Tag: Online shopping

How to Outperform Your Competitors with Unified Commerce

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

In today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape, the ability to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience across all channels is paramount. Unified commerce, a strategic approach that integrates online and offline channels, offers a powerful solution to differentiate your business and outperform competitors. By breaking down silos and creating a cohesive customer journey, unified commerce enables retailers to deliver personalized experiences, enhance customer loyalty, and drive sales.

What is Unified Commerce?

Unified commerce strategy is more than just a technology solution; it’s a strategic mindset that prioritizes customer experience. It involves integrating various channels, such as e-commerce, brick-and-mortar stores, mobile apps, social media, and marketplaces, into a single, unified commerce platform. This integration allows retailers to offer a consistent and personalized experience across all touchpoints, regardless of where the customer chooses to interact with the brand.

Unified Retail Commerce: Key Benefits

Enhanced Customer Experience:

  • Seamless Omnichannel Shopping: Customers can easily transition between online and offline channels, such as browsing products online and picking them up in-store or returning items purchased online to a physical location.
  • Personalized Recommendations: By leveraging customer data from multiple channels, retailers can offer highly personalized product recommendations and marketing campaigns, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
  • Consistent Branding: A unified commerce approach ensures that customers experience consistent branding and messaging across all channels, reinforcing brand identity and loyalty.

Increased Operational Efficiency:

  • Streamlined Inventory Management: Unified commerce enables retailers to have a real-time view of inventory levels across all channels, reducing stockouts and overstocking.
  • Optimized Order Fulfillment: By integrating online and offline channels, retailers can leverage their entire network to fulfill orders efficiently, improving delivery times and reducing costs.
  • Simplified Returns: Customers can return products to any channel, regardless of where they were purchased, streamlining the returns process and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Improved Customer Loyalty:

  • Personalized Interactions: Unified retail commerce empowers retailers to deliver personalized experiences that resonate with individual customers, fostering a stronger emotional connection and increasing loyalty.
  • Consistent Customer Service: A unified view of customer data allows retailers to provide consistent and helpful customer service across all channels, building trust and loyalty.
  • Loyalty Program Integration: Unified commerce can seamlessly integrate with loyalty programs, offering personalized rewards and incentives to encourage repeat purchases.

Competitive Advantage:

  • Differentiation: By offering a superior customer experience through unified commerce, retailers can differentiate themselves from competitors and attract a larger customer base.
  • Increased Market Share: A unified commerce approach can help retailers expand their market reach and capture new customers by providing a more convenient and personalized shopping experience.
  • Enhanced Brand Reputation: A positive customer experience fueled by unified commerce can enhance a brand’s reputation and drive word-of-mouth marketing.

Implementing Unified Commerce: A Strategic Approach

To successfully provide unified commerce experience, retailers should follow a strategic approach:

  1. Define Goals and Objectives: Clearly articulate the desired outcomes of unified commerce, such as improving customer satisfaction, increasing sales, or enhancing operational efficiency.
  2. Assess Existing Infrastructure: Evaluate the current state of your technology infrastructure and identify areas that need to be upgraded or integrated to support unified commerce.
  3. Choose the Right Technology Partner: Select a technology partner with expertise in unified commerce solutions that can provide the necessary tools and support.
  4. Implement a Data Strategy: Develop a robust data strategy to collect, analyze, and leverage customer data across all channels.
  5. Provide Employee Training: Ensure that employees are equipped with the knowledge and skills to effectively support unified commerce initiatives.
  6. Continuously Monitor and Optimize: Regularly evaluate the performance of your unified commerce implementation and make necessary adjustments to optimize results.

By embracing unified commerce, retailers can create a more customer-centric, efficient, and profitable business. By breaking down silos, delivering personalized experiences, and enhancing operational efficiency, unified commerce offers a strategic advantage that can help businesses outperform their competitors and thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.

Contact ETP Group today to learn more about our unified commerce and how it can benefit your business.

The Future of Stores: Driving Bigger Baskets with Smart Retail Solutions

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

 

Did you know the first product to be barcode scanned was a pack of Wrigley chewing gum at an Ohio supermarket in 1974? Fascinating, isn’t it? This changed the retail game forever. As revolutionary as it sounds, this transformed the way people shop. Barcodes not only help business owners track their stocks but also help in quicker checkout processes for customers.

From the invention of the cash register in 1883 to the digital age of online shopping, we have come a long way. Over the years, technologies have made business owners’ lives easy as well as hugely influenced consumer’s choices and habits. This has only encouraged businesses to keep up with the technologies. The faster the technologies, the more sophisticated the customer’s behavior.

