Unified commerce, which blends online and offline channels to create a fun and functional shopping journey, will drive this evolution. More enjoyable retail experiences will be fuelled by personalised shopping agents and in-store media opportunities that engage and entertain, along with loyalty programs that turn shopping into a game. And we think we’ll see retailers getting more creative with new tactics aimed at winning the hearts and wallets of Gen Z. So let’s get on with it.

Our 2025 retail predictions:

1. Unified commerce will unlock new AI capabilities
2. Retailers will build shopping agents for consumers
3. Retail media strategies will focus on in-store opportunities
4. Gamification will be table stakes for loyalty programs
5. Retailers will explore new ways to reach Gen Z

Retail prediction #1: Unified commerce will unlock new AI capabilities 

Unified commerce happens when you use a single, integrated platform to manage retail operations across the entire digital and physical shopping journey. With an integrated system, you can unify data from every touchpoint including point of sale, shopper data, inventory information, digital engagement, order management, and marketing. With the right tech stack, you can enable a connected customer experience that can be automated or enhanced by retail AI agents.

This has never been more critical, as our research shows that 84% of shoppers expect a seamless shopping experience across a retailer’s app, website, and in store. But 29% feel retailers don’t deliver on that expectation. 

A unified commerce strategy provides a seamless, comprehensive view of each customer by linking front- and back-end data. This integration will allow you to build AI agents that deliver highly personalised experiences, such as tailored marketing campaigns and product recommendations, based on real-time customer behaviour and preferences. Additionally, it can enable automated merchandising, where AI analyses sales trends and inventory levels to optimise promotions and stock, enhancing the shopping experience and reducing manual effort. Finally, unified data empowers customer service AI agents to provide more informed and proactive support, leading to faster issue resolution and higher customer satisfaction.

Pro tip: Use an integrated, cloud-based platform to create a single source of truth for customer, product, and order data. Then use advanced analytics and machine learning to help you uncover actionable insights. This data helps you anticipate customer needs, forecast trends, optimise inventory, and personalise marketing efforts.
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Retail prediction #2: Retailers will build shopping agents for consumers

Our Cyber Week 2024 data shows that AI and agents drove $60 billion in online sales through personalised offers and engagements, up 20% year over year. Salesforce alone powered nearly 60 billion AI-generated product recommendations throughout the week. 

Per Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce, “Retailers who invested in AI and agents were able to reap even greater revenue during Cyber Week this year through personalised promotions, recommendations, and support.”

We’ve already seen a strong push for personalised shopping experiences, with consumers wanting tailored recommendations and seamless interactions across all channels. With recent advances in AI and conversational commerce, shopping agents are the logical next step. These intelligent assistants, such as Agentforce Personal Shopper, can provide 24/7 support, analyse customer data to offer personalised suggestions, and create engaging, convenient shopping experiences that cater to tech-savvy consumers. Personal Shopper agents can predict which products a customer is likely to enjoy based on their past interactions and preferences. The more data the agent collects, the more accurate its recommendations become over time. 

What does this mean for you? Retailers that use agents as personal shoppers see increased sales and conversion rates because personalised product recommendations increase the likelihood of a purchase. What’s more, by helping customers find the right products, sizes, and fits, agents can significantly reduce return rates. This saves you the operational costs associated with processing returns but also minimises inventory waste. Finally, you can put personal shopper agents in the hands of store associates to help with clienteling, quickly delivering personalised product recommendations based on the shopper’s history, freeing up time for them to serve more shoppers. 

Pro tip: Ensure AI understands your brand and customers. Invest time in training agents on your brand’s voice, product offerings, and customer preferences, so it provides on-brand, relevant, and personalised recommendations. Regularly update the AI with new product information and customer feedback to continuously improve its performance.
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Retail prediction #3: Retail media strategies will focus on in-store opportunities

Retail media refers to the advertising opportunities that retailers offer to brands and suppliers within their owned properties. This includes online and offline channels, such as websites, mobile apps, in-store displays, and even receipts. The primary goal of retail media is to help brands reach consumers at the point of purchase, influencing their buying decisions and driving sales. EMARKETER predicts a $60 billion spend in retail media in 2025. 

Most retail media spend is for online formats, such as search. But search is increasingly saturated as more brands start their spending there, so retailers are looking for new inventory supply to sell to brands.

In-store advertising has become crucial for retailers and advertisers as 84% of retail sales still occur in physical stores. In a 2023 Salesforce survey, 16% of shoppers ranked in-store ads as the most helpful for making purchasing decisions (second only to social media ads at 20%), which tied with streaming tv ads. Search followed at 13%, then ads on retailer websites and apps at 12%.

When it comes to purchasing decisions, more people prefer in-store media than online retail media ads, so the industry needs to catch up. Shoppers in stores are in discovery mode and close to the point of purchase. Their intent is clear. Because of this, in-store retail media can have a significant impact on sales volume and revenue.

Despite this fact, FTI Consulting says less than 1% of retail media spending is spent on in-store media. This is about to change, as U.S. in-store retail media is expected to reach more than $1 billion by 2028. We believe there will be a surge in in-store retail media opportunities in 2025, including screens on cooler doors and at self-checkout stations, smart carts, point-of-sale (POS) systems, or audio ads over store speakers. Retailers can strategically interact with customers throughout their shopping experience using tools such as kiosks, digital end caps, vertical banners, and smart carts. 

These tools not only engage shoppers but also gather important data, monitor ad views, and assess the impact of advertisements based on purchasing patterns.

Pro trip: Be sure your in-store media doesn’t detract from the overall shopping experience. Thoughtfully integrate in-store media elements into the store’s natural flow. Keep digital signage and audio announcements subtle and well-placed to provide useful information and promotions without disrupting the shopping experience. The key is to enhance, not overshadow, the customer’s journey, encouraging engagement rather than distraction.
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Retail prediction #4: Gamification will be table stakes for loyalty programs

Retail marketers are using gamification to increase customer engagement and drive desired actions. The goal is to create personal connections with shoppers through enjoyable, memorable, and rewarding interactions, which can drive customer loyalty and increase sales, especially through loyalty programs. Tactics include:

• Chance games, such as spin the wheel or scratch off to win prizes
• Tiers, where earning or spending points gives shoppers access to benefits
• Challenges where shoppers complete tasks to earn points within a time period
• Milestones, which shoppers unlock based on completing multiple actions
• Leaderboard rankings that show shopper performance against others

What’s more, there’s been an explosion of retailers introducing interactive video game experiences that give customers the chance to unlock rewards and exclusives. Also, retailers continue to expand into gaming platforms like Roblox with brand-specific experiences. The new twist? Connecting the Roblox game with the retailer’s loyalty membership and incentives, where achievements and time spent playing can unlock rewards in real-life shopping interactions, as well as purchases in the real world that unlock perks exclusive to the Roblox platform.

Why should you game-up your loyalty program in 2025? Our data shows 73% of shoppers plan to take part in more gamified loyalty opportunities in the coming year.

By incorporating more gamification into your loyalty programs, you can turn routine transactions into interactive experiences, making the process of earning rewards more enjoyable and motivating for customers. And 69% of shoppers say gamification would motivate them to more frequently engage with loyalty programs, purchase from a specific retailer, and open a retailer’s app to check their points. By encouraging repeat purchases and upselling through reward systems, gamification can directly contribute to increased sales and revenue. 

Pro tip: To make gamified loyalty programs even more personal and effective, use AI to create and scale personalised and engaging experiences. For example, AI can analyse customer data to tailor gamified elements like challenges, rewards, and badges to individual preferences and behaviours, making the loyalty program more relevant and fun. Additionally, AI can dynamically adjust the difficulty and rewards of these gamified elements based on customer engagement, so the program remains exciting and motivating over time.
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Retail prediction #5: Retailers will explore new ways to reach Gen Z

Retailers know the importance of capturing the hearts and wallets of Gen Z shoppers. Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z makes up about 25% of the global population. With two billion of them out there, Gen Z is the largest generation ever, with spending power expected to reach $12 trillion by 2030. 

But you may need to rethink your approach to this generation.

Gaming: Gen Z enjoys gaming and virtual worlds, like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite. You can win them over with a fun, social, gamified shopping experience. In fact, 84% of Gen Z and Millennials said they planned to take part in more gamified loyalty programs in 2025. And 79% said they would buy more frequently from a retailer with a gamified loyalty program. Use gaming platforms to launch virtual words, which could include virtual fitting rooms, fashion shows, and digital clothing purchases to help build long-term relationships with Gen Z shoppers.

Influencers: Many Gen Zers follow gaming influencers and content creators on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. Influencers often review and recommend products, which can sway Gen Z’s purchasing decisions. Our data shows that 43% of Gen Z follow influencers specifically to discover and evaluate new products, compared to just 22% of the general population. Gen Z is twice as likely to follow influencers than everyone else. Partnering with the right influencers can significantly boost your brand credibility and drive sales. 

Generative AI inspiration: Gen Z also interacts with generative AI when making purchasing decisions, often using AI-driven tools for personalised recommendations and product information. Our data shows that 29% of Gen Z have used generative AI for product purchase information, as compared to 17% of the general population. AI-powered platforms that offer personalised shopping experiences, such as style recommendations or virtual try-ons, are particularly appealing to them.

Pro tip: No matter which tactic you use, be sure to create authentic, co-branded experiences that blend all elements seamlessly. Don’t change your brand to attract Gen Z, but find what appeals to them about your brand and focus your efforts there. Then partner with influencers who genuinely align with your values, develop gamified experiences, and offer AI-powered interactions that feel organic to this generation. The key is to make the experience fun, authentic, and shareable, fostering a sense of community and connection with your brand.
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Put these retail predictions to work in 2025

In 2025, unified commerce and AI agents will change how retailers do business. By offering seamless online and offline experiences, you can win new customers and maintain relationships with loyal ones. If you increase engagement, you’ll stay competitive and meet the evolving expectations of their customers.

The post Our 2025 Retail Predictions: Unified Commerce and AI Agents Will Help Retailers Engage Shoppers appeared first on Salesforce.

Agentforce allows marketers to forge deeper relationships, from personalised conversations to proactive retention strategies. Let’s explore five use cases that you could build an agent to solve.

1. Automate personalised, two-way conversations on WhatsApp

Interacting 1:1 with every customer who might respond to a promotional campaign on WhatsApp is a tall order for any marketing team. Historically, there’s been limited chat bot capabilities that typically use only keywords, or no ability to respond to an WhatsApp message at all. But with Agentforce, you can connect a customer-facing, autonomous agent that acts like a personal concierge, right from the WhatsApp thread itself. 

Imagine a customer receiving an exclusive offer for a product they’ve shown interest in. They reply with a question, and an agent instantly responds with tailored product recommendations, current offers, or even information on complementary products. If a customer decides to make a purchase, the agent can guide customers through the entire checkout process, from completing the transaction to sending order status and updates. If they need additional help, the agent smoothly transfers the conversation to a human service rep, maintaining continuity.

Why it matters: This approach not only boosts conversions by keeping customers engaged, but it also builds satisfaction and loyalty through timely, relevant responses. By reducing support team load, Agentforce helps deliver a consistent brand experience that feels truly personal and seamless.

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2. Create personalised agendas for event attendees

Events are an invaluable tool for marketers to foster connections and create value for customers. However, ensuring each attendee finds the sessions and resources most relevant to them can be challenging. Trusting the attendees can find the sessions most relevant to them with a self-guided experience can result in more opportunities to abandon registration. Agentforce for Marketing can help you greet visitors on your event website, scaling the ability to provide 1:1 assistance to every visitor. 

