Written By: eyos Marketing | Last Updated: November 2022
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the online shopping trend has accelerated even further.
Businesses must adopt an omnichannel retailing strategy to offer a frictionless experience for customers switching between online and offline shopping, and enhance engagement at every touch point.
According to a UC study, up to 90% of customers want an omnichannel experience. As customer expectations continue to grow, so too does their desire for convenience.
The future of retail is now a balance of online and in-store shopping using a seamless experience to easily navigate between both in a single buying journey.
Read on to find out more about how businesses can achieve success with omnichannel retailing.
What is omnichannel retail?
Omnichannel retail refers to the strategy in which retailers can communicate with customers through multiple channels. When customers move across multiple channels, they carry data with them.
Using this data to understand the customer preferences and behavious across different channels allows retailers to create a consistent brand experience for their customers from the start of the journey, until the end.
With an omnichannel strategy in place, retailers can provide a more convenient and customised experience at all touchpoints within the customer journey. Whether the customer has started shopping online using their mobile device or they’re in-store.
Multi-channel vs Omnichannel
Although the two are similar in qualities they represent two very different retail models.
Multi-channel involves using as many channels as possible, but managing these separately. Essentially, multichannel strategies are developed to help retailers sell as much as possible.
Omnichannel, however, is based on a more customer-centric point of view. It provides businesses with a centralised way of viewing, accessing and managing customer data from across existing channels. This means customers can seamlessly go from one channel to the other, with a little difference in their experience.
Why is omnichannel retail important for customer experience?
Omnichannel retail is designed to suit customer behaviour and preferences, offering a much more holistic overview of customer information. Businesses that adopted it are thus able to gain a greater understanding of what their customers need, and how they, as a business, can fulfil them.
Omnichannel retailing can increase retention, allowing businesses to present a range of options to purchase products or services, that are best suited to the customer’s preferences.
Customers want a convenient way of purchasing, and if that’s provided, they will continue to keep coming back. This will allow businesses to build brand loyalty, as up to 46% more customers are willing to pay for the omnichannel experience.
By offering a range of purchase options, businesses can also improve their brand visibility by using consistent messaging across a range of channels. This can allow businesses to offer personalised messaging every time a customer engages with a number of touchpoints such as:
- Customer service
- Products
- Advertisements
- Emails
- Questionnaires
- Blogs and online educational content
- Websites
- A Point-of-Sale system
How to build an omnichannel retail strategy
When integrating an omnichannel retailing strategy, there are a number of steps to follow:
Understand the audience and their behaviours
When measuring success, feedback is key to understanding exactly what customers want. Learning whether customers are satisfied or not with different stages of the journey can help businesses enhance specific touchpoints.
Collecting a customer survey at different customer journey stages can improve satisfaction and gather valuable insights.
Unify key stakeholders around KPIs
To achieve a seamless omnichannel retail flow, businesses need to align their business goals with their internal processes.
KPI’s not only be aligned but integrated across all departments in the business. If the aim is to provide a convenient and seamless experience, that goal needs to be defined and aligned with business objectives.
Identify pain points within the customer experience
To identify pain points in the retail customer experience, businesses need to gather data at every stage of the journey. This is to understand if anything went wrong and to improve the process.
Trends should be identified to see if there are common points and this way, measures can be put in place to resolve the issues for customers.
Get advice on omnichannel retailing today
Unlock the power of in-store data with eyos. Our software is used by retailers all over the world, to offer omnichannel retailing using digital receipts.
Digital receipt software makes it possible to connect 100% of in-store transactions to a platform of your choice. And that means huge amounts of valuable data at your fingertips – ready and waiting to be put to great use in your next marketing campaign.
If you’d like to find out more about digital receipts and how they work, get in touch with our team.
Additional Reading
What is Offline Conversion Tracking?
How Digital Receipts Can Improve the Customer Retail Experience
The Value of Digital Receipts for Small Businesses
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