According to the latest statistics, the number of companies using Salesforce has reached 150,000. And this looks impressive. Indeed, given the rich functionality, scalability, and convenience, this Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform has become one of the undisputed market leaders. 

Below we will discuss a particular product of this CRM: Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a platform for creating an unparalleled e-commerce experience. If you’re still hesitant about choosing a specific Salesforce solution, please take a look at our Salesforce consulting services.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) is among the world’s most popular B2C and B2B cloud CRMs. This enterprise-level CRM allows online businesses to get the most out of artificial intelligence and data-driven touchpoints on all existing digital channels (mobile, websites, social media, and online stores) when interacting with potential and existing customers and smoothly push them through the sales funnel. Currently, the solution is presented in four products: B2C Commerce, B2B Commerce, D2C Commerce, and Order Management.

Businesses benefit from the following:

  • Automation of interactions with customers at all stages of the sales funnel
  • Increase in conversion and sales
  • In-depth analysis of bottlenecks in the marketing strategy
  • User experience personalization
  • Increasing customer loyalty
  • Secure online payment 

Speaking of more global advantages, Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation significantly reduces companies’ efforts to grow and scale their business activities. World-famous clients who have improved their key business indicators in the digital environment include Mercedes-Benz, IBM, Loreal, Unilever, Bentley, U.S. Bank, and many others.

What Types of Companies Should Adopt Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

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Commerce Cloud from Salesforce is typically adopted by mid-sized to large enterprises that operate complex digital commerce ecosystems and view online sales as a core business channel. Companies in retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, and B2B distribution often choose this platform when they need scalable cloud e-commerce capabilities, global reach, and deep integration with CRM, marketing, and analytics tools. For organizations asking what is Commerce Cloud and whether it fits their growth strategy, the answer is often yes when personalization, omnichannel engagement, and enterprise-grade reliability are top priorities.

SFCC is a strong fit when your business faces the following situations:

  • You need a scalable cloud e-commerce platform that can handle high traffic and rapid growth
  • Your business requires a complex integration case with CRM, ERP, PIM, or marketing systems
  • You operate across multiple regions, brands, or currencies and need centralized control
  • Personalization, customer data, and omnichannel journeys are critical to your sales strategy
  • You are investing in long-term e-commerce development rather than a short-term storefront

SFCC may not be the best choice in certain scenarios:

  • Your business is a small startup with limited revenue and a tight e-commerce budget
  • You only need a simple online store with minimal customization or integrations
  • Your sales volumes are too low to justify a revenue-based pricing model
  • You lack internal resources or partners to support enterprise-level e-commerce development
  • Speed-to-launch matters more than scalability, flexibility, and long-term optimization

In these cases, lighter-weight platforms may be more practical until your business requirements grow in complexity.

Core Capabilities of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Services

Core Capabilities of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Services

AI-powered Commerce

Salesforce Einstein is an SFCC proprietary AI solution primarily for lead scoring and sales predictive analytics. This feature appeared in 2016 and here’s how it works: first, data is captured from all available sources. AI processes it, learns by itself, and performs predictive analysis. After that, business managers can use analytics when working with clients. For example, Einstein can provide all website visitors (even not just authenticated ones) personalized product recommendations, as well as product bundles, sets, and deals.

This concept is not new: Amazon’s machine learning tools like Alexa are great examples of AI working in the background. For Salesforce, its team has taken the same idea to the business.

Omnichannel Support

Salesforce Commerce Cloud allows companies to go beyond the digital plane by moving customers through the sales funnel online and in the physical world. In particular, buyers can learn about the company by visiting its website, then read the reviews on social networks, proceed to place an order after contacting the call center representatives, and pick up the goods at an offline pickup point.

Also, this solution provides A/B testing of target segments based on customer behavior, traffic channel, and location. SFCC also maximizes website visibility, dealing with sites, products, categories, images, and metadata.

At the same time, Salesforce Cloud will cover all these processes, making the purchase process seamless, even if we are talking about companies of an international scale.