The autonomous agent can recommend sessions based on interests and help attendees build personalised agendas. By analysing past attendance and engagement data, the agent can curate an agenda that aligns with each attendee’s preferences and priorities, from keynotes to breakout sessions. For repeat attendees, the agent can even suggest new content based on past sessions and complete registration with their customised agenda.

Why it matters: Personalised agendas help create a memorable event experience that leads to attendee satisfaction and loyalty. By making the registration journey seamless and reducing bounce rates, Agentforce supports stronger connections and builds long-term interest in your events.

3. Capture and qualify leads effortlessly on your website

When visitors land on your website, use Agentforce to welcome them with tailored product or service recommendations, offer exclusive content, and capture contact information. Depending on visitor behaviour, the agent can suggest gated assets such as case studies, demo videos, or even register someone for an event or webinar. This helps avoid self-guided experiences for the visitor, often resulting in opportunities to bounce before becoming a lead or talking to a sales rep.

For highly engaged prospects, the agent can schedule follow-up meetings with sales reps, ensuring they receive immediate value without friction. This proactive, conversational approach nurtures leads by guiding them to the right solutions based on their needs and interests.

Why it matters: Automated lead capture accelerates qualification and boosts conversions. By keeping visitors engaged and moving seamlessly through the pipeline, Agentforce for Marketing nurtures leads naturally, resulting in higher-quality opportunities, and, ultimately, loyal customers.

4. Improve customer journeys with intelligent reprioritisation

Keeping your audience engaged while respecting their communication preferences can be a balancing act. Before customers reach their communication limit, reassign them to the most relevant journey based on both their interests and your business goals. By reprioritising messaging, marketers can ensure high-value content is delivered at the right time, without overwhelming customers. For example, if a customer is close to their communications cap, use Agentforce for Marketing  to prioritise an upcoming product announcement or a VIP event invitation, aligning customer interests with timely opportunities for engagement.

Why it matters: Intelligent reprioritisation leads to higher conversion rates, lower unsubscribe rates, and stronger customer relationships. By adapting dynamically to customer behaviour, Agentforce helps ensure every interaction is relevant so customers stay engaged with your brand without feeling overwhelmed.

5. Reduce churn with proactive, personalised promotions

Retaining customers is just as important as acquiring new ones, especially when they may be at risk of churning. Agents can identify these at-risk customers by analysing specified churn indicators — such as low engagement or decreased purchase frequency — and autonomously send a tailored promotion based on their profile and guardrails set by the marketer.

For example, if a customer’s churn score nears a threshold, reach out with an exclusive loyalty discount or renewal incentive that guides them through the redemption process. By reaching out proactively, agents helps identify where to rekindle interest and engagement before the customer decides to leave.

Why it matters: Proactive AI-powered retention strategies boost customer lifetime value, reduce churn, and foster brand loyalty. With minimal manual effort, Agentforce helps marketers stay connected to customers who might otherwise drift away.

Agentforce is more than an automation or co-pilot tool — it’s an essential partner that empowers you to deliver the seamless, personalised experiences your customers expect. By building agents to implement these five use cases, marketers can increase customer engagement, increase conversions, and build deeper, lasting relationships.

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The changing value of data

In the fast-paced, data-driven markets of ASEAN, organisations have shifted their focus from simply accumulating data to unlocking its potential. The question is no longer, “How much data do we have?” but rather, “How do we unlock the value of data?”

The answer lies in unified, harmonised data. A unified data strategy helps businesses gain deeper insights into their customers by understanding how they interact across different systems. They can identify the same person at various touchpoints — and then act on this data by providing more personalised and relevant interactions, whether a customer is engaging with a sales or service representative or an AI agent. 

This not only enhances the customer experience but also meets the growing expectations of customers around the value exchange of their data. With the right data and AI solutions, organisations in ASEAN can deliver personalisation on a scale like never before. 

Jamie Quek, Director of Technology at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, highlights the importance of this shift: “Our data transformation was the most important aspect of rebuilding our tech stack because, at the end of the day, we are a customer-first brand and are always looking out for our customers and trying to understand what they want. We needed to bring together our data to do that.”

From siloed data to a single source of truth 

In the past, businesses struggled with data scattered across countless systems — databases, CRMs, and even physical locations. Consolidating this data into a central warehouse or lake for analysis was a slow, resource-heavy process, often facing challenges like long ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) times, security risks, and incomplete or outdated data. 

Even when data was consolidated, unlocking its full value was difficult. Insights were often trapped in these systems, requiring manual extraction to access and act on them.

Today, there’s a better solution: Data Cloud. With zero-copy architecture, it harmonises data from disparate sources — from telemetry and customer transactions to unstructured data like social posts — into a single, reliable platform. This unified view of each customer allows companies to activate data in real time, seamlessly within the flow of work. 

One business experiencing the benefits of unified data is Royal Enfield. The cult motorcycle brand transformed its approach to customer engagement by harmonising and consolidating over 80 data streams and 17 million profiles into 9 million unified customer profiles. 

With Data Cloud, Royal Enfield has gained an enriched view of customer preferences and interactions, empowering them to deliver personalised, contextually relevant communications. This has led to a 100% boost in customer engagement, a 50% reduction in communication volume, and a 23% improvement in lead conversions.

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Unified data powers smarter, more strategic decisions

One of the greatest benefits of unified data is how it empowers teams across an organisation. When all departments  — whether sales, marketing, or service — have access to the same real-time data, they can make faster, smarter decisions. Instead of piecing together information from scattered sources, employees can directly tap into the data they need within their flow of work.

Advantech’s implementation of Salesforce is a good example. When it first introduced Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, its teams saw benefits including a 93% reduction in time spent on tasks like creating opportunities and email delivery rates increasing to over 99%. Advantech’s recent rollout of Data Cloud has compounded these improvements by connecting data across sales, marketing, e-commerce, and service. With an end-to-end view of each customer, teams can deliver more personalised interactions and discover new growth opportunities.

“Bringing together consumer behaviour, preferences, and interaction history, we can predict customer needs and provide tailored products and services. This will not only increase customer satisfaction and loyalty but potentially help us expand and grasp new market and revenue opportunities,” says Gary Lee, Global Chief Digital Marketing Officer at Advantech.

Data Cloud also sets the stage for new AI innovations, including autonomous and assistive AI agents. Advantech is exploring how data and AI can work together to deliver increasingly personalised experiences, including solutions like Prompt Builder to automate tasks and boost efficiency.

The secret to autonomous AI? Unified data

For AI to deliver on its promise, it needs a foundation of unified, trusted data. Unified data provides AI with the context and accuracy required to deliver meaningful results. Without it, insights remain fragmented, and AI is limited in its ability to act effectively.

Data Cloud solves this challenge by unifying structured and unstructured data from any source into harmonised customer profiles—which can then be activated with Agentforce. 

As the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform, Agentforce empowers businesses to build and deploy autonomous AI agents that seamlessly collaborate with teams, supporting both customers and employees. By combining human expertise with agents, businesses can create a workforce without limits — one that’s powered by unified, high-quality data.

Agents can handle complex, multi-step tasks, such as processing refunds or rescheduling deliveries. It relies on actionable, harmonised data to understand inquiries, determine the next-best actions, and execute those actions autonomously. Unlike traditional chatbots with preprogrammed responses, Agentforce uses insights from Data Cloud to make intelligent decisions and act with confidence.

For example, while a traditional chatbot might respond to a customer with, “Click here to check your order status,” AI agents powered by unified data can go further. They can access a customer’s transaction history, provide status updates in real time, reschedule a delayed delivery, update the estimated arrival time, and notify the support team if further assistance is needed.

Grounded in unified data from Data Cloud, AI agents don’t just respond; they proactively resolve issues, anticipate customer needs, and make informed decisions. This creates a seamless, highly personalised experience that drives satisfaction and builds loyalty at every interaction.

Building a data strategy to unlock AI’s potential

In ASEAN’s rapidly evolving business landscape, AI has become imperative for competitive advantage — and unified data is the essential foundation. By consolidating high-quality, secure data within a unified infrastructure, organisations across the region can unlock the transformative potential of AI agents.

To support your journey, we’ve created the Unlocking Opportunity in the Data and AI Revolution guide. With insights from 15 ASEAN business leaders, it explores how a unified data strategy is the key to driving AI innovation, business growth, and truly personalised customer experiences.

Read more

• Training Your Own AI Model Probably Won’t Help Win Customers, But Data Will
• What is Data Cloud?
• Meet Agentforce: A New Era of Humans with AI Agents

The post How Unified Data is Breaking Barriers to AI in ASEAN appeared first on Salesforce.

Before AI can deliver on its promised value, organisations must first examine their data. Simply collecting large volumes of information isn’t enough — data must be accurate, well-organised, and ready for analysis. Raw data often requires transformation into clean and enriched formats so AI can generate actionable insights and deliver personalised experiences that create tangible business value. 

With 32% of organisations in Singapore already using AI across a range of use cases, and 66% planning to implement it within the next 6-18 months, getting your data in AI-shape has never been more critical. 

Is your data ready to meet the challenges of AI, or is your business at risk of falling behind? 

What is data transformation and why does it matter for ASEAN?

Data transformation involves converting, structuring, and unifying data so it can be effectively used by a system. It’s essential for businesses that want to take the vast amounts of data they have access to and activate it to improve customer experiences, make smarter decisions, and increase operational efficiency. 

Businesses across ASEAN collect data from a variety of sources, including digital channels, customer support, and connected devices. However, this data is often fragmented across different systems, with the same customer appearing under different profiles in each, making it hard to see them as a single entity. This lack of cohesion means businesses can miss key insights and lose potential value. 

Overcoming disjointed data and building a unified customer profile is essential to realising the potential of AI across sales, service, marketing, and commerce — not only to increase efficiency in the back-office but also to unlock new value in customer-facing, front-office functions.

As Alvin Neo,  Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, FairPrice Group and Managing Director, NTUC Link explains in Unlocking Opportunity in the Data and AI Revolution: “Fundamentally, the foundation of AI is data, that is why a major priority for us is ensuring that our data is clean and well organised. This is because the full value of AI is achieved when you can use it at scale, and we can only safely use it at scale if we have that data foundation in place.”

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Data transformation offers a competitive edge for ASEAN

In an AI-driven world, data transformation is not just a technical task but a strategic imperative for businesses across ASEAN. In Singapore, 89% of businesses believe that AI will be somewhat or very critical across a range of use cases, including developing hyper-personalisation and identifying new sales opportunities. And having accurate and secure data is the foundation of AI success. 

As Minh (Martin) Tran, Global Sales Development Manager at FPT Software shares: “Integrating Einstein has streamlined our operations with predictive analytics. We can target the most promising prospect by combining AI with human expertise.”

Simply put, AI makes it possible for businesses to streamline processes, empowering teams to solve problems faster and deliver better customer experiences. 

Understanding types of data transformation

Data transformation can be broken down into several processes that ensure data is clean, structured, and ready for AI-powered systems. These processes are generally grouped into four key classifications: 

1. Data cleaning and preprocessing: This includes tasks such as imputation, outlier detection, data standardisation, and normalisation. Cleaning ensures that AI models work with accurate, high-quality data.
2. Data aggregation and summarisation: Data is grouped and summarised to enable analysis at higher levels, improving the clarity of insights generated by AI tools. Techniques like rolling up and pivot tables are common here.
3. Data derivation and enrichment: New data can be derived through feature engineering, while enrichment involves adding context to existing data, making AI more effective in delivering insights.
4. Data integration and transformation: Unifying data from different sources (merging, joining) and ensuring it flows correctly into AI systems is critical for maintaining data consistency and accuracy.

