Customers these days have very little tolerance for hiccups in the shopping experience. With market saturation at an all time high, effective commerce requires seamless coordination across all ecommerce operations — inventory systems, payment gateway integrations, order management, and ecommerce shipping solutions. Every disconnect creates a blip of friction in your customers’ experiences (and an opportunity to abandon cart and shop somewhere else).

On the flip side, when your ecommerce operations run smoothly — to the point where shoppers don’t even notice — you create loyal customers. Real-time, accurate inventory information gives customers confidence that you’ll have what they need when they come back. A friction-free, seamless payment process makes it easy to purchase again. Proactive shipping notifications build trust that you’ve got it handled. Moments like these ultimately compound into high-value, lasting customer relationships.

A connection between backend operations and frontend experience is no longer a “nice-to-have” for you and your customers. In reality, it’s becoming table stakes commerce. Here’s why your customer experience depends on getting operations right and how top brands are making it happen.

Your ecommerce operations are your brand

Your operations don’t just support your brand promise—they are your brand promise. Even millions of dollars spent on marketing can’t overcome the impact an out-of-stock notification or a delayed shipping update has on your brand. Any gap between what your brand promises and what your ecommerce operations enable you to deliver will be deeply felt by customers, and it will be where their loyalty ends.

It’s important to always keep in mind that all operations across your retail supply chain are what drive customer experience and your brand identity. Each and every interaction with your behind-the-scenes operational systems—from inventory checks to returns processes—creates an impression that’s at least as powerful as your marketing messages. When your operations are reliable, it changes how shoppers interact with your brand. They browse differently, engage more frequently, and spend more when they know your systems won’t let them down.

Successful brands lean into this. They treat their ecommerce operations as more than just backend processes. Brands that win put time and effort into their operations, because they understand that operational excellence doesn’t just support their brand, but it delivers on its promises.

Unified commerce is more than omnipresence

Your marketing is what brings in customers, but what keeps them coming back is your ability to meet their needs wherever they are. It’s not just about having a presence across multiple channels—it’s about making sure that all of the channels you’re in work in harmony.

Say a customer discovers a product on your social media, then clicks through to check it out on your website and adds it to their cart. They’ll be much more likely to buy if the item is still in their cart when they go to your site on desktop—and even more likely when you follow up with marketing that helps them make their decision.

The stakes are higher than ever for seamless, real-time, and accurate cross-channel shopping experiences. You need an ecommerce solution that can keep up with countless customer touchpoints and interactions, because shoppers’ attention is fragmented and their brand loyalty is precarious and fleeting.

Customers bounce between social media, websites, apps, and marketplace listings—and they’ll happily abandon any purchase the second they’re met with friction in their journey. When prices don’t match, stock levels aren’t right, or item details are inconsistent, customers don’t troubleshoot. They leave. And you certainly can’t count on them giving you another chance.

Building a delightful unified commerce experience isn’t optional anymore for brands who want to stay ahead. You need a solution that uses customer behavior data in a smart way and automatically maintains consistency across every customer touchpoint.

Flawless order fulfillment builds lasting trust

The time right after a new customer places their first order is high stakes: It’s a point where they’ve invested real money but haven’t received any value yet. That gap between payment and delivery is a risk for your customers, and it’s the perfect time for you to focus on building their trust.

Even well-established brands lose customers when their fulfillment operations create friction. The brands that keep a loyal customer base have built fulfillment operations that catch problems early on, reroute orders as needed automatically, and of course, keep customers updated—before they need to ask. Every step in the fulfillment process is an opportunity to prove to your customers you know what they need.

To do this, you need a strong operational foundation. You need to do more than send a tracking number on time. You need operations that can adapt in real time and equip your entire team with instant visibility into the status of every customer’s journey. Strong fulfillment operations let you turn the time after purchase into an opportunity to build customer confidence and long-term loyalty.

Doing inventory optimization well eliminates unnecessary friction

Stockouts and inaccurate inventory counts are some of the fastest ways to lose potential customers forever. Some hiccups in your inventory management systems are inevitable, but when you do inventory management right, you turn potential frustrations into seamless experiences that keep customers coming back. Shoppers want confidence that what they’re looking for is always going to be available exactly when they ask you for it.

The most successful retailers understand that inventory is about creating a real-time, responsive system that can quickly adapt to changing factors like customer demands. Without exception, that means using data to make smart decisions to help with inventory reconciliation: what to stock, where to keep it, and how to make that data available across multiple sales channels for your entire staff. Inventory optimization is a powerful tool that allows brands to stay ahead of customer wants and reduce the risk of losing sales.

Your ecommerce solution should prevent you from having to ever tell a customer an item is out of stock or break their trust with inaccurate inventory counts. When products fly off shelves faster than you anticipated, for example, you need to know immediately—not when it’s too late to reorder in time to meet customer demand. The right ecommerce platform not only gives you this power, but it works with every other part of your operations, turning all your data into insights that help you keep your entire business running smoothly—and your customers happy.

Intelligent payment integration accelerates growth

With abandoned carts contributing to over $111B in lost ecommerce revenue per year, ecommerce brands simply cannot afford to compromise on their payment gateways. Weak payment infrastructure creates a dam in your revenue stream. Processing delays, declined transactions, and even not having a customer’s preferred payment method will turn away previously willing buyers.

These days, your payment system needs to be able to handle complex demands without adding complexity to your customer experience. That means securely processing payments of many types without creating friction and scaling smoothly during high-traffic periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday — so your customers don’t even have to think about it.

The most successful ecommerce brands have payment operations that grow with their businesses. They choose systems that support many payment methods, expand into new markets without a hitch, and maintain performance at all times. Solid payment operations are more than just having a place to enter a credit card number. Brands that do it right know it’s an opportunity to continue a seamless, delightful experience and grow customer trust.

Your ecommerce operations should be built to drive a positive customer experience

What customers really want is simple: They want to trust that they can get exactly what they need every time they shop with you. Making good on a solid customer experience is a bit more complicated, and it involves every part of your ecommerce operations.

Your competitors can copy anything that sets your business apart, whether it’s your products, your brand, or even your pricing model. But the lasting differentiator that customers truly care about (whether they know it or not) is a finely-tuned unified commerce engine. Everything works together on a single platform: inventory, payments, fulfillment, and even marketing and merchandising. A seamless operational foundation is a hard thing for competitors to replicate when you have a truly unified system.

Customers these days have so much choice that they’ll leave at the first sign of friction. The brands that gain long-term, loyal customers are the ones who use their operations to create incredible customer experience strategies.

Want to learn more about how Maropost can help you build a seamless ecommerce engine that wins loyal customers? Book a demo.