Drive Ecommerce Growth Through Multi-storefront Optimization

"How do I manage all the ecommerce stores without losing my sanity?" This could be the most concerning question for brands that manage multiple siloed ecommerce stores. 

You go for multiple individual ecommerce implementations to govern your growing ecommerce ecosystem efficiently. Gradually, the complexity and management responsibilities multiply, overwhelming you. Managing multiple ecommerce stores is a full-time juggling act. You drop one, eventually lose the rhythm, and everything comes down crashing. 

What if we recommend a tried and tested approach that can save your management hassle and, significantly, your budget, too? It's the multi-storefront approach that most renowned brands put to great use. 

If you are a brand looking for a solution to handle multiple individual storefronts, this blog could serve as a start. We'll explore the following areas: 

• What is multi-store ecommerce? 

• Why go for a multi-storefront approach? 

• Multi-storefront optimization strategies. 

• Renowned brands leveraging multi-storefront approach. 

• Battling multi-storefront challenges with BigCommerce. 

Now let’s begin with understanding the multi-storefront ecommerce model. 

What is multi-store ecommerce? 

Multi-store ecommerce is the approach of combining two or more independently functioning stores into a single platform. On the business front, you centralize your management responsibilities into a single backend interface. On the experience front, your customers get to shop from your different stores as always. There’s no disconnect in experience, and it’s cost-effective and simpler. 

Why go for a multi-storefront approach? 

Cross-border selling. 

If your brand is gaining popularity across regions, a multi-storefront approach can help you expand to new international markets. A multi-storefront model allows you to personalize the customer-facing application to cater to consumer expectations. Your operations team can handle products, sales, order processing, marketing, etc., from a single dashboard without having the need to build exclusive stores. 

Exclusive branding for customer demographics.

As you keep adding new products to your portfolio, chances are more likely for your customer segments to expand. From gender-based customer segments to age-wise demographics, your customer base will expand. With loads of products to offer for each customer segment, launching multiple storefronts exclusively for each of the customer bases helps.  

Centralized management.

A multi-storefront ecommerce approach simplifies a lot of management tasks compared to maintaining stores individually. You can pick and choose the stocks and portfolio for each store based on consumer buying behavior. Rolling out new products, updating content, developing new functionalities, centrally managing product data and more can be done from a single interface. 

Cost optimization. 

The multi-storefront approach enables business owners to avoid platform license fees for building exclusive stores. Essential integrations like ERP, CRM, PIM, site search, product recommendation, marketing automation, etc., can also be commonly used for multiple stores. 

Technical SEO changes, such as performance optimization, metadata, and URL optimization, can be made for multiple storefronts. With analytical data that accumulates across stores, you can streamline marketing efforts and personalize campaigns. 

Manage multiple business models.

Suppose you are a manufacturer, depending on your network of B2B buyers (distributors, wholesalers, and retailers) for your online business but having ambitions to explore a DTC (direct-to-consumer) approach. In such cases, multi-storefront is the go-to model. As a DTC brand, you can build exclusive storefronts for B2B and DTC networks and manage both business models from a single interface. 

Platforms like BigCommerce enable multi-storefront capabilities (MSF), which can accommodate different business models and turn them into a unified backend. To configure and customize the BigCommerce storefront based on your business models, sign up for BigCommerce development services from an official BigCommerce partner. 

Multi-storefront optimization best practices 

Localization.

For fast-growing brands, selling across borders becomes a part of growth plans or a competitive necessity. Taking your business to unchartered territories demands localization. Your store must support the currency, date, time zone, etc., of the local market. 

Also, align your portfolio with the consumer demands based on cultural and geographical factors to stay relevant to the market. Another crucial part of localization is staying compliant with regulations and laws. Ensure that your business abides by rules related to tax calculations, data management, and privacy.

Region-specific SEO. 

Source: Reviewtrackers 

SEO is at the heart of your marketing initiative. It can make or break conversions. So, a well-thought-out plan must be devised to win across borders. For example, imagine a store that specializes in winter clothing selling across borders. The search phrase for winter clothing in the new region might be different. 

If the store already optimizes “Winter jackets” as the keyword, potential customers in the new market might search with phrases like “Warm Coats for extreme weather” or in a completely different language. 

So, as a store owner selling across borders, you need to get your SEO right for the regions you are focusing on. Look for ecommerce platforms that allow you to change product names, descriptions, language, URLs etc per storefront. By doing so, your storefront that sells across borders can pick the product appropriate to the search keywords (or languages) used in that region. This improves search accuracy and eventually, conversions.

Implementation. 

Building multiple storefronts into a single platform comes packed with a lot of integration challenges. Apart from providing multi-store provisions, the platform should be able to integrate third-party systems. 

For instance, tools like ERP, CRM, inventory, and order management are essential to managing ecommerce operations. Adding multiple ERP systems for each storefront would make things complex in a multi-store environment. Choosing an ERP system or a shipment partner that works seamlessly for multiple storefronts could simplify the task for your operations team, or, the ecommerce platform you choose can do the trick. 

Platforms like BigCommerce optimize third-party systems to work globally for multiple storefronts. When choosing an ecommerce platform, ensure that it has third-party systems optimized to work across multiple storefronts. 

Frontend customization. 

Your multiple storefronts need differentiated experiences for its customers to conceive it as a standalone brand. Customize your frontend’s UI and design philosophy to carve a niche for your sub-brands. 

Based on the product portfolio, regions, or customers, a few storefronts might demand more experience and a content-driven setup. For instance, a retail storefront that sells furniture might need intuitive features like product configurators, guided selling, AR-driven product visualization, and so on. To deliver such experiences, you can take a headless approach, which paves way for independent front-end customization and technology integration. 