What tools can organisations use to implement data transformation?

Once you understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of data transformation, the next step is ‘how’. 

In Singapore, 96% of business leaders agree that a strong data strategy is crucial, yet only 30% report having one integrated across their business. 

Bridging this gap in data readiness is critical to unlocking the power of AI — and the right tools make it simpler and easier to do so.

As the only data platform native to the #1 AI CRM, Salesforce’s Data Cloud allows ASEAN businesses to unify data without moving or duplicating it, thanks to its zero-copy architecture. With over 200 out-of-the-box connectors, Data Cloud simplifies the process of activating data in real-time — minimising complexity, reducing costs, and lowering both security and data cleanliness risks. This provides businesses with a comprehensive, up-to-date 360-degree view of each customer.

MuleSoft complements Data Cloud by seamlessly connecting systems and integrating data across departments, unlocking even more value from existing data and extending Data Cloud’s capabilities. Together, they empower businesses to derive actionable insights and deliver personalised customer experiences efficiently.

With Mulesoft and Salesforce’s Data Cloud for Marketing, Lotus’s — a major retailer in Thailand and Malaysia — was able to unify its data, eliminating duplicate records and halving the overall volume. This not only streamlined the data but also enriched the remaining records, making them more valuable for activation. As a result, Lotus’s gained a comprehensive view of its 9 million customers that could be activated directly in the flow of work.  

Tools like Agentforce and Prompt Builder make it possible to automate tasks, personalise workflows, and surface insights, unlocking new opportunities for informed decision-making and operational efficiency. The key to unlocking trusted, relevant responses from AI lies in unified data. By integrating data across departments, AI agents deliver accurate recommendations, efficiently route cases to representatives when necessary, and ensure faster resolutions — enhancing customer satisfaction while allowing service teams to focus on higher-value tasks. 

For example, Lion Parcel unified customer data from Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with external sources including warehouse data, to create an integrated view of operations and customer interactions. By segmenting its customer database, Lion Parcel can identify issues based on customer tier and automatically route cases to specialised agents. This approach has led to a 73% reduction in case resolution times. Additionally, by integrating generative AI with Salesforce, AI-powered chatbots now answer 90% of WhatsApp queries, significantly reducing service times and allowing service representatives to focus on more complex tasks.

Data security is a top priority in data transformation

As AI becomes integral to business operations, the need for strong data security becomes even more pressing. Businesses are increasingly focused on security, governance, and ethics as they explore new AI use cases and prepare for future advancements.

72% of business leaders in Singapore cite privacy and security concerns as a barrier to purchasing AI, while 92% agree that trust is critical when partnering with an AI vendor. This highlights the growing need for solutions that not only deliver powerful AI capabilities but also prioritise data protection.

The Einstein Trust Layer provides a robust set of features and guardrails that protect the privacy and security of your data while improving the safety and accuracy of AI results. Key safeguards include Secure Data Retrieval, which securely grounds AI prompts in business data, maintaining permissions and access controls, and Data Mask, which prevents sensitive information from being exposed or used for training AI models. This means businesses can use AI to ground results in real-time data while keeping that data secure. These protections build confidence in AI by addressing concerns over privacy, security, and ethics — critical for fostering trust in AI solutions.

Towards a data-driven future

To ensure successful and secure AI adoption, businesses must consider the following:

• Data quality: Ensuring data is clean, consistent, harmonised and accurate is essential for maximising the potential of generative AI. While 74% of organisations in Singapore are concerned about AI output quality, grounding it in well-maintained business data significantly improves results. 
• Documentation and version control: Keeping track of changes and updates to data.
• Testing and validation: Regularly testing AI systems to ensure they deliver the desired outcomes.
• Efficiency and scalability: Ensuring the data infrastructure can handle growth. 82% of organisations in Singapore believe that a CRM’s ability to perform and scale is important – even critical – when partnering with a CRM vendor.
• Data governance: Implementing policies and procedures to manage data securely.

By following these best practices, businesses across ASEAN can bridge the data strategy gap and unlock AI’s full potential.

Victor Setya, Vice President of Data at Tiket notes that: “As you mature in your data journey, you want to have trust and accuracy in the data so you can make the right decisions. Then, it is about how you can actually use your data to drive a competitive advantage.”

This focus on data maturity is echoed across ASEAN, where forward-thinking organisations are adopting cloud-based solutions and leveraging AI to turn vast amounts of data into actionable insights

As Yeap Yan Han, Head of Marketing, GXBank affirms: “What I’m really excited about, and looking forward to as our operation scales up and the volume of data continues to grow, is being able to make sense of all these data signals and grow our audience from 10 segments to possibly hundreds. We will then be able to anticipate customers’ next actions and deliver increasingly personalised offers.”

AI’s continued evolution will see data playing a crucial role in helping businesses stay ahead of the curve. Cloud-based solutions, such as Salesforce’s Data Cloud, will be central to this transformation, enabling businesses to unify and process data across systems.

Building a strong foundation for AI success

Data transformation is the foundation for any successful AI implementation. 

Businesses that prioritise data quality, security, and a well-structured data strategy will lead the way in the AI-driven future. 

To support your data transformation journey, we’ve put together Unlocking Opportunity in the Data and AI Revolution guide. With insights from 14 ASEAN business leaders, you’ll discover how to drive AI innovation and personalised experiences with connected data. 

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Read more

• The 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report: Key Trends Shaping APAC’s Digital Landscape
• AI Trends from Singapore and the World Reveal Keys to Success
• Meet Agentforce: A New Era of Humans with AI Agents

The post What is Data Transformation and How Can it Help ASEAN Unlock AI’s Potential? appeared first on Salesforce.

Crafting an excellent elevator pitch is an art. You need to be able to convey your message in an easy-to-understand way, and you need to be able to do it quickly to keep your audience engaged. It isn’t as easy as listing off benefits or reeling off a scripted sales pitch like Steve Jobs, who mastered product launches. 

You’ll have to build a connection and get people genuinely interested in what you have to say. If this all sounds pretty challenging, don’t worry. We’ve put together this complete guide to help you learn the ropes. I’ll also share 10 examples that you can use for inspiration. 

Plus, I’ll share some actionable tips and best practices to help you get started writing your own pitches.

How long should an elevator pitch be?

Let’s start by addressing the most asked question. How long should an elevator pitch be?

A general best practice is to aim for a 30-second elevator pitch, which is a rough estimate of how long an elevator ride may take, but this isn’t a rule. It all depends on who you’re pitching to and in what context, and it’s easier to begin practising through networking events, virtual networking, or even job searching (if you’re looking for a new job). 

For instance, if you’re pitching to a customer in a B2C setting, you’ll need to be snappy to keep them paying attention. However, in a B2B negotiation where a business is actively seeking services like yours, you likely have some leeway to expand on your messaging. 

That said, you should make your pitch no longer than it needs to be and maintain eye contact. The longer you spend explaining your idea, the higher the chance your audience will clock out and lose interest.

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What are the benefits of writing an elevator pitch?

Here are four compelling components of an elevator speech that should help you create an engaging elevator pitch.

• Make a strong first impression: Elevator pitches catch the audience’s attention quickly. They’re ideal for making a good first impression and showcasing personal branding.
• Increases your confidence: Learning how to concisely communicate your value proposition will improve your communication skills, and develop your confidence to speak about your ideas. 
• Shows your professionalism: An expert elevator pitch shows that you understand the value of your company and also respect your audience’s time. This demonstrates your professionalism. 
• Opens doors to new opportunities: Ultimately, an elevator pitch is an impactful way to get people on board with your idea. Do it right, and it can offer you greater opportunities.

How to write an elevator pitch?

Let’s get into the reason you’re here. Here’s everything you need to consider when crafting an elevator pitch. 

Note that we’ve provided one possible structure in this section, but there are many opportunities for variety. In the next section, we’ll also provide plenty of pitch examples to inspire you.
Experiencing writer’s block? Generative AI can help you draft and write a pitch for your audience in less time. You can then refine the AI content to ensure it’s a good fit for your product or service.

Step 1: Introduce yourself

State your name, what you do, and, if applicable, your company’s name and industry. This is the bare-bones context your audience will need to piece together your pitch. It will also make you more approachable and relatable.

You’ll need to tailor your introduction to the context. For investment pitches and business negotiations, keep it formal. For networking, pitching and social gatherings, you can afford to be more casual and open. 

You can even start with a joke to set the tone and keep things light. Just be sure to keep everything brief at this stage. You need to get to your primary point as quickly as possible.

Step 2: Convey your primary point

What’s your key message? Get your main point across quickly to prevent your audience from losing interest. 

We recommend using a problem-solution structure at this stage. Simply put, present a problem your audience is having. Then, explain how your business is the solution to that problem. For example:

“Small businesses in {{insert country name}} often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO knowledge. Our platform offers an all-in-one set of business tools for owners to build, optimise, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise.”

This is short, sweet, and to the point. The more clearly and concisely you can convey how you are the solution, the easier it is to keep a potential client engaged.

Step 3: Demonstrate your value

This is the kicker that sets you apart from other businesses or individuals. Why should your audience choose you over the competition? Offer a sentence or two that lays your value out in an easy-to-grasp way. Refining our example in step two, here’s what we came up with:

“Small businesses in {{insert country name}} often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO expertise. Our platform offers an all-in-one toolkit for small business owners to build, optimise, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise. Our fixed price includes free masterclasses from instructors, who will walk you through SEO best practices tailored to your business.”

In that extra sentence, you’ve explained to your audience why you’re different from every other SEO platform. Now you’re making your pitch interesting.

Step 4: End with an interesting finish

Now, it’s time to explain why your value proposition matters. This is your chance to turn curiosity into serious interest.

There are a few approaches to achieving this. You can tailor your pitch to the target audience, provide a personal story, or end with a real-world example. That said, a simple and focused approach is to end with a statistic that proves you get results. Let’s head back to our pitch and round it off with a stat. 

“Small businesses in Australia often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO expertise. Our platform offers an all-in-one toolkit for small business owners to build, optimise, develop keyword strategies, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise. Our fixed price includes free masterclasses from instructors who will walk you through SEO best practices tailored to your business. Our customers experience an average of 50% growth in organic traffic within their first 12 months on our platform.”

Step 5: Provide an action item

Depending on the context, you may need to finish up with an action item — something that convinces your audience to make a decision, ponder something, or act. 

The simplest approach is to use contact information and a call to action (CTA). Saying ‘contact me,’ ‘schedule a tour,’ or ‘watch a demo,’ for instance, offers the next step for your audience to take. You should also reiterate the benefit of your service to hammer the point home. 

Alternatively, you could choose to end with a question that provokes thought. For instance, you might ask how the audience intends to solve the problem they’re facing. 

Ultimately, the goal here is to make the audience want to find out more. That’s the ticket to landing that second conversation.

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Elevator pitch template and examples for businesses

When starting to create your own elevator pitch, the best place to start is with some examples for inspiration. 

Elevator pitches are versatile, and I’ve aimed to reflect that in these examples. Let’s start with professional settings and then move to more personal scenarios afterwards.

Example 1: A startup founder presenting their innovative idea to investors

Investors and leadership teams have heard it all before, so you need to get to the point and list the problem you’re solving and the solution you’re presenting. You should also include a stat to show why your business idea makes sense. 

“We’re {{insert company name}}, and we want to address the fear that consumers have when growing their own fresh produce at home. Our automated indoor garden contains smart sensors that adjust light, water, and nutrient levels automatically for every crop’s needs. As our product is a self-contained ecosystem, all crops can grow indoors regardless of climate. Our initial customers have reported that 97% of their planted crops succeeded. We’re the first of our kind and are ready to push our product to a global market. We’d love to have you on board for the next step of our journey.”

