Technological changes introduced over the past decade have revolutionized how people shop for products they want. A few more than a decade ago, a salesperson and a toll-free number were enough to keep customers happy and take care of all their shopping needs. However, today, there are several channels through which a prospective customer shops for products. For the same reason, merchants have now embraced several media; in other words, they pursued an omnichannel strategy. They provide a great experience to all its customers, including mobile, laptop, print, tablets, and in-store purchases.
This practice of enabling a great shopping experience through different channels is called omni-channel marketing. It is an important concept to understand, especially for the merchants handling Shopify ecommerce.
Omnichannel is a way of selling products and services through multiple channels that, at the same time, provides an integrated shopping experience to the customers as well. That is, omnichannel offers customers a seamless experience, whether they are buying a product through their desktop, mobile, laptop, or bricks and mortar store.
While all omnichannel experiences use multiple channels, it is essential to note that not all multiple-channel experiences may be omnichannel. Merchants can carry out social media campaigns, have a user-friendly website, and do mobile promotions, but if all these do not coordinate, then they are not omnichannel.
In Shopify ecommerce, it is essential to ensure that a customer receives the same form of treatment and, in turn, has a similar experience across all platforms the company sells its products through. This can be done by instigating the customers’ interest, offering great deals and promotions, and addressing other concerns.
It is essential to have a holistic view of the customer. A person handling a customer in the store should know what products and offers are available online. Similarly, the customer service representative at a call center should be able to discuss the products available online and their pricing.
A study conducted in the past proved that customers who buy both online and offline have 30 percent more customer lifetime value that those who prefers to make a purchase from only one channel. Therefore, it is important for a Shopify merchant to know the platform that people are purchasing from. By offering an option to buy in person to those making an online purchase, merchants can capitalize on these study findings.
In addition, there are now an increased number of mobile users who make purchases through the app. Moreover, the competition is now tough since more number of comparison tools are now available to conduct the evaluation and a purchase decision. Therefore, it is important to have knowledge about such customers and offer the option to make in-store purchase.
Research shows that customers benefit from an omnichannel environment primarily because of transparency, competitive pricing, a wider product range, and a little personalization. Shopify site owners can capitalize on this by ensuring that their site includes a comparison of pricing and product from a competing site, real-time inventory data and additional products that the customers may like based on their purchase behavior and preferences. You can even provide a live chat option, flexible delivery options and an option for fast delivery. This will significantly help improve customer satisfaction, irrespective of the channel they choose to make the final purchase.
Try understanding the preferences of the customers to generate a great customer experience. It’s not just for increasing your sales number and brand visibility but also, for ensuring your customer has an easy, and enjoyable experience. Be it in-store shopping or online purchase, you can use the data to analyze customer preferences. Understanding customer behavior and common things in a journey within a particular customer segment may help design a marketing strategy for individual channels and offer customers specific products for a great experience.
Typically, customers tend to fiddle between different channels to make purchases and conduct the final transaction. Therefore, it is important that you suggest the best suitable channel for your customers. As a good step, Shopify site owners should keep all their channels open for the customers so that they can interact with them. This can be through email, text messaging, social media, voice call or video chat. This helps provide a great customer experience. You can also make use of channels like the Shopify POS so that your customers walk down to your store and purchase things personally.
Responsive website design ensures that the customer can see products and different functions of the website on any screen. It helps enhance the shopping experience, maximize online sales and also build brand equity. Considering the number of users who make purchases through mobiles and desktop, it is crucial to have a responsive website design that caters to both the audiences without hampering their shopping experience.
The frustration of witnessing out-of-stock scenarios sometimes becomes unbearable for customers. Therefore, to create a stellar shopping experience, it is essential to develop real-time visibility of a particular product across all shopping channels. People tend to turn to other retailers if they do not find the product of their choice quickly and easily. They often track the product soon and order it for as minimum delivery time as possible. Real-time access to customers offers instant information and helps keep them happy, improving sales.
You can get a more profound knowledge of your customers’ purchasing stages that includes; awareness, evaluation, and postpurchase when they are interacting with your various channels. One of the most effective ways is journey mapping, which includes how customers switch across channels. Users’ journey map is a graphic representation of all touchpoints they experience when engaging with your online store. It’s a great way to identify whether most of your customers have been in a specific stage for a long time. Remember that it might be challenging to map the process since you offer various channels.
Using the same type of content to interact with the shoppers is a little monotonous and boring. In addition, customers should be greeted and impressed with different messages at different levels of a purchase cycle. For the same reason, having a personalized message for all customers at some stage of the purchase cycle is excellent. For example, you can send a different message to someone just browsing through the products and something different to a customer who has selected the products, but is yet to make the final purchase. You must develop content that addresses specific behavior of the target audience. Remember to end the engagement with a CTA. Consider creating multiple types of CTAs for every different channel you use when reaching your customers. Ensure that CTA extends the seamless experience you provide.
Having a world-class customer service facility for the customers can greatly impact customer satisfaction, company sales, and brand image. Failure to provide customer assistance and the inability of the customer to get in touch with a supportive, prompt, knowledgeable and courteous staff drives them away and nullifies any future scope of purchase. Companies that embrace omni-channel customer care strategy experience significant profitability and lifetime customer value. This ensures that a customer can enjoy frictionless shopping and great support throughout the purchase lifecycle.
While using omnichannel strategy, businesses can interact with customers on any channel to gather feedback. For example, you can send a quick survey or rating after purchase or customer service call/messaging. So that you can get feedback whether there was any issue you could improve. Customer reviews and comments allow you to see if your omnichannel strategy works well. Continue to collect and analyze data to improve and ensure it remains pertinent.
Omni channel marketing is not just a trend of today, but a lot more. This is typically how small and medium business owners should target customers. It can be done by providing a consistent, personalized shopping experience to all the customers who make purchases through different channels, including in-store purchases, mobile apps, desktop, laptop and tablets. With the strategies mentioned above, you can also adopt omnichannel marketing and create an excellent customer experience across all channels.
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Wow... Its excellent blog to read and well explained about the omni channel strategy. Thanks for sharing it.
Chandru , Ecbilla - Global Ecommerce portal
Thanks chandrusekaran
Love this! Thank you for sharing such an insightful article!
Hi Chris, thanks a lot for letting us know! It's really nice to know we're helpful!