The changing reality of retail with the rise of omnichannel shoppers
Brick and mortar, that’s where it all started for retail… but the landscape is changing. Internet coupled with the remarkable rise of smartphones has revolutionized the retail sector. Smartphones and social media contribute a lot in the way customers discover, analyze and finally make a purchase.
Time to Go Omnichannel
All major retailers are offering ‘anywhere and anytime’ shopping experiences. In present time, shoppers who buy from both online and in-store are the most desirable and it’s crucial to connect with them. But parity is a bottleneck; shoppers get different experiences from different channels.
So, what’s the solution? A small leap to OMNICHANNEL, where a shopper gets a seamless shopping experience everywhere, from in-store to web to mobile.
A Bonus for Retailers
Digital technology adaptation has influenced the buying patterns of shoppers and therefore omnichannel is now seen as a requirement by the new age retailers. Retailers spend millions on marketing and advertising, and still fail to hit the right audience. However, omnichannel approach gives a better visibility across personas, their desires, and shopping patterns. This helps retailers in making marketing communications more efficient, and run similar offers and discounts across multiple stores and online channels.
There’s a huge chunk of shoppers who shop across multiple channels. Some shoppers are undeterred by the physical location constraints and still prefer to touch and feel a product before making a purchase. This is the reason why major eCommerce players are looking to establish physical stores. Additionally, brick and mortar retailers are also looking to leverage the eCommerce model, to benefit from the impactful marketing messages, increased conversions, and higher ROI.
Many Happy Returns for Your Customer Too…
A sound omnichannel strategy can play a huge role in integrating the best of both physical and online world into the customer’s purchase journey. IDC highlights that omnichannel consumers have a 30% higher lifetime value than single-channel purchasers.
Going omni-channel will increase the engagement points with customers and meeting their expectations will become easier. Also, it can give retailer a comprehensive understanding of shopper’s profile and allow them to provide a personalized experience based on shopping behaviors across different channels. And by enabling in-store kiosks, it’ll be easy to browse the catalogue of items available at other stores and place orders.
Your Moves to Go Omnichannel
The path to omnichannel is easy to envision, but if not orchestrated well can leave a sour taste among shoppers. Retailers are blocked by legacy infrastructure and lack of technology adoption in their path to delivering world-class experiences.
The first thing will be to understand your customer and their interactions across different channels. Retailers should also have a clear documented understanding of their brand, merchandising, and pricing strategies. Then, the right organizational structure and incentives to support an omnichannel strategy.
Last, but the final thing is a right strategic partner who can build a robust omnichannel platform for your brand with the right kind of analytics to understand how customers behave across these channels. They can help you set the personalize interactions across promotions, and curb the cannibalizing across channels.
It’s a Need, Whether You Like It or Not!
Today shopping doesn’t mean luring customers to shops, but reaching wherever they are and on whatever device they are using. People no longer discriminate between store and smartphone for shopping and 2015 holiday season proved that.
There you have it, the reasons to take a leap from multi-channel to omnichannel, but if you’re wondering how? Let INKONIQ experts find you a better omnichannel strategy for your business.