What Omnichannel Means for Ecommerce

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The term omnichannel, or multichannel, represents a business model incorporating cross-channeled management of customer relations, where the focus is to build on a unified customer experience. Simply, omnichannel is primarily aimed to establish and sustain the continuity of a customer's shopping experience in favor of a retailer's profitability. Today, an ecommerce portal will integrate live web chats, telephone contacts, social media integration, mobile applications, customer testimony pages, timely news updates, FAQ pages, and a million other channels of interacting with the customer. The primary goal of all those channels is to improve customer experience before, during, and after making a purchase through the avenue that is most convenient to them, simultaneously. So why does omnichannel represent a fundamental transformation of retailing through digital technologies?


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The Role of the Omnichannel Strategy

Whether a customer is using a desktop, a mobile phone, a smartphone, or a tablet, omnichannel provides convenient opportunities to interact with customers optimally. Regardless of the screen size and type of the device a potential, current, or future customer is using, it has become extremely essential to create a seamless experience using both physical and online channels. Experts and practitioners readily agree that the omnichannel strategy is indeed driving the very future of marketing, given that 87% of online customers prefer sites with a cohesive shopping experience.

The omnichannel ecommerce consolidates sales, marketing, public relations, and customer service functions when interacting with potential, current, and past customers. The difference between modern ecommerce sites and those that operated about two decades ago is in exploiting advanced web app development, creative sales ventures, and online marketing to enhance the online shopping experience. Consequently, it is clear that omnichannel strategies are unique in their function in contemporary ecommerce. However, before briefly reviewing advantages of the omnichannel ecommerce, it is important to consider what has inspired omnichannel in the first place.

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The Birth of Omnichannel in Modern Ecommerce

What has largely inspired omnichannel in modern ecommerce is the need for ecommerce sites to adapt to the changing times, and embrace a new characteristic of their customers. In other words, online retailers are only adapting to a changing ecommerce landscape. This explains why ecommerce had already reached USD 1.6 trillion capital base in 2015, and more importantly, the industry was set to grow with over 20% annually since then. While ecommerce only accounts for 6.6% out of USD 24 trillion in global retail sales, it was registering the highest rate of growth unprecedented in the retail industry.

What perhaps explains this gigantic growth rate is the willingness, readiness, and commitment of modern ecommerce to remain connected with the mobile consumer. Traditional retail models are still targeting the consumer of the 20^th century, forgetting that modern consumers prefer shopping on their mobile phones, and are largely using digital cash flows. Using omnichannel, the ecommerce segment of the retail industry has recognized and embraced the complex notion of a mobile customer, reinvented the purchasing process, built the ties with social media, and tapped into a growing web of mobile technologies with an assortment of solutions from web app development. Omnichannel has become the future of ecommerce, given the need of modern retailers to:

1. Accommodate a mobile customer base
2. Reinvent and digitalize the retail purchasing process
3. Connect to social media
4. Accommodate advancing mobile technologies
5. Redefine the shopping experience
6. Adapt to the lifestyles of the Information Age

Core Advantages of Omnichannel Ecommerce

The world is now witnessing what has been regarded as a new era of innovation in retailing. Gradually replacing the traditional retail models, ecommerce is gradually serving the new generation of consumers who prefer using their digitalized income the same way they get it. The mobile device, including laptops, smartphones, mobile phones, and tablets have become common in modern lifestyles. Acknowledging that, modern ecommerce has also gone mobile. Indeed, the mobile device is not only the foundation of omnichannel retail, but also the answer to an increasingly omnichannel world.

That settled, you may as well ask the 'So?' question. New research findings have shown that 65% of consumers today make additional purchases above their budget following optimized omnichannel-based shopping experiences. The omnichannel is therefore not only the future of ecommerce, but also the boost for profitability. Walmart recently invested hundreds of millions to build what they described as a seamless omnichannel shopping experience, to join a growing list of multinational retailers whose sales and marketing are already anchored on omnichannel. But why invest so much in omnichannel retailing, you may ask? Simply put, because omnichannel provides unprecedented advantages in retail, from the perspective of the retailer.

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1. Unprecedented Potential of Customer Engagement

• Today, a retailer will engage the customer in a hundred ways more than traditional marketing, sales, and public relation strategies could.
• A social media interaction, added to live web chats, and personal emails will definitely engage the customer way more than traditional TV adverts could. This potential for customer engagement will undoubtedly make those using omnichannel the winners in ecommerce sales.

2. Increased Profitability

• As stated above, 65% of consumers buy more than they need because of omnichannel. According to Harvard Business Review, omnichannel-anchored consumers are more valuable for a retailer, by adding that 65% sale to what a traditional store would have sold.

3. More New Customers

• Most customers are often attracted and retained through omnichannel, in a way that they would never have made a purchase without that engagement.

4. Adaption to New Shopping Trends

• Customers are changing in how, why, and when they shop. Omnichannel address the new mobile customer who prefers mobile shopping with numerous engagement points besides the traditional in-store interactions. With omnichannel, modern retailing adequately adapts to the seasonal and moment-based needs of the consumer.
• Offering exactly what they need and when they need it, helps to transform a retailer into a popular brand, during high season and out of season, building customer loyalty and increasing profitability.