Sorry, I had to do a shout out to Steely Dan (we miss you Walter…)
Salesforce has forecast that next Friday will be the BUSIEST on line shopping day of the year! Analysts are forecasting that fully 50% of online shopping will be complete by December 3rd. And, 40% of the sales will be done on a mobile Device…
A quick search reveals tons of online ads for all of the big players – Amazon, Zappos, Target, Wal-Mart that are online specific and geared towards Black Friday (not Cyber Monday).
Forbes is predicting that on line sales over the Black Friday shopping weekend will increase by 47% this year. For sure, there has never been a better time to own an online store as it relates to Holiday shopping.
And Salesforce is finally starting to figure out messaging for Commerce Cloud (formerly DemandWare) – pushing it as a mobile first e-commerce cataloging engine (not exactly a shopping cart package, but certainly an online product selection/recommendation engine).
My feeling is that as online shopping continues to dominate – a tool that can connect the shopping experience with sales analysis (typical CRM functions) is well placed to dominate in ways the the typical ecommerce engines (Big Commerce, Nexternal, and the rest) simply cant compete with.
In my view, Commerce Cloud is the next killer app from Salesforce. When Salesforce went into the Service Business in 2007, or when Chatter was introduced, or the year SF1 was rolled out at Dreamforce, we all saw huge growth on the Salesforce brand and reach.
I see this – over the next few years as Service Cloud a la 2018.