Digital commerce has been evolving rapidly over the past 3 years, encouraged onward by the pandemic.
It’s time to talk about Commerce 3.0 – a newish term we have seen floating around the blogosphere.
So What defines Commerce 3.0?
One of the major trends happening is Headless ecommerce.
This is when the frontend and backend are decoupled, giving merchants use of the best of breed technologies, piecemeal fashion, for frontend experiences, and backend technologies of their choice. This way the full stack can be optimized. There’s an API layer between the front and back that allows this decoupling to happen.
This trend is further defined by a more specific definition – Composable Commerce.
Composable Commerce uses modern approaches like MACH (microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless) as well as JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, & Markup) code architectures to allow businesses to adapt to the rapidly evolving consumer trends in purchasing behaviors.
Another rapidly progressing trend is the increase in Offsite Commerce. And this is all about the path of least resistance. This is where removing as much friction as possible makes the “journey” happen.
The natural progression of online and offline purchasing journeys to more simplified experiences, and meeting consumers where they are, like social media, chat, text message, video, etc, does favor the rise of text message as a preferred conversational commerce mode by consumers and business.
In just a few years down the road, it will seem old hat to go through a traditional shopping cart checkout experience. We now have Facial recognition ID, touch ID, mobile payments, One Click, or One Text and soon to be more shortcuts, as it seems that everyone in Fintech or online marketing is developing a checkout shortcut.
Without throwing out a lot of data points, let’s just say we have seen an explosion of DTC brands on Shopify, Woo and Wix. This space has heated up so much that new brands must have a strong and experienced marketing team, as well as a treasure chest of funding, and/or some sizable influencers in their locker room.
There is no doubt that the heyday of Facebook Ads has passed. Google PPC is expensive and increasingly seems rigged against small business users. (read:new accounts) More and more brands are selling through Amazon, which takes a large share of revenue. It’s a competitive digital landscape for new brands or old brands migrating to DTC sales.
Brands must find the stickiest commerce channel in terms of ROI, Engagement, LTV and Repurchase rate and Cost of Revenue in order to maximize their competitive advantage in demand generation.
Text to Buy programs are especially powerful for brands that are dealing with inventory problems, or brands that are trying to increase their DTC revenue, or brands that are seeking more sales from Subscription based or flexible subscription based products.
References:
- https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/ecommerce-3-0-defining-the-next-generation-of-purchasing-97662c046d8c