Multi-site Сoverage and Localization

Regarding international companies in more detail, SFCC effectively handles the specifics of sales for all regions covered. Specifically, due to the difference in trading rules specific to each region, you may need to implement several websites simultaneously. In turn, Salesforce can take on the task of localizing your basic online store template, customizing it to the laws of each country where you will start your business.

Built-in Marketing and Merchandising Tools

Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides dozens of helpful marketing and merchandising tools—including AI-driven ones—to power merchandising insights, ensure end-to-end automation, syndicate products and pricing across categories and websites, and make your product promotion easier, no matter where your company operates. 

Also, with their help, you can test several marketing strategies simultaneously and without any technical support to determine the most effective ones and implement them to the fullest. Thanks to this, you can spend a minimum amount of money and time to attract and retain customers.

Mobile Friendliness

Since more and more users use mobile devices to make purchases every year, SFCC supports this trend and adapts the user experience specifically for this interaction format. For instance, thanks to Salesforce, your website will have the same look and feel on both desktops and smartphones. At the same time, your customers will be able to quickly pay for their purchases through Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other mobile payment tools.

Autoscaling

Although the main target audience of SFCC is enterprises, it’s also possible to create small online stores that will scale in the future. At the same time, the platform will provide you with all the resources necessary for scaling and automatically adapt to the workload required by users at a particular point in time. Thus, you can protect yourself from the need to change the CRM when the old one has ceased to satisfy your business needs with its functionality and performance. 

Multiple Integrations

Salesforce Commerce Cloud supports a bunch of third-party integrations like Twitter, Slack, Google Maps, LinkedIn, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, NetSuite, Workday, Amazon, and so on. You can find out more about Salesforce integration tools here.

Order Management

SFCC offers powerful functionality for managing orders, encompassing order placement, payment, delivery, cancellations, and returns. It covers a full order lifecycle management journey, providing easy allocation and fulfillment logic. Such automation of SFCC reduces overhead costs for companies that operate in several regions. Also, it increases efficiency by delivering real-time order data to Commerce Cloud Digital, ensuring instant order processing and streamlining order management.

Content Management

SFCC comes with a Salesforce CMS (where files and media can be stored) and dozens of customizable templates, developer tools, and APIs that combine to help you build a full-featured online store of any size. Moreover, in most cases, you may not need programming skills since all the components of your future project can be added via drag-and-drop.

Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) in Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) is a modern and flexible framework for building and customizing storefronts. It provides a structured, best-practice-driven approach to front-end development, combining reusable components, controllers, and templates that accelerate time to market while maintaining high performance. SFRA is designed to support scalable, maintainable storefronts that can evolve alongside business needs without requiring a full rebuild.

SFRA acts as a reference implementation that balances standard functionality with customization. It supports headless and API-driven scenarios, enabling teams to extend or replace specific storefront components while keeping core commerce capabilities intact. Developers can easily integrate third-party services, customize user journeys, and implement advanced features such as personalization, promotions, and multi-site management without breaking platform updates.

From a business perspective, SFRA reduces development risk and long-term maintenance costs. Its modular architecture allows teams to introduce changes incrementally, test features in isolation, and roll out improvements faster. By aligning closely with Salesforce best practices, SFRA ensures compatibility with platform upgrades, security updates, and new capabilities—making it a reliable foundation for sustainable, future-proof e-commerce growth.

Benefits of Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Benefits of Salesforce Commerce Cloud

High Performance

Because of the colossal volumes of information users receive daily via the internet, their concentration on specific objects will be minimal if you do not take additional measures to keep them. This is exactly what Salesforce Commerce Cloud is good at. 

In particular, this platform supports a mobile-first approach and provides instant content upload wherever your users are and whatever device they use. The platform also helps developers provide digital accessibility for websites, which means unhindered access through devices with an unstable internet connection. Finally, here, you will get all the tools you need to create effective and visually appealing product catalogs with a variety of filters and search options. 

