Digital Commerce Award 2026: What "Green Betty" reveals about Swiss e-commerce

In Brief

• HORNBACH becomes Digital Commerce Champion 2026, Betty Bossi runner-up.

• Betty Bossi wins the Sustainability Feature category with "Green Betty" and places second through fifth in five additional categories.

• Three of the award-winning platforms have been long-standing Unic partners: HORNBACH, Betty Bossi, and Switzerland Travel Centre.

• The evening yields three observations for commerce decision-makers – on sustainability, end-to-end journeys, and productive AI use cases.

The Evening's Takeaways

On 20 May 2026, the Digital Commerce Award jury recognised Switzerland's best online shops at StageOne in Zurich-Oerlikon. The champion title goes to HORNBACH – for its consistent omni-channel presence and features such as in-app store navigation.

Second place goes to Betty Bossi. The jury nominated the platform in six categories and crowned it winner of the Sustainability Feature category with "Green Betty". It also earned a shared second place in Mobile Experience and third place in AI Integration.

Switzerland Travel Centre also made the podium – placing second in Customer Support. In doing so, the jury recognised several platforms that Unic has supported for years.

Three Observations for Commerce Decision-Makers

1. Sustainability wins as a feature, not as a slide

The jury gave a clear rationale for recognising "Green Betty": Betty Bossi embeds sustainability directly within the context of recipe search. A scale from 1 to 5 shows, at the moment of decision, how environmentally friendly a dish is. Behind the scale lies a holistic life cycle assessment by ZHAW – factoring in seasonality, resource consumption, and emissions.

Today, Betty Bossi evaluates more than 3,000 recipes on bettybossi.ch in real time – for around 1.5 million users per month. Sustainability doesn't stay confined to a strategy chapter here. It takes effect where the purchasing and cooking decision is made.

The question for your setup: Which of your sustainability claims hold up live in the shop – and which only exist on a strategy slide?

2. Content and commerce belong in a single end-to-end journey

Betty Bossi competed across six very different disciplines – from Category Leader to AI Integration to Customer Support – and placed in the top five in every category. This is only possible when recipes, magazine content, products, and sustainability ratings all come together on a single platform. We observe this beyond the award in our own projects too.

Where content systems and shops operate in separate worlds, users lose the thread – precisely where conversion happens. Those who integrate search, content, and sales into a single end-to-end journey gain versatility as a by-product, not as a special effort.

The question for your setup: Where are you artificially separating content and commerce today – and which steps in the customer journey are being lost as a result?

3. AI integration delivers – when the use case matters

The trophy in the AI Integration category goes to Hockerty, with predictive body measurement, virtual try-on, and style advice. The impact is tangible: customers see before purchasing how a suit fits them – and return items less often. The service team gains time for the complex cases. Betty Bossi comes in third – with an AI-powered search that brings together recipes, products, and magazine content in a single results view.

Both examples show: the jury does not reward the boldest AI ambition. It rewards the productive use case with a measurable impact on a relevant metric.

The question for your setup: Does your most productive AI application today deliver a measurable contribution to conversion, service costs, or return rates – or does it remain a demo?

Three Platforms That Deliver Over the Long Term

Three of the award-winning platforms have been long-standing Unic partners: HORNBACH, Betty Bossi, and Switzerland Travel Centre. What they share is less a single technology than a way of working. Continuous development within well-established teams, with a focus on the next visible user experience improvement.

Awards recognise individual features. What usually makes them possible are teams that get better step by step over years. The award was submitted in each case by the client team – the trophies belong to HORNBACH, Betty Bossi, and Switzerland Travel Centre.

Three Questions to Bring to Your Team Tomorrow

• Which sustainability claim do you currently stand behind live in your shop – not in your annual report – and how do you demonstrate its impact?

• Where does the boundary between your content system and your shop lie – and what value disappears in that gap?

• Which metric proves the value of your most important AI use case today?

Which of these three questions resonates most with you? Write to us – we'll bring it into an initial conversation.