Online shopping has taken the retail world by storm due to the conveniences and tailored shopping experiences, it offers its customers. However, shoppers still like to visit a brick-and-mortar retail store to experience the product or services closely. This has further encouraged retail stores to optimize their in-store customer experiences using smart retail technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, the Internet of Things, robotics, and other latest technologies. Before diving deep into smart retail technology, let us take you through the basics. What exactly is smart retail technology?

 

What is smart retail?

A smart retail is nothing but a store that has integrated advanced digital technologies including smart self-checkout systems, smart inventory management, smart carts, and smart mirrors and shelves; into the traditional retail store. This next-generation technology helps deepen the interaction between customers and the shops.

 

How do smart retail solutions help store owners and shoppers?

  • Creates a customer portfolio by capturing visitors’ data more precisely
  • Ensures stable income and traffic by bringing back customers with easy-to-navigate and interactive stores
  • Enable smooth operations with advanced inventory and client management systems
  • Avoids task overload by automating the duties saving a great of shop owners’ time
  • Helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors who still using traditional retail ultimately winning the market

 

Smart retail technologies that will define the store of the future

  • Internet of Things (IoT) can collect real-time data which can be used to monitor inventory levels, consumer movement tracking and shopping patterns, etc
  • AI & ML can analyze the collected data to customize marketing efforts, enhance inventory management and pricing strategies
  • Mobile apps give customers access to offers, discounts, and recommendations
  • AR & VR allows immersive shopping experiences for customers
  • Beacon technology can be used to send offers & location-based notifications to customers’ smartphones who are in-store
  • Big Data Analyticsallows to analyze huge data collected from different sources to make data-driven decisions
  • Robotics and automationcan help shelves restock, handle warehouse inventory, and assist customers with basic inquiries

 

What are some applications of smart retail technology?

Smart mirrors:  Acts as navigation, information & advertising board, and advanced fitting space. It can help store visitors try on clothes and accessories and will also allow them to visualize more products, and choose colour variations in different weather settings.

 

Virtual fitting space: Allows visitors to choose items without leaving the fitting rooms by contacting the consultants through a smart mirror in the fitting room.

Smart shelves: Help staff track the item’s availability, misplacement, and theft attempts. Moreover, it will help customers find the right product size and colour.

Interactive kiosks: Self-service kiosks where customer can order and pay for their product. Other kinds of kiosks are information and interactive kiosks where visitors can find any product or information about the shops and 3D maps of shopping locations.

Real-time inventory: Helps business owner keep track of their stock in real-time and ultimately take control of their stocks. This is a way to enhance customer experience and they hate to see their desired product go out of stock.

Smart carts: A tablet that will convert the cart into a smart cart. These carts can track products bought and tailor offers based on the data. Moreover, they also allow visitors to make payments from the cart without standing in a queue.

 

What does the future hold?

Retail stores are keen to adopt smart retail solutions and their interest has been increasing rapidly over the last few years. Whether it is to transform their customer shopping experience or to provide a personalized and immersive service, businesses need to keep up with the latest technologies if they want to bridge the gap between online and offline retail.

Malls – One-stop retail shopping destinations!

Posted on by admin

Etp-Blog-malls-vs-online

The Christmas festive season is almost here, as is the end of another year and we look for the best in the New Year. The past 2 years have probably been one of the biggest testing times for the retail industry, especially for physical retail. In the wake of the last year, which seen many known retail brands going bankrupt or shuttering stores, debates on whether physical retail would witness an apocalypse because of the rise of online shopping have been happening across the industry; but it seems like the predictors of the doom of physical retail have been silenced, thanks to the reinvention of retail.

Malls still face a threat from e-commerce shopping due to rising number of consumers preferring to shop online. The major reasons being a wide range of options available online, more discounts on online purchases, convenience of shopping from home while avoiding crowds and even reducing the chances impulse shopping. One of the major debates were whether malls would survive the online shopping or e-commerce onslaught, but the numbers are in favor of shopping in a mall. A recent survey indicated that more than 60% of consumers would visit the mall for apparel shopping as opposed to shopping for clothing online, and another 39% prefer to go to the malls, not only to explore multiple retail brands in one location, but also try on and compare clothing options. Malls offer strategic advantages which are still a hit among consumers.

One of the biggest clicks for shoppers visiting malls is the tangibility of products. Brick-and-mortar retail has thrived on the ‘touch-and-feel’ feature that shoppers love when it comes to purchasing apparel, footwear and other items. Moreover, most retail brands would be present in malls and this allows shoppers a fair opportunity to explore different brands belonging to similar categories and then take a conscious decision on what to buy, from where. Another major advantage that malls offer is socializing. Consumers prefer shopping with family and friends or even interacting with store associates to help them find the right product, as they find it easier to seek opinions and then make a purchase. In addition to this, malls are a one stop destination for shopping, entertainment and eating, thus offering wholesome experiences to shoppers for their time and money.

