Salesforce’s Summer ‘24 release is here, with a profusion of data-driven, customer-focused, AI-powered features across all of its many “Clouds.”
That’s no different for Commerce Cloud, where customers using B2C Commerce, B2B Commerce, D2C Commerce, Order Management, and Salesforce Payments can look forward to platform updates starting in May.
Here are our top Salesforce Commerce Cloud features announced for the Summer ‘24 Release!
Salesforce Summer ‘24 Release Schedule
Before we dive into the top features, let’s review the schedule itself. For the Salesforce platform, including B2B Commerce, D2C Commerce, and Order Management, the release date for Summer ’24 is one of the following, depending on your instance of Salesforce:
- May 17, 2024
- June 7, 2024
- June 14, 2024
To confirm your release date, ask your admin for your production org’s Salesforce instance. Then visit Salesforce Status, click on your instance name, and hit “Maintenance.”
Salesforce B2C Commerce has a distinct release schedule from the Salesforce CRM Platform, and releases platform updates monthly:
- 24.4 releases starting April 9th
- 24.5 releases starting May 7th
- 24.6 releases starting June 11th
To confirm your release date, ask your Commerce admin for your POD number, and determine if you’re in Phase 1 or Phase 2 on the B2C Deployment Schedule.
Top Summer ‘24 Features for Salesforce B2C Commerce
Copilot for Shoppers
Generative AI-assisted shopping experiences are here, and this breed of customer experience is promising to be the “new SEO”. Consumers are embracing generative AI to help them shop, and retailers need to optimize their storefronts and product data to meet these expectations.
One channel for this is a chat interface embedded right within the storefront, which is Salesforce’s newest AI-powered innovation for commerce, called Copilot for shoppers (formerly known as “Commerce Concierge”).
Note: Copilot for Shoppers is also available for Salesforce B2B and D2C Commerce.
Astound’s Copilot for Shoppers accelerator is ready to demo. Interested in Copilot for Shoppers? We’ve built an accelerator that will speed time to value for B2C and B2B Commerce retailers. Get in touch with Astound Digital to learn more!
Composable Storefront and Salesforce Commerce API improvements
Salesforce’s Composable Storefront offers tremendous value and ROI, and Salesforce continues making the product better. In the Summer ‘24 release, customers are enjoying performance improvements as part of PWA Kit v3.5, making the fastest SFCC application even faster.
Meanwhile, Salesforce Commerce APIs (SCAPI) also get much needed improvements with more robust coverage for Custom API methods (POST, PATCH, DELETE and more) and the ability to designate custom headers in responses, both long-awaited features from developers.
Salesforce is investing in making the Composable Storefront application a best-of-breed composable commerce platform as evidenced by the Forrester report linked above.
Astound’s Composable accelerator is ready to demo. Want to upgrade your SFRA or SiteGenesis Site in as little as 8 weeks with a hybrid composable deployment? Schedule a demo with Astound today.
Granular Replications
The ability for merchants to publish only the products and pricing they need to will be a welcome change for everyone who’s ever pushed content to an SFCC production instance. We’ve already written at-length about this feature, and we’re excited to see it come out of pilot and into an Open Beta in Q1.
Refined and localizable promotions
With this update, users can now create refinable promotions that utilize custom localizable product attributes, as well as custom product attributes of type enum-of-string and enum-of-int. That might sound a little dry, but if you know, you know: this adds a lot of flexibility for multi-locale merchandizers, especially in areas like Europe.
Top Summer ‘24 Features for Salesforce B2B and D2C Commerce
Redesigned Commerce App
The administrative interface of B2B and D2C Commerce received a major overhaul in this release, making it more efficient for merchants to manage their stores.
New D2C Starter Store
D2C Commerce’s reference store received a visual uplift, more in line with what merchants expect for this channel, with a much better look and feel that will compete better in the commerce market.
There are a number of additional features released on “Commerce on Core” which you can find here.
Top Summer ‘24 Features for Salesforce Order Management
Enhancements to Exchanges and Returns
Businesses can now enjoy a visual UI flow to manage exchanges, while bulk editing is available for returns and RMA workflows, promising higher operational efficiency for order servicing.
While we covered a lot in this Summer ‘24 preview, we truly only scratched the surface. Salesforce is investing heavily into Commerce in Summer ‘24, and we expect that investment to continue into 2024 and 2025.
Need help getting your Sites and Stores AI-ready for Summer ‘24? Get in touch.