered recommendations and conversational commerce features for a more interactive shopping experience.
These features collectively improve your store’s performance, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive growth through actionable insights and personalised experiences.
8. Enhance Store Performance with the New Salesforce Commerce Features
With the latest Summer 24 release, Salesforce has introduced valuable updates to the Commerce app, aimed at boosting your store’s performance and user engagement.
The revamped Goals and Recommendations feature is now part of the Insights and Actions workspace. This makes it easier to track and act on recommendations for improving your store, helping you understand what works best. Additionally, the app now highlights top recommended actions, such as configuring a new History table within the workspace. This feature provides a clear view of actions taken and their results, like new promotions, product fields, search setting adjustments, and deploying Commerce Einstein. These are displayed directly on your store’s home page for quick access to impactful improvements. You can also customise content visibility for different buyers using expression-based visibility rules, showing relevant information based on their account. Overall, these updates streamline how you manage and optimise your store, ensuring you can implement effective changes and deliver a better shopping experience.
9. Optimise Your Store’s Performance with Enhanced Commerce Dashboards
The latest updates to Salesforce’s Commerce app introduce powerful dashboards designed to enhance your store’s performance and financial oversight.
- The Commerce Payments Dashboard provides a detailed view of your store’s payment transactions, allowing you to analyse their health and performance for more informed decision-making and streamlined processes.
- The Commerce Promotions Dashboard offers insights into your coupon offerings and discount campaigns. This helps you develop data-driven strategies to boost customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.
- The Commerce Finance Dashboard gives a comprehensive overview of your store’s financial health, including sales, taxes, and shipping charges, all within a single, easily navigable interface.
These dashboards collectively empower you with the information needed to optimise your operations and drive better outcomes for your business.
10. Streamline Order Management with New Salesforce Features
Salesforce has enhanced its Order Management capabilities with new features designed to make handling orders more efficient and flexible. You can now manage exchanges more easily using UI flows, allowing for post-fulfilment and uneven exchanges without needing to develop custom API flows. This improvement helps you provide a more adaptable order management experience for your customers.
Additionally, bulk-editing functionality has been introduced. Swiftly update quantities, reasons, and shipping details for multiple items at once across cancellations, discounts, and returns. The new page navigation and search components further enhance item findability in order summary records with extensive line items (more than 25 lines). These updates collectively streamline your order management processes, improve operational efficiency, and enhance customer satisfaction.
11. Effortless Payments Integration with Salesforce
Salesforce’s latest updates make setting up and managing payments for your D2C store easier and more efficient. The Commerce Setup Assistant now automates the configuration of Salesforce Payments. It handles tasks like setting up remote payment gateways and assigning the necessary administrator profiles and permissions. It also creates a Digital Experience site to streamline data management. For quick merchant account setup, Salesforce Checkout guides you through the process. It allows you to designate credit cards as your default payment method and add additional payment options as needed. This setup simplifies tax and shipping configurations, consequently helping you start selling with minimal effort.
Additionally, Salesforce Pay Now offers a flexible solution for extending payments across various Salesforce apps. You can send payment links to customers and receive payments directly from your org using the self-service Your Account app. These enhancements ensure a smoother, more streamlined payment process for your store.
In conclusion
Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s Summer ’24 release comes packed with innovations designed to transform your e-stores. Leverage powerful enhancements to upgrade your eCommerce strategy and improve customer experiences for an exceptional eCommerce transformation.
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