Understanding Omnichannel Retailing In Detail

In 2019, omnichannel shopping proved to be a consistently popular trend, and will continue to be an essential part of customers’ experience in 2020. The Google study concluded that 83% of U.S. consumers who visit a store on a regular basis make an online search before going to the store.

The number of omnichannel shoppers is expected to grow by 25% by 2020, which is why retailers need to put an emphasis on omnichannel commerce. Getting across a relevant message using the right channel at the right time is essential for an omnichannel experience. To make that happen, you need to manage your customer data in an intelligent way.

What is Omnichannel Commerce?

With the advent of omnichannel commerce, consumers can engage with retailers in an entirely new way. With a growing number of digital channels and touchpoints, along with standardized customer service expectations, your business needs a comprehensive, multichannel approach to stay in step with customer expectations.

In the absence of consistent, relevant and trustworthy product information and digital assets on your commerce platforms, you will miss opportunities and fall behind your competition.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel: What’s the Difference?

Selling on different channels, such as digital and physical, is omnichannel and multichannel commerce. Despite this, conventional multichannel campaigns can separate the channels into their own separate ones.

Omnichannel commence’s name is true to its meaning, since it covers all channels and strives to satisfy customers’ needs regardless of their channels of engagement.

Why do Companies Need Omnichannel Commerce? What Are the Benefits?

In today’s world, where products are sold through multiple channels, more information is needed than ever before. Customer-centric, personalized, search-powered, and social-powered are the metrics-driven omnichannel product experiences of today. Make sure you are maximizing your product information to create an intuitive, new-age purchasing experience that won’t cease to excite and convert customers.

What is the importance of an omnichannel experience? There are many ways to market to customers across multiple channels: a non-buyer in one channel might be won over in another by offering the right content and selling the right product to meet their needs and interests.

Many retailers contend with the challenge of consistency. Although the information shared in each channel may differ, the operative principle should be to ensure that you provide trustworthy and relevant information across all digital touchpoints and channels.

According to the 2020 IDC PIM for Commerce MarketScape, “In the digital economy, both customers from within the industry and from outside are looking for more compelling, frictionless, and personalized commerce experiences.

A retailer, manufacturer, and brand must provide accurate product data across all distribution channels for their products to optimize the story being told around them. As organizations seek to strengthen customer relationships both in terms of the creation loop and loyalty loop through engaging product stories, the need for product information management (PIM) will only increase.

In order to enable brands and retailers to collaborate and manage product content within an open omnichannel environment, a PIM solution provides the basis to help support the creation and management of multichannel product experiences.

Do Omnichannel Commerce Strategies Offer Benefits?

An intelligent omnichannel commerce strategy has the following top 3 benefits:

1. With seamless integration of channels, consumers have a seamless and informed buying experience.
2. Providing a consistent customer experience in any channel can drive customer engagement.
3. Customers who buy wherever and whenever you are can be converted, leading to increased sales, up-sells, and cross-sells.

Omnichannel Commerce Trends to Watch

Adding Context to Omnichannel Product Experience

One of the challenges facing marketers is contextualizing omnichannel experiences. Customers will be provided with the information that is relevant based on your knowledge about them or their channel activities, and the level of consent they have given to you.

Consumers may know or suspect their devices, buy or consume goods in a certain way, have specific preferences, knowledge of the market, demographics, and geolocations. That is, the customer could potentially see different features of different products due to the amount of information you know about them.

This year’s worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19 has already broken a significant aspect of how and what we purchase. There are a number of factors that influence our shopping behavior, including our buying preferences and priorities.

In public places, many people are using Internet shopping in order to limit human contact and the risk of spreading infectious diseases. Many consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical products are in high demand within online grocery channels, and this strain increases the workload for all online grocery channels.

Consumers respond more quickly to omnichannel strategies that retailers and brands have in place. In addition to improving its ability to manage product content, it will enable the company to provide a more profitable, trustworthy, and enhanced consumer experience.

An Omnichannel Commerce Approach Providing Relevant, Personalized Offers

Customer segmentation and customized products can only be achieved with a comprehensive picture of your customers and products. The combination of product and customer insights with e-commerce can generate immense value.

Omnichannel commerce solutions incorporate Master Data Management and Data Quality to get your product data in sync with your sales channels and deliver a holistic picture of your suppliers, products, and customers. By centralizing content and assigning roles and responsibilities to it, your approach streamlines workflows and collaboration.