Likewise, for a few storefronts, the platform's native out-of-the-box features would suffice. So, when choosing your multi-store ecommerce platform, ensure that it provides support for integrating both headless and native storefronts and managing them from a common interface. 

Customer management. 

In a multi-storefront ecosystem, managing customers is a complex task. Why? Often, customers are unaware of the multiple brands your business owns. They use the same login credentials to create customer accounts across two or more stores in your ecommerce ecosystem. 

As a business owner, you need to set up mechanisms that classify customer accounts created across several storefronts despite duplications. This enables administrators to create customer groups (B2B/B2C) and assign pricing and discounts for specific customer groups. Optimizing customer accounts will enable marketing teams to customize outreach and re-targeting campaigns.

Order management. 

In a multi-channel setup, orders accumulate from individual storefronts. To initiate order processing operations like picking, packing, shipping, and return management, you need to consolidate orders according to the storefront they came through. When choosing an order management system, ensure that it provides a comprehensive view of orders.

Renowned brands leveraging multi-storefront approach 

American Eagle. 

American Eagle is a popular clothing brand in the USA. The brand leverages a multi-storefront approach to showcase products through its sub-brand Aerie, a comfort-based clothing brand that offers an athleisure collection. 

Source: American Eagle 

Gap. 

Gap is one of the most commonly known brands with a muti-storefront approach. The brand owns Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Athleta. Its multi-storefront approach enables it to diversify its product portfolio, with each store clearly defining its connection with the other. 

Source: GAP 

L'Oréal. 

In the health and beauty market segment, L'Oréal is the leading brand that owns multiple storefronts for its brands like Garnier, Maybelline, NYX, Lancome, Giorgio Armani, etc. Loreal uses a multi-storefront approach for its cosmetics subsidies (skincare, makeup, haircare etc). 

Source: L'Oréal 

Nestle. 

Nestle, a globally renowned FMCG brand, uses a multi-storefront approach for its owned brands like KitKat, Nescafe, Nestea, etc. This helps the brand grow its customer base, gaining market share across a diverse range of products, and improve brand awareness and reputation. 

Source: Nestle 

Battling multi-storefront challenges with BigCommerce 

BigCommerce offers several features essential to administering a multi-storefront ecommerce system. From adding storefronts to a single backend to configuring store settings, product catalogs, customer settings, checkout, and orders, BigCommerce provides merchants with end-to-end multi-storefront capabilities. 

The multi-store ecosystem. 

BigCommerce’s MSF enables merchants to expand a single ecommerce store into multiple storefronts, with each having its own customization provisions.  

Be it expanding across borders, managing multiple sub-brands, or personalizing your portfolio to cater to a niche market segment, BigCommerce can facilitate a single source of control to manage end-to-end operations. You can also add storefronts as microsites to run marketing campaigns for holiday season sales, new brand launches, etc.  

Features like the out-of-the-box content management system work globally for all the storefronts you host under a single backend. 

Multi-storefront customization. 

You can set different domain names, theme, product catalog, customer segments, pricing, analytics, categories, emails and so on for each storefront you add. 

Each storefront can be customized to have a unique look aligning with the sub-brand's theme or the local market. 

If you add native storefronts, you can customize them using Stencil, BigCommerce's customizable native theme platform. You can also add headless storefronts built on JavaScript (Next.js, Gatsby.js, Nuxt.js) and solutions like Contentful, Prismic, etc. 

Catalog management. 

The base product catalog of your store is globally available to the multiple storefronts you own. However, BigCommerce provides built-in features to control the listing of products on different storefronts. 

To list products in different storefronts, you’ll have to create product categories specific to each storefront. While creating a product, you can assign it to the storefronts and then to different product categories available on that storefront. 

BigCommerce has the complete database of your products under ‘Product List’. You can manage products from this dashboard performing actions like assigning to channels (storefronts) and storefront-specific categories, editing price, and inventory levels. This enables merchants to manage products across their multi-store ecosystem from a single interface. 

Localization and SEO. 

BigCommerce enables merchants to localize multiple storefronts according to the region. While creating storefronts, merchants can choose the default customer-facing language, SEO settings, country, and language.  

To localize individual storefronts, you can build unique pages for the storefront, customize email templates, configure search settings, assign products, categories, etc.  

Localization options also include specifying the dates, time zones, and formats for physical dimensions (width, length, breadth), date, and time zone.  

While adding products to your store, you can select the storefront in which they should be listed and customize fields like product name, description, categories, images, variants, search keywords, contents, and so on. This enables localizing the product to the niche market, improving SEO visibility on search engines and making it easier for the site’s internal search to show relevant results. 

Customers and order management. 

By default, BigCommerce allows access only to the storefront on which a customer has created an account. You can grant access to other storefronts as well. To overcome the challenge of duplications (same credentials used to create accounts across two or more storefronts), BigCommerce provides a holistic view of each storefront a customer’s email ID is registered with. 

In terms of customer settings, you also have provisions like allowing global access to all the storefronts, creating customer groups, assigning storefront access, providing discounts, and configuring discounts per storefront. 

The final word

Optimizing your multi-storefront is the key to achieving continuous growth and staying competitive in the fast-growing digital landscape. Management complexities increase as your business scales across multiple brands, regions, and product categories. It’s pivotal to have the right optimization strategies in place. 

By prioritizing optimization, you can ensure that all your storefronts align with local consumer expectations and niche market demands. Choose an ecommerce platform like BigCommerce that provides out-of-the-box support for multiple storefronts. The final step is to find the right official BigCommerce partner to handle the customization and configuration necessary to implement multi-storefront optimization strategies successfully.