It’s no surprise that customers prioritise convenience in the busy weeks between Halloween and New Year’s Eve. But while traversing across channels is getting easier for customers, it’s getting more complex for retailers. Shoppers already use nine channels to make a purchase and 85% expect consistency during every interaction.

As many who have shopped on Black Friday can attest, it’s disappointing to find an empty shelf after waiting hours in line. Now imagine how excited you’d be if there was a store associate standing near those empty shelves, locating products and taking orders for home delivery. Leaders are connecting back-end systems – using advancements in composable APIs – so store (and online) associates can view real-time inventory and fulfill orders across the enterprise. With the right order management system, you can stay on top of orders from the point of purchase through fulfillment, no matter how your customers choose to shop.

This is especially critical during this holiday shopping season as retailers face high demand and (likely) product shortages. A real-time view of warehouse and in-store inventory ensures you can sell across physical and digital channels without having to worry about delivering a post-purchase out-of-stock notice. You can also use order management to enable flexible fulfillment options like buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), streamline returns and exchanges, and ensure customers can access their order history and delivery journey.

For customers, holiday shopping excitement is all about finding amazing deals at flash sales, blowout events, and during huge promotions. Conceiving and delivering those memorable moments is challenging enough for retailers. But at the same time companies are working to attract shoppers’ attention, changes in inventory, customer demand, and delivery capability are accelerating behind the scenes. Retailers know their online experiences need to keep up with what’s happening in real time. The challenge? Using traditional site architecture, keeping digital channels fresh can take many days and resources, a critical disadvantage during peak shopping season.

Headless commerce enables retailers to make changes in hours instead of days. Imagine a retailer that’s just received a shipment of cold-brew coffee makers. It’s been a top seller all year, stock is low, and the new shipment wasn’t expected until January. At a headless company, the business unit could update every virtual experience from the website to the metaverse quickly and at one time. This is likely why companies with headless commerce report excelling at digital commerce at greater rates (55%) than companies without headless architecture.

Customers were already eagerly turning to flexible payment options like “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) and “ pay over time” (POT) before 2022. These options are bound to grow in popularity as higher prices chip away at consumer spending power. In fact, according to the Salesforce Shopping Index, BNPL accounted for 9% of global Q1 2022 digital spend, up 20% year over year and 9% since Q4 2021. For retailers, the financial benefits are considerable: One retailer reported an increase of 50% in average order value after implementing BNPL.

Customers are increasingly using mobile devices to shop for holiday gifts. Not only did mobile devices account for 60% of order share in Q4 2021, it comprised 72.9% of total ecommerce spend. Make it easy for your customers to shop from their phones with simple designs that load fast, feature large “buy now” buttons, and offer seamless checkout experiences.

Mobile marketing programs that communicate personalised information through push notifications or text messages are another place retailers should focus. That’s incredibly important at the holidays as shoppers eagerly await restock notices, special promotions, and delivery confirmations.