And the Winner is: Salesforce Commerce Cloud

When I was younger and played football (whoops! I will always call the sport which you kick with your foot… football) we would all get together at the end of the season and eagerly anticipate awards night.

Who would win manager’s player of the year? Who would win most improved player (which I never wanted to win because of the implications of how bad I would have been at the beginning of the season)? And who would win player’s player of the year? 

The last award was the most cherished because it meant that you were not only judged by one person but all of your teammates. It was a wider recognition of your qualities that were seen by the majority of your fellows.

The same goes for other awards in other areas of life, including the tech industry and awards for best ecommerce platforms. And recently, the tech company SoftwareReviews (which is an arm of Info-Tech Research Group, based in Toronto) recently announced their winners of its 2021 eCommerce Platforms Data Quadrant Awards.

They named four winners and awarded them gold medals, based on the feedback of their users and scores across four areas of evaluation: vendor experience, vendor capabilities, product features, and likeliness to recommend.

The four gold medalists are:

• Salesforce B2B Commerce
• Shopify Plus
• Fastspring
• Salesforce B2C Commerce

Underlying the awards, Ben Dickie, the research lead at Info-Tech Research Group, underlined the importance of ecommerce platforms and their performance during such unprecedented times. “The Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated the need for many organizations to take their selling efforts online,” said Ben. “Deploying a strong ecommerce platform is where the rubber hits the road in transacting with your customers through digital channels.”

Talking about the criteria which SoftwareReviews used to tally up the performance of each, Ben added: “These platforms have an indispensable array of features, from product catalog and cart management to payment processing to detailed transaction analytics. Our recent Data Quadrant in ecommerce solutions provides a compelling snapshot of the ever-growing list of popular players.

“Whether you need a B2C-centric platform such as Shopify,” he added, “or a platform that can also handle B2B use cases well such as Magento, this quadrant will help you make the right decision when it comes to enabling great digital commerce experiences for your customers.”

A little more about SoftwareReviews’ Awards

The criteria not only gathered information on the satisfaction of users of both product features and their experience with the platform, but also something they call “emotional response ratings” that are anchored to multiple areas like negotiation, innovation, and product impact, and give an overall number they call a “net emotional footprint.”

So which ecommerce platform came out on top when filtered by these specific criteria? 

1. Shopify Plus, which came out on top with a net emotional footprint of +91, marked particularly high in order management and shopping cart management.
2. Then came Salesforce B2B Commerce, with a net emotional footprint of +90, and marked highly in reporting and analytics.
3. Coming in third was Salesforce B2C Commerce, earning a net emotional footprint of +82, performing very well in content management.
4. And then Fastspring, with a net emotional footprint of +78, and currently excels at payment processing and microsite management.

When we withdraw from the particular and look more holistically, then we see that users of ecommerce platforms, in general, were most satisfied with payment processing, and most dissatisfied with microsite management.

PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud agencies. Contact us to see how we can work together.

PPS: I never won most improved player, but I did manage to win the award for player’s player.