Let’s explore some fascinating statistics that shed light on the growing influence of online sales. By 2023, it is estimated that global online sales will account for approximately 22% of total retail sales. This remarkable shift in consumer behavior translates to a staggering $6.54 trillion in eCommerce sales worldwide. The digital revolution is well underway, evident from the substantial investment in digital advertising, which reached $261.1 billion in 2022 and is projected to climb even higher, reaching $440.3 billion by 2027. These figures highlight the significant impact of the digital landscape on the retail industry.

Speaking of online shoppers, a whopping 48% of them prefer to head straight to large eCommerce marketplaces for their purchases. It’s clear that the way consumers shop is rapidly evolving, and retailers need to adapt accordingly.

Meanwhile, the retail digital transformation market is on an upward trajectory, expected to reach an astounding $388.51 billion by 2026. With an anticipated CAGR of 18.2% from 2021 to 2026, retailers are recognizing the need to embark on this transformative journey to secure their place in the market.

In this blog, we will explore the transformative power of intelligent solutions in the retail sector and how Experion, as a forward-thinking company, is leading the way.

The Evolving Retail Landscape

Retail has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, driven by changing consumer behaviors and the rise of digital technologies. Today’s customers expect personalized experiences, seamless transactions, and instant access to information. To meet these demands, retailers must adapt and leverage advanced solutions that enable them to optimize operations, drive sales, and build customer loyalty.

The Promise of Intelligent Solutions

Imagine a world where artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things seamlessly come together to empower retailers with unprecedented capabilities. These technologies offer unparalleled opportunities, allowing retailers to make data-driven decisions, streamline processes, and enhance customer engagement. By harnessing the power of AI and ML algorithms, retailers can gain valuable insights into consumer behavior, optimize inventory management, and accurately forecast demand. The global smart retail technology market is set to skyrocket from $22.6 billion in 2021 to a staggering $68.8 billion by 2026. That’s a jaw-dropping compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.9%. These cutting-edge technologies are transforming the retail landscape, enhancing operations, and delivering seamless customer experiences.

Intelligent solutions offer a myriad of benefits for retailers, enabling them to tackle key challenges and unlock new avenues for success:

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging advanced analytics and AI-powered algorithms, retailers can make informed decisions based on real-time data. This enables them to identify trends, optimize pricing strategies, and deliver personalized experiences that resonate with customers.
• Seamless Customer Experiences: Intelligent solutions enable retailers to provide frictionless shopping experiences across multiple touchpoints. From personalized recommendations to seamless checkout processes, retailers can enhance customer satisfaction and build long-lasting relationships.
• Efficient Supply Chain Management: By integrating intelligent solutions into supply chain operations, retailers can optimize inventory management, automate procurement processes, and minimize wastage. This leads to improved cost-efficiency and a streamlined supply chain network.
• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Automation and AI-driven tools empower retailers to streamline back-office functions, such as inventory tracking, employee scheduling, and reporting. This frees up valuable time and resources, allowing retailers to focus on strategic initiatives and customer-centric activities.

Black Rock IT Solutions: Empowering Retail Innovation

As retailers navigate this digital transformation, partnering with an experienced technology provider becomes paramount. Experion, with its DNA in product engineering and digital transformation services, has been at the forefront of driving innovation in the retail domain. With a deep understanding of the industry’s pain points and a wealth of expertise, blackrock has empowered numerous retail businesses to embrace intelligent solutions and achieve sustainable growth.

At Experion, we are not only passionate about technology, but we are also committed to empowering our clients in the retail sector. Our collaboration with a leading retail technology provider in Australia stands as a testament to our capabilities and the remarkable outcomes we deliver.

Our solution has transformed the operations of our client, processing a staggering 380 million transactions monthly. With an impressive product portfolio of over 17 million SKUs, our solution has successfully optimized their processes. It is currently deployed across 20,000+ terminals and self-checkouts, ensuring seamless operations and enhanced customer experiences.

The impact of our solution goes beyond efficiency. By leveraging our expertise, our client has achieved a significant 30% reduction in labor and operational costs. This achievement demonstrates the tangible benefits that our innovative approach brings to the table.

The future of retail is not a distant concept—it is here and now, and at Experion, we are leading the charge. With its deep industry knowledge and expertise, Black Rock IT Solutions is empowering retailers to embrace intelligent solutions and unlock a world of possibilities. By embracing these technologies and staying at the forefront of innovation, retailers can shape their destiny in an ever-evolving industry.

The future of retail is here, and the possibilities are limitless.