Example 2: A business representative delivering a sales pitch

With a sales pitch to customers, you need to directly address the pain points your consumers are facing. Demonstrate empathy and show you understand the problem. 

Prioritise benefits over features when delivering your product overview to make sure your pitch has a clear CTA, as prospects need to know what to do next. This will help to make sure that you’re selling your product right. For example:

“75% of men say they struggle to keep their hairstyle in the right shape throughout the day. It’s annoying and embarrassing when a gust of wind can ruin the look you’ve spent 20 minutes perfecting. At {{insert company name}}, we’re putting an end to that frustration. Our spray provides a rock-solid hold without weighing your hair down, meaning no stray hairs and no more wind ruining your day. And unlike other hairsprays, it contains only beneficial ingredients, which will leave your hair looking and feeling healthier. We can honestly say it’s the best hairspray on the market, and 82% of our customers agree. Here’s one of my business cards.”

Example 3: A recent graduate highlighting their skills and experience

Recent graduates should focus on presenting their skills, professional experiences, and knowledge. They should also demonstrate their enthusiasm for the industry and, where possible, reference a specific example that proves they’re a good fit for the organisation. 

“Hi, I’m {{inset name}}, a recent graduate with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I’ve spent the last year shadowing at {{insert country name’s}} premier marketing firm and helped the brand decrease its cost-per-lead by 27%. I’m seeking a position that will allow me to put my experience to work and reach my career goals. You’ll find my cover letter attached for your review.”

Example 4: A specialist providing a personal summary in a job interview

The dreaded ‘tell me about yourself question.’ As a job seeker with experience, you have more leeway to reference niche skills. As with all interview questions, you should lean into specific examples to prove your expertise to the potential employer. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ questions are open-ended questions that are aimed to get a response and test what you’re thinking off the top of your head.

“I’m {{insert name}}, a specialist in sustainability who has helped hundreds of businesses fine-tune their environmental initiatives to better align with customer values. I’m proud to say I helped reduce my last company’s carbon footprint by 35% in only a year. Now, I’d like to continue my career with a company that shares my ambitions for the environment. I’m confident I can add value to your organisation based on my recent successes in several green projects. If you’re ready to make a difference for our planet and your customers, I’m the professional that can get you there.”

Example 5: A seasoned professional pitching their services to a business

A good protocol here is to explain a problem a business is or may be having and then present yourself as the solution. This is especially powerful if you can back up your claim with your own research and data. 

“I noticed your competitors are outperforming your website when it comes to organic growth. I performed a competitor analysis of your top-performing keywords and found your most direct Australia competitor ranks for over 1000 additional words and phrases on Google. This presents a huge opportunity for your growth. I forecast we can increase organic traffic by 35% over the next 12 months, driving an additional 1,500 sales for you this year. Is this something you’d be interested in? If so, reach out, and I can talk you through my recommendations.”

30-second elevator pitch examples using different styles

Elevator pitches don’t have to be formulaic. There are plenty of opportunities to switch things up and inject your personality into your speech. Here are five elevator pitch examples with a twist that’ll help you win a new potential client.

Example 6: A humorous pitch

“Ever had a nightmare about your to-do list? I remember waking up in a cold sweat with a pencil in my hand to the sound of every email notification. Never again. I decided to build an AI-powered platform that would automatically optimise my calendar and prioritise the most important tasks. I’ve finally managed to get some of that mythical free time everyone keeps mentioning. Oh, and my nightmares are gone, too. If you want more sleep this year, too, I can show you a demo of how it works.”

Example 7: Playing on human emotions

“I struggled for years to prevent burnout on my team. I wanted to keep everyone happy at work without compromising on deadlines. And that’s a really hard balance to find sometimes. After finding nothing worthwhile on the market, I spent a few months building an incentive platform that would reward my employees with tangible benefits for good performance. I’m not talking about gift cards, either. I could instantly use positive client feedback to provide cash bonuses for my employees. I’ve seen a huge uptick in customer retention, but just as importantly, I’ve also managed to keep my employees secure and satisfied. I’m really proud of that.

Example 8: Leaning into statistics

“Are you aware that 72% of remote workers in {{country}} report experiencing loneliness since the pandemic? A further 35% say remote working has actively made socialising more difficult. And 22% have left a remote job simply due to the isolation. I created my platform to connect remote workers locally and fix this loneliness epidemic. We schedule local meetups to connect these individuals, and so far, we’ve helped 22,350 people across the country meet new friends for life through our initiative.”

Example 9: Drill the point home with repetition

“Did you know that people have an attention span of around 8 seconds? Just like I only have a few more seconds before you lose interest in my pitch, you, as a business, only have 8 seconds to capture attention in your blogs. That’s 8 seconds for a consumer to decide if they’re on board or jumping ship. No wonder most businesses get little to no conversions from their digital marketing. Fortunately, I can help with that.”

Example 10: Ask questions

“Ever worried that your team isn’t doing enough to manage customer relationships? I think every manager has experienced this at some point. But here’s something interesting. When we switched to customer relationship management software, we found that retention increased by 50%. It wasn’t the staff at all — it was a lack of organisation that was letting us down. Who knew? Have you ever tried something similar?”

Have these 10 elevator pitch templates helped you? If so, consider adding them to your project management software as a task for improvement or to your Slack Lists for easy access

12 effective elevator pitch tips

Let’s round things up with 12 fast tips to create and deliver an outstanding elevator speech.

• Edit and refine: Once you’ve written your pitch, see if you can trim it down. The more concisely you can convey your point, the better. 
• Make it relatable: Incorporate anecdotes, humour, or a customer story to make your pitch more authentic and memorable. 
• Practise: Speak your written pitch until you feel comfortable and confident. 
• Speak out loud: Remember to speak your written pitch to check for any language that doesn’t flow as you present. 
• Be friendly: The real way to win over your audience is to keep it light. Make eye contact, smile, and maintain open body language. 
• Consider your audience: Adapt your speech to your audience. Based on the context of your situation, make it more formal or casual. 
• Reduce the jargon: Don’t rely on technical jargon. You need your audience to understand your pitch. Make it easy to grasp. 
• Recording yourself: Optionally, you can also record yourself to see how your speech sounds to others. 
• Speak slowly: When it comes time to deliver the speech, slow down your speaking. It’ll make you look less nervous. 
• Don’t overwhelm: Remember, your goal is simply to secure a follow-up. Stick to the key points, and don’t overwhelm your audience.
• Listen: Remember that an elevator pitch needs to be a conversation. Listen to your audience and respond accordingly.
• Be passionate: If you want to convince your audience, you need to show them why they should care. Let your passion shine through.

Are you looking for real visual examples? You could also watch past episodes of Shark Tank Australia, Shark Tank India, or Shark Tank Global to learn from those who have pitched angel investors and VCs on national TV and practice how to create an effective elevator pitch.

Summing up

Elevator speeches can sometimes feel a bit daunting. As a content marketer, salesperson, or business owner, you’ll have so much to say to an audience that may or may not be interested. And you don’t have much time to do it. That’s why it’s so important to create the perfect elevator pitch and practise your speech to get it right. 

And when you do make the perfect elevator pitch, you’ll make a memorable first impression, foster better customer relationships, create buzz around your idea, and set yourself up for success. If you still feel too shy to give a pitch, then consider networking events that’ll allow you to practice selling your product.

Need help with a sales team pitch? Let Einstein AI provide insights to elevate your sales conversations, helping you tailor pitches that resonate better with your target audience. Start making each interaction count with Salesforce Einstein AI.

The post Elevator Pitch: What is it? 10 Standout Examples appeared first on Salesforce.

Over the years, Salesforce has continued to strengthen its commitment to helping both B2B and B2C commerce businesses build highly personalised and AI-powered customer experiences at scale.

Grow Revenue Everywhere.

Get Commerce Cloud

Why it matters: According to Gartner, the digital commerce platform market’s revenue grew by 11.5% in 2023 to $8.9 billion. While below pandemic-driven rates, growth is steady, and Gartner expects an increase over 2024 to 2025.

Commerce Cloud empowers B2B and B2C companies across a wide range of industries to power commerce everywhere, equipping brands with tools to accelerate growth and reach customers on any channel with:

• Proactive, autonomous agent applications that provide always-on support to merchants and customers. 
• Unified insights and data-driven actions that drive personalisation and boost efficiency. 
• Flexible and extensible commerce interactions at every touchpoint that drive growth.

Innovation in action: Salesforce recently announced three agents for Commerce Cloud — Merchant, Buyer, and Personal Shopper — designed to autonomously manage a range of tasks, including product recommendations and order lookup, without the need for direct human supervision.  

Humans with Agents Drive Customer Success Together.

Agentforce is here

Salesforce also recently acquired PredictSpring, a modern retail Point-of-Sale (POS) software vendor built natively in the cloud. PredictSpring will enable Salesforce to unify digital and physical commerce channels at a global scale and provide AI-powered shopping experiences to customers both online and offline. 

Salesforce perspective: “Businesses grow on Commerce Cloud because it delivers the agility and innovation customers need to scale their workforce and grow revenue across both digital and physical channels while building highly personalised customer experiences,” said Michael Affronti, General Manager of Commerce Cloud. “Today, Commerce Cloud unifies every element of ecommerce on a single, integrated platform powered by trusted data and agentic AI, helping companies fuel business success across digital and physical channels.”

Fast facts:

• Salesforce was recognised as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant report based on its “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute,” and was positioned furthest on Ability to Execute among all other vendors evaluated. 
• In the last year, Commerce Cloud unveiled Unified Commerce, Salesforce Foundations, and Agentforce for Commerce.

Customer perspective: 
According to Gartner® Peer Insights™, Salesforce customers are saying:

• Strong tool, nice SLA and support, leader on the market, allow to cover the full scope for ecommerce in one CMS.”
  • “Leader on the Market” (A Ecommerce Platform Manager from a 3B-10B USD Services company, giving the Salesforce B2C Commerce Platform 5/5 Rating)
• “Incredible experience. Connects all customer data to the account level which is what we need in a B2B world.”
  • “Modern B2B World: Interconnecting Shoppers to Account” (A CMO from a 500M – 1B USD Manufacturing company, giving the Salesforce B2B Commerce Platform 5/5 Rating)

Additional information:

• View a complimentary copy of the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce 
• Learn more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, 6 November 2024, Mike Lowndes, Sandy Shen, Aditya Vasudevan, and Jason Daigler.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant and Peer Insights are a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Appeared as Demandware in 2016 report. Demandware was acquired by Salesforce in 2016.

The post Salesforce Positioned as a Leader in 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce appeared first on Salesforce.

The mistake that many rookie web designers make is not realising that building a website takes time and effort. It isn’t a quick plug-and-play process. Getting started requires plenty of thought and a good bit of legwork.

The good news? After learning the basics of web design and development, anyone can create a great website that attracts customers and keeps them coming back for more. In our beginner’s guide, we’ll show you how to do just that using either a content management system (CMS) or a website builder.

What is website development?

Website development refers to the process of planning, building, designing, and maintaining a website for your business. The website development process is split into two main sections: front-end and back-end.

Back-end development (web development)

The back end is the server-side part of your website that your customers don’t see. It’s all about how the site functions, how fast your pages load, and how easy your site is to use. 

Backend web developers need to learn coding and generally how to make sure everything runs smoothly. This means being familiar with server-side languages like Python and Ruby on Rails.

Front-end development (web design)

The front end is the customer-facing part of your website. This encompasses the visual elements that help your customer navigate your pages, as well as the graphics, layouts, navigation, and content. It often involves using programming languages like JavaScript and HTML to create seamless menus that help users navigate through your pages. 

