Incremental Sales From Improved Online Conversion

Evidence and data. Interviewees at organizations that adopted Salesforce B2C Commerce reported significant improvements in site performance, scalability, and merchandising capabilities, leading to higher conversion rates and revenue growth. Interviewees shared the following experiences:

• The senior vice president of software engineering at a furniture retailer explained how Salesforce B2C Commerce improved site  performance and scalability, leading to an improvement in site conversion of approximately 43%. By upgrading its B2C commerce solution, the organization streamlined digital experience management across multiple storefronts, locations, and currencies on top of a modern, scalable architecture. The interviewee noted that the previous site suffered from performance issues like latency with inventory and pricing checks, which negatively impacted drop-off rates and conversion. With B2C Commerce, the retailer improved overall site performance and calls to backend systems, reducing the time from product search to checkout by approximately 75%, improving conversion rates, and enabling faster, more reliable experiences.

• The chief information officer at an apparel retailer explained how Salesforce B2C Commerce enabled their organization to optimize site merchandising and enhance shopping experiences, which improved site conversions. They noted that their legacy commerce solution lacked modern merchandising features like image carousels and integrated video content in product descriptions while delivering poor image quality, which limited the ability to showcase products effectively. By adopting B2C Commerce, the organization gained modern capabilities for merchandising, site search, and checkout, including support for multiple payment methods. The interviewee shared that conversion rates improved by an estimated 30% to 50% following implementation, contributing to a more than twofold increase in daily revenue compared with prior years; the interviewee attributed roughly half of the impact to B2C Commerce versus other supporting factors, such as product and marketing improvements.

• The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer explained that adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce improved site performance and customer engagement. Average session times nearly doubled across all device types, bounce rates fell by more than 5%, and cart abandonment declined significantly, indicating a smoother shopping experience. Transitioning from a custom-coded legacy platform to B2C Commerce allowed teams to use out-of-the-box features and platform configurations, which cut development timelines for site improvements from months to weeks. This contributed to a 39-basis-point increase in conversion, raising rates from approximately 1.5% to 1.9%.

• The senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer reported that peak-season conversion rates doubled after they replaced their legacy commerce platform. The interviewee shared that this improvement was driven by smoother site experiences due to faster page-load times and accurate inventory visibility across the product listing and checkout processes, which reduced cart abandonment. Additionally, improved integrations and merchandising tools enabled teams to enrich site content more easily.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization receives 100 million online visits annually.

• Prior to adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce, the composite organization has an online conversion rate of 1.5%.

• The composite’s online conversion rate improves by 45% after adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce.

• The composite has an average order value online of $100.

• The composite organization has an operating profit margin of 6.2%.³

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on:

• Conversion rates in the prior environment.

• An organization’s online traffic volume and average order value.

• Changes in market conditions, competitive dynamics, or customer behavior.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $9.4 million.

Order Servicing Efficiency Savings

Evidence and data. Two of the interviewees reported that adopting Salesforce Order Management improved order servicing efficiency. With Order Management, these organizations gained capabilities to manage order servicing activities, including order modifications, refunds, and order status updates, enabling them to reduce customer service costs. They shared the following experiences:

• The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer reported that their organization reduced case handling times and customer hold times by using Salesforce Order Management alongside its existing OMS. Previously, service agents had to switch between Agentforce Service and the organization’s existing OMS to modify or place orders on behalf of customers, reducing efficiency. The organization adopted Order Management to enable order servicing capabilities directly within Agentforce Service. As a result, the interviewee reported improved customer service efficiency and capacity, stating, “We’ve been able to increase our capacity and the number of contacts that we handle without adding headcount.”

• The director of engineering at a beverage retailer noted that they significantly improved order servicing efficiency, reducing the time to resolution by 80% to 90%. Prior to adopting Salesforce Order Management, customer service representatives had to work across multiple disparate applications to serve customers, resulting in large backlogs of unresolved cases. Customers lacked the ability to easily self-serve order information, increasing strain on the organization’s customer service team. Adopting Order Management enabled near-real-time visibility into order fulfillment statuses and streamlined the execution of servicing activities like refunds and reshipments, accelerating case resolution and improving overall operational efficiency. Customers also gained better access to their own order data, enabling self-service and reducing the need to submit cases. As a result, the organization reduced its reliance on third-party customer service support, cutting contracted service hours by approximately 30% to 35%.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Before adopting Salesforce Order Management, the composite organization receives 300,000 customer service cases related to order servicing activities, including returns, exchanges, and cancellations.

• Case handling times are 8 minutes per case.

• After adopting Salesforce Order Management, the composite reduces case handling times by 30% in Year 1, 35% in Year 2, and 40% in Year 3.

• The fully burdened hourly rate of a customer service agent is $25.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on:

• The volume of customer service cases related to order servicing that an organization receives before adopting Salesforce Order Management.

• Case handling times before adopting Salesforce Order Management.

• Customer service labor costs, which can vary based on factors like location and outsourcing.

• Utilization of Agentforce Service.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $776,000.

