Omnichannel eCommerce

Omnichannel eCommerce is a selling strategy that combines multiple online and offline marketing channels to ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers. It empowers companies to provide consistent and unified experiences across various channels, including sites, apps, social media networks, physical stores, and other points of interaction with clients.

In this article, we’ll explain the importance of omnichannel eCommerce and the difference between it and multichannel eCommerce. We’ll also provide you with a guide to creating a successful strategy, 9 best practices, and examples of omnichannel eCommerce.

Why should you use omnichannel eCommerce?

There are multiple reasons for companies to consider implementing an omnichannel eCommerce strategy. Here are the main ones.

• Improved customer experience. By incorporating omnichannel eCommerce, brands can ensure a seamless shopping experience across different channels, enabling clients to interact effortlessly with the companies. This results in better customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention in the long run.
• More sales opportunities. By interacting with customers through multiple channels, businesses can expand their reach and capture sales from different segments of their target audience. Omnichannel strategies also enable cross-selling, upselling, and personalized recommendations, driving higher conversion rates and revenue.
• Competitive advantage. Since customer expectations change quickly, companies providing a superior omnichannel experience stand out from competitors who use traditional-only models. Brands with well-executed omnichannel strategies manage to differentiate their products and draw the attention of clients, prioritizing convenience and flexibility.
• Improved inventory management. When using omnichannel eCommerce platforms, businesses can unify inventory data from several channels, providing instant access to stock levels and eliminating the chances of overselling or stock shortages. It contributes to efficient inventory management, reduces storage expenses, and boosts operational effectiveness.
• Data-driven insights. After incorporating omnichannel strategies, marketers can access abundant customer data from various touchpoints, including online, in-store, and social media interactions. By analyzing this customer data, brands gain essential insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. As a result, they can tailor marketing initiatives, product assortments, and operational strategies based on this data for better effectiveness and higher sales.
• Compliance with changing market trends and consumer behavior. Since consumer preferences and shopping habits are changing fast, omnichannel eCommerce strategies are necessary for meeting customer requirements and preferences, including multiple fulfillment options like in-store pickup, same-day delivery, or subscription services.

Now that you have some reasons to consider an omnichannel eCommerce strategy for your business, it’s time to proceed to the difference between omnichannel and multichannel eCommerce.

Omnichannel eCommerce vs Multichannel eCommerce

Omnichannel eCommerce and multichannel eCommerce are both approaches for promoting and selling products across various marketing channels, yet they differ in several areas and levels of integration.

Omnichannel eCommerce is a strategy focusing on a seamless shopping experience across all channels. It helps unify the customer experience, providing consistent branding, messaging, and service through each company channel.

When a business incorporates omnichannel eCommerce, it prioritizes seamless customer experience by offering convenience, flexibility, and personalization. Prospects and clients can smoothly switch between online and offline channels, such as browsing online and completing in-store purchases. Since all the channels are integrated, all their data will be automatically saved.

Multichannel eCommerce is a strategy that implies promoting and selling products through multiple channels, yet these channels often operate independently. Marketers can’t ensure cohesive experience and consistency in messaging and branding across all channels when using this approach. Customers have various purchasing options, but their experience might differ when they choose different channels. Clients can sometimes experience product availability, pricing, and promotion inconsistencies when switching between online and offline channels.

In summary, while multichannel eCommerce uses multiple channels to offer products, omnichannel eCommerce integrates all these channels, ensuring a seamless and consistent shopping experience for each customer. Omnichannel approaches focus on satisfaction, efficiency, and data-driven insights, allowing companies to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

Now, let's learn how to create an omnichannel eCommerce strategy to increase your business's sales.

How to create a successful omnichannel eCommerce strategy?

Developing a well-thought-out omnichannel eCommerce strategy is a complicated process that involves planning, integrating online and offline channels, and providing a seamless shopping experience. To make the process easier for you, here's our step-by-step guide to help you create it faster.

