Business decision-makers know the deal. Hesitating to adopt emerging commerce technology negatively impacts businesses, leading to decreases in brand loyalty, sales, and damaging the overall customer experience.

According to a new survey released by commercetools, nearly three-quarters of shoppers will take their business elsewhere if a brand’s commerce experience fails to meet their expectations, and more than half say they prefer “modern commerce experiences” that include digital devices and multiple payment options. Despite this, 45% of business decision-makers say they only dedicate a “minimum amount” of their budget to improving or expanding commerce capabilities.

The results of commercetools’ survey make it clear that customer loyalty drops when brands don’t innovate. The majority of retail executives do understand that failing to adopt emerging commerce solutions will hurt their businesses, many are even aware of why customers are frustrated with their existing commerce experiences. Despite this, business decision-makers are hesitating or delaying implementation of the latest SaaS solutions.

What gives?

According to commercetools, 73% of consumers say it’s likely or very likely they’ll take their business elsewhere when a brand doesn’t have the shopping experience they expect. The issue is even clearer when consumers are broken down by age group. Millennials and Gen Z shoppers are an especially important demographic for today’s multi-location retailers, and yet these are the groups most likely to shift loyalty in the face of aging commerce infrastructure and outdated interfaces.

The Source of Shopper Frustration

Adopting new commerce solutions might be easier if retail brands understood which problems they’re trying to solve.

In the commercetools survey, the biggest shopper challenges centered around accessing the right information when shopping online and interacting with customer service support teams. The top three sources of frustration when purchasing from brands, according to decision-makers, are searching for products/services (23%), interacting with customer service support (22%), and finding product information (19%).

In a separate survey conducted by the digital intelligence technology provider FullStory, 55% of consumers said they have experienced a “digital issue or glitch” while shopping online in the past six months, and 75% said they are likely to abandon a transaction when they encounter a technical issue.

More than 60% of respondents in the FullStory survey said they have repeatedly clicked or tapped on a site or app in a moment of frustration—an action described as a “rage click”—and nearly six-in-10 said they’re unlikely to return to an e-commerce site or mobile app after experiencing such a struggle.

With so many options at their fingertips, consumers in 2022 are continuing to redefine what the ideal customer experience looks like when shopping online. Brands that take the evolving needs of consumers into account when implementing SaaS commerce solutions will be well-positioned for the future, as newer SaaS commerce tools are rolled out at an even faster clip.

Adapting to the new modern retail environment doesn’t have to mean jumping on every trend. Surveys show that retailers fare best when executives keep their fingers on the pulse of customers’ shopping behaviors and adopt the commerce experiences that resonate the best among them.

Modern Retailers Find Room for Growth

One particular area where retailers have room for growth is in modern commerce solutions. According to commercetools, less than half of business decision-makers (38%) feel their organizations have fully blended traditional options and modern commerce solutions, and 21% haven’t adopted any modern commerce solutions at all. This sort of blending is necessary to facilitate omnichannel shopping experiences.

A clear example of this has to do with payments. A whopping 84% of consumers have used peer-to-peer payment services, like Venmo and PayPal, as of 2022, but 55% of the brands in the commercetools survey said they don’t currently offer multiple payment methods to customers.

Adoption is even lower for other common commerce expectations, like next-day shipping, loyalty programs, and cashback rewards. Fewer than one-in-10 businesses offer purchasing within a virtual reality or augmented reality or digital games, and just 11% offer purchasing within the metaverse.

The rapid expansion of the real-world metaverse—as detailed in Mike Boland’s recent article —means that resistance to innovation could actually be driving away customers and damaging the bottom line for brand retailers.

Businesses that remain hesitant to adopt the SaaS technology to enable modern commerce services won’t be able to provide shoppers with next-generation experiences, and ultimately they will be unable to remain competitive in today’s retail space.