It's officially 2024, and boy, does it feel like we're already leaving 2023 in the dust!
2023 brought a lot of big announcements and advancements in retail. New technology continues to push the capabilities of supply chain and tracking the small details of the retail shopping experience, both online and in stores. Retail analytics and data management continues to evolve thanks to advancements like Walmart Luminate. As the retail shopping experience has improved due to rapidly evolving trends, tech, and media, the customer's expectations and conditioning has also changed. Customers are demanding more and asking for more personalization in their shopping experience, making consistency in omni-channel more challenging than it has ever been. Omnichannel success now requires synchronization and carefully architected shopping experiences. However, as more shopping metrics and customer requirements increase, the need to focus the basics of omnichannel should not change.
Buckle up as we go back to the basics to discuss the key strategies to help you think through and provide a seamless omnichannel experience in 2024.
Just as it sounds, omni channel means multiple selling channels. From physical stores to ecommerce, from mobile apps to marketplaces, the main priority of great omni strategy is ensuring that no matter where your customer engages your brand, they will get a similar and consistent shopping experience. Additionally, it means making the necessary adjustments to cater to the customer's needs and requirements based on the channel they choose.
For example, your online shopping experience should lean strongly on researching and visuals - this means emphasizing customer reviews, search engine optimization, and simple bulleted lists of benefits or selling points. Your in store experience, on the other hand, needs to rely more on attractive packaging, simple messaging, and item comparison. And while each experience needs to feel similar and consistent for your brand, there are also major differences in the customer's behaviors and buying tendencies when comparing online vs. in store. Knowing your core customer and customizing the experience to their needs in the moment is key.
There are four key stops along the way in the customer's journey: Discovery, Purchase, Fulfillment, and Post-Purchase. Having a great omnichannel strategy ensures that you understand what matters along each phase and how to nurture the customer relationship from one phase to the next. Here are a few examples:
Discovery - the discovery phase is all about helping your customer understand your product, find detailed information, and compare to your competition. Your packaging needs to be eye-catching, the product description and messaging needs to be concise and simple, and your visuals need to clearly state the problems your product solves.
Purchase - the point of purchase needs to be as smooth as butter, especially for online. Minimal clicks, easy add-to-cart, easy to understand terms and conditions (return policy), and clear delivery expectations.
Fulfillment - in the fulfillment stage of an online purchase, your customer should receive multiple emails and/or texts confirming the order, detailing tracking information, and item arrival. There should be no question from the point of purchase where the item is and when it will be delivered.
Post-Purchase - for post-purchase, your brand should follow up to ensure customer satisfaction, collect feedback, kindly ask for reviews, and handle any issues with excellent customer service.
Understanding how your customer thinks from one stage to the next is crucial to elevating your customer's overall shopping experience, earning customer loyalty, and acquiring repeat business. And, making every customer touch point shoppable with easy options to purchase is key to success along every phase of the customer's journey.
When used correctly, analytics can drastically impact your omnichannel strategy. Analytics tell the story of your customer behavior as they make their key purchase decisions as well as where marketing attribution, fulfillment and other key decisions factors place. From add-to-carts to conversion rates to cycle times and measuring order fulfillment, your ability to lean into analytics can determine whether your retail business lives, dies, or thrives. A few basic metrics to pay attention to when assessing your omnichannel strategy include:
And while there are many more metrics and analytics that tell the story of your omnichannel shopping experience, the goal is to have complete awareness of every product and to make adjustments as needed to ensure a quality engagement.
There is much to learn and keep track of in omnichannel. And even for seasoned retail professionals who have been in the game for a while, it's not easy to balance all that comes with omni. That's where we at High Impact can help. We are designed to become your fractional retail team, from analysts to fulfillment specialists, our team exists to take the load off, make your job easier, and make your brand more profitable. To set up a time to learn more about our team and our omnichannel capabilities, click HERE!
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