Increased Capacity For Resources Managing Digital Experiences

Evidence and data. Interviewees described how implementing Salesforce B2C Commerce improved the capacity of their organizations’ technical and digital teams by streamlining development workflows and simplifying site management. As a result, they reported faster time to market for new digital experiences and site improvements, reduced operational overhead, and improved agility compared with their prior environments. They shared the following experiences:

• The senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer reported that the organization doubled its technical team’s delivery capacity after moving from its legacy commerce solution to Salesforce B2C Commerce. Previously, development cycles were slow due to a Java-based architecture that required lengthy coding, testing, and deployment processes. With Salesforce’s modern architecture, sandboxes, and rapid deployment capabilities, the time to build and release new functionality decreased significantly, enabling new site experiences to be launched faster. The organization’s e-commerce team also realized significant productivity gains in managing product listings and site enrichment via improved integrations, automation, and merchandising tools. For example, team members previously had to load each product SKU manually; with B2C Commerce, they could upload SKUs in batches for faster site updates.

• The senior vice president of software engineering at a furniture retailer reported that the organization doubled its speed to launch new digital experiences after moving from its legacy commerce solution to Salesforce B2C Commerce. Previously, rolling out new content, products, and campaigns required significant effort due to poor architecture design and integration. With B2C Commerce, the retailer accelerated its time to value by deploying new site features more quickly and unlocking capabilities that weren’t possible before, such as advanced homepage layouts and richer content experiences. The interviewee shared that these capabilities have enabled the organization to avoid growing its merchandising team despite doubling its business growth. They also noted that the organization previously relied on outsourced support to manage the platform but was able to transition to an internal technical team instead.

• The chief information officer at an apparel retailer reported significant productivity and capacity improvements after moving from its legacy commerce solution to Salesforce B2C Commerce. Business teams managing content and merchandising increased their productivity by approximately 50% due to out-of-the-box merchandising capabilities and the ability to develop and preview multiple versions of the site, which wasn’t possible before. The technology team also experienced major efficiency gains by transitioning from an on-premises, Java-based environment that required extensive DevOps efforts and long deployment cycles to a cloud-based platform with streamlined deployment workflows. As a result, the retailer doubled its technology team’s delivery capacity, enabled faster releases, and reduced operational overhead.

• The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer reported that replatforming to Salesforce B2C Commerce on the Composable Storefront architecture significantly improved agility. Compared with its heavily customized legacy environment, developers could make front-end changes without breaking other pieces of their front- or back-end environments, eliminating the cascading technical debt that previously consumed 80% of the team’s workload. The interviewee told Forrester that the team now spends approximately 70% of its time on new functionality and just 30% on maintenance, a significant reversal from its prior state. The organization also reduced its digital team by two full-time employees, a reduction in team size of approximately 18%. They attributed these efficiencies to the flexibility and maintainability of the composable architecture. They also noted that merchandising productivity improved by 20% to 30% and new site experiences can be launched in days, rather than weeks or months, so it can respond rapidly to seasonal campaign needs and customer demands.

• The director of engineering at a beverage retailer reported that moving from its legacy environment to Salesforce B2C Commerce significantly improved productivity and speed for both technical and merchandising teams. The interviewee shared that developer capacity doubled: Tasks that previously required six to eight weeks to complete, such as adding new customer profile attributes or swapping APIs, now take as little as two weeks. They also shared that the environments for development, staging, testing, and production reduced production bugs by approximately 30%. They noted that merchandising teams reduced inventory and product misalignment errors requiring remediation thanks to improved integrations with backend systems. E-commerce managers were able to create landing pages more quickly; their ability to test landing and product pages before going live reduced errors and cut the turnaround time from two weeks to three days.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has five technical FTEs on the e-commerce team that are impacted by Salesforce B2C Commerce. In the composite’s legacy environment, these resources are working at full capacity to manage the organization’s digital storefronts.

• After the investment in Salesforce B2C Commerce, the composite’s technical team realizes productivity gains and additional capacity. Each technical resource increases capacity by 100%, effectively doubling the team’s output.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a technical resource is $149,000.

• The composite has four FTEs on its digital team that optimize and maintain the online storefront by managing product listings, crafting engaging content, and optimizing user experiences. In the legacy environment, these resources are working at full capacity.

• After the investment in Salesforce B2C Commerce, the composite’s digital team realizes productivity gains, increasing each FTE’s capacity by 75%.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a digital team member is $108,000.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on the following:

• The maturity of the technical team. The learning curve these resources face in effectively using Salesforce B2C Commerce will depend on their skills and familiarity with the solution, which will impact the additional capacity that they are able to realize.

• The maturity of the digital team. The ability of these users to take advantage of Salesforce B2C Commerce’s tools depends on their skills and training, which will determine the additional capacity they can realize.

• The fully burdened cost of technical and digital team resources. The size and type of company, employee location, and employee seniority will factor into the fully burdened cost of labor.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.2 million.