Smart Data Analysis

The product enables businesses to turn vast amounts of customer and transactional data into actionable insights that inform smarter decisions. By analyzing behavior patterns and performance metrics in real time, companies can refine merchandising strategies, personalize experiences, and respond faster to market changes.

The use cases for these analytics are numerous: with its help, your future online store will be able to select personalized product recommendations, shorten the steps on the way to the sales funnel through search suggestions, and optimize the order of products in the catalog through Predictive Sort. Also, you can provide a unified user experience regardless of the device, collect customer data, generate search results for synonymous product names, reduce cart abandon rates, and so on.

Improved Business Strategy

This cloud uses internal algorithms and tools to help businesses identify market trends, monitor and optimize KPIs, improve user traffic quality, speed up the checkout process, optimize website design for devices of various sizes, implement cross-selling strategies, perform end-to-end visitor behavior analytics, and also simplify interaction with them at all stages of the funnel.

Built-in Marketing Tools

The built-in marketing tools of SFCC will ensure that your customers discover the products they need as quickly as possible. Specifically, you can deploy this process on all your localized websites, promote individual products through all available types of digital advertising, make promotions and special offers, run A/B testing, generate product assortment recommendations, automate merchandising tasks, etc. 

Top-notch Customization

One of the main features is the abundance of tools for creating a personalized customer experience. This is achieved through AI-driven tools that can provide your online store’s visitors with smart recommendations for complementary products, personalized recommendations based on their search history, generation of relevant search results, quick access to product information, adding products to their wishlists, and much more.

Unified Across-device Design

Regardless of the device used by your website visitors, with SFCC, they will get an advanced user experience and will be able to deal with a unified design that will be the same and convenient for all its versions.

Better Scalability

This platform will save your business from the problems associated with traffic bursts that are typical for seasonal sales and holidays. It also supports reverse scaling, reducing allocated resources when it is no longer needed. As for stock management, Salesforce will not leave you without support either: thanks to powerful auditing tools, your users will not face the ‘out of stock’ problem noticed after placing an order.

Multi-site Management

You will get a centralized access panel to all your online stores based on this platform. You can also set individual settings for each localized website according to individual online trading policies in a particular region.

Advanced Customer Support

In case of a problem or outage, customers can always get instant support from the Salesforce team. For example, you can use Trailblazer and the help portal. Salesforce also provides webinars and accelerators that will ensure the most efficient use of the platform. However, when you cooperate with an outsourcing Salesforce development team, all the tasks related to ensuring the smooth operation of SFCC become their responsibility, so you don’t need to worry about it.

Salesforce to Streamline Sales and Marketing Processes

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Pricing Model

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing model is enterprise-oriented and primarily revenue-based, rather than a fixed license fee. Its pricing is typically calculated as a percentage of your annual gross merchandise value (GMV). This means the cost scales with your business growth: the more revenue your online store generates, the higher the platform fee. Such an approach aligns Salesforce’s interests with yours, but it also requires careful forecasting, especially for fast-growing or seasonal businesses.

In addition to the core commerce license, pricing can be influenced by the specific edition you choose (such as B2C or B2B Commerce), regional deployment, and the overall complexity of your setup. Costs may also increase when you extend your ecosystem with related Salesforce products, such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, advanced personalization tools, or CRM integrations. While these add-ons significantly enhance customer experience and data-driven marketing, they should be evaluated as part of the total cost of ownership, not as isolated features.

Finally, Salesforce Commerce Cloud development and implementation costs are separate from the platform license. These include solution architecture, integrations, customization, and ongoing support. Businesses investing in custom e-commerce solutions—tailored storefronts, unique checkout flows, or deep ERP and PIM integrations—should expect higher upfront development costs but greater long-term flexibility and scalability. As a result, SFCC pricing works best for companies that view e-commerce as a strategic, revenue-driving channel rather than a basic online storefront.