The post Unleashing the Potential of Intelligent Solutions in Retail appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

• COVID-19 forced 79% of Retail Leaders to set up online presence and launch Digital Commerce
• According to Statista, Revenue in the eCommerce market is projected to reach US$4.11tn in 2023 and resulting in a projected market volume of US$6.35tn by 2027.
• According to Gartner 86% of Marketing Leaders Believe Digital Commerce will become the most important Sales Channel within the next two years.
• 70% of customers believe Market Places are the most convenient way to shop

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Out of adversity comes opportunity” and during COVID, organizations across verticals, not to let go of the opportunity, were in a rush to land an eCommerce platform in some way or other– be it B2C /B2B/D2C. Ultimately their goal was multifold and to ensure:

• To have a scalable platform
• To create business tools that empower business to perform operations (Ex: set up products, set up promotions & festive banners etc) with minimal IT intervention
• To leverage their current infrastructure and data
• To integrate with their inhouse systems (read legacy)
• The ability to operate internationally

which brought the million Dollar question for every CIO – Should I build or Should I buy, my eCommerce platform?

The choice of eCommerce platform- Build vs Buy, depends on many factors. In general, building an eCommerce platform from scratch is a very time-consuming exercise, fraught with risks and is best suited for very mature organizations.

Below table shows some considerations for the Build vs Buy choice:

Here are the top 5 considerations that can help determine a Build vs Buy choice.

• Time to Market and accelerated Global Rollouts

Faster time to market should be the most important consideration to launch an eCommerce website. Organizations want a transactional platform, where their end users can place orders. In this case a Most Viable Product (MVP) launch is the best strategy. Once the site stabilizes, they can go for a multisite global roll out, (in case of multiple brands), maintaining the same codebase but different branding and local integrations. eCommerce platforms such as Adobe Commerce on Cloud (erstwhile Magento) and SaaS platforms like BigCommerce, Commercetools can accelerate these roll outs, compared to a bespoke platform.

• Organization Budgets and Cloud Strategy

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.6 trillion in 2023, an increase of 5.1% from 2022. “Enterprise IT spending is recession-proof as CEOs and CFOs, rather than cutting IT budgets, are increasing spending on digital business initiatives,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. While the trend shows an increase, Small Medium Businesses have limited IT budgets. Adoption of COTS eCommerce platforms incur significant costs. Most of the eCommerce software providers charge on parameters such as Order Lines or GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) or pricing based on a specific set of features. The costs may include a one-time signing fee and a monthly/yearly license fee. Additionally, Organizations typically need to engage a System Integrator, to customize, brand, integrate and launch their website. Also, most organizations have a preferred cloud provider and would like to have their eCommerce website also hosted on the same cloud provider. Building a bespoke platform, may go light on budgets in terms of license fees, but would still incur cloud hosting charges.

• User Experience – Headless and Composable Commerce

According to Forrester, improving UX experience can increase conversions upto 400%. Mobile devices account for ~70% of all user traffic to websites. Add to that, according to Google, probability of a user leaving a website goes up by ~30% if there is an increase in page load time. All this highlights the importance of building a superior User Experience.
Of late Progressive Webapps are preferred over separate Mobile apps.

Organizations can focus on best practices such as

• Headless Commerce – where the frontend UI (Ex: React js, Next js) is decoupled from backend services (Ex: REST Services) in order to provide a diverse experience based on the eCommerce channel or device. This may be used in conjunction with a Content Management System (CMS)
• Composable Commerce – which involves choosing Commerce components and combining or ‘composing’ them into a custom application built for specific business needs

Platforms such as Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce provide native support for Headless/ Composable Commerce. When building a bespoke platform however, a lot of additional effort is needed on the UX part and support for Headless and Composable Commerce

• Organization Maturity and inhouse eCommerce IT expertise
  In case of Organizations that are very mature – in terms of enterprise-wide adoption of cloud and latest technology stacks – and have a very strong IT team inhouse or partnering with a System Integrator – defining and building a bespoke platform following MACH (Microservices based, API first, Cloud-native and Headless) principles is the preferred option.
• Support for B2B

B2B market is not as mature as B2C. However, B2B eCommerce sales reached $1.2trillion, as per eMarketer. Increasingly Organizations are expecting B2B features on their eCommerce platforms – such as Quotes, CPQ, Punch out, Custom pricing, ERP Integration etc. Platforms such as HCL Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce come bundled with many of these features along with B2C features on a common codebase and can accelerate B2B rollouts. Building B2B features on bespoke platforms is quite complex.

