If changes to shopping behavior over the past several years (and accelerated by COVID-19) have shown anything, it’s that buyers will flock to the most convenient and complete experience — regardless of the sales channel.
How to Implement Omnichannel in Retail
With omnichannel retail, also called omnichannel commerce, the consumer is the focus of the shopping experience. The shopper’s priorities, not the retailer’s or brand’s, are what matter most.
Implement an Omnichannel Retail Strategy in 6 Steps
Learn how to implement an effective omnichannel retail strategy in six steps, which will allow you to meet your customers wherever they shop online.
Step 1: Get Your Digital Touchpoints in a Row
Perhaps your brand has a strong Instagram presence, and you’d like to break ground on YouTube. Maybe your brand is still ironing out your buy online, pick-up in-store (BOPIS) strategy.
Perhaps you’re working through displaying real-time, in-store inventory to shoppers — a feature that 71% of consumers demand, according to Forrester.
Because omnichannel connects all customer touchpoints and channels to create a cohesive customer experience, it is essential to clarify your brand’s current marketing and selling channels, as well as the ones on which you’d like a presence.
Get your touchpoints in a row by making a list of these channels, then set specific goals for each.
Step 2: Unite Critical Players To Build Your Commerce Strike Team
A solid strategy starts with a solid team. It could begin as a small task force or could include representation from all departments within your company at the outset.
At a minimum, you’ll want the expertise of each main selling channel: ecommerce, in-store, and social media. Including an analyst from each team will help make sure you have a firm understanding of current performance trends and growth opportunities.
Marketing, public relations (PR), and creative representatives are essential for ensuring the messaging is unified and consistent. If you plan to work with a new content platform, you’ll also want to include technology and program management.
Step 3: View Content as a Means To Convert Sales
Omnichannel strategies should actively build and nurture relationships with consumers. To effectively communicate with shoppers, content must be a top component of your strategy.
Activate your products where your consumers spend their time. Make every touchpoint readily shoppable and supply the content that consumers want.
Over 50% of the time, the more bullets and images on product display pages (PDPs), the higher the conversion rate. Enhanced content works your PDPs even harder by immersing the consumer in an engaging brand and product story.
An excellent place to start is to pass your current content through a product content checklist to ensure your PDPs have everything they need to boost online results.
Step 4: Focus on Consistency
Each touchpoint within an omnichannel retail strategy should contain unified messaging and feel like a natural extension of the brand experience.
Marketing language doesn't need to be the exact same everywhere, but product content details must be aligned, so the consumer doesn’t get confused and discouraged as they move from channel to channel.
Cohesion builds trust and familiarity with the products, which leads to a transactional relationship with the brand. The most seamless way to keep your product content up-to-date and accurate on every channel is through syndication, which can help streamline your go-to-market process.
Step 5: Anchor Your Experience on a Unified Platform
Implementing an omnichannel retail strategy can seem overwhelming. There’s a lot to consider. Without the right platform partner, your omnichannel universe could be challenging to sustain.
A commerce experience management (CommerceXM) platform could get your brand’s catalog online, ease the process for editing and updating product content, format content to channel-specific requirements, syndicate the content globally, and report back with insights and analytics to help you improve current campaigns and future rollouts.
Step 6: Optimize Each Experience To Remove Shopping Speed Bumps and Roadblocks
From the consumer lens, omnichannel retail must be effortless. Digital shelf analytics provide real-time data that helps you better manage content and user-flow streams so they are more relevant, contextual, and personalized.
You can also see where consumers drop off and then repair those breaks. Shopping experiences that are easy and enjoyable to experience increase conversions and build customer loyalty.
Watch our on-demand webinar, "The Era of Omni-Commerce: New Insights for Dominating the Digital Shelf and Beyond," for actionable insights that will help you build stronger connections with shoppers and buyers while building your long-term revenue.