Migration to Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce definitely deserves your attention if you’re looking for a comprehensive solution for creating a scalable eCommerce platform. With it, you will get powerful tools for content management, automation, analytics, business process management, customer interaction, and much more. Also, this product supports dozens of third-party integrations available in AppExchange, which can be useful if the default features of Salesforce are not enough for you.

At the same time, migration and transferring of data to Salesforce from an old Customer Relationship Management (CMS) system can be quite a difficult task. Moreover, you also need to accurately assess your budget to ensure you can keep your updated online store up and running. So, if you want to get the most out of this migration without unnecessary expenses, feel free to contact us. We will estimate time and financial costs for this procedure and perform it safely and fast, with no downtime.

Don’t let cloud complexity delay your business. Follow our expert deployment checklist for faster, smoother launches.

AI-Driven Actions in Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce continuously expands its AI-driven capabilities, with new AI-based actions evolving over time as Salesforce enhances Einstein and related services. These features are designed to automate decisions, personalize experiences, and optimize operations across the entire commerce lifecycle. Below are key AI-powered actions businesses can leverage today, along with practical examples.

  • Personalized Product Recommendations
    AI analyzes browsing behavior, purchase history, and real-time intent to recommend relevant products. For example, a returning customer sees curated product sets based on previous orders and similar user patterns, increasing conversion rates and average order value.
  • Predictive Search and Merchandising
    Machine learning optimizes on-site search results by ranking products based on likelihood to convert rather than simple keyword matching. A fashion retailer, for instance, can automatically promote trending items during peak demand without manual merchandising rules.
  • Dynamic Pricing and Promotion Optimization
    AI evaluates customer segments, demand signals, and historical performance to suggest optimal discounts or offers. This allows businesses to run targeted promotions for specific audiences while protecting margins.
  • Intelligent Customer Segmentation
    Salesforce AI groups customers based on behavior, lifecycle stage, and engagement patterns. Marketing and commerce teams can then deliver personalized journeys, such as exclusive offers for high-value customers or re-engagement campaigns for dormant users.
  • Demand Forecasting and Inventory Optimization
    AI predicts product demand using historical sales, seasonality, and external factors. For example, businesses can proactively adjust inventory levels to avoid stockouts or overstock during major sales events.
  • Automated Fraud Detection
    AI models monitor transactions in real time to identify suspicious patterns and prevent fraud. This reduces chargebacks and protects both merchants and customers without adding friction to legitimate purchases.
  • Personalized Content and Experience Optimization
    AI selects the most effective banners, messages, and content blocks for each user. A B2B buyer might see technical specifications first, while a consumer shopper sees lifestyle imagery and promotions.

As Salesforce continues to invest in AI, these actions expand with new models, deeper automation, and tighter integration across the Salesforce ecosystem—allowing businesses to continuously refine customer experiences and operational efficiency without rebuilding their commerce foundation.

Real-life Examples of Using SFCC

The Salesforce team has presented dozens of success stories on its website from world-renowned companies that have optimized the shopping experience through the Salesforce Commerce Cloud services. Below, we’ll briefly review three of them.

Real-life Examples of Using SFCC

U.S. Bank

U.S. Bank, a popular U.S. bank with 73,000 employees, has been using Salesforce since 2009. While many banks choose to interact with customers locally, this one decided to create a centralized, unified platform to provide a consistent customer experience no matter where these clients are located. 

In practice, this implies introducing a single customer base, which must be extended through all available channels: mobile, desktop, offline, etc. The company currently has 3,000 branches in 25 states, and thanks to Salesforce, the conversion rate of potential customers has increased during the cooperation by 2.35 times.

Ovation Medical

Ovation Medical, which sells orthopedic products, has doubled its productivity and improved customer service in four weeks thanks to Salesforce’s choice. The main reason for using this platform was the COVID-19 pandemic, which shifted the focus of businesses to online sales. The company had over 12,000 customers across the US and needed a solution to accelerate the transition of B2B customers to online shopping. 