Front-end web developers have a lot in common with graphic designers. They spend a lot of time picking the perfect colour palettes, deciding on the best graphics and selecting legible fonts. They may also need to consider the words included on a page.

Why should I build a great website?

The world isn’t like it used to be. These days, customers aren’t content with visiting the first store they see and buying whatever’s sitting on the shelves. They want to do their own due diligence and find a business that aligns with their needs.

That’s why 81% of retail shoppers conduct online research before they visit a store. Your customers want to know what you offer, how you can help fix their problems, and how you stack up against the competition before they buy from your business. 

Creating a website lets all of these customers find you online. It helps you market to a global audience around the clock. It makes you look professional. And most importantly, it allows you to control the entire customer journey from lead generation to conversion and loyalty. 

However, it isn’t enough to buy a domain name and start uploading your products. Businesses create thousands of websites every day. If you actually want to stand out, you have to create a site that’s better than the rest. Consider these statistics:

• 94% of your customers’ first impressions will be based on your website design. 
• 89% of consumers will switch brands if they have a bad user experience.
• 42% will abandon a site if it functions poorly.

With so many websites online, consumers are spoiled for choice. So, to make sure they choose you, you need to focus on website personalisation and making your site easy to use. With that said, let’s get into the complete guide. Here’s how to create a website from scratch, step-by-step.

How to create a website?

If this is your first time building a website, we strongly recommend you opt for a CMS or website builder to streamline the process. Here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Plan your project

Before you pick a theme or write any code, you’ll need to define your project and understand what you want to achieve. Here’s what to do.

Defining the basics

First, work out all of the basic elements:

• Business essentials: Define what you offer, your unique value proposition, your mission, and your values.
• Stakeholders: Determine which key stakeholders will need to be involved in the web design process.
• Competition: Take the time to understand your competitors. These will be a valuable source of information, but you also need to understand how you can set yourself apart from the crowd.

Understanding your target audience

You need to understand your audience before you begin designing your website. Start gathering information and create an ideal buyer persona to build an understanding of your perfect customer. You can carry out surveys to gather insights directly, or explore your competition to identify opportunities. 

This knowledge will lay the foundation for everything from your website layout and graphics to font and colour scheme. The more details you know at this stage, the better.

Identifying your goals

Once you understand your audience and competition, define some goals that will underpin your development process. Here are some common objectives and what you’ll need to prioritise to achieve them.

• Generating leads: Create valuable content that people can download in exchange for email addresses or inquiries. 
• Growing organic traffic: Prioritise search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies to help visitors find your website online. 
• Improving product sales: Create enticing product pages and a seamless eCommerce website checkout process. 
• Improving brand image: Design a visually appealing website with first-class customer service options like live chat and FAQs.

Conducting keyword research

Search engine optimisation (SEO) will help you improve your website’s position in the search results, helping more people find you online. You should spend some time in this preliminary stage researching keywords that you can target within your content.

Using keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner, research your competitors to learn the words and phrases they’re ranking for. You can use this to create a list that you can refer back to when you begin writing content for your pages.

Considering the elements your site will need to include

Lastly, you should think about the elements your site will feature based on your goals, competitor research and understanding of your audience. Common sections include:

• Homepage.
• About Us page.
• Contact page.
• Blog page.
• Privacy Policy.
• Customer Portal.
• Product pages.
• Testimonials page.
• FAQs.
• Case studies.

Once you’ve decided on your ideal pages, your planning is complete. You should now have everything in place to begin building your site.

Step 2: Choose your website domain name

First, in the web development process, you need to think about your domain name. This is the URL that your customers will associate with your website. A great choice can communicate your professionalism and even help with your SEO efforts. Here are some tips.

1. Make it memorable: Don’t make your domain name too long. Two to four words are best. Also, try to make it catchy so it rolls off the tongue. 
2. Stick to words: Don’t include numbers or hyphens in your domain name, as these can make it harder for people to remember and type into a search bar. 
3. Make it relevant: Choose a domain name that aligns with your brand. It needs to resemble your brand’s core messaging and values closely. 
4. Think about SEO: Is there a keyword or meaning that you can include in your domain to boost your SEO efforts? While optional, this can help more customers find you online.

Got a few ideas in mind? Run them through a domain name checker to see if your choices are available. In addition, decide on an extension that aligns with your website. Using .com is the most popular choice, but you could also opt for .net, .store, .blog, or .org, depending on your brand.

Once that’s complete, you can register your domain with your chosen hosting provider and secure an SSL certificate. Most website builders will let you handle this entire process within their platform.

Expert tip: Avoid .io domains for the time being, as there is a chance that they might be removed from domain registrars.

Step 3: Choose your platform

Choosing the right website development software for your skill level will offer you just the right amount of control without becoming overwhelming. 

For the purposes of this guide, we won’t be diving into coding a website manually. If you’re a beginner in the world of web development, you may want to start with a web design agency that specialises in creating custom websites, as these tools require little to no technical skills. 

There are two primary options I’ll cover: content management systems (CMS) and website builders. Let’s break each down one by one.

Content management systems (CMS)

A CMS lets you build your website without writing extensive amounts of code. 

They’re designed to be more flexible than website builders but easier to learn than coding a website yourself. 

Beginners can choose a theme, add different sections, and upload extensions to customise their site. More experienced developers can access the back end and customise the functionality to suit their business needs. 

There are various options available to you when choosing your CMS. Here are five to consider:

When you choose a CMS, look for something that is easy to use and offers the right amount of customisation for your skill level. 
Expert tip: Note that when you select a CMS, you’ll also need to invest in a hosting plan with a hosting company, such as WordPress Hosting. This can either be a shared hosting plan (good for smaller websites) or a dedicated hosting plan (better for high-traffic sites that need more resources).

Website builders

Website builders are all-in-one tools that allow you to create websites with no coding experience. These out-of-the-box solutions are ideal for users who want to build functional websites fast without any web development know-how. 

However, these solutions have their limitations. They have fewer customisation options and are harder to make unique. With website builders, you have several options to choose from:

• Wix: Offers an intuitive UI, excellent web-store features, hundreds of templates, and easy customisation options. The best of the bunch when it comes to website builders. 
• Squarespace: Very aesthetic designs, options to use custom code, and an intuitive interface. Squarespace only has a premium plan — no freebies. 
• Hostinger: Offers an easy drag-and-drop interface and AI-powered recommendations. Also comes with Hostinger web hosting built-in. 
• Weebly: A very easy-to-use site builder with excellent uptime, but it lacks extensive customisation options.

Using an AI website builder is by far the easiest way to get your site up and running faster. However, with limited options for you to fine-tune your pages, you should weigh whether this is the best option versus a CMS.

Step 4: Build your site structure

A site map will help your users navigate around your website. It ensures every customer can get exactly where they need to go without frustration. 

Naturally, you’ll want to start with a homepage. Then, think about the different landing pages for your business website that you’d like your users to click on. A common navigation bar at the top of a homepage might include:

• An About Us page.
• A portfolio.
• Customer testimonials.
• A product directory.
• FAQs.
• A resources or blog directory.
• A ‘Meet the Team’ page.

From there, spend some time refining and optimising your navigation.

How to optimise navigational flow?

Here are some tips to make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site.

• Dropdowns: Use dropdown lists to ensure your pages are manageable. For instance, a ‘Meet the Team’ page could easily fit underneath the ‘About Us’ section. Your portfolio and customer testimonials could both fall under ‘Why Choose Us.’ If your site is too confusing to navigate, you’ll end up with a high bounce rate.
• Menu placement: Keep your navigation menus in the same place on every page so your users can navigate easily. A sticky menu is one of the easiest ways to achieve this. 
• Add a search function: Place a search bar to the top of your page so your visitors can search for what they’re looking for. This is a great choice if you have an extensive product list or content catalogue.
• Breadcrumbs: Add breadcrumbs (trails of links) to show users the hierarchy of the page they’re currently on. This allows customers to ‘backtrack’ to higher-level pages, aiding navigation and creating a better user experience.

At all times, think about how you can make your website provide users with the best possible experience. The more you know your audience, the easier it is to get in their shoes and figure out what they need from you and how you can provide it.

Step 5: Website design considerations

The design and development process will differ depending on your chosen platform. However, there are some essential considerations you should think about regardless of your chosen solution.

• Template: Choose a template in your chosen CMS or website builder that aligns with your sitemap, brand identity and style. Double-check the template works well on mobile. 
• Colour schemes: What colours will you use to convey your brand’s tone, voice, and messaging? Research colour theory and psychology to find a palette that aligns with your business ideas and audience. 
• Typography: Choose an interesting, engaging font that is easy to read. 
• Layout: How do you want each of your pages to look? Come up with a rudimentary design before you start building your pages in your chosen tool.

Through all of this, consider how your website will appear on mobiles. Mobile accounts for over 53% of traffic worldwide, so you need to keep this in mind as you choose your design elements.

Key features for your business website

While the web design process is unique to your business, you should consider implementing some of these core features:

Call to action (CTA): Include CTAs on every page. Depending on your business goals, this could be to get in touch, fill out a form, or download a piece of content. Either way, make sure it’s easy to find. 

Titles: Your headers should be easy to read and descriptive. They can be creative but don’t make them ambiguous. For a technical tip, make sure your headers are above the fold so your users can see them even when scrolling down the page. 

Contact information: What use is a website if your customers are unable to contact you? Include a contact form with all of your details so prospects can reach out to you.

Payment gateway: How will your audience pay for your products or services? 

Choose a payment processing provider that can accept different forms of payment. Then, consider how you’ll integrate this feature into your web pages.

Social media integration: Consider incorporating social media platforms into your website. Live social feeds, user-generated content, social media icon buttons, and even follow and share buttons on blog content are all exceptional ways to link your Facebook, Instagram and TikTok directly to your page. This can drive traffic on both sides of the equation.

Step 6: Creating content for your pages

High-quality content creation is vital for attracting customers. It will help you to engage your audience, convey your brand messaging, and guide your customers down your sales funnel. 

Your landing page content is the best place to start. What are the core messages you want to convey to your audience? You can look at your competitors for inspiration, but here are some additional tips:

• Keep it concise: You don’t want to overwhelm your prospective customers, so keep your text short and sweet.
• Use headers and subheaders: Break up long pieces of text with headings to boost readability. 
• Incorporate images and videos: Use videos and imagery to improve your site’s aesthetics while communicating core messaging faster. Just remember to optimise this media so it doesn’t ruin your site’s loading times.

As an aside, consider creating a handful of blogs. While blogging will be an ongoing part of your website journey, you’ll appreciate having some engaging content ready to upload when your site goes live.

Optimising your content for SEO

As we touched on earlier, SEO is one of the best ways to make sure your audience can find you online. We won’t get into the finer details of SEO in this guide, but here are a few best practices you need to know:

• Keywords: Conduct keyword research to identify the words and phrases your audience is using in search engines like Google. Then, incorporate these keywords naturally into your content. 
• Meta tags: Write meta titles and meta descriptions that accurately describe the contents of each page. 
• Images: Compress images to ensure your website loads quickly. Google PageSpeed Insights can help you find ways to improve. 
• Responsiveness: Make sure your website is optimised for every device. Test it on all devices, including tablets and mobiles. 
• Internal linking: Link to other areas of your site within each page’s content. This helps Google to understand the structure of your website.

SEO is a powerful tool that you can continuously improve over time. Keep it at the top of your mind as you design your site, and keep refining it long after your domain goes live.

