As you evaluate your strategic options, do you ever get concerned that your omnichannel strategy is antiquated and that it might be time to shift your focus to a connected commerce strategy? Have you considered adopting a unified commerce strategy? What do these terms mean, and where should your priorities be focused? If you’re feeling confused, you’re in good company. The content you are about to read will define these buzzwords in a real business context. More importantly, it will challenge whether understanding them is necessary to make the right decisions for your business.

Omnichannel Commerce

Omnichannel commerce is a business strategy that aims to create a seamless experience across all shopping channels. For many retailers in 2025, the focus channels are often online and brick-and-mortar stores. However, some companies have started to enable seamless experiences across additional channels such as mobile, social, customer care, and conversational platforms. Whether integrating your channel experiences is a new concept for your brand or you’re an early adopter leading the pack, your omnichannel commerce strategy should prioritize supporting your customers in finding the products and services they need across any channels. And they should be able to accomplish their needs on their time, through their preferred methods and channels, with as little friction as possible. 

This concept becomes more clear when you focus on that common, channel-agnostic objective, recognizing that omnichannel is intended to cover all channels. Whether you operate two channels or five, you need to determine whether they are contributing to a seamless customer experience. And as you add new channels, providing a seamless customer experience must be your priority. If you still find that your channel leaders are more focused on who gets credit for the sale instead of how they contribute to total growth through a seamless experience, it may be time to reevaluate your company’s priorities and reorient around the customer with an omnichannel commerce mindset before you start adding new options.

Connected Commerce

Some say that connected commerce is the evolution of omnichannel commerce, the next step in a business strategy that creates a seamless experience across all physical and digital channels. This approach allows customers to discover products and information, make purchases, and engage with a brand in the way they prefer. Um, didn’t we just cover this? If this sounds familiar, you’re right. 

Clarifying the difference between connected commerce and omnichannel commerce is like selecting a shade of white paint. One may seem like it fits a bit better, but if you selected the other, the distinction would likely be negligible. Connect commerce is a more recent term, so you could argue that it’s more of a brand refresh that aligns with the same principles as the incumbent. Language evolves over time, and this shift may reflect the need to stay current in the discussion, with the underlying goals remaining the same. I’m not saying don’t use the term. What I am saying is that debating the difference is a waste of breathable air–the two terms are too similar..

Unified Commerce

Ahh, here we go! Unified commerce is a bit different from omnichannel or connected commerce. The term encompasses what legacy omnichannel leaders found to be significant challenges in their early days of blurring the lines between channels. Unified commerce is a strategy to centralize your capabilities and data to support all channels of interaction from a single, unified platform. This includes elements such as an Order Management System (OMS) that centralizes all sales and return transactions, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that consolidates customer records to provide a single view of the customer, centralized payment processing, pricing and promotions, and other customer enabling capabilities. 

In the end, a unified commerce approach still enables that seamless customer experience across channels. However, it requires a more intentional effort to build foundations that support these experiences while limiting future challenges. An effective unified commerce strategy requires significant alignment between your technology and business objectives to ensure that single-use point solutions are not the go-forward approach to enabling the channels you plan to support. Implementing a unified commerce approach will give you a more streamlined, adaptable infrastructure that can evolve with changing customer needs and new market demands. 

What Are You Actually Doing?

Do you ever find yourself in a discussion debating the differences in these buzzwords, only to realize that the conversation has veered into jargon rather than meaningful action? Or maybe you‘ve heard variations of these words come up, with everyone trying to ensure their story is unique, and you’ve thought to yourself, “…but what are you actually doing?” The challenge with buzzwords is that many people don’t take the time to educate themselves on the distinctions, leading to incorrect usage and more confusion. 

Does it really matter which buzzword is being used? No. It doesn’t. What matters is that your audience understands your intended message. Whether that audience consists of internal stakeholders, attendees at a conference presentation, or those in a lively business dinner discussion, you will always have a more effective outcome when you are clear about what you mean and don’t require the audience to decode or decipher parts of your message. 

If you ask “…but what are you really doing?” enough to most company strategists, and get them to focus on the basics of their approach, you’ll likely hear many say they are working to create a seamless experience across all channels to remove friction and simplify the customer journey. They may also mention steps they are taking to align foundational technology to centralize their customer-enabling capabilities into a single platform, which enables new opportunities and protects them from common challenges faced by other organizations. Buzzwords are not necessary to communicate the real work being done behind the scenes. 

Now you know the basic differences—or the lack thereof in some cases—between these common buzzwords. Is there any value in knowing? Maybe. Perhaps you’ll need to use key terms for marketing purposes, just as a youthful brand may use the speech patterns of their target market to be more relatable. You may be selling a product that will benefit from positioning itself as part of the “commerce zeitgeist,” and you need to ensure your language choices perk up the ears of your desired audience. 

Or maybe you’re just a consultant that sees conflict and confusion around something as simple as buzzwords negatively impacting brand progress. In that case, you might use these buzzwords for search engine ranking purposes to deliver a simple message. Ultimately, it is more important that your audience clearly understands your intent so you can more effectively work toward alignment to accomplish your common objectives than it is to ensure the appropriate buzzwords are included in your pitch. Whatever your situation, you now have the tools necessary to navigate the sea of buzzwords and communicate effectively.