What is Omni Channel Commerce and how do I navigate it?

February 14, 2023

What is Omnichannel Commerce?

Omnichannel Commerce is a sales approach that uses multiple channels to give a seamless and personalized experience to its customers through connecting online-store platforms, offline-store platforms and social media platforms altogether.

Omnichannel Commerce focuses on the overall customer experience not a customer’s individual experience on different platforms.

Before further discussing Omnichannel commerce, lets first discuss what Single-channel Commerce and Multichannel Commerce means.

Single-channel Commerce

Single-channel Commerce is a sales approach which uses only one platform to sell your products. This could be either a physical store or an online store only.

Multichannel Commerce

Multichannel Commerce is a sales approach which uses multiple platforms to sell your products both online and in a physical store. Multichannel Commerce is already a great way to attract customers.

But is attracting customers just enough for you to establish your brand? No, it’s not. For you to establish your brand there should be a connection between all the Multichannel platforms in your business. By doing so you can not only attract new customers but hold on to them.

Omnichannel Commerce

Omnichannel Commerce is actually the process of connecting both online and physical stores experience together. It makes it clear to us that there can be no Omnichannel without Multichannel. This means that your customer can have a seamless experience across all platforms.

Benefits of Omnichannel Commerce

Improvement in sales
Research shows that a customer tends to spend 4% more in physical stores and 10% more in the online platform, than those who use Single-channel only.
Better customer experience
According to research, it shows that 9 out of 10 customers want an Omnichannel experience with every channel seamlessly connected together. By taking down the obstacles of communication between different channels, companies can build a more natural relationship with their customers.
Increased customer loyalty
Research shows that within 6 months after an Omnichannel shopping experience customers log in 23% more to repeat their shopping habits with the retailer.
Better data collection
As retailers are able to collect more data about their customers over multiple channels they can provide their customers with a more personalized experience.

Challenges of Omnichannel Commerce

Physical store stocks vs Online stocks
This means that in-store stocks update and online stocks update should be connected together. Or else it can get difficult to keep track of stocks records and will lead to losing customer trust.
Lack of latest technology
When a business is trying to implement an Omnichannel system, their technology often is not up to standards.
Teaming up with right partners
When using an Omnichannel approach you should be able to find the right partners for logistics, shipping and eCommerce partners.

How to implement a successful Omnichannel Commerce strategy?

Steps to start off an Omnichannel strategy,

Get to know your customer
Select the right channels
Connect all channels
Maintain all channels

What’s next in Omnichannel Commerce?

Physical only stores are now investing in online stores.
For example, consider Alibaba, previously a physical-only store, who are now investing in establishing online stores and expanding them. Alibaba has certainly understood the importance of Multichannel and Omnichannel strategy. Looking forward to it, more companies in the future should be trying to implement this strategy.

The building of personalized mobile apps.
Now, people do not go anywhere without mobile phones. It’s an era in which most people are using mobile phones to complete their daily shopping. And with the latest Covid-19 pandemic situation, people shopping through their smartphones have rapidly increased. So shopping using smartphones is definitely the next big thing in Omnichannel strategy, and retailers should be trying to build more convenient mobile apps for the use of their customers.

For this, companies can use PWA application which allows you to have a website and mobile apps for any application of the same code, which could cut down your costs in developing and would be more convenient for your customers. Read more about PWA here: https://yoast.com/what-is-a-progressive-web-app-pwa/

Final verdict

Omnichannel Commerce is actually the next big thing in the retail business. People expect to reach their preferred brands always. So being reachable for your customers at any platform of their preference at any time is very important in giving a seamless experience to your customer for a complete Omnichannel experience.

References:

https://www.bloomreach.com/en/blog/2019/07/omnichannel-commerce-for-business.html

https://www.sana-commerce.com/e-commerce-terms/what-is-omnichannel-e-commerce/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qualid Stanly is a newbie to the professional world. Due to the enthusiasm about the business and technology he chose to take the path as a Business Development intern at NeoSolax just after his final exams at school in 2020.

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Beginner,Magento 2,Training