It has become essential for brick-and-mortar retailers of every size to have an online presence. And, as more retailers offer purchasing options through their website or other online channels, it has become increasingly important to ensure these different store fronts are windows to the same store rather than disconnected experiences.
With the significant attention to detail that it takes to run the day-to-day operations of a retail store, small business owners and managers may find this difficult to prioritize. However, providing a consistent customer experience across selling channels is as essential to running a successful business as traditional marketing methods. This article will discuss why creating an omnichannel shopping experience is so important and how you can achieve this without spending a fortune. Read on to learn more.
What Is an Omnichannel Shopping Experience?
The word “omnichannel” refers to a retail store’s ability to create a cohesive, consistent experience for its customers across all selling channels including in-store, online through desktop, tablet, and smartphone, as well as through any in-store kiosks. An omnichannel shopping experience will provide customers with consistent pricing, inventory, and customer service through the entire buying process, whether they decide to shop online, in-store, or utilize a combination of buying channels.
Creating this omnichannel experience for customers also allows retailers to market and retarget customers through multiple channels, ensuring that their business stays front and center in the customer’s mind. A true omnichannel experience benefits both the customer and the retailer.
How Do You Create an Omnichannel Shopping Experience?
Ensure Consistency Across All Channels
One of the main focuses of providing an omnichannel experience is ensuring that pricing, inventory, and the overall customer experience is consistent throughout every selling channel. The easiest way to accomplish this is through product data syndication software that will keep your online inventory and pricing consistent as it is updated in-store.
Consistency helps to build a trusting customer-retailer relationship. It also lends to a more positive customer experience and reduces time-wasting back and forth with consumers confused about multiple price points or wrong inventory information.
Optimize Your Website for Smartphones
Ensuring that your website is optimized for smartphones is something that is commonly overlooked. Websites often have to be specifically optimized, sometimes page by page, to appear the way you would like on a smartphone. And, with so many customers utilizing smartphones for shopping these days, this is not an opportunity that you want to miss. If you’ve only viewed your website on a computer screen, take a second to bring it up on your phone to see what it looks like, and to see if there is anything that you can do to create a better experience for customers accessing your store through mobile devices.
Utilize Customer Data to Understand Their Behavior
Whether a customer walks in through your front door or logs on to your website to check out your inventory, you want to ensure that you are collecting customer data. This will help you and your product syndication data software to recognize customer behavior and enable you to market in a way that will be more likely to lead to a sale.
Personalize Each Customer’s Experience
Collecting customer information and understanding their behavior also allows you to personalize each customer’s experience. And, this personalized experience should expand across all of your selling channels. Whether your customer began by searching online or walking in through your front door, you want them to enjoy a one-of-a-kind experience that is tailored to them.
Ensure Customer Convenience
Customers will often spend time both in your store and on your website before making a purchase. You want to ensure that you make their entire experience as convenient as possible. With so many shopping options today, a customer who is slightly inconvenienced by a glitchy website, inconsistent pricing, or a lack of inventory, can easily choose another retailer. You want to ensure that you are creating a seamless omnichannel experience that brings each customer closer and closer to a sale.
Wondersign – The Product Data Syndication Platform
If creating an omnichannel shopping experience for your customers sounds like the perfect way to grow your business and your sales, it’s time to learn more about Wondersign. Our product data syndication platform allows you to offer your customers a true omnichannel experience. Our software can help you keep your in-store and online product data, pricing, inventory, and customer experience consistent, and allow you to collect customer data in unique ways. Learn more about Wondersign today.