EasyEcom, industry-leading omnichannel inventory management and reconciliation solution for e-commerce businesses was founded in 2015 by Mr Punit Gupta along with Ms Swati Jindal. Punit has around two decades of professional experience. He started his journey by working as a Research Consultant with MiraLab in Geneva, Switzerland and then moved on to working for Endeavor Telecom as Head of Engineering for over 6 years. In 2009, he became the Founder of Compare Broker.com. Then in 2012, he became the Co-Founder of The TradeStreet, a platform developed for active stock traders to network and exchange trading ideas.
There has been a massive surge in the popularity of e-commerce in recent years, especially since the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers today are looking to purchase from retailers all around the world while sitting in the comfort of their homes, and consequently, store owners now can reach potential customers at a much wider demographic. While multichannel e-commerce simply refers to selling on multiple channels, omnichannel retail takes it a step forward and connects all of them. Omnichannel offers shoppers a seamless and consistent experience across channels while purchasing products from the brand of their choice. Since creating a seamless customer experience remains the primary concern irrespective of the platform, omnichannel retail can be positioned as a powerful e-commerce approach. Hence, its implementation becomes of utmost importance.
Let us delve deeper into the world of omnichannel retail and find out why exactly it is the future of e-commerce:
What is Omnichannel Retail?
The omnichannel retail approach refers to selling products with a seamless, consistent, and integrated shopping experience independent of the channels and devices, while also unifying online as well as offline shopping. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with multichannel, however, both of them are quite distinct as omnichannel connects all sales channels seamlessly, focussing on customer experience as a whole. It can be described as a fully integrated approach for e-commerce that extends well beyond mobile browsing or e-commerce marketplace or in-person storefront. Offering a connected experience for customers, omnichannel retailing allows a customer to browse through a store’s inventory on the computer, purchase their item of choice through their mobile, and pick up the item later from a physical store with ease.
What Are the Advantages of Omnichannel E-Commerce?
Owing to the ideal shopping experience it can provide, when a business operates in an omnichannel manner, the chances of customer retention increase. This, in turn, elevates the overall brand reputation and the business management becomes more efficient. There are incredible benefits that can be reaped from omnichannel commerce which makes it extremely appealing for e-commerce businesses. Let’s take a look at some of the major advantages.
- Efficiency and Consistency: Using an omnichannel channel strategy allows businesses to focus on a consistent and coherent shopping experience across sales channels. Offering better customer service since omnichannel retailing relies on a central, common database for all information, businesses essentially create a transparent, more interactive ambience. When the existing and prospective customers can easily keep up with a brand in terms of offers, sales, new product lines, etc, they are more likely to engage and make repeat purchases. Even if the customer chooses to make their purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, they still have the option to look at the product offerings on numerous channels beforehand.
- Better Data Collection: When a business gains visibility across multiple channels, it results in creating a more personalized customer experience. The company can get access to customer-related data via multiple channels and take note of their preferences, to provide them with better service. Hence, omnichannel retail can help companies create better marketing strategies and ideas, for offers that are going to encourage the consumers to engage with them more while shopping at physical stores. This, of course, ends up increasing the chances of impulsive buying.
- Consumer Satisfaction: Over 56% of customers abandon their shopping carts due to bad and inconsistent experiences. Omnichannel retail contributes to making the buyer’s journey swift. From personalized advertising to better customer services, numerous measures can be taken to enhance the overall shopping experience and customer service, which ends up boosting customer satisfaction considerably.
- Integrated Data Analysis and Communication: There is no doubt that having multiple communication channels can give your business access to a variety of information streams. For a business, understanding these data streams and then meeting the customers’ demands and needs is quite important. By leveraging analytics you are able to comprehend, quantify and review the communication gathered from your current clients, which is important for ensuring consistent success.
How Can Businesses Implement Omnichannel Personalization Successfully?
The benefits garnered from omnichannel marketing are massive, and knowing how to implement omnichannel personalisation is a key component for having a successful strategy. Here are a few tips to accomplish successful delivery of personalised retail experience:
- Understanding customer behaviour. Retracing your consumers’ journey across channels, gathering and analysing real-time data to understand what influences them to visit your page and make purchases is crucial. The more touchpoints you have, the more impactful the data collection will be. This will give rise to more effective methods of personalisation that can be tried, tested, and implemented for the long haul.
- Ensuring that you have enough resources for transitioning. There is no denying that running a successful omnichannel business can be quite overwhelming and requires all kinds of resources. Therefore, you must have the financial as well as technological resources that can help you in sustaining omnichannel retail adequately before you actually do so.
- Personalising emails, product recommendations, and marketing strategies go a long way while making a brand name that sells. Make sure that you are tailoring your product recommendations for every customer, based upon the data collected from their browsing activity.
- Last but not least, backend integration. For the creation and management of a seamless shopping experience, all your channels need to be truly connected on the backend. From product descriptions, listings, photos, offers that you are running, everything needs to be consistent across channels. This creates a lasting impression on the customer which prompts them to buy the product at some point.
As technology keeps on evolving, so do market trends. Omnichannel today can be considered the modern face of e-commerce that is only going to evolve and grow over time. Customers today expect deeper connections with brands as well as a quick and efficient shopping experience, which can be provided by omnichannel retailing. As it continues to become the standard that customers now require, omnichannel retailing needs to become a top priority for e-commerce businesses as it is prevailing in the present and will most certainly continue to be so in the future.