How to Own Your Omni-Channel Strategy
Monday, November 21, 2016Lauren Macdonald
This is how You Own and Master Your Omni-Channel Strategy
As merchants lean into the mobile world, many are met with the challenge of creating an experience that not only aligns with their existing web presence, but complements it. Optimizing the balance between mobile, desktop and in-store channels is a vital step for savvy retailers, as an omn-ichannel existence is quickly becoming the benchmark by which consumers measure the digital value of their favorite brands, whether they realize it or not.
We’ve sat down with Vishal Wadher, CEO of atmosol, a company with 11 years of eCommerce experience, hyper-focused on the end-to-end processes & digital marketing strategies for eCommerce retail businesses. atmosol clients include Tupperware, Comedy Central, Red Bull and many more. Read on for Vishal’s take on how omni-channel can affect your customer experiences, and how to make sure your channels are aligning in the most productive ways.
“eCommerce conversion happens when you have successfully created a personal and emotional bond with your customer who can visualize your product as part of their lifestyle” –Vishal Wadher, CEO, atmosol
In order for this bond to happen in today’s ever-changing eCommerce and retail industries, the omni-channel experience is mission critical as part of any retailer’s digital marketing strategy.
Omni-channel is essentially the culmination of a retailer’s technologies, carefully integrated and interacting with one another for the purpose of providing the consumer a seamless experience. One example would be this: A customer visits a local retailer’s store and an iBeacon alerts them of specials available in store. The customer opens the mobile app to see these special offers and makes a purchase at the counter and shows the agent the promotion from the app. The customer walks out and a few hours later, decides they need to change the shipping address due to an upcoming move. They open their laptop and log in to the retailer’s eCommerce store. Within their account, they see the order under the “pending shipment” section, and updates the shipping address. While on the site, the customer is shown an accessory item to their original purchase, which they add to their cart, but never complete the purchase. A few days later, the mobile app sends a push notification with a reminder that they have products in the cart. From there, the customer opens the app and completes their purchase, using the built in Apple Pay method. After a few months, the mobile app sends a push notification to let the customer know the retailer is running specials both online and in-store for limited quantity clearance items. These item quantities are visible from the app to reflect the pending amounts both at the physical store and the ecommerce store.
While it may not seem exciting, and it may seem like an obvious workflow, you’d be surprised how complex the integration and logistics can get behind the scenes to make all of this possible. A true omni-channel experience results in a smooth, end-to-end experience, but can take a good bit of elbow grease to implement.
- Content Contributed by Vishal Wadher, CEO, atmosol
eBridge Connections, a leading provider of accounting integration solutions, understands the importance of an omni-channel experience as well. For eBridge customers, integrating their accounting/ERP systems with their eCommerce stores, EDI trading partners, or CRM applications, takes them from order-entry chaos, to an organized business model they can rely on. By eliminating the need for manual data entry between business systems, eCommerce merchants using eBridge can free up valuable time and resources to focus on other areas of their business. As Vishal mentioned, an omni-channel experience results in a smooth end-to-end experience, and eBridge’s integration solution can certainly help merchants achieve this. It’s all about connecting different platforms, so that data moves seamlessly between them, and life becomes easier.