Expert tip: You can use a project management tool like Slack Lists to help streamline your task management and improve team collaboration.

Step 7: Testing your website

Ready to launch your website? Test it first. There are potentially dozens of small errors and bugs that you won’t catch until you hit publish.

Here’s a simple website development checklist outlining all of the things you need to assess before launch:

• Make sure the website functions the same across all devices.
• Ensure the website works exactly the same on all browsers. 
• Make sure your UX and UI design looks as you intended. 
• Test all forms for proper submission. 
• Ensure fonts are consistent throughout. 
• Make sure the text is accurate and free of errors.
• Check that you’ve replaced all placeholder content. 
• Check all headers and text are properly sized. 
• Ensure your site’s security system is in place. 
• Verify all internal and external links work as intended. 
• Make sure the page loads as fast as you expect. 
• Check all pages have a meta title and description. 
• Install an SSL certificate. 
• Confirm HTTPS is working as expected. 
• Verify that error pages are functioning correctly.
• Check site performance under different traffic loads.
• Add alt text for all forms of media. 
• Create a full website backup.

Once you’ve completed that checklist, you’re ready to launch. Remember to submit your website to Google for indexing through Google Search Console.

5 quickfire tips for successful website development

Here are 5 tips for successful web development and design.

• User-centric design: Make your user the focus of every decision you make. They’ll be the ones that decide whether your website is the best of the bunch. 
• Clear navigation: The clearer your navigation, the easier it is for your customers to find exactly what they’re looking for.
• Fast loading times: If a customer can’t reach your page in a short space of time, they’ll leave. Optimise your site so it loads faster. 
• Regular updates: Post new blogs, articles, product listings, and more on your site regularly. This will keep people engaged and will also boost your SEO strategies. 
• Website accessibility: Make sure your site is accessible to everyone. Provide alt texts for images, allow keyboard navigation, and provide adequate colour contrast.

Web design Philippines example: Ayala Land

Image source: Ayala Land

Ayala Land’s image carousel is a brilliant way to incorporate several visuals and messages without overwhelming the user. The brand includes four core images and messages that automatically scroll on a short interval.

Image source: Ayala Land

You don’t always have to rely on keeping your brand messaging concise to deliver an impactful message. Employing creative web design tools lets you provide customers with all the necessary information without making your page too text-heavy.

Summing up

Building a compelling website isn’t a quick process. But with a bit of knowledge and the help of technology, you don’t need a degree to create something that keeps users coming back. 

Build your understanding of your audience, create a compelling layout, focus on the functionality, and let the design fall into place. Achieve all that, and you’ll create a site that attracts users and keeps them coming back for more.

How Salesforce Experience Cloud can help?

Salesforce Experience Cloud lets you build personalised sites, portals, and forums faster. With our platform, you can build custom experiences with code or clicks with our easy-to-use tools, custom templates, powerful AI models, and seamless app integrations. 

Here’s how you can use Experience Cloud to create a website that engages your customers and keeps them coming back over and over again.

1. Choose from our wide range of templates to start building your site. 
2. Select from hundreds of engaging themes and fully customise every pixel.
3. Add custom components and design your site with your own content. 
4. Connect your CRM solution to your site design to keep everything in one place.

Want to learn how our platform can help you design, optimise, and maintain your perfect website? Watch the Experience Cloud demo to find out what Salesforce can do for you today.

The post How to Develop a Website: The Complete Guide appeared first on Salesforce.

SWOT analysis is a management technique that helps companies identify their business’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In addition, SWOT stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. 

Regardless of industry or scale, SWOT analysis is a valuable tool for any organisation. The technique can even be applied to different sectors of the same organisation. 

From marketing to product development, it is a valuable tool for assessing a company’s current position in the market, understanding industry trends and outlining strategies for the future.

In this article, we will demystify SWOT analysis, making it a practical and straightforward tool for your business strategy. We’ll explain what it is, how to apply it, and, most importantly, how it can benefit your business. Let’s get started!

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What is SWOT Analysis?

As mentioned above, SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. Before we delve into these topics, it is worth noting that SWOT analysis is usually done as a matrix. This matrix is ​​divided into four quadrants, each representing an aspect of the SWOT analysis. 

Visually representing a SWOT matrix effectively summarises the information you’ve gathered and highlights key findings. Visualisation helps simplify the analysis, making it easier to understand and share with others. 

The SWOT matrix presents information clearly and concisely, making it easier to remember and discuss. Its visual format helps identify patterns and trends, facilitating informed decision-making.

Finally, the matrix is ​​usually organised in a specific pattern, following this logic:

• Above: internal elements of the organisation (Strengths and Weaknesses)
• Left: positive elements (Strengths and Opportunities)
• Below: external elements (Opportunities and Threats)
• Right: Negative elements (Weaknesses and Threats)

Now that we understand how the matrix is organised let’s explore what belongs in each quadrant of your SWOT analysis.

• Strengths: These are your company’s strengths, that is, what it does well and can use to stand out in the market. Examples include fast delivery, talented professionals, experience serving large clients, or a specific niche.  
• Opportunities:  These are external factors that could benefit your business. Examples include new technologies, unexplored market niches, emerging consumer demands, or the launch of new social media platforms.
• Weaknesses: Everything your company needs to improve to remain competitive in the market, such as an unmotivated or inexperienced team, high prices, inefficient processes, or a bad reputation. 
• Threats: These are market trends, which are shifts in the market that can harm the company, and competitive threats, which are challenges posed by other companies. Examples include economic instability, high competition, or changes in legislation.

What benefits does SWOT analysis bring to a business?

SWOT analysis is a widely used tool to assess the strategic position of a company, organisation or project.

With this analysis, strategies can be defined to maximise strengths, minimise weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities and face threats.

Let’s look at some benefits of using SWOT analysis in different scenarios and applications:

Identifying the company’s strengths and weaknesses:

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses requires thoughtful reflection. When conducting a SWOT analysis, set aside dedicated time to carefully consider these aspects of your business or project.

An example of a strength could be the quality of your products and the efficiency of your processes. Try to base your analysis on real evidence rather than intuition. Quality recognition seals, success rates, and customer feedback are essential indicators that accurately identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Read more: Customer Focus: 6 tips and strategies!

Market and competition assessment

Likewise, SWOT analysis also allows you to identify market opportunities and competitive threats, such as new consumer trends, regulatory changes, entry of new competitors, and other variables that may affect your business.

Take the boom in AI-based applications like ChatGPT, for example. Using this new technology is a huge opportunity for various industries, from healthcare to data science. On the other hand, your competition will also be looking to stand out and become a threat. 

Definition of strategies

SWOT analysis enables you to define strategies that maximise strengths, minimise weaknesses, capitalise on opportunities, and address identified threats.

Strategy definition is the core purpose of SWOT analysis. The true value lies not just in identifying weaknesses but in developing solutions to address them while leveraging strengths and opportunities.

Clear and objective communication

To include several points in the SWOT matrix, it’s necessary to synthesise a lot of complex information. Things on paper like “unmotivated team” can give rise to countless explanations, but with the SWOT analysis, you and your team must identify the actual problem, making communication with the company’s partners, other employees, investors, and customers easier.

Read more: 9 Sales KPIs Every Sales Team Should Be Tracking

How to do a SWOT analysis?

Now that you understand the main advantages of SWOT analysis, it’s time to apply it. Start by clearly defining your objective. Are you aiming to reposition your brand, launch a new product, or run a marketing campaign?

Once you’ve set your goal, invite relevant team members to a meeting. Choose participants based on your objective to ensure productive collaboration. For example, a marketing team member might be crucial when discussing a product launch, while a developer may offer less insight for an influencer campaign.

While SWOT analyses are typically conducted in group settings, they can also be performed effectively by individuals. The individual approach trades diverse perspectives for deeper, more focused insights. This method allows for more detailed exploration of ideas, though it lacks the benefit of multiple viewpoints.

The SWOT analysis typically takes a few hours but may extend to a full day for complex topics. Prepare necessary materials for note-taking and brainstorming. Use whiteboards, paper, pens, and sticky notes, or digital tools like Miro for remote teams.

After gathering all points, evaluate the collected information and identify key factors for strategy and decision-making. Prioritise these factors based on their importance to the company or project.

Use the analysis results to develop business strategies, marketing plans, and other strategic documents. Review and update the SWOT analysis regularly to stay informed about market changes and internal conditions.

Read more: How to create a sales plan

SWOT Analysis Example

To make this content more educational, we have prepared an example of a SWOT Analysis that can serve as a model for you. Let’s imagine that we are a company focused on the B2B market, which sells personalised gifts for employees and events. In this sense, we must consider and analyse our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Tips for getting your SWOT analysis off the ground

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool, but it is only helpful if the company knows how to analyse and put the information you have gathered and put on paper into practice. To leverage the full potential of your SWOT analysis, incorporate these proven techniques into your strategic planning process:

1. Prioritise strategies: Prioritise strategies by identifying the most crucial actions for your business. Consider starting with easily achievable goals or focusing on high-impact initiatives. Engage your team in a thoughtful discussion to create a well-reasoned priority list.
2. Set goals and objectives: Ensure that your goals and objectives align with the company’s mission and vision.
3. Develop an action plan: Break down your goals into manageable steps. Figure out who’s best suited to handle each part and put them in charge.
4. Monitor and evaluate progress: Implement regular reviews to assess the execution of your action plan. Analyse key performance indicators and milestones achieved. Based on these assessments, make timely adjustments to strategies and tactics as needed. 

Read more:  Project Management: Your Comprehensive Guide

Practical Applications of SWOT Analysis

Now that you’ve learned about SWOT Analysis, you might be wondering how to put it to use. Let’s explore some ways to use this technique:

Business strategy development

SWOT analysis is widely used for developing business strategies as it helps organisations identify their strengths and weaknesses. 

Examples:

An online retailer can use SWOT analysis to spot opportunities for expanding into growing product categories while assessing and mitigating competitive risks.

A construction firm might discover a trend of project delays through customer feedback. Using this insight, the company can explore new project management methods or introduce employee incentives to boost productivity.

Marketing planning

By using SWOT analysis to create a marketing plan, you can assess your company’s positioning in relation to the market and its competitors. By using SWOT analysis to assess market trends and identify customer preferences, a company can develop a marketing strategy that delivers results.

Examples:

A fashion brand notices its customers are increasingly interested in conscious consumption and sustainability. By leveraging this insight, the company can craft marketing messages that resonate with these values, potentially boosting product appeal and sales.

When launching a new app for teenagers and young adults, a development company identifies an opportunity to focus its marketing campaign on TikTok and Instagram, platforms popular with its target audience.

Project management

SWOT analysis enhances project management by allowing teams to assess their resources and capabilities against project requirements. This process helps identify and minimise risks, ultimately leading to more effective project execution and better outcomes.

Examples:
A consulting firm identified its team’s skills and knowledge in relation to the project requirements. With this information, tasks were assigned, and an action plan was defined according to each member’s capabilities, increasing the effectiveness and quality of deliverables.

An engineering firm can use SWOT analysis to assess its resources relative to a specific project, considering factors such as time and budget. From there, it can develop a project management plan that takes into account the challenges identified.

Performance evaluation

Another way to use SWOT analysis is to assess a company’s performance in relation to its goals and objectives. By doing this, the company can identify which areas are successful and which need more attention and effort.

SWOT Examples:

A retail company can use SWOT analysis to evaluate store performance across Australia and New Zealand. This helps identify successful stores and those needing improvement. The company can then replicate effective strategies or investigate regional factors affecting poor performance.

A healthcare company can use SWOT analysis to assess its disease prevention programs. This approach highlights successful areas and those needing improvement, helping to enhance overall program effectiveness.

