Sitecore Commerce vs. OrderCloud

As omnichannel commerce continues to evolve, ecommerce businesses need to step up their game to provide the best experience for their customers. Sitecore Commerce and OrderCloud are both results of Sitecore’s acquisitions aimed at providing ecommerce businesses with the best possible customizations to improve operations and the customer experience.

In this article, we’ll compare the two solutions and explain how they fit into Sitecore’s overall strategy.

Sitecore’s Ecommerce Strategy

Companies may be familiar with Sitecore’s previous ecommerce offering, Sitecore Experience Commerce. Since they acquired Four51 (now Sitecore OrderCloud) and its headless commerce platform, they’ve revamped their ecommerce strategy to provide flexibility and scalability to help businesses deliver a top-notch commerce experience for customers.

On July 27, 2021, Sitecore OrderCloud expanded its marketplace capabilities with new features that made provision for more marketplace flexibility better than before. Implementers can create many adaptable ecommerce systems, from traditional marketplaces (like Amazon) to multi-location retailers and everything in between, using these exciting features.

The OrderCloud features focused on the following ecommerce features:

• Order routing flexibility:This allows you to select where to send an order or fulfillment—for example, retail stores, warehouses, or external suppliers.

• Supplier empowerment:The ownership and management of promotions, catalogs, products, and price schedules are now open to suppliers and retail locations. Additionally, they can share product management functions from a single reliable headless platform.

• Pricing flexibility: The same products can be sold by different suppliers, each with a unique price.

Also, with Sitecore Discover, Sitecore provides an AI-powered recommendation search engine platform for ecommerce that allows you to integrate into your commerce sites using APIs. This way, you can provide customized search results based on existing search histories to help guide customers through your sales funnel and eventually boost conversions.

Now, Sitecore Commerce includes Sitecore OrderCloud and Sitecore Discover to provide the best ecommerce experience for customers.

What Is Sitecore Experience Commerce?

Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) allows businesses to personalize the end-to-end shopping experience – before, during, and after a purchase. You now have access to all the tools needed to manage an online storefront with the Sitecore Experience Commerce solution.

Sitecore XC is the previous version of Sitecore Commerce and will slowly be phased out to make room for the new Sitecore Commerce.Some of the features of Sitecore Experience Commerce include:

A/B and Multivariate Testing

It can design and execute A/B and multivariate testing, allowing commerce teams to utilize the most effective messaging and design.

Powerful Dashboard

It comes with a powerful dashboard that offers insightful data on your digital storefront, making it easier to optimize these data for improved results.

Multilingual Support

Content editors can manage their work in one location thanks to Sitecore’s native support for multilingual websites. Built-in interfaces streamline workflow with translation services.

Centralized Content

Businesses can create and manage all content in one place and combine web and commerce content for a richer and more relevant customer experience.

Benefits of Sitecore XC include:

• WYSIWYG Editing: Ability to assemble and build commerce pages using a powerful WYSIWYG editor

• Multiple Devices: Support for laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and many more.

• Easy Development: It has Prebuilt SXA components for easy development.

• Flexibility: The flexibility and extensibility to support your great vision are part of the Sitecore experience.

What Is Sitecore OrderCloud?

Sitecore OrderCloud is a headless and API-first commerce platform. It enables brands to implement composable commerce and offers unlimited customization and unending room for growth to accommodate your entire business strategy.

Some features of OrderCloud include:

Omnichannel Management

As customers today shop through different channels - web, mobile, social media, and physical stores – it is vital to provide them with a unified and consistent shopping experience across all these channels with Sitecore OrderCloud.

Scalability

As your business grows, there is an increased chance of business remodeling. With OrderCloud’s headless, API-first architecture, there is now support for the difficulties of changing and expanding your business models.

Order Management

With OrderCloud, you can implement seamless order management processes by controlling complicated orders, fulfillments, shipping, and inventory management. This can be done by digitizing the whole process on Sitecore OrderCloud.

Custom Commerce Platform

Since every business has different environments and needs, you can customize your unique commerce platform to match your needs with OrderCloud, rather than forcing your business to fit into a prebuilt solution.

Globalization

The problem of aligning your business with different currencies can be daunting when it comes to globalizing your business. Sitecore OrderCloud makes it easier for companies to manage multinational commerce operations.

Benefits of Sitecore OrderCloud Include:

• Scalability: You can scale your commerce business to different B2X models and marketplaces.

• Customization: You can quickly build and customize your commerce platform with the out-of-the-box features needed for your unique business environment.

• Flexibility: Things change quickly in today’s market, but with the flexibility of Sitecore OrderCloud, you can modify your commerce platform to your preference when needed.

What Is Sitecore Discover?

Sitecore provides an AI-powered search engine platform with Sitecore Discover, which you can integrate into your ecommerce websites using APIs. Helping clients go through your sales funnel and increasing conversions enables you to give personalized search results based on prior search activity and intent.

Some features of Sitecore Discover include:

Commerce Engagement Console

Setting up and customizing rules and conditionals for individualized shopping can be difficult. Still, with Sitecore Discover, this is easier to do with its unified console to control everything in one place.

Multi-locale Support

With the multi-locale support feature, you can provide your customers with a geo-tailored digital shopping experience. Sitecore Discover allows you to customize rules to manage different locales and geo-based product recommendations.

Search and Recommendation

The search and recommendation will help you boost conversions with AI-powered technology to identify each shopper’s purchase intent in real-time and display the most helpful search results and product recommendations.

Benefits of Sitecore Discover Include:

• Increased Customer Engagement: Boosting customer engagement and maintaining interest throughout the journey by showing what attracts each customer most.

• Purchase Intent: You can identify each customer’s purchase intent in real-time. This will enable customers to make better decisions when providing the most relevant search results and product merchandising for each individual’s shopping experience.

• Increased Conversions: Sitecore Discover helps customers make quicker and better buying decisions, leading to higher conversions and increased ROI.

Get More Out of Sitecore’s Ecommerce With Oshyn

Ecommerce has taken over the world, and businesses must adopt the best solutions and practices to deliver an improved digital experience for customers. This is why Sitecore is the ideal platform for ecommerce businesses that want to put together and build a long-lasting and engaging digital experience for their customers.

Oshyn is a long-time, trusted Sitecore partner with years of experience working with businesses to deliver quality and well-optimized web experiences for clients. We can help you navigate the decision of what type of commerce solution you want to implement.

Do you want to embrace headless commerce? Has composable commerce caught your eye? What’s the difference? Read our article to find out: Headless Commerce vs. Composable Commerce.