Unifying DTC and B2B on Shopify for Scalable Growth

Beyond Omnichannel

Consumer brands are often caught running their DTC sales and B2B operations as completely separate entities, missing the opportunity for these channels to work together and strengthen each other.

In a recent webinar, we explored how leading consumer brands are moving beyond traditional omnichannel approaches to build truly integrated experiences.

⇒Beyond Omnichannel: Unifying Digital Experiences with Shopify 

Our expert panel brought together valuable perspectives from across the industry: 

• Kyle Rushton, Lead of Consumer Goods Sales at Shopify
• Darren Feeney, VP of Marketing at Arccos Golf
• Nina Collier, Director of Ecommerce at Third and Grove

The foundation: a unified customer journey

Unified commerce isn't just about connecting DTC and B2B. It's about creating a holistic view that allows brands to understand and serve customers across every possible interaction point.

• When brands can seamlessly track customer journeys across these diverse touchpoints, they unlock the ability to deliver precisely tailored experiences and smoothly guide customers between different purchasing programs. This holistic approach forms the foundation for optimizing the entire buying journey, regardless of the channel where the interaction begins or concludes.

  Shopify's Kyle Rushton shared some examples of merchants crushing it in this area:

  • Parachute saw a 500% increase in their buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) business over four years. They credit this to a unified customer view across online and physical stores, allowing them to optimize the BOPIS experience.
  • Pepper Palace, a hot sauce brand, offers an experiential in-store tasting model. For their many tourist customers, they provide a "try in-store, ship to home" option, enabling a unified experience that integrates the physical tasting with convenient home delivery.

  Content: the engine of conversion and trust...and AI

  In an oversaturated market where consumers face endless choices, compelling content has evolved from a nice-to-have into an absolute necessity for capturing attention and establishing trust. Structured content is necessary for any AI-driven engine to be able to effectively crawl a site and surface relevant and thoughtful information.

  Rich content extends far beyond product detail pages to encompass blog posts, customer stories, video content, and social media clips that serve as natural extensions of the product experience. These content pieces educate potential customers while inspiring engagement and building emotional connections. Arccos Golf exemplifies this strategic approach to content. As a golf technology company, they invest heavily in articulating their unique value proposition through diverse content formats.

Choosing the right architecture: headless vs. headed solutions

The debate between headless and headed ecommerce solutions continues to generate discussion among brands and developers. While headless architecture provides exceptional flexibility for creating highly customized experiences, industry consensus increasingly favors starting with simplicity.

For most traditional eccommerce workflows, a headed solution on Shopify delivers robust functionality while often outperforming headless solutions in conversion optimization—all with significantly lower maintenance requirements. However, specific use cases may justify the headless approach, such as complex multi-brand single-cart checkouts or highly artistic, abstract website designs.

The decision ultimately depends on whether brands require truly unique experiences rather than simply managing multiple sales channels or producing large volumes of content.

Preserving margins

Today's market conditions demand strategic thinking around maintaining healthy margins across diverse sales channels. Arccos Golf treats their owned and operated channels as their most profitable and controllable touchpoints while strategically using marketplaces to reach new audiences.

Successful brands implement several key strategies:

• Channel-specific optimization: Tailoring messaging and value propositions to each platform while maintaining consistent brand standards across all touchpoints.
• Value-first pricing strategy: Emphasizing education, community engagement, and personalized service to reduce dependence on discounting and price competition.
• First-party data maximization: Investing in data strategies through engaging content, robust CRM systems, and meaningful post-purchase interactions to maximize customer lifetime value, generate referrals, and identify cross-selling opportunities.
• Cross-functional alignment: Ensuring sales, product, marketing, and finance teams maintain clear alignment on margin scenarios, retention metrics, and the true costs associated with all channels.

AI's transformative impact on personalization

AI is revolutionizing omnichannel experiences and personalization at an unprecedented pace. At Arccos Golf, AI algorithms personalize information and training drills for individual golfers, directly contributing to higher conversion rates among trial users. As Darren explains: "AI is integrated into all of those algorithms for us to be able to try to be more personalized to the storytelling."

From a platform perspective, Shopify's Sidekick provides valuable insights into customer behavior while generating innovative campaign concepts. The future points toward "declarative e-commerce," where brands could make broad statements to instantly update their entire website presence.

Nina stresses how important it is to get your site ready for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), so AI tools can easily find and recommend your brand.

Success measurement: a holistic approach

Evaluating DTC site performance requires moving beyond single-metric assessments. Relying on just one metric provides insufficient insight into true performance and growth potential. While traditional metrics like traffic, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value remain important, brands need comprehensive measurement frameworks.

Nina advocates for this broader perspective: "If you're looking at just one metric for your website performance, you're not looking deep enough." She recommends analyzing customer touchpoints comprehensively, examining lifetime value by customer cohort and traffic source, and tracking post-purchase engagement metrics including Net Promoter Scores.

Ready to transform your commerce strategy?

If you're interested in exploring how to enable scalable growth on Shopify Plus or want to discuss best practices for unifying your DTC and B2B experiences, TAG is ready to help. We can guide you through the complexities of modern ecommerce and develop strategies tailored to your brand's unique needs and growth objectives.