A new vendor guide from Gartner Group helps companies better understand and evaluate digital commerce platforms.
Though the importance of offering a great digital experience has been growing for some time, the pandemic compounded this need by catalyzing a huge spike in online commerce. According to Adobe Analytics, U.S. online sales in April 2020 increased 49 percent over the year prior.
While many parts of the world are glimpsing the end of the pandemic, Gartner and other top analysts predict that ecommerce sales will remain high for many years to come, as consumers increasingly rely on convenient digital channels to support their purchasing needs.
In fact, in a recent survey of 1,500 North American consumers, Fullstory found that 8 in 10 (81%) plan to increase or maintain their online usage, even when in-person activities resume.
The Gartner Digital Commerce Vendor Guide 2021 was published based on Gartner’s finding that success in digital commerce now hinges on having the right tools in place to deliver compelling experiences and respond to business needs.
Consider your entire digital commerce technology stack
The growth in ecommerce sales is likely to result in increased competition in the ecommerce arena. For that reason, more businesses are turning to digital commerce platforms to get ahead of the competition.
Gartner recommends using an “ecosystem” approach, in which multiple applications are tightly integrated to optimize the digital commerce technology stack.
In the report, Gartner examines digital commerce platforms from multiple categories, including the category Digital (Web) Analytics. Solutions from this category, like Fullstory, enable ecommerce businesses to collect, analyze, and report on user behavior, friction, and customer journeys. These tools help businesses better understand how users navigate their site and provide insights into how and where to improve the customer experience.
In other words, making confident, strategic DX decisions—like which site fixes or improvements to prioritize—requires a complete view of the customer’s digital experience. Digital analytics provide the quantitative and qualitative data necessary to do this, and platforms like Fullstory make it easy to interpret and act on that data.
In the changing digital commerce landscape, the competition is fierce–and it’s only getting fiercer. Prioritizing the digital experience by investing in a digital analytics platform like Fullstory can help you create a great customer experience that promotes loyalty, growth, and retention.
Visit Gartner to read the full analysis (note, a paid subscription is required to access the report).