References: Gartner, Forrester, eMarketer, Statista, Sitecore

The post Build vs Buy – Choosing your eCommerce Platform appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

The pandemic is also a significant factor for the sudden growth of this industry. According to industry experts, the pandemic has accelerated online shopping by as much as five years. This has led retailers worldwide to sell online – scaling and expanding their businesses to reach new markets and serve customers from across the globe.

But, as the industry is exploding, there are specific challenges retailers must contend with, such as:  

• Building customer loyalty and improving user experience     
• Handling data and security breaches  
• Dealing with fierce competition, price hikes, and economic uncertainty  
• Inefficient policies for returns, refunds, and order fulfillment  
• Lack of SEO knowledge for drawing relevant traffic to the online store  
• Converting shoppers into paying customers   

While many eCommerce platforms are available in the market, there are a handful of reasons why Magento has been the most popular and how adopting it can help solve the above challenges. But before we dive deep into the unique features and values of Magento, let us have a quick understanding of the platform itself.  

What is Magento?  

Magento is one of the most widely used eCommerce platforms for building customized websites and shopping portals. It helps enterprise store owners manage high sales and customer volume and handle heavy website traffic while offering a high conversion rate. 

The platform offers a high degree of customization and exceptional flexibility with advanced features such as various tools for managing an XML website, CMS for static pages, rewriting URLs, integrated image optimization, the grouping of products, multi-store facilities, email list, and SEO related modules. Moreover, it has a user-friendly interface with responsive design, multiple deployment choices, and seamless integration with third-party modules, which aid in creating an enjoyable shopping experience for users.

Headless Commerce- The digital differentiator  

Modern shoppers are empowered by technology and look for seamless digital shopping experiences tailored to their specific needs and interests. In addition, they expect loyalty rewards, same-day delivery, free shipping, social engagement, and more. This shift in consumer behavior has created a demand for novel approaches in Magento.  

Headless commerce decouples the front-end of the eCommerce store from its backend. This means the content presentation layer is separated from the functional and business logic layer, allowing eCommerce companies to deploy new customer experiences across various channels. Headless commerce is agile, flexible, and customizable and helps in creating unique and engaging shopping experiences.

Adobe Commerce & Adobe Commerce Cloud   

Adobe Commerce is an eCommerce product developed and maintained by Adobe and powered by Magento. It allows businesses to create engaging and unique shopping experiences with striking features for store fulfillment, page builder, marketplace, user experience, product recommendations, customer segmentation, personalization, etc. It offers an easy-to-use interface to create and launch content and provide a personalized shopping experience without the support of a developer. It can serve both B2B and B2C customers within a single platform and easily integrates with existing backend systems. It also offers numerous extensions and themes to customize your eCommerce storefront. Additionally, its business intelligence feature allows you to track and monitor your data and turn the insights into striking visualizations for better decision-making.  

Adobe Commerce Cloud is an automated Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) built on a redundant AWS-based cloud hosting platform. It is a highly scalable and customizable solution including all the Magento Commerce on-premise features. 

Top Reasons for Choosing Magento for eCommerce  

If you’re looking for a new e-commerce website, the first thing you need to decide is whether you’ll use a pre-made plug-and-play website or a custom solution. There are ready-to-use e-commerce solutions available such as Shopify and WooCommerce, that offer numerous advantages, but they do not fit the needs of every business. Custom e-commerce solutions, on the other hand, require a more significant time investment but offer better scalability, flexibility, and control. Here are some unique features and functionalities of Magento that make it stand out from the rest of the available solutions for eCommerce development. 

Open Source  

Magento is an open-source platform that gives the developers and site owners access to the source code, thereby offering complete flexibility and freedom to customize the code to fit specific business requirements. In addition, the Magento Open Source is free and adaptable, so all that the developers need is some extra time and server space to build the website. With Magento Open Source, you can create your site exactly as you envisioned if you have the right technical skills. It also gives you control over the logic flow and design on each site page and access to a library of modules to develop new features and functionalities for your Magento store.  

Highly scalable  

Magento is a scalable solution, making it suitable for both small and large businesses. It can handle growth and scale accordingly. If you are a new business, you can start with a relatively basic installation and upgrade features with the proper hardware and configuration as your business grows. For instance, if your site traffic increases suddenly, you can easily manage the load by adding more backup servers. This will save your online store from crashing and improve page loading, thereby saving a lot of business for your retail store.  

