For the past decade, “seamless commerce” has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the world of B2B and B2C – and using a unified design system is how brands actually move from a buzzword to reality.
From physical stores to online to mobile to social media, the number of customer channels has proliferated, and brands have been working hard to create a consistent, connected customer experience (CX) across multiple touchpoints, so that shoppers can enjoy an easy — and yes, seamless — path to purchase.
It’s already been three years since Gartner found that 81% of marketing leaders believed their companies would mostly or completely compete on the basis of their CX within two years.
And as customer behavior has shifted to online shopping over the past six months, it’s clear that brands need to step up their efforts to create a coherent, end-to-end customer experience across their entire ecosystem.
The challenges of a brand experience ecosystem
Most mid- to large commerce brands have designed thousands of unique customer touchpoints across various channels, purchase stages, and global geographies.
These are often produced organically, across a variety of departments and global partners. We call the sum of these touchpoints a “Brand Experience Ecosystem” — and, not surprisingly, the sum total of these touchpoints can be overwhelming and difficult to organize.
The truth is that technologies, customer expectations, and the increase of new channels have changed far more rapidly than marketing organizations.
The latest iteration of Scott Brinker’s famed Marketing Technology Landscape, for example, features a supergraphic of over 8000 technology tools. This mind-boggling multitude has left brands with a fragmented set of processes and technologies, making it impossible to get the most of their talent.
Worst of all, it leaves marketers with a big customer experience problem in an era when even the most loyal shoppers can head over to the competition with a quick click.
Unified design system: A clear path to seamless commerce success
Despite the myriad of challenges in creating a seamless customer experience, there is a clear path to success: The critical mission for today’s marketer is to enable teams to deliver consistency, focus on value creation, and to produce tailored experiences at scale.
This requires a unified system of templates, reusable assets, and workflows that do four important things:
- Reduce siloed, redundant activities and production
- Standardize design systems, tools, asset management and technologies
- Facilitate the adoption of best practices and the reuse of shared assets
- Foster collaboration of a singular CX strategy across channels and departments
This process must start with a baseline understanding, which requires an assessment to map the various customer journey touchpoints within a brand ecosystem- including:
- Websites
- Mobile apps
- Social media
- Digital ads
The goal of the assessment is to identify specific challenges, as well as the best places to start making changes to increase customer engagement and decrease friction.
For example, brands need to:
- Identify and define the role of touchpoints
- Review transitions from one point to another
- Analyze use of patterns and features
- Identify friction points and areas of redundancy
Keep in mind, every touchpoint has a role. Touchpoints shouldn’t unintentionally duplicate content or functionality.
Every experience should – directly or indirectly – lead to a product, experience, or service. The bottom line: Every touchpoint is connected to and/or aware of every other touchpoint, so they should be created in concert and optimized.
A unified design system is much more than a style guide.
The ideal CX system includes layers of shared assets across design patterns, content templates, technology assets, marketing, analytics, personalization, and customer data. Learn more HERE.
The addition of each capability into the system will deliver exponential gains in customer acquisition, conversion, average offer value (AOV), and life-time value (LTV).
The future of commerce is unified
According to a Boston Retail Partners study, 28% of retailers had adopted unified commerce by 2018, and 81% plan to deploy it by the end of 2020.
With the right unified commerce approach, today’s retail brands can move confidently into the future by offering a seamless experience that’s consistent and meets customer expectations for a better end-to-end journey.
This is a critical effort, not a “maybe next year” consideration for mid-to-large commerce brands.
The companies that invest now in creating the right unified design system, one that meets the expectations of today’s customers, are those that will speed ahead in a highly-competitive digital landscape. Those that sit on the sidelines are at risk of falling behind.
The powerful technologies and processes are ready and able create a seamless customer experience that was once only wishful thinking — but is now table stakes for the future of commerce.
