The small business they are transforming themselves to face all the challenges that are presented to them. Global inflation, the last throes of the pandemic or the ever-changing behavior of customers make them and their partners consider new ways to develop their business.
To understand all these changes, Salesforce has analyzed the purchasing behavior of online stores that use its Commerce Cloud platform and has conducted a survey of more than 4,000 commerce professionals from around the world, including Spain. The result is the second edition of his study State of Commerce.
Enrique Mazón, Regional Vice President Commerce Cloud Spain, states that “Spanish businesses are very aware of where ecommerce is going and are taking measures such as adjusting their retail strategies to rely on reliable data, incorporating new digital channels and adding emerging payment options. All this, with the aim of optimizing the shopping experience and meeting the demands of customers who, although they have returned to the physical store, have more than 9 different points of interaction with retailers and most of them take place in the digital channels. For this reason, it is increasingly important to focus on the customer and see the physical channel and digital channels as complementary in the journey made by the consumer”.
According to the report, 45% of the income of Spanish businesses in the B2C segment is currently driven by digital technology, but they expect that, in two years, this percentage will rise to 55%. In the B2B segment, these percentages are currently 27% and they are expected to grow to 46% two years from now.
New channels and payment methods to look to the future
Businesses in our country do not hesitate to invest in channels that allow them to boost their sales, such as the website (mentioned by 66% of respondents), the POS (point of sale terminal) (64%), social networks (58%) or third-party marketplaces (57%). In the B2B segment, meanwhile, the channels that receive the most investment are, in this order, social networks (55%), sales representatives (55%) and the website (49%).
In this scenario, dominated by the digital, new means of payment are another crucial element. Thus, to the most widespread options, such as credit cards (accepted by 74% of those surveyed in Spain), bank transfers (74%) or PayPal (71%), there are other more innovative ones such as the “purchase now, pay later” (54%), Apple Pay (49%) or cryptocurrencies (33%). Regarding the latter, 52% also state that they plan to start accepting them as a payment method during the next two years.
In addition, new trends such as the Headless Commerce, they also make their way in our country. In fact, according to the study, this modality that separates the front end and back end in e-commerce applications, it is planned to be adopted by 65% of Spanish businesses by 2024. Among the advantages of this new technology, those surveyed highlight greater agility when making changes in e-commerce (78%) , greater flexibility (76%), better integration between systems (72%) and the ability to add new sales channels (72%).
The use of data by digital businesses is also evolving, and the question now is not who has more data, but how to use them to value them. Thus, around 90% of Spanish respondents say that their organization uses data effectively to understand customer behavior, while 86% say they do so to acquire new buyers and to automate processes.
