The present-day customers are not only tech-savvy but are also multi-channel consumers. While most sales are still fulfilled in physical stores, online channels and social media significantly impact customer behavior. Retailers today should go beyond just the physical store or a purely online store to reach customers with the most impactful customer experiences at the right time and place.
The article discusses why omnichannel retail order management system is becoming a reality nowadays and how retailers can leverage various technologies and techniques to build a successful omnichannel retail experience.
Why retailers should go omnichannel
- Shoppers prefer multi-channel experiences
Spurred by smartphones and the on-demand economy, customers today are demanding an ‘always on’ shopping experience. Not only should such experiences be easily accessible, but they should also deliver optimal product assortments and flexible fulfilment options on all channels. Although the internet has opened numerous online shopping opportunities, most sales still happen in physical stores. However, a fundamental difference in customer behavior today is that customers are better informed and leverage online platforms, even when considering and completing purchases at physical stores. Hence, physical stores must find channels to reach customers via online platforms.
- Influence of Social Media
Social media is one of the strongest influences in today’s retail space. Today customers seek multiple channels to shop products or check reviews and feedback on various social media platforms. For instance, when customers visit Apple’s App Store, they would not purchase products with only one star. Social media review platforms significantly impact brand loyalty, and bad/poor reviews could lead to long-lasting adverse effects on retailers. A well planned omnichannel strategy will seamlessly integrate social media and commerce to ensure retail success.
How to build an omnichannel strategy
With the emergence of omnichannel retail, brands and businesses have to re-visit their strategies to meet today’s empowered customers’ requirements and reach them with the most enticing, seamless, consistent and contextual experiences across all channels.
- Map customer purchase behaviour
Customer behavior and their journeys in the omnichannel space is relatively complex. With several influencing factors, purchases can be made at any time of the day or night, either directly at physical stores or online stores. This requires businesses to develop sound omnichannel strategies that consider the different customer paths and influencers across all channels. Understanding the process of customer decision-making is the key to create an omnichannel strategy.
- Boost customer engagement
After understanding customer behavior (from the previous section’s questions), retailers should chalk out detailed customer route maps to set up relevant triggers across channels. The motive of such triggers should be to increase customer engagement and drive leads and purchases.
Effectively using triggers can help brands not only drive customer engagement but build sustainable brand value.
How actual stores can fabricate omnichannel encounters
- Make satisfying store encounters
Actual stores can help satisfy omnichannel encounters by going about as satisfaction habitats for the stores’ online partners. Administrations like ‘snap and gather’ (purchase online get available), in-store return for online buys, permitting store clients to carefully check store stock and running focused on advancements dependent on online conduct is a portion of the approaches to convey an incentive to both online just as in-store clients.
To convey such smooth and consistent encounters, actual stores should put resources into associated advancements. For example, retail stores can undoubtedly communicate ‘snap and gather’ offices to online customers utilizing reference points. We have examined how retailers can convey guides to convey this arrangement in our prior online journals.
- Present virtual perspectives
Stores can utilize advances like AR (increased reality) and VR (augmented reality) to convey upgraded, virtual encounters that can help clients experience conditions that can’t be satisfied by stores.
Such virtual advances permit retailers to introduce exceptionally fascinating virtual encounters like a virtual perpetual path that shows a comprehensive combination of items (that are not accessible at the store) or a virtual mirror that permits clients to, for all intents and purposes, take a stab at garments or items.
- Offer significant types of assistance
Clients today are exceptionally educated and look for the best insight on any stage. Actual saves amp up the client experience they convey by giving essential data and administrations. For example, two-way correspondence advances like Facetime or Skype can be utilized by retailers to permit clients to associate with item specialists on in-store terminals or booths.
- Coordinate web-based media with in-store insight
In-store encounters can likewise be upgraded by incorporating web-based media stages. Retailers can have screens or dividers that hand-off live web-based media feed or editorial. This can also include pictures, tweets and recordings to drive client commitment. Changing areas can have shows that permit clients to acquire regular item audits from web-based media stages on the items they expect to purchase.
Such incorporations will likewise help store staff to screen in-store social analysis and react progressively.
- Send in-store warnings dependent on web-based perusing history
The information and bits of knowledge assembled from client ways in the online world (site and application) can be utilized to trigger customized and context-oriented warnings when clients are coming up. A genuine illustration of this can be seen at an extravagance retail chain, Barneys New York. The store utilizes signals to send customized warnings and item proposals to clients. The signs depend on the clients’ versatile shopping packs, lists of things to get and clients perusing designs inside the store’s online distribution – The Window.
How online stores can fabricate omnichannel encounters
- Fabricate experience zones
Online-just stores will miss out on a lump of clients if they don’t have a presence in the actual world. Indeed, even today, clients are persuaded by contact and believe, and a more significant part of retail deals occur in real stores. A decent method to defeat this issue without really opening an actual store (and re-adjusting business measures) is to have experience zones. Such experience zones are an extraordinary route for clients to encounter items and assemble certainty before making buys. This methodology saves online retailers from the problem of item returns because of a bungle in item assumptions.
- Empower client collaboration through online talks
Online stores ought to endeavor to make the client experience as customized as the in-store insight. A decent method to accomplish this is by incorporating intelligent live talk stages that permit clients to associate with item specialists or deals heads straightforwardly from the site or application. Joining such association stages is a great approach to comprehend client conduct, address client trouble spots and drive values.
The omnichannel retail insurgency is merely beginning, and retailers understand that they cannot work in storehouses. The assembly of advanced and actual trade will before long turn into a retail standard. To remain on the ball, retailers should use recent advances and realign measures to make significant and essential retail encounters.
Also, read this related blog – Omnichannel: Future of Retail Commerce
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