As for Salesforce, this product was used to launch a digital commerce platform that automated and streamlined repetitive business operations and sales processes. As a result, since the launch of the new website in mid-2020, the processing time for repeat orders has been halved.

L’Oreal

L’Oreal has partnered with SFCC to provide unique beauty experiences with a data-driven approach. Salesforce delivered these experiences, ensuring connecting data from each touchpoint into a single source of truth about each consumer while respecting their data privacy.

To get to know its customers better, L’Oreal implemented Salesforce Commerce Cloud to use throughout all the stages of the sales funnel real-time data. As a result, the company got the most out of the power of Beauty Tech to become more inclusive and sustainable for its consumers.

Conclusion

Now you know about all the benefits and features of this Salesforce product and can make an informed choice for or against this decision. As for developing online stores based on this CRM system, you better turn to real pros. NIX offers you our services in Salesforce development and migration. We have implemented Salesforce success stories for different business niches helping our clients to achieve their goals, and now we are happy to apply our knowledge and experience to your business idea. Feel free to contact us to discuss your project in detail.

FAQs on Salesforce Commerce Cloud

01/

How does Salesforce Commerce Cloud support cloud e-commerce scalability?

SFCC enables businesses to scale digital storefronts efficiently, handling large or frequent purchases and traffic spikes without impacting performance. It provides unified commerce capabilities, integrating multiple channels and touchpoints, while AI-powered insights help optimize inventory, promotions, and customer engagement. The platform supports first-party data management, lightning web components, and automated workflows, allowing companies to expand globally or launch new storefronts quickly. By enabling businesses to deliver consistent, high-performance experiences, Commerce Cloud helps increase customer engagement, build brand loyalty, and support ongoing growth.

02/

Can Salesforce Commerce Cloud support headless or composable commerce?

Yes, it supports headless commerce, allowing businesses to separate the frontend experience from backend e-commerce functionalities. This enables rapid customization, integration with external systems, and composable architectures to deliver omnichannel experiences. Using APIs and lightning web components, companies can create personalized shopping experiences, optimize digital storefronts, and integrate with mobile apps, IoT devices, or other digital touchpoints. By enabling businesses to maintain flexibility while driving a unified experience, the product helps improve first-party data collection, increase customer engagement, and support direct-to-consumer strategies effectively.

03/

How long does it typically take to implement Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Implementation depends on the project size, complexity, and integration needs. For standard storefronts with pre-built templates, it may take 3–6 months, while fully customized implementations with integrations into CRM, ERP, and third-party systems may require 6–12 months or more. Factors include product catalog size, third-party apps, AI-powered personalization setup, and headless commerce architecture. Commerce Cloud includes tools to manage products, optimize digital storefronts, and create personalized shopping experiences, enabling businesses to deliver a unified experience and increase customer engagement throughout the implementation process.

04/

How complex is Salesforce Commerce Cloud development and customization?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud development can be complex due to its extensive capabilities, rich ecosystem, and need for customization. Developers use lightning web components, APIs, and integrations to enable businesses to create personalized shopping experiences, implement headless commerce, and optimize digital storefronts. Custom e-commerce workflows, AI-powered insights, and first-party data management require careful planning. However, with proper architecture, tools, and best practices, businesses can drive sales, increase customer engagement, and maintain a unified experience. Large-scale or direct-to-consumer projects may require expert developers to ensure performance, scalability, and brand loyalty.

05/

Do you need Salesforce CRM to use SFCC?

No, Salesforce CRM is not strictly required to use SFCC, though integration is recommended for maximum efficiency. This tech solution can operate independently to manage products, optimize digital storefronts, and create personalized shopping experiences. Integrating Salesforce CRM enhances first-party data use, AI-powered insights, and unified commerce across sales, marketing, and service channels. For business customers or direct-to-consumer operations, CRM integration helps track interactions, increase customer engagement, and drive sales while maintaining a unified experience. The platform’s flexibility supports both standalone and fully integrated deployments.

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