Read more: 10 Essential Skills Every Sales Manager Needs in 2024

Did you enjoy learning more about SWOT Analysis?

SWOT analysis is a simple and effective tool that can help businesses of all types and sizes stay competitive and achieve their goals.

By identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can develop informed business strategies and make better decisions across all business areas.

To perform a SWOT analysis, it’s important to follow the correct steps and ensure that the SWOT matrix is carefully analysed and implemented.

With SWOT analysis as part of their strategic planning, companies can position themselves for long-term success.

Our blog and Resource Centre are always up to date with news and content about CRM, marketing, and sales.

Below, we suggest other readings that may be useful to you:

• Personalisation in Online Sales
• Sales Report: How to Create One and Examples
• The Sales Process: Your Ultimate Guide

Take the opportunity to check out all the features of Sales Cloud and understand how our CRM can transform your sales routine. Good luck, and see you next time!

The post SWOT Analysis: The Guide to Doing It Right appeared first on Salesforce.

Dropshipping is an eCommerce method that lets you sell your products to customers without keeping any in stock. How? The business accepts customer orders and then forwards all the details to a dropshipping supplier. That supplier then packs the product and ships it straight to the customer.

Though the exact details can vary depending on the third parties you work with, dropshipping websites allow eCommerce companies and startups to outsource much of the fulfilment stages of a customer experience.

Dropshipping introduces a middleman who will handle order fulfilment on your behalf. They’ll keep the product in stock year-round, wrap it up when required, and handle the shipment for a fee. Some dropshipping suppliers will even handle custom orders, such as printing a custom graphic on a plain white or black tee when a customer requests it.

You can use dropshipping partners to handle everything from producing the goods you sell to storing them, shipping them to a specific region, and then handling the “last mile” delivery to each customer.

Becoming a drop shipper means you won’t need to invest in warehouse space. There’s also no risk you’ll have excess unsold stock if that product launch doesn’t go quite as you’d hoped. Let’s take a look at those benefits through the magnifying glass.

Running an eCommerce business often involves wearing many hats — from product development to marketing and service — and dropshipping is one way to let someone else wear a few of them on your behalf.

What’s the difference between dropshipping and affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is another retail model that earns commissions by promoting another business’s products or services. 

For instance, you’ll receive a unique product link you promote through your website, advertisements, or social media posts. Whenever someone clicks on your link, you’ll earn a small commission. 

Affiliate marketing has an even lower barrier to entry than drop shipping. You don’t need business knowledge, branding ideas, or domain names. 

However, the profit margins are smaller since you need to source products, manage shipping times, or sell online directly to customers. If you want the full experience of running an eCommerce business, including managing product sourcing and shipping, without the upfront costs, dropshipping is a better option.

How dropshipping works: step by step

Let’s walk through a typical dropshipping process one step at a time.

Step 1: Work with a dropshipping supplier

First, find a dropshipping supplier that stocks the products you’re looking to market. Once you contact them and reach an agreement, they’ll keep the products in their warehouse, handle packaging, and ship to your customers whenever they make an order. 

Step 2: Build your brand

Once you know the products you’re selling online and have a partner to handle logistics, all that’s left to do is build your brand. Build an online dropshipping store, a business name, a logo, and key brand messaging to differentiate from your competitors. Then, market your new business to build your brand and start selling products. 

Step 3: Receive orders

Receiving orders works as you’d expect. A customer visits your website and clicks to buy online. They checkout, pay and receive an order confirmation. As far as they know, the stock comes directly from your online business to them.

Step 4: The supplier handles the rest

Next, forward the order details to your dropshipping supplier. They’ll handle all of the details, package your product with custom branding, and ship the order to your customer’s location. 

Step 5: You gain a happy customer

Lastly, the customer will receive their product. If all goes well, you’ve just gained a happy customer. If it doesn’t, your drop shipping partner will handle customer service.

Dropshipping benefits for eCommerce entrepreneurs

Given the increased use of digital channels for shopping and the business opportunity it represents, dropshipping can be a way to level the playing field and allow smaller players to act more like a large enterprise.

Instead of owning and operating their own warehouse, for example, dropshipping allows entrepreneurs to have help managing their inventory. There’s no need to invest in a fleet of trucks and hire drivers or become an expert in shipping products to various countries. This offers many advantages, like:

Lower startup costs

Dropshipping is the great equaliser. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an established enterprise or launching an online store for the first time. You don’t actually buy your own inventory, meaning there’s less of an initial investment. You can even run your dropshipping business model from home. All you need is an eCommerce website. As a plus, you’ll also keep low overheads, potentially increasing profit margins over time. 

Scalability and flexibility

Dropshipping is a common tactic for eCommerce, where products are sold through large online marketplaces such as Amazon and Etsy to make it easy to start an online store. However, it’s not the only option.

As a seller of record, you can also form direct relationships with manufacturers who will drop ship your wares and produce them. Then, some wholesalers might purchase your products, mark them up, and drop ship them to other retailers.

Global reach

One common roadblock for small businesses is getting products overseas. Selling to your local clientele is one thing; selling to a customer halfway around the world is much more logistically complex. 

Dropshipping gives businesses a global reach, allowing them to sell worldwide without jumping through logistical hoops. Dropshipping companies are only limited by the quality of their brand and products rather than their geographical and economic circumstances. 

Time to focus on other high-value tasks

Best of all, dropshipping may make it easier to focus on areas of the customer experience that require greater attention and creativity. This includes the brand image you’re trying to develop, the channels you use to tell stories about your products, and the time you spend addressing customer questions and complaints through customer service.

What are the challenges of dropshipping?

Every retail model has its pros and cons. Despite the benefits, dropshipping does have some notable challenges. Let’s walk through some of the cons of dropshipping now. 

Loss of control over the supply logistics and product quality

If you outsource your manufacturing, custom packaging, and shipping to a dropshipping supplier, you’re putting a lot of trust in that business. If there’s a problem, you can’t address it as quickly as if it were your own logistical network. 

If your supplier isn’t performing well, you’re in a tight spot. Either you cut ties and risk your temporarily discontinued product going off the market, or you risk losing customers and tarnishing your brand reputation. 

High competition leads to low profit margins

The beauty of starting a dropshipping business is that it’s so accessible. Anyone can do it, and many people will. Unfortunately, that also means there’s lots of competition. 

Many businesses attempt to undercut competitors’ pricing to stand out. This inevitably leads to lower profit margins, making growing more difficult. 

Building your brand

Carving out a brand identity is essential for customer loyalty. But this can be harder when you sell third-party products. For instance, it’s more challenging to assure quality and promise excellent service every time. In short, it’s harder to be consistent. And if your customer expectations demand consistency, retaining them can be tougher if quality dips or service falters.

Dropshipping best practices 

The good news is that these drawbacks are avoidable, provided you implement best practices. 

1. Choose the right niche

The dropshipping market is saturated. Do some competitor research and take the time to choose the right niche. You ideally need a market that isn’t overly competitive. There has to be room to get your foot in the door. Equally, you should choose a segment that you’re genuinely passionate about. 

2. Partner with a reliable supplier

Choose your supplier carefully. Don’t just opt for the partner that offers the cheapest rates or the best package deal. Be diligent and shop around carefully. Search for a supplier that is reputable, communicative, transparent, and, above all, committed to creating a quality product. 

3. Differentiate yourself in other ways

Price isn’t the only way to differentiate your product. Incorporate branding so consumers have something tangible to associate with your products. Commit heavily to customer service. 

Create intelligent or humorous marketing campaigns that make your brand memorable. The more you can do to stand out and build a strong brand identity, the better your chances of carving out market share. 

4. Take the blame

Authenticity goes a long way toward promoting customer loyalty. If your customers complain about missing items or poor service, own it and tell them how you will fix it. 

5. Track performance and improve

Use data analytics to improve your business strategy regularly. Learn more about your target audience, monitor KPIs, and track the competition. The more you start understanding customer habits through market research, the easier you’ll be able to work your way to the top of your niche.

Print-on-demand dropshipping in The Philippines: Prodigi

To reveal just how advanced dropshipping can be, let’s take a closer look at Prodigi, the Philippines’ print-on-demand brand. 

Dropshipping products have a reputation for needing to be more inspired and generic. However, brands like Prodigi change that narrative by allowing businesses to start selling custom on-demand products without stocking any inventory.

Prodigi’s online store contains over half a million print-on-demand products, including canvases, clothing, mugs, phone cases, and stationery. The platform allows businesses to choose from these products and upload their own designs, such as artwork and prints.

Image source: Prodigi

Then, the entrepreneur can sell these prints and products in their shop. When a customer places an order, Prodigi will create the custom end product you sell and ship it directly to the customer.

This effectively allows businesses to create branded products and unique garments without all of the upfront inventory costs. Prodigi also sets itself apart by promising quality, sustainability, and excellent customer service — three common concerns of the tentative drop shipper. 

Most businesses think that a dropshipping model implies a need for more personality and brand identity. But the truth is that it’s entirely possible to create custom products and merchandise without stocking them in your own warehouse. 

Key considerations for Choosing a dropshipping partner

If you’re seriously considering getting started with dropshipping to launch and scale your eCommerce operation, thoroughly vet your partners. Some of the areas to consider and explore include:

Flexibility

Many dropshipping websites have been developed with maximum efficiency in mind. That could mean there are limitations on how your products can be handled regarding packaging or other aspects of eCommerce fulfilment. As a result, you may want to think harder about how you’ll differentiate your brand in different areas.

Visibility

Even though you’re outsourcing as part of a dropshipping arrangement, your customers will consider you accountable for every process step. Talk to your dropshipping partner about the extent to which you’ll be able to see inventory levels for products to sell and ensure customers don’t order out-of-stock items.

Integration

Sharing data about customer orders should be seamless and allow you to continue optimising other aspects of the customer experience. Make sure you can connect your CRM to whatever the dropshipping service has in terms of a tech stack.

Promotions

Though no one wants to compete solely on price, eCommerce customers tend to respond well to special discounts and other offers. Before you can do that, though, make sure your dropshipping partners will allow you to extend free shipping for a limited time or to create themed product bundles.

Quality of Service (QoS)

If a product arrives broken or even with the package dented, it can detract from your brand’s experience and perception. Discuss the dropshipping partner’s controls and safeguards to ensure quality is prioritised throughout the fulfilment process.

Safety

In light of recent events, many customers will look for contactless options when products are delivered to their doors. Your dropshipping partner should be well-equipped with scanners or apps that remove the friction from signing off on a delivery.

Exchanges and returns

Whether you like it or not, customers who order via eCommerce platforms will need to return items. Ask about any costs you’ll incur as part of returns, how quickly exchanges can be handled, and how best to connect all the relevant data to your customer service applications.

Summing up

In some respects, dropshipping involves making trade-offs in the degree of control you have over areas like fulfilment and the speed at which you can grow your business.

If you have significant capital to work with, for instance, it may be better to create your own fulfilment operations so you can find ways to innovate in how customers receive their products.

You’ll also want to consider your goals in terms of profit margin. Products offered via dropshipping are often priced low to move larger volumes of orders. When you use a CRM well, this becomes easier because you can begin to forecast sales accurately.

At the same time, using dropshipping at the outset could mean you develop a brand with unique attributes that set you apart in the market. Once you reach a certain level of growth, you may be more prepared to deal with the complexity of supply chain management and inventory issues.

Remember that customers ultimately turn to eCommerce to enjoy a well-developed digital experience. You need to deliver, whether you opt for dropshipping or tackling fulfilment yourself.

