Omnichannel Retail Strategy: The What, Why, and How of “In-Store” Shopping

You’ve probably heard someone, somewhere utter the word “omnichannel.” It sounds hip, new, and revolutionary. But whatexactlyis it?

In a growing online world, it becomes harder and harder to differentiate real tactics from buzzwords. To add to that, the word “multichannel” often gets thrown into the mix, and it can be confusing to understand how the two are different.

Here is the why, what, and how of anomnichannel retailingstrategy to cover your customers from beginning to end.

Table of contents

• What is an omnichannel retail strategy?
• Single channel vs. multichannel vs. omnichannel retail
• Omnichannel strategy example
• Benefits of an omnichannel strategy
• How to develop an omnichannel retail strategy
• Retail and POS apps for your growing ecommerce business

What is an omnichannel retail strategy?

Anomnichannel strategyis a sales and marketing approach that provides customers with a fully integrated shopping experience. Omnichannel strategies unite user experiences across multiple touchpoints, including brick-and-mortar, web, and mobile devices.

Single channel vs. multichannel vs. omnichannel retail

• Single channel:A business that sells its products or services through only one channel, such as a retail store.
• Multichannel:A business that sells through multiple channels, such as a brick-and-mortar store,ecommerce site, and marketplaces.
• Omnichannel:A business that offers seamless shopping across all of its channels, such as physical stores, online stores, marketplaces, mobile apps, and catalogs.

The big idea is that, in omnichannel, every customer interaction changes the customer’s overall experience of your product and brand.

Omnichannel strategy example

Pressing questions surround a trulyomnichannel retailstrategy:

• Can your customers browse a product in-store, scan it with your app, and then add it to their bag to purchase later at home in a different size?
• 可以为新的风格,他们浏览你的在线商店欧宝体育官网入口首页explore those outfits on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, and then get an in-store coupon to redeem?
• Does your data connect in-store purchases so loyal customers get notified on Messenger when similar styles are released online or off?
• Can your customers search for your products on Amazon, or another marketplace, then purchase them in-person?

They should be able to do all those things and more.

To illustrate, let’s look at an example from discovery to checkout and beyond.

Discovery

The entire customer omnichannel journey typically begins with discovery. A customer will research products, find detailed information, and compare prices across different channels, such as the company website, retailer websites, online marketplaces, and social media.

Example:A customer is looking for a new pair of shoes. They research the different styles and sizes available online, then visit an online marketplace to compare prices and discounts.

Purchase

Once customers have identified the product they want to purchase, they typically move to the purchase phase. Here, customers can make a purchase through a retailer’s website, an online marketplace, or a physical store.

Example:The customer purchases the shoes through a retailer’s website. They enter their card details and make the purchase.

Fulfillment

After the purchase has been made, the fulfillment stage kicks in. This is where the customer receives their order and makes the purchase official. In the digital world, this is typically done through email, SMS notifications, or automated tracking systems.

Example:客户收到一封电子邮件确认的ir order and a tracking number so they can track the delivery of their purchase.

Post-purchase

Finally, the customer experience stage starts. This is where the customer decides if they are satisfied with their purchase and experience with the brand. Customers can leave reviews and feedback and access customer service should they require more assistance.

Example:The customer is satisfied with their purchase and leaves a positive review on the retailer’s website. They also follow the brand on social media to stay updated on future deals and promotions.

Benefits of an omnichannel strategy

There are a few key benefits to creating an omnichannel strategy:

1. Makes it easier to optimize stock levels and improveinventory management.An omnichannel strategy gives businesses a better understanding of its inventory, and lets it fill orders from anywhere.
2. Helps you gain a competitive edge.Some80% of shoppersin a physical store browse online channels before or during a purchase decision.
3. Better customer experience.Customers want options when it comes to how they interact with brands. By using an omnichannel approach, they can engage on different channels and get a consistent experience, which improves customer engagement and satisfaction.
4. Increases sales.By using multiple channels, omnichannel businesses can reach a larger customer base. As a result, you'll make more sales and improve your customer lifetime value. One analysis found that omnichannel customers spend20% morethan single channel shoppers.
5. Personalizes the customer journey.An omnichannel strategy makes capturing customer data and creating detailed customer segments easier, leading to more personalized shopping experiences.
6. Creates a unified brand experience.Omnichannel retailing makes creating a consistent brand experience easier across all channels. This can help you build trust and customer loyalty.

Recently, theHarvard Business Reviewstudied 46,000 shoppers and foundthat “omnichannel customers loved using the retailer’s touchpoints, in all sorts of combinations and places. Not only did they use smartphone apps to compare prices or download a coupon, but they were also avid users of in-store digital tools such as an interactive catalog, a price-checker, or a tablet.”

Beyond having multiple channels and points of contact, shoppers loved when an integrated omnichannel experience was available. Creating a more seamless transition from channel to channel has the power to help you retain the majority of your customers.

Are you ready to create your own omnichannel retail strategy? Here’s where to get started.

