What is omni-channel retailing?
Omni-channel retailing — or, omnichannel (meaning, all channels) — is a fully-integrated approach to commerce that provides shoppers a unified experience across online and offline channels (e.g., touchpoints).
True omni-channel shopping extends from brick-and-mortar locations to mobile-browsing, ecommerce marketplaces, onsite storefronts, social media, retargeting, and everything in between.
To be everywhere. That’s the dream.
However, according to a recent survey, only 22% of North American retailers consider “omnichannel efforts” a top priority. Compare that to 2015, when 45% of retailers claimed the same.
This fluctuation might mean that while retailers agree omni-channel is important, it’s not as high a priority as avenues that appear to have more tangible outcomes, like mobile, marketing or merchandising. However …
These channel’s true potential will always be squandered so long as they’re thought of as separate, non-integrated ways of selling to your market.
It’s not just about having a presence on multiple channels or giving your customer the option to shop in multiple places. Mobile, marketing, merchandising, fulfillment, marketplaces … all of it, needs to be taken into consideration if you’re going to be a robust omni-channel retailer.
To do that, let’s explore …
- What Is Omni-Channel Retailing?
- How Omni-Channel Shopping Could Be
- What’s the Opportunity in Multiple Channels?
- Why Is Everywhere Commerce So Valuable?
- How to Create Immersive Experiences
- What Omni-Channel Shopping Feels Like
- What’s Next for Omni-Channel Retailers?
What Is Omni-Channel Retailing?
With many definitions and spellings, it’s easy to get confused.
- Retailers with a physical and digital presence
- “Seamless and effortless, high-quality customer experiences that occur within and between contact channels.”
- The ability to deliver a consistent experience across offline and online channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business.
The most fleshed out definition of omni-channel I’ve seen involves allowing in-store visitors to see products and deals on their mobile devices, ship purchases to stores, have in-store purchases shipped to their home, have stores process returns, and allow for exchanges in a physical retail location.
These definitions are sufficient… but none contain the gravity you’d expect a prefix like “omni” should carry. “The ability to sell online and offline” is significant. However, does it sound nearly as powerful next to words defined as “being everywhere” and “having unlimited knowledge?”
No.
The reason these definitions of omni-channel sell themselves short is because the tooling itself has forced retailers to think small.
Consider this, in a recent study conducted by Periscope research, 78% of retailers admit their consumers do not have a unified brand experience. 45% of retailers also say that progress isn’t happening fast enough.
Their primary obstacles with delivering great omni-channel experiences cited were:
- Lack of internal organization (39%)
- Lack of customer analytics across channels (67%)
- Siloed organization (48%)
- Poor data quality (45%)
- Inability to identify customers across shopping trips (45%)
Each obstacle stems from management practices that were born and developed around tools built in a previous era of commerce.
How Omni-Channel Shopping Could Be
Omni-channel as a philosophy is about providing consistent, yet unique and contextual brand experiences across multiple customer-aware touchpoints, including brick and mortar, marketplaces, web, mobile and social.
It’s about allowing consumers to purchase wherever they are while communicating in a way that is in tune with why they use a given channel and showing awareness of their individual stage in the customer lifecycle.
Using that definition as a guiding philosophy, a sample omni-channel customer experience might look something like this:
- A customer discovers and buys from your brand through Amazon.
- They receive a tailored-for-Amazon unboxing experience, with inserts that promote inventory not found on Amazon along with a discount, information about your loyalty program, your retail experiences (i.e store or popup) and a URL to a dedicated collection page on your site.
- The landing page triggers retargeting pixels for your Facebook shop, Buyable Pins, and Display remarketing ads promoting products that complement the original purchase.
- When the second purchase is made, the customer receives an email notifying them of a nearby retail storefront or event, the option to ship to store, and promotes the “refer-a-friend” program.
- Follow-up emails encourage the customer to check out new looks on Pinterest or tagging the company on Instagram and promote your loyalty program (if they haven’t joined) which adds bonus points for following on different social media channels.
- Before your next pop-up, loyal customers are sent a link to a private collection, are encouraged to buy from their phones, and are notified of an exclusive, members-only VIP lounge.
Even without getting specific about a company or product category, it’s easy to see how this basic omni-channel user journey uses information about one sales channel and invites them to participate in another they may not have been aware of.
What separates this from what many businesses are doing is inviting the buyer to take actions that feel native to additional channels, so the interaction isn’t forced or contrived.
When done well, buyers seamlessly transition from one channel to the next, blissfully falling deeper and deeper into the brand experience.
