Comprehensive Guide to Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Creating a digital presence across multiple channels is a growing trend among businesses. However, delivering a seamless shopping experience is also essential. To do them both, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the ideal solution. It not only optimizes business processes but also delivers a seamless customer experience. 

Commerce Cloud can be incorporated into your B2B or B2C ecommerce platforms to increase customer engagement with a personalized, seamless shopping experience.

In this blog, we will discuss Salesforce Commerce Cloud, its features, and how it helps businesses grow and scale. Alongside, we will be discussing how you can make a career in Salesforce Commerce Cloud.  

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, recently renamed to Agentforce Commerce, is a SaaS platform that helps businesses manage their digital presence. It provides a fast, engaging, and personalised shopping experience through the necessary tools across web, mobile, and social channels. 

Simply put, Agentforce Commerce Cloud is a complete e-commerce solution that supports the entire customer journey, from browsing products to final order fulfilment. To process these business functions effectively, it offers key products designed for different business needs: 

• B2B Commerce Cloud: Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud is an ideal solution for handling your entire business operations, including sales, marketing, and e-commerce. It helps businesses manage their catalogues, orders, and inventories. It streamlines the shopping experience with dedicated support, personalization, and easy B2B payment methods. The software supports complex contract pricing, account hierarchies, and a custom buyer workflow. 
• B2C Commerce Cloud: Salesforce B2C Cloud focuses on managing brand-to-customer relationships. It allows businesses to manage their online storefronts, providing users with a personalized, AI-driven, and extensive selection of products. It focuses on your target audience, the individual shopper. Here, businesses focus on high volume and traffic, as well as a fast, seamless digital experience. 
• D2C Commerce Cloud: The B2C and D2C cloud services are almost similar. However, the central feature of D2C is its direct connection to the end users without mediators. Using this software, businesses can connect directly with their audience without any middlemen, offering a more straightforward e-commerce solution. 

Features of Commerce Cloud 

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is created to meet the needs of digitally growing businesses by offering advanced features like: 

• Business Management: Businesses use the commerce cloud to manage the pricing, catalogues, inventory, and promotions across different social channels. 
• Order Management: The Order Management system is also an essential part of Commerce Cloud. It is responsible not only for transactions but also for tracking the entire order cycle, making it easy to exchange or return items. 
• Site Management: Merchandisers can easily build multiple storefronts from a single space, offering high customer exposure. 
• Agentforce Salesforce AI: It leverages dedicated Einstein AI to deliver personalized product recommendations and categorize products, improving user conversion.
• A/B Testing and Optimization: Using AI, it tests different Site variations to drive engagement and conversions across digital platforms. 
• Multichannel Commerce: Businesses can create a diversified presence across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and social media.
• Simplified e-commerce platforms: Salesforce enables businesses to operate both B2C and B2B simultaneously. The software enhances accessibility and makes it easier to operate in different ecommerce worlds. 

Why Do Businesses Choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is not just for businesses to integrate with; it also helps students learn and apply it in their career paths. Here, we will outline the key growth drivers and how to implement them. 

Customer 360 Integration with Different Clouds

The most advantageous feature or benefit of Salesforce Commerce Cloud is its deep integration with:

• Sales Cloud: Salesforce Sales Cloud tracks all customer purchases, helping create better leads and manage accounts. Learning this will help you cover the gap between the retail and B2B relationship management. 
• Marketing Cloud: Salesforce Marketing Cloud is simply used to personalize a custom cart. For example, if you abandon your search or cart, it will be sent to the cloud, which will then send you re-engagement emails or push notifications. It will help you automate marketing processes to analyse overall revenue.
• Experience Cloud: Salesforce Experience Cloud is dedicated to delivering a unified brand experience, enabling customers to access their profile data and order history with ease. Using this, you can provide a unified brand identity and a better user experience. 

Scalability and Reliability for Enterprises

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is also a SaaS product that handles website hosting and infrastructure. If a brand or business faces high traffic during holiday seasons or sales, Commerce Cloud auto-scales and guarantees high uptime. 

Analysing how the platform performs during peak traffic will help you scale the website accordingly and maintain high uptime for your audience, even under pressure. 

Personalized Digital Channels

The overall implementation of Salesforce Commerce Cloud primarily focuses on providing tailored, customizable digital platforms. It is done to deliver product recommendations, push notifications, and complete marketing campaigns to enhance customer engagement. 

Gaining hands-on knowledge of AI trends and implementing them will help you grow and establish yourself in the market. These help implement recommendations and customize the platform. 

Benefits of Integrating Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud directly connects to higher revenue and operational efficiency. The significant benefits of using the commerce cloud are: 

1. Built on Trusted Platform: Commerce Cloud is one of the most trusted platforms for businesses, thanks to its security and compliance. It is compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and PCI, making it a trustworthy platform for businesses.
2. Connects with the Customer Journey: From a customer viewing products to the order arriving at the doorstep. Commerce Cloud integrates with the data cloud, providing real-time data to generate meaningful customer insights. It helps customize the entire process and gives better recommendations. 
3. AI-powered process: The system helps them optimize overall costs and reduce delivery times using the built-in Einstein AI tool. Customizations powered by Einstien AI offer more relevant products, reducing bounce rates and increasing average order value. 
4. Better Efficiency: With the combined Order management system, business owners can monitor their warehouses, products, and prices. Salesforce Einstein AI helps businesses optimize inventory distribution to prevent stockouts and excess stock.
5. Innovative Advertising: Business managers enable non-tech teams to launch promotions and websites quickly. It helps the team understand market trends and make necessary adjustments. 

Job Roles and Career Paths in Salesforce Commerce Cloud

We have discussed Salesforce Commerce Cloud and understood how it works, its features, and everything. One question you might have is how to secure Salesforce Commerce Cloud job roles. For that, you have several options to explore, such as developer, consultant, or administrator. The primary job roles are: 

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Developer: Focuses on writing custom code and integrating systems. The overall focus is to optimize the performance of the digital channels. 
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Technical Architect: A technical architect is responsible for providing system solutions, creating data models, and establishing a security framework. 
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Administrator: An administrator reports to a business manager and is responsible for managing products, prices, content, and promotions. 
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Consultant: As a consultant, you will bridge the gap between clients and the business’s needs. They also offer technical solutions to companies and clients.  

A Salesforce certification is the most critical requirement for the Salesforce-related job roles listed above.

How to Learn Salesforce Commerce Cloud? 

To learn Commerce Cloud, you can start with the free resources available at Salesforce Trailhead and connect with training platforms like S2 Labs for better interactive learning. To be a certified Salesforce Commerce Cloud Professional, you need to be proficient in:

• B2C commerce cloud with proficiency in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and related frameworks. The Front-end and full-stack developers are perfect.
• B2B commerce Cloud by learning Apex, LWC, and API fundamentals for REST and SOAP. Salesforce developers with hands-on Apex expertise are ideal. 

Certifications

To validate your skills and knowledge, getting a relevant Salesforce Commerce Cloud certification is essential. Salesforce offers certifications for different roles, including:  

1. Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Architect: The certification focuses on designing sites that support brands and their digital channels using design patterns. 
2. Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Cloud Developer: This certificate is the Starting point for technical roles that allow you to write and work with custom logic using Apex code and APIs.

Conclusion

Commerce Cloud enhances the business presence by offering personalizations and navigation for the business products. If you are looking to manage your customer journey and streamline the order management process, it is your go-to solution. 

Beyond supporting business growth, it also offers compelling career opportunities for both tech and non-tech professionals. If you are interested in building a career in this field, start with the S2 Labs Salesforce Administrator Training.