Omni-channel e-commerce is a concept which helps customers in providing a seamless and integrated shopping experience through multiple channels including online, social media and in-store.
Technologies have evolved customer behavior and their buying needs. Now, to unfold these customer behaviors it’s important to understand the different touchpoints customers use to complete their purchase journey.
In other words, you saw a pair of shoes on Instagram and you really liked them. Now, you have clicked on the Instagram post and you are redirected to the company’s website showing shoe color, size, material and price information. You liked the product but decided to grab it from the store instead of purchasing it online. You buy them from the store and the next day, you open Instagram and see the same advertisement on Instagram.
With an omni-channel strategy, all of the channels you have used throughout your customer journey – social media, website, and store- are linked and consider what is happening on the other channels. In this case, the transition from Instagram to the website and store was omni-channel, but it was lost in the transition from the website and store back to Instagram.
The reality is that most companies face this problem. Also, they keep paying unnecessary advertisement costs using multi-channel ways to keep the customers engaged and complete the purchase journey. But the question arises of how omni-channel is different from multi-channel. Let’s understand the difference.
Omni-channel Vs Multi-channel
Omni-channel and Multi-channel involve multiple physical and digital channels, but the level of awareness between channels is what distinguishes them.
E-commerce brands that are going omni-channel witness many significant benefits. Having an omni-channel e-commerce platform impacts the business by delivering a great omni-channel customer service experience and enhancing brand credibility.
The brands that offer an omni-channel e-commerce platform to can offer excellent solutions to their customers and also witness significant benefits to their business.
Here are the key reasons why brands should shift towards an omni-channel e-commerce platform:
Providing omni-channel e-commerce solutions focuses towards offering customers cohesive messaging about your brand. No matter where a customer reaches out to your brand, the messaging remains unaltered.
Omni-channel commerce platforms allow brands to collect and merge customer data from multiple channels. The amalgamated data gives a full picture of the types of customers interested in your brand, and their behaviour, which helps to personalize the customer journey.
A thorough understanding of the customer journey can help you to personalize your customers’ experience. Creating a personalized experience is vital to omni-channel customers as they have a 30% higher lifetime value over shoppers who only purchase using one channel.
Having an omni-channel marketing strategy for e-commerce in place helps in understanding customers’ purchase behaviour and developing stronger relationships with customers, which has a direct impact on sales.
With the evolving technology every day, effective utilization of technology keeps the business ahead of disruption. Though we understand it’s challenging to stay ahead of the disruption, however, taking these challenges makes strong businesses.
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