1. Understand your target audience. Before executing your omnichannel strategy, start by analyzing your target audience. Conduct research to learn their preferences, shopping behaviors, and expectations. After that, analyze customer data and collect feedback to gain insights into their needs and requirements.
2. Choose communication channels. The second step involves identifying customers’ favorite marketing channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media networks, online marketplaces, physical stores, email, SMS, and others. Consider using marketing tools like SendPulse to centralize your customer data and consistently send your messages through email campaigns, SMS, chatbots, sites, and other crucial promotion channels.
3. Develop consistent branding. Ensure consistent branding across all channels to establish a cohesive brand identity and deliver a seamless customer experience. It includes visual elements, messaging, tone of voice, and customer service.
4. Incorporate inventory systems. Consider using platforms that allow you to synchronize inventory levels across all communication channels. This will help you provide customers with accurate product information and select the best delivery options for them.
5. Ensure cross-channel communication. You should enable clients to switch between channels during their shopping process without interruptions. For instance, they might browse products on your brand’s site, add items to their cart via your mobile app, and complete payments through chatbots.
6. Ensure a seamless mobile shopping experience. Since mobile shopping prevails nowadays, you need to make sure that your site and app are responsive for different devices and screens. They should offer a smooth browsing and purchasing experience on smartphones and tablets.
7. Personalize customer shopping experience. Consider using customer insights to tailor the customer shopping experience with your brand to their specific needs and requirements. This needs to be applied to every channel you use for support, promotion, and sale. Consider providing personalized product recommendations, targeted promotions, and tailored content based on customer behavior, purchasing, and browsing history.
8. Provide several payment options. To improve customer convenience, consider offering several payment methods. These methods can include debit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, and “Buy now, pay later” options.
9. Ensure several fulfillment options. Offer flexible fulfillment options such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, same-day delivery, and ship-from-store. This allows customers to choose the most convenient fulfillment method for their needs.
10. Evaluate and analyze strategy performance. Monitor your key metrics across all marketing channels to assess their effectiveness. These include sales performance, customer engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction. You can use this information to improve your omnichannel strategy, optimize the customer experience, and adapt to market trends.

Let’s imagine that you have a sports apparel brand and want to implement an omnichannel strategy. We’ll show you how you can do it easily and fast using SendPulse. Let’s dive in.

Step 1. Create a user-friendly website

You need to establish an online presence by creating an intuitive and easy-to-navigate brand site. It should let customers seamlessly browse and purchase your products. When developing your site, ensure that it looks good on laptops and smartphones, allowing users to have the best experience with your company. Moreover, your site should provide personalized product recommendations based on the items users explore. You can create a stunning mobile-friendly website by using SendPulse. The platform lets you use ready-to-go templates, and add readable texts, functional forms and buttons, and elements that fit perfectly on any device.

Below is the process of building a website from a template in SendPulse.

Step 2. Ensure social media integration

Since social media is a vital part of everybody’s life, allowing exploring news, new topics, discovering new items, and purchasing products, it’s a must to establish connections through these channels as well. Consider adding chatbots to the channels your customers use most often. It can be Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, or all of them altogether. Chatbots will help you provide timely instant responses to customers' FAQs and hand the chats to your support agents in case customers face complex issues. SendPulse will help you do it easily without knowledge of the code.

You can see how easy it is to create a chatbot with SendPulse.

You need to add text and build the flow. As a result, users will be able to get answers to common questions, book an appointment, and buy the product through social media networks or messengers quickly and with no effort.

Step 3. Build mobile app

Consider creating a mobile app for your customers for better convenience and experience. The app should be available for iOS and Android. You can use the app to provide exclusive deals, early access, and an excellent shopping experience.

Now that you know the steps, let’s explore the best practices for a robust omnichannel eCommerce strategy.

10 Best Practices for a Killer Omnichannel eCommerce Strategy

To create an effective omnichannel eCommerce strategy, you need seamless integration of multiple channels, ensuring an excellent shopping experience. Yet there are some more points to consider when doing it. Below are some key best practices to keep in mind.