Looking for a way to streamline your dropshipping operations? Salesforce Order Management helps you track orders, manage inventory, and automate fulfilment across multiple vendors for seamless eCommerce success.

The post Dropshipping: What is it and How to Get Started? appeared first on Salesforce.

A proforma invoice is a way for the buyer to show the seller how much they’ll need to pay once they receive their goods or services. They’re typically used when a buyer has confirmed the sale, but there are still a few details to iron out, such as quantity, materials, or delivery date. 

Businesses use proforma invoices between the confirmation of the sale and the point when the transaction actually takes place. They act as a gesture of good faith so the buyer knows exactly what to expect when they receive their final sales invoice. 

Proforma invoices look very similar to a standard conventional invoice, but there are several points of difference to consider that can impact the invoicing process. Let’s explore this in greater detail.

Proforma vs commercial invoices

The easiest way to understand a proforma invoice is to examine how it differs from the regular invoices you’re already familiar with. Here are four essential differences:

As you can see, proforma invoices aren’t a formal request for payment and don’t have any legal backing. They exist primarily to ensure the seller and the buyer are on the same page about the upcoming transaction. They also act as a gesture of good faith, giving the buyer confidence there are no hidden costs.

Quotes vs proforma invoices 

The difference between proforma invoices and quotes is a little more nuanced. On the surface, they look incredibly similar. Both come early in the sales process, neither are legally binding, and each provides an estimated total cost. However, there are some important distinctions.

A quote (or estimate) is a ballpark cost provided by the seller to the buyer. It is a preliminary document provided during the procurement process to help the buyer decide whether they want to buy from a business. 

In contrast, when a business sends a proforma invoice, the buyer has typically already confirmed they intend to buy the product or service. These invoices are more clearly defined and outline the final terms of a sale rather than just offering a ballpark estimate of costs.

A proforma invoice is more formal and definitive than a quote. They’re a way for business owners to formally outline the costs a buyer should anticipate without legally obligating them to pay. 

What is the difference between a proforma invoice and a Bill of Lading?

Important distinctions exist between a proforma invoice and a bill of lading that are essential for efficient business transactions. I’ve created this table below to help simply their key differences and roles in the shipping and invoicing processes.

When to use a proforma invoice?

At this stage, you might be wondering why it’s worth sending a proforma invoice at all. Aren’t they just a combination of a quote and a commercial invoice?

That’s partially true, but proforma invoices have important use cases that can help you when running your business. Here are some scenarios to consider:

• Internal purchase approval: Proforma invoices show the buyer the cost of goods or services in advance, allowing them to budget for the expense.
• Pre-payment agreements: While not legally binding, proforma invoices are more defined than quotes, making them useful for customers evaluating different businesses. 
• International trade: Proforma invoices are often required for clearing goods in international shipping due to their clear statement of estimated costs.

What are the benefits of a proforma invoice?

Why incorporate proforma invoices into the sales process at all? Let’s take a look. 

1. Clarification

Sending a proforma invoice ensures you and your customer are on the same page about the service you’re providing and the price to pay. This gives them confidence in the purchase and allows them to budget for the expense. 

2. Informal agreement

While a proforma invoice isn’t legally binding, it does act as a good-faith agreement between you and your buyer. This prevents the deal from ‘going cold’, making it more likely you’ll finalise the sale. It will also help to avoid disputes surrounding costs when the final invoice arrives. 

3. International clearance

Banks and government agencies typically require proforma invoices when attempting to ship goods across borders. They’re advantageous when securing export licences or obtaining trade finance. 

4. Showing professionalism

Aside from these benefits, a proforma invoice shows your customers that you’re professional and trustworthy. They’ll appreciate the fact you aren’t keeping your cards close to your chest, helping with customer loyalty. 

How to label a proforma invoice?

The proforma invoice should be clearly labelled to distinguish it from a conventional invoice. Customising your invoice with accurate details ensures transparency and avoids confusion during the transaction process.

• Date of issue: List the date when you issued the invoice. Note the proforma invoice doesn’t require a payment due date. 
• Seller details: The proforma invoice includes the details of the seller, like the company name and address, plus contact information. 
• Buyer details: The proforma invoice also needs to include all necessary buyer information. 
• Description of goods/services: Briefly outline the product or services you’re providing. 
• Total amount due: If you have a final cost, include it. If not, provide an accurate estimate for the buyer’s review. 
• Shipping costs: If applicable, list the shipping costs the buyer will pay for their order. 
• Payment terms: When the final invoice arrives, how will the buyer pay you? Including these details will help with the buyer’s preparations. 
• Terms and conditions: Include any TOCs, such as a validity period, delivery terms, currency requirements, cancellation policies, and applicable taxes.

If there are any details you can’t yet clarify, don’t worry. You’ll have the chance to negotiate any remaining details with the seller and fill in the blanks before you send your final commercial invoice. 

Remember to clearly label your document as a proforma invoice. As the proforma invoice looks deceptively similar to a conventional invoice, it’s important to distinguish between the two to avoid confusion. 

What about invoice numbers? 

A proforma invoice should not have an official invoice number — you won’t want it to get mixed up with your commercial invoices.

However, you should include some form of reference number so it’s easy for you and your customer to retrieve it if needed.

How to create a proforma invoice?

Now that you understand the essential components of a proforma invoice let’s walk through the process of creating one step by step.

Step 1: Work out the details 

Before you create a proforma invoice, you’ll need to understand the costs of your product or service. Estimate everything your committed buyer will need to pay, factoring in additional costs and fees. 

You should also determine any terms and conditions you’d like to present to your buyer at this preliminary stage. While you won’t have all the details on hand, the more accurate and clear you can be at this point, the better. 

Step 2: Include all key components 

Using a proforma invoice template or even a standard invoice template is the easiest way to start creating your proforma invoice.

From there, you can fill in all essential details, such as the issue date, contact details, product/service specifications, and cost. If you’re creating your proforma invoice to export your products, you should also specify the country where your goods were manufactured. 

Remember to specify that this is a proforma invoice rather than a formal commercial invoice. You should also specify that the invoice isn’t a tax document for the same reason. 

Step 3: Add terms and conditions

Add any additional terms that your buyer should be aware of. For example, you may like to include a validity period for the invoice. You can also specify how the buyer will need to pay and their rights if you fail to deliver within a certain timeframe. Lastly, include a cancellation policy. 

Step 4: Send the invoice and negotiate

Remember that the proforma invoice isn’t set in stone. Once you’ve sent it, be open to negotiation with your buyer. This is the best chance to work through any remaining details and ensure the transaction goes smoothly. 

What are the different types of proforma invoices?

There are three main types of proforma invoices that business owners can leverage to enhance transaction efficiency, clarify billing expectations, and improve client communication. These include the following:

It’s important to note that various proforma invoices are tailored for specific purposes, such as freight forwarding, customs, project work, down payments, estimates, and quotes. I’ve included the three most common proforma invoices in the table above to help keep things simple.

Proforma invoice templates

Below, I’m sharing three of the most commonly used proforma invoice templates for sales, services, and recurring revenue:

1. Standard proforma invoice template for the Philipines, Singapore, and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number).
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number).
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN.

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code][City, State, Postal Code]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST/VAT/SST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

2. Standard proforma invoice template for the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number)
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number)
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

3. Recurring revenue proforma invoice (SaaS) template for the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (Varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number)
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number)
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

What are the best practices for using proforma invoices?

Proforma invoicing is rather straightforward once you get the hang of it. Still, it’s important to keep a few things in mind while you’re getting started:

Clarity and accuracy

Proforma invoices may not be final, but it’s essential to be precise. This is your opportunity to give your buyer confidence in your business — if your final bill is too different to your proforma invoice, they may feel short-changed. Include all of the details you have available and try to get your costs as close to actual as possible. 

Negotiation

Equally, you should be willing to negotiate. Based on your buyer’s feedback, be prepared to adjust pricing, shipping costs, delivery dates, and any additional terms and conditions. Here are some tips for negotiating when using proforma invoices.

• Itemise your prices: Break down costs in your proforma invoice so your buyer can easily see exactly what they’re paying for. This lets your customer negotiate specific aspects of the costs rather than the entire service. 
• Keep it efficient: Don’t waste too much time negotiating if it isn’t in your best interests. If your buyer isn’t happy with the price and isn’t open to compromises, ask yourself whether they’re really interested in the service you’re offering. If not, you may be spending too much time on a cold lead. 
• Ask for a deposit: Buyers often negotiate payment plans for large projects rather than paying everything upfront. This is usually acceptable for most businesses, but you should request an upfront deposit to minimise risks. 
• Bundling additional services: One simple way to streamline the negotiation stage is to offer complementary services. You can use this to add financial value to your offering and boost customer satisfaction without compromising the price of your goods or services.

Conversion to final invoice

Converting your proforma invoice to a formal invoice is straightforward. Remember to add an invoice number and specify a due date for payment. You’ll also need to detail any regulations, rules, and TOCs you left out of the proforma document. 

If you’ve changed any details, such as the final cost, it’s important to inform your buyer to avoid any unwelcome surprises. 

Technology and proforma invoices

Some businesses ignore proforma invoices because they think the process takes too long. But this is no longer the case. 

You no longer necessarily need an accountant or bookkeeper to arrange your proforma invoices. Invoicing software simplifies the process and lets you create accurate, professional documents using predefined templates. 

This means you won’t need to waste your working day manually creating fields and tediously inputting data. You can simply find the ideal template, fill it out with your information, and export it to send. The software will also catalogue all of your documents so you can easily find them at a later date.

Invoicing and accounting software will also sync with your CRM software. This means you can bill customers directly from your CRM interface, allowing you to control the entire customer journey from lead generation to conversion. 

With Salesforce, you can integrate invoicing software directly into our CRM platform. This streamlines your sales funnel, meaning you can take customers from brand awareness to the point of sale and beyond with complete visibility over the entire journey. 

Summing up

Proforma invoices are an easy way to keep your customer in the loop before finalising the transaction details. They alleviate doubt, instil confidence in your potential buyer, and increase the likelihood that they’ll see the sales process through to the end. 

The best part about proforma invoices is that they’re easy to set up with the right invoice software. And when you link that software with your CRM, invoicing will become a seamless part of your sales pipeline. 

Salesforce can help you manage the entire sales process from start to finish. Our AI-driven platform links all of your data and each of your teams in one place, giving you a 360 view of the customer journey. With thousands of apps that integrate seamlessly into our platform, you can guide customers to the point of sale and create effective invoices that get you paid on time. 

Ready to simplify your invoicing process? Salesforce CPQ streamlines the quoting process, enabling sales teams to quickly generate accurate quotes and proforma invoices. With Salesforce CPQ, you can configure products, set pricing, and create professional-looking quotes, ensuring consistency and reducing manual errors in invoicing. 

FAQs

When should I send a proforma invoice?

Unless your buyer requests it earlier, you should send the proforma invoice you’ve agreed on for the final price — typically after the quote but before the final invoice. You can also send out a proforma document as part of your export documentation for customs purposes. 

Is a proforma invoice a legally binding agreement?

Proforma invoices are not legal documents, which is why it’s important to label them correctly. You don’t want your buyer to think you’re demanding payment and that they’re legally obliged to act on the proforma invoice. This could cause unnecessary confusion. 

Can a proforma invoice be cancelled?

Yes. A proforma invoice isn’t legally binding, and it can be cancelled at any time. If your buyer backs out of the deal, there’s no need to take action to edit the invoice or cancel it. 

Can I use a proforma invoice for tax purposes?

You can’t use a proforma invoice for tax purposes as it isn’t considered an official sales invoice. This means it has no legal standing or impact on VAT or GST.

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