Here's what a typical shopping experience looks like today:
Tom's backpack is busted and he needs a new one. He goes online and finds an awesome one in your web shop. But Tom wants to see it and try it out before he buys it. Tom is smart, be like Tom and all that.
Once he's there, he gives his card to your sales person, Judy. She instantly sees the contents of his shopping cart and shows him the actual backpack. Yup, Tom likes the backpack. Judy completes his online purchase for him and wraps it up.
Tom gets a 15% discount for his next purchase - happy birthday Tom! It will be stored with his card info and subtracted from the bill next time he shops at any of your points of sale, both online and offline.
Later on, Tom gets reminded about his 15% discount through targeted Facebook and Google ads.
So you see, things have changed. Your customers' newly developed shopping habits blur the lines between your sales channels as they shift from mobile to online to brick'n'mortar stores and back again with ease. The customers expect to be able to buy an item online and pick it up in a physical store, or to try an item out in the store but complete the transaction online.
They want the retailers to learn from their previous purchases and they expect a personalized, flexible and consistent shopping experience on all points of purchase and across all channels. When a business and sales solution enables you to do all that, it is called an omnichannel solution.
90%
90% of customers research items online before purchasing
60%
60% of customers research items online while at the physical store
66%
In the lasts 6 months, 66% of customers have made a purchase that involved multiple channels
73%
73% of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information and purchase history to tailor their shopping experience
84%
84% of customers believe that retailers should be doing more to integrate their online and offline channels
98%
98% of incremental sales after integration of both online and offline sales channels
90%
90% of customers research items online before purchasing
60%
60% of customers research items online while at the physical store
66%
In the lasts 6 months, 66% of customers have made a purchase that involved multiple channels
73%
73% of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information and purchase history to tailor their shopping experience
84%
84% of customers believe that retailers should be doing more to integrate their online and offline channels
98%
98% of incremental sales after integration of both online and offline sales channels
For example, you have your own web shop on Shopify, you also sell on eBay and Amazon.
You have to maintain product catalogue across all channels manually, you can’t track inventory and orders from a single place, nor can you get insight into revenues and payment methods across all channels in real-time.
For example, you have a physical store and basic online presence, but no online sales channels.
You are losing revenue due to lack of online sales channels, your desktop POS system can't track real-time sales data, you have to maintain all your separate stores individually and you don't have a solution for selling on-the-go.
For example, you have dozen brick'n'mortar stores on high street and many separate online sales channels - your own web shop, you sell on Amazon, eBay and so on.
You have difficulties updating and syncing product catalogue and availability in all online and offline stores, you can't monitor your entire business from a single place and you can't receive unified data and insights into payment methods and revenue.
That means complete inventory, stock and catalog management, order tracking and synchronization across all your web shops, carts and marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay and more, and all your brick'n'mortar stores - all your sales channels united in a single cloud-based system and managed through a single interface.
That means online, on-the-go and in store credit card payment system with varied hardware-backed mobile and POS options.
That means a single comprehensive stream of information collected across all your online and offline sales channels, with tools that help you extract valuable business insights from your sales and revenue data.
That means no more individual and manual product catalog and stock management for all separate sales channels - all changes are instantly updated everywhere and everything is in sync all of the time.
That means a solution that stores and synchronizes your customer's data such as shopping preferences, carts, previous purchases and credit card info, so that you can create a personalized loyalty program for each individual customer, across all channels.