One site set up for multiple stores  

Whether you have a specific product catalog that serves multiple websites or has more than one brand on the same website, you can use Magento to maintain all your products, orders, and settings in a single site setup. It supports multiple store setups from the same backend, which allows you to manage multiple stores from the same admin dashboard. The inventory and order management feature of Magento will enable businesses with various brands, sites, stores, and warehouses to create seamless cross-channel experiences. It also allows developers to extend and expand the platform to new product categories and customize it based on their brand and target market, saving a lot of money, effort, and time for retail players.  

Third-party integrations  

Magento allows you to integrate with various third-party services such as web applications, payment gateways, shipping, transportation and order tracking systems, and databases. Some of the popular integrations used by retail stores include PayPal, eBay, Google Shopping, MailChimp, QuickBooks, etc. It also offers in-built Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google Base, and Google Checkout to help you monitor site traffic, analyze website performance, and stay well-informed of the latest trends in Magento eCommerce.  

Product Recommendations  

Product recommendations are a great marketing tool to improve customer engagement, boost conversions, and increase revenue. Powered by Adobe Sensei, Magento’s product recommendation uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to analyze visitor data and suggest relevant products. These recommendations appear on the storefront in the form of “Similar Products” and “Customers who viewed this also viewed” and create highly relevant and personalized shopping experiences.  

Live Search feature  

Magento also offers an AI-powered tool for intelligent and fast live searches. Also powered by Adobe Sensei, this tool uses real-time data to deliver automated personalized search results for shoppers to find what they want quickly. It also offers a flexible developer framework that eliminates tedious merchant tasks and provides search results with accuracy and speed.  

Flexible content and extensions  

One of the main reasons for Magento’s popularity amongst developers is its flexibility in content systems and extensions, allowing them to develop the site the way they want. It provides you with a flexible content management system to manage changes in content based on language, culture, laws, currency, etc., for global markets and customize your store for user-friendliness. Moreover, it also allows you to customize your online store with high-quality add-ons, extensions, modules, plugins, and apps designed to meet specific business needs. Adding these extensions helps enhance your site, drive more traffic, boost conversion and sales, report and analytics, and optimize the customer experience. Both free and paid extensions are available, which you can leverage based on your requirements and budget.  

SEO friendly  

Magento comes with in-built SEO features that help your eCommerce store rank in the search engines and reach your target customers easily. It includes an SEO-friendly URL structure, meta tags and descriptions for products, categories, and content pages, auto-generated sitemaps, positioning layer, and popular search terms, which improve the on-page SEO of your website.  

Mobile friendly  

As per a recent report, three out of four consumers prefer buying from their smartphones because it saves time. Catering to mobile-savvy customers is therefore inevitable for the success of your eCommerce business. Magento supports shopping experiences on mobile devices with pre-integrated HTML5 technology. In addition, it offers device-specific media capabilities, user-friendly search and results, display, pinch, multi-touch, scaling images, zoom, and easy swipe options for product images. All these features help in quickly creating a storefront optimized for a seamless mobile shopping experience.  

Security features  

Magento provides advanced security features to protect your eCommerce store from unexpected breaches and site attacks. It uses CAPTCHA and PCI Data Security for protection, which makes the site difficult to hack. As a result, it is more secure for both customers and sellers than sites built using Core PHP or WordPress.  

Multi-lingual support  

Businesses and merchants catering to multiple markets across the globe should offer their website in various languages to make it easily accessible to their customer base. Magento allows you to build multi-lingual sites, making it the go-to platform for businesses wanting to expand to new markets. Consequently, it also supports multi-currency transactions, making it ideal for building your eCommerce store.  

Magento is a sure-shot option for companies looking to implement many distinctive features to their online store. The scalability and customization capacity of Magento makes it stand out from the plug-and-play options available. Moreover, all these powerful features and benefits play a huge role in improving your eCommerce business processes which will, in turn, result in better ROI. 

Wrapping Up  

Apart from those discussed here, other valuable features for order management, customer service, analytics and reporting, product browsing, checkout, payment and shipping, and marketing and promotions play a crucial role in improving your eCommerce business. The quick load time, improved shopping experience, high-level technical architecture, and better testing and reporting capabilities make Magento a powerhouse for eCommerce. 

At Experion, we have a team of Magento certified experts offering Magento design, development, maintenance, and support services. Our Magento portfolio includes e-commerce consulting/development, architecture design, Magento migration, re-platforming, roadmap support, usability/UI re-engineering, and headless eCommerce. 

To know more about our Magento services or to get help with building a Magento store for your business, write to us at sales@blackrockdxb.com. 

The post Why Magento eCommerce Platform for your Online Store? appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.