The bottom line is that malls and e-commerce will continue to coexist as consumers will always look at multiple options to satisfy their shopping needs. However, the catch is to ensure customers get what they want and retail brands are able to do that no matter which channel they use.

Conversion Rate Optimization in Physical Retail

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Like online retailers, brick-and-mortar retailers need to focus more of their efforts on converting the store traffic that they receive. In today’s retail environment, no retail business can afford to fritter away their store traffic – it should be treated as a valuable, non-renewable resource. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) when effectively applied, can be the difference between delivering positive same-store sales or not.

Here are some statistics that shed light on the conversion rate scenario of brick-and-mortar stores:

Physical stores have a higher conversion rate than online

Conversion rates vary considerably across retail categories, but they also vary significantly within the same chain as a result of variations in store format, geographical location, product mix, inventory levels, and most importantly, store personnel who serve the shoppers. The reality is, each and every brick-and-mortar store is unique and in order to optimize conversion rates, these unique characteristics need to be considered.

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Impact of Click & Collect on Conversion Rate

Customers expect a seamless experience regardless of how they engage with a retailer and these expectations are blurring the lines between online and physical stores. Concepts such as Click and Collect are impacting store traffic patterns and conversion rates.

etp physical-stores-convert-03

At the store depicted here, the store traffic counts went up from 10 to 12 after the implementation of omni-channel retail solutions that enabled Click & Collect, sometimes also referred to as Buy Online, Pick-up In-Store (BOPIS) functionality.

Since three of the 12 traffic counts generated were ‘pre-converted’ i.e., already purchased online and came to the store to pick-up their purchase; they didn’t generate a sales transaction. If we don’t track that Click & Collect transaction and factor it into our conversion rates, then the only thing that we will conclude is that our conversion rates have dropped from 50% to 42% in this example.

Reasons why in-store shoppers didn’t convert

The most cited reasons why in-store shoppers didn’t purchase are:

  1. They could not find anyone to help them; and
  2. They did not want to wait in a queue at check-out.
  3. They could not find what they were looking for or the preferred item was out-of-stock.

etp physical-stores-convert-04

This draws attention to the impact in-store staff have on conversion rates. Getting the store teams engaged and encouraging them to apply insights from traffic and conversion analytics can play a winning role in driving the conversion rates at the store.

Solutions such as mobile POS, self-checkouts can address the long wait-time at the checkout counters by enabling effective queue busting at the store.

The merchandising and product availability challenges can be countered by deploying omni-channel features such as endless aisle.

In conclusion, modern day retailers need to implement innovative software solutions that allow them to transform their business in to omni-channel as well as equip them with the power of capturing and analyzing data across channels. This will help them boost the conversion rates at the brick-and-mortar store.

Source: http://www.retailwire.com/public/sponsors/headcount/assets/HeadCount-Conversion-Rate-Optimization-2017.pdf

Endless Aisles – Harnessing In-Store and Online Shopping

Posted on by admin

ETP blog Endless Aisle

Endless aisle is allowing customers to make use of technologies such as specially designed in-store kiosks or other intuitive systems to order items that are currently out-of-stock in that particular brick-and-mortar store. It is a concept that extends beyond the inventory that in tangible form is available in the store at a given point in time. Thus, endless aisle allows retailers to forge a strong link between customer demand and inventory. Retail companies that have been quick to embrace cross-channel strategies have already begun adopting the endless aisle technology to boost their sales further.

But what makes endless aisle click? Here are some of the noteworthy benefits:

Retailers can downsize unnecessary floor area of their brick-and-mortar store. This trimming of floor space will therefore result in higher sales per square foot. Implementing endless aisle also helps retail owners counteract in-store revenue bleeding as a result of showrooming. Retail companies can thus capitalize on reduced cost of rentals and optimize the available floor space. Further, retailers can reduce the effort of displaying large products physically at the store with the implementation of endless aisle. Products that have low inventory turnover can thus be removed from the shelves of the store. Endless aisle can help boost conversion rate due to the enhanced shopping feature at the physical store and help improve customer loyalty.

With the advent of endless aisle, the need to depend on warehouses to stock-up merchandise is diminished to a large extent as retailers can enter into tie-ups with manufacturers to ship the ordered products directly to the consumers from the manufacturer’s end.

In-store consumers can enjoy the comfort of e-shopping without compromising on the traditional ‘touch and feel’ factor. Also, real-time visibility of available products at the physical and virtual store empowers the customers to shop on their own terms.

With the help of data processing and analytics, retailers can display only those products that have a high turnover in-store while offering the not-so-popular merchandise through kiosks, tablets or computers so that customers can try and buy at the same time.

As the consumers of today are in the driver’s seat, demanding the best service and setting up high expectations, retailers must opt for investing in the right tools and technology to successfully implement endless aisle in their business thus ensuring that they do not end-up facing the reality of lost sales situations.