1. Get ready with consistent messaging. Make sure to maintain consistent branding, messaging, and design elements across all channels you decide to incorporate, such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and physical stores. It will help you develop a recognizable brand experience for customers.
2. Find the perfect marketing solution. There are plenty of marketing platforms, reducing the workload on your team. With their help, you can provide consistent messages through email campaigns, chatbots, SMS, web push notifications, and many others. SendPulse is one of them. This omnichannel marketing solution allows you to build chatbots for Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook, providing the latest and most relevant offers. Even more, using the platform’s CRM will help you store all customer data synchronized and track all your marketing efforts in one place. It results in consistency and a well-executed marketing strategy.
3. Provide a seamless cross-channel experience. Enable customers to switch between online and offline channels effortlessly. Offer features such as click-and-collect, buy online, and pick-up in-store to provide convenience and flexibility.
4. Consider using personalization and customization. When sending messages through various channels, personalize marketing messages, product recommendations, and promotions across all channels using customer data. AI and machine learning will help you deliver relevant and targeted content that meets the expectations of different audience segments.
5. Incorporate mobile shopping experience. To resonate with the increasing number of mobile shoppers, consider making your eCommerce company’s site mobile-friendly. Your site and mobile app should offer a seamless experience when used on smartphones and tablets.
6. Ensure customer support around the clock. If you want your customers to get all the necessary assistance and increase conversions, you need to provide consistent and high-quality customer service across multiple channels, such as live chat, email, phone support, and social media networks. Make sure that your prospects and clients can contact you quickly and get timely responses. If you want to do it fast and without much effort, consider using a multichannel solution like SendPulse. With its help, you’ll be able to answer FAQs, recommend products, accept payments, and handle exchanges and returns in seconds through chatbots for channels like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp. Moreover, you can add live chat to your website to provide prospects and customers with timely assistance at any stage of their customer journeys.
7. Provide a simple checkout process. By ensuring a fast checkout process and removing any unnecessary steps, you’ll be able to reduce cart abandonment rates and encourage more conversions. For a smoother experience, your customers should have several payment options, guest checkout, and one-click ordering. This will help your company speed up the purchasing process and improve customer satisfaction.
8. Incorporate loyalty programs. Consider implementing loyalty programs and rewarding existing customers for engagement and purchases across multiple channels. These include discounts, points, exclusive offers, and other perks for more repeat purchases and loyalty.
9. Improve strategy. Track and analyze key performance metrics regularly across all channels to find areas for improvement. A/B testing and experiments will help you improve user experience, conversion rates, and the effectiveness of your strategy in general.
10. Ensure effortless returns and exchanges. Your business might have various scenarios, including returns. Such inquiries can influence customer satisfaction in a good or bad way. Everything depends on implementation. If you strive for improved satisfaction, then make sure that customers can make returns and exchanges across all available channels seamlessly and without much effort from their side.

These instructions will help you develop a powerful omnichannel eCommerce strategy, ensuring a smooth, customized, and memorable shopping experience. Now, let’s explore some excellent examples of omnichannel eCommerce strategies.

Examples of Omnichannel eCommerce

Several companies have effectively executed omnichannel eCommerce strategies. Here are three noteworthy examples from famous brands.

Starbucks

The famous coffeehouse chain presented worldwide successfully incorporates an omnichannel eCommerce strategy by combining channels like mobile app, website, and brick-and-mortar coffee places. Customers can order their favorite drinks using the mobile app and enjoy coffee or tea in-store, at the drive-thru, or via curbside pickup. Moreover, the company offers a loyalty program for regular customers that spans all channels. According to this program, consumers get points for their purchases and then can redeem them for pleasant rewards. There are even more attractive offers for customers who order through the mobile app, have their birthday, or come with tumblers.

Alo Yoga

Now a well-known athletic apparel retailer, Alo Yoga, is another amazing example of effective and seamless integration of site, mobile app, social media, live chat, physical stores, and other channels that ensure a positive shopping experience with this sportswear brand.

Oysho

Oysho, an international chain for sports apparel, seamlessly combines multiple marketing channels for better customer support, promotion, and sales. Customers can use the brand’s Instagram to explore new arrivals and follow the link in the bio to proceed to the checkout process.

Congrats! Now you know what omnichannel eCommerce is and why it’s essential. We hope that our guide, best practices, and examples will help you develop a successful omnichannel eCommerce strategy. Register in SendPulse to seamlessly use various marketing channels for your business.

References:

1. This article determines the term and unveils how to incorporate an omnichannel eCommerce strategy.
2. In this article, you’ll find the difference between omnichannel and multichannel eCommerce strategies.

Last Updated: 29.09.2024