How to develop an omnichannel retail strategy

1. Research where your customers already are
2. Make every touchpoint shoppable
3. Bridge the gap between online and offline

1. Research where your customers already are

The first step in creating a flawless omnichannel retail strategy lies in figuring out which platforms, mediums, and devices your customers use on a daily basis. That includes where they like to shop, where they hang out, and what experiences motivate their daily lives.

If you know that none of your customers use eBay, there’s no point in wasting your budget on it. So don’t guess. Analyze, instead.

A quick way to figure out popular channels for your business is by looking at the Acquisition reports insideGoogle Analytics. There, you can see which specific places are driving people to your site, meaning you can see how customers are discovering your business.

If you want to go a step further, you can run different attribution reports in your Multi-Channel Funnels section to see the typical “funnel paths” (or steps) people take prior to converting.

Looking at the entire conversion path like this helps you properly identifymarketing attribution, or which channels and campaigns deserve proper “credit” for driving the sale (as opposed to just looking at the final site that sent a customer).

Shopify Plus users can add theAttribution Connectorto side-step this manual labor. It will provide similar graphs, charts, and analysis, pulling in cost data from your advertising channels and then comparing that cost with individual customer activity.

Best of all, though, is the in-depth customer view. You can zoom in to see the exact path each individual customer took before buying. It will show you how much each customer is worth. And Attribution Connector will even show you the multiple devices, phones, and apps a customer used throughout their journey.

Poring over this data will help you gain a general understanding of the most important touchpoints for your business.

Now that you’ve nailed down specific platforms to streamline or improve, it’s time to build off of that understanding for an omnichannel buying experience.

2. Make every touchpoint shoppable

One major key to designing an omnichannel retail strategy is making every touchpointshoppable. Just like Disney does with its mobile app, website, and theme parks.

Every time you have an experience with Disney, it has the opportunity to make a sale.

If someone adds a product to their cart from your website, it needs to be in their mobile app too. If they land on Facebook, they need suggested products based on that previous product viewing.

With Shopify Plus, you canintegrate your store directly with Facebook, allowing fans and followers to check out natively.

You can use the same exact strategy on platforms like Pinterest, too. It now supports shoppableproduct pins, giving you another touchpoint that connects back to your online store.

With these deep, symbiotic connections between channels, you could run promotion campaigns on social media, drive traffic to your site, and have users explore how others use your product through Pinterest and check out directly from there.

可能使你所有的客户touchpoints shoppable is almost limitless.

3. Bridge the gap between online and offline

If your retail strategy involves any sales that aren’t offline, connecting the two is critical. Just being present in both channels isn’t enough. Not in today’s world where consumers don’t make a purchase instantly at your store.

Consumers want to connect with your brand both on and offline. They want to know what’s in stock before they come to visit. They want to add that item to their cart on the way to the store and have it sitting at the register for pickup.

Big box stores like Office Depot are already making moves in the omnichannel world using this approach. Office Depot currently usesLocal Inventory Adsto bridge the gap between online traffic and offline traffic.

Creating product catalog feeds that work with Shopping campaigns like this is often a messy, time-consuming, and technical issue for large inventory retailers.

Shopify and Google’s direct integrationmakes it easy for omnichannel shoppers to discover and buy your products with Shopping campaigns.

A user can go from keyword search to product location to buying it and picking it up in-store, while hitting multiple, interconnected touchpoints in the process.

You can see another fantastic example of an online-to-offline relationship with theSephora mobile application.

When you shop in-store, you can use Sephora’s app to find out-of-stock items or look for special discounts via its loyalty program. With the app, you can test the colors of its products virtually, adding them to your cart for later in-store pickups.

With that, the cycle repeats and continues to generate sales.

Your physical gift cards are now connected to the app. Whenever you spend money on it, your balance updates online. A successful omnichannel retail strategy is one that doesn’t focus on a specific end destination. The most sophisticated retailers ensure theiromnichannel marketing strategiesare geared toward enabling customers to convert on any channel.

You shouldn’t have the end goal of producing sales on one specific platform. Instead, sales should have the ability to naturally occur oneveryplatform, syncing perfectly between them.

The goal is to unify youromnichannel marketingcampaigns and sales structure. Making each touchpoint shoppable and integrating online traffic with offline visits is just the tip of the iceberg.

Retail and POS apps for your growing ecommerce business

These Shopify Plus retail and POS apps were hand-selected for their elite functionality and ability to reduce complexity in your retail business so you can focus on growth.

These certified app technologies work seamlessly with Shopify Plus and have been approved at our highest technology standard:

• Dor: Real-time foot traffic analytics for retailers.
• Endear: CRM with personalized and trackable messaging that drives revenue.
• Marsello: Marketing automation, loyalty and referrals built for retail.

Create an omnichannel retail experience for your brand today

Ten years ago, omnichannel strategies would have seemed absurd. But today it’s the norm. The majority of shoppers have various online shopping and in-store experiences before making a purchase.

Limiting yourself to one or two platforms and lacking the seamless integration you’ve seen here can be detrimental to your long-term growth.

These tips should serve as a jumping off point for your omnichannel retail strategy.

Always look for new outlets and ways to connect each and every channel. Create an experience that isn’t locked into a single platform. Rather, create a seamless experience that can be completed and repeated on each.