Technology Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that their organizations decommissioned legacy commerce solutions, order management systems, and third-party applications after adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management, which reduced infrastructure costs, licensing fees, and ongoing maintenance expenses. The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer said that their organization decommissioned its legacy commerce solution and several third-party applications for capabilities like content delivery network tools, which are now provided by B2C Commerce, saving over $150,000 annually. The chief information officer at an apparel retailer noted that the organization decommissioned its legacy commerce and order management solutions, reducing the total cost of ownership by eliminating infrastructure costs for owning and managing servers and data centers. Similarly, the senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer explained that moving from its Java-based legacy platform to B2C Commerce eliminated the need to manage firewalls and on-premises services, reducing operational overhead and infrastructure costs.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization avoids $200,000 in licensing costs for its legacy commerce solution, order management system, and supplementary applications.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on the following:

• The actual cost of solutions in an organization’s legacy environment.

• The likelihood that legacy solutions can be decommissioned in parallel with adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $473,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Vendor consolidation. Interviewees highlighted that using multiple Salesforce products together reduced operational complexity. The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer said using both Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management reduced the need to build and maintain custom integrations and manage multiple vendor relationships. They shared that “running on common rails” simplified operations for the organization’s lean technical team, allowing engineers to work within a single technology ecosystem: “I don’t need engineers who specialize in multiple technologies. By working within the Salesforce ecosystem, everyone can just know the core fundamentals of Salesforce. And rather than having to work across multiple different technologies, they’re all speaking the same language.” Similarly, the senior vice president of software engineering at a furniture retailer shared: “We have a full product team built around the Salesforce [B2C] Commerce platform. That’s because the platform integrates well with other Salesforce tools, and we don’t have to manage separate systems.”

• Improved agility. Interviewees emphasized that Salesforce B2C Commerce improved organizational agility, enabling faster response to business needs and seasonal demands. The senior vice president of software engineering at a furniture retailer noted a twofold improvement in the speed to launch new digital experiences, while the director of engineering at a beverage retailer shared that landing-page turnaround dropped from two weeks to three days. Similarly, the head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer highlighted the ability to make rapid adjustments during critical sales periods, such as back-to-school season, equipping merchandising and marketing teams with greater agility. The senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer reported that new capabilities could be delivered in days and weeks instead of months.

• Uptime and scalability. Several interviewees highlighted scalability and uptime as a benefit of Salesforce B2C Commerce. The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer noted that the platform could easily scale in capacity to handle large traffic spikes during events such as black Friday and cyber-Monday. Similarly, the senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer reported less than 0.1% downtime due to improved reliability and scalability. The senior vice president of software engineering at a furniture retailer shared: “Even through holiday peaks and everything else, to not really have to worry about any sort of downtime has been a relief.”

• Order orchestration. The director of engineering at a beverage retailer highlighted the value of Salesforce Order Management’s order orchestration functionality. Prior to adopting the solution, their organization had to write and maintain custom order logic for order routing to 3PLs; they also needed to build custom app integrations on top of this order logic, often creating issues that impacted visibility across the order lifecycle. With Order Management, the organization gained prebuilt workflows for distributed order management. The interviewee explained: “Order Management automatically handles order routing to our 3PLs based on where the customer is ordering from and where we’ll ship from.”

• Improved CX. Interviewees told Forrester they used Salesforce B2C Commerce to improve shopper experiences by reducing friction and increasing convenience across the buying journey. The chief information officer at an apparel retailer said that B2C Commerce provided tools to build and manage user experiences across merchandising, search, checkout, and overall site reliability; for example, the ability to add different payment methods improved convenience for customers. The director of engineering at a beverage retailer said leveraging B2C Commerce’s APIs improved page-load times: For example, they estimated that website visitors in rural areas experienced a 6-second reduction in page-loading time.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Finding opportunities to leverage Agentforce. Two interviewees described opportunities to incorporate Agentforce into their commerce ecosystems to drive business outcomes like operational efficiency and customer engagement. The head of e-commerce product and engineering at a footwear retailer noted that their organization was experimenting with use cases for Agentforce in customer service; they also saw opportunities to scale merchandising efforts by using AI agents to create landing pages and by adopting customer-facing shopper agents. The senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer shared that their organization recently deployed a customer-facing chatbot to answer FAQs based on knowledge articles, reducing the need for customer service teams to answer common inquiries. They shared that their organization plans to expand this capability by integrating additional data sources to support more complex inquiries, including order status, pricing, and product availability updates.

• Creating a foundation for future innovation. The senior manager of omnichannel solutions at a home goods retailer shared: “Previously, the company was very restricted because our technology was outdated. Digitally, we were behind, which prevented us from implementing key business drivers on our legacy platform. We are now in a position to introduce capabilities for better marketing, improved product selling, subscriptions, same-day delivery, and more omnichannel capabilities. These features were restricted for nearly 10 years before we launched the new site.” The head of e-commerce and engineering at a footwear retailer described Salesforce B2C Commerce as a strategic asset, citing the ability to quickly launch new capabilities and integrate new solution providers based on changing customer, stakeholder, and technology needs. The director of engineering at a beverage retailer saw its investment in B2C Commerce and Order Management as a foundation for omnichannel capabilities and enhanced personalization via the adoption of Salesforce Loyalty and Data Cloud.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).