Omnichannel retail: Bridging the gap between e-commerce and physical stores

Highlights

You’ll learn:

How integrating e-commerce and physical stores through an omnichannel approach leads to:

• Unified shopping experience: Shopping online or in your physical store? No problem. An omnichannel unifies the shopping experience, making it seamless and consistent
• Use the right technology: With a composable DXP, you can deliver omnichannel content and personalized digital solutions. Just as your customers require
• Full data integration: Integrate customer data from all your marketing channels to enable you to manage the inventory better and optimize the shopping experience
• Customer data and insights: Gain insights from customer data. Track all interactions, behaviors and preferences and optimize your operations accordingly

With an omnichannel approach, you can surely future-proof your retail strategy. Opt for a composable DXP to help you deliver omnichannel experiences. Request for a free demo today.

Keep reading to learn more!

As customer behavior evolves, brands must plan to meet their expectations, and omnichannel retail offers a reliable way to do it. It is part of a suite of omnichannel strategies that composable DXPs are built to deliver.

Bridging e-commerce and brick-and-mortar

The omnichannel retail strategy promotes e-commerce integration with brick-and-mortar stores, creating a seamless and personalized shopping experience. It meets customers at the point that is most convenient for them.

Omnichannel retail enhances customer loyalty, improves brand visibility, and leads to more sales.

The new era of omnichannel retail

Omnichannel retail is a strategy with which brands engage their customers through multiple unified and integrated digital and physical channels. It consists of all channels, whether in-store, phone, online, social media, or mobile apps.

The idea of omnichannel retail aligns with the modern customer’s desire for a flexible, efficient and unified shopping or store experience.

Brands and retailers can meet these desires by adopting omnichannel retail solutions. The approach also helps brands collect valuable data across all channels, which they then use to optimize the customer experience.

The evolution of retail: From single channel to omnichannel

In the past, retail was mainly confined to physical stores. Then came e-commerce to shake things up, bringing a better level of comfort.

It enabled consumers to enjoy online shopping and payments. It was convenient, and that reduced physical store shopping. Sales also declined for brands that relied solely on physical stores.

Though e-commerce improved retail, it did not offer a synergy between their physical and online channels.

Brands also realized that focusing on one or the other channel was akin to leaving money on the table. Omnichannel retail solutions have changed that. It has created a digital and physical retail convergence. That synergy is enabling brands to deliver more tailored shopping experiences.

Benefits of omnichannel strategies

Omnichannel strategies ushered in digital and physical retail integration. Today, businesses benefit from access to better customer journey mapping, stronger brand awareness, and higher conversion rates. Here are other benefits to consider:

• Enhances customer experience: Omnichannel retail solutions focus on what customers need and their pain points and deliver the solution at the channel that is most convenient for them.
• Data-driven insights: Omnichannel strategies in retail enable brands to have access to richer data through customer interactions on all channels, enhancing customer journey mapping and data-driven insights for optimizing omnichannel solutions.
• Reduces wait times and rising costs: With omnichannel solutions, retailers fulfill orders from the most convenient and efficient location, which reduces wait times and delivery costs.
• Streamlines inventory management: Omnichannel strategies also enable retailers to see the stock levels in real-time across all sales channels. That way, they can manage their supply chain better and not overstock their products. It also helps them save storage costs and restock quicker, especially for popular products.

Key components of a successful omnichannel retail strategy

• Digital and physical retail integration: The sync between physical and online stores enables loyal customers to switch channels with ease. That provides a unified, consistent, and easy shopping experience for them. 
• Retail technology trends: Big data analytics, voice commerce, and mobile payment are enabling the success of omnichannel retail strategies. A composable DXP also helps brands to create tailored solutions for their customers. It adapts to consumer needs, ensuring they are better engaged and satisfied.
• Streamlining operations: Digital and physical retail integration ensures all channels are in sync and you can manage data. That leads to faster services and a better brand experience.

Actionable steps for adopting an omnichannel approach

1. Train your staff: Train your staff on omnichannel strategies, best practices, and the use of relevant and new technologies. Ensure they know how integrated systems work, especially with inventory and customer support.
2. Integrate your channels: Connect your sales and marketing channels, set up e-commerce integration, and ensure there is digital and physical retail synergy. Integrate these channels so that customers can move between each one to enjoy a smooth shopping experience.
3. Leverage data analytics: Use analytics tools to track customer behavior and how they interact on all channels. You can then use the insight to customize digital content or email marketing campaigns, develop new products, and also make efficient inventory decisions.
4. Focus on the customer: The customer is at the center of omnichannel strategies. Hence, prioritize their needs and improve your customer service. Ensure your website and mobile apps are responsive and user-friendly. Also, seek out customer feedback and use that to improve your operations further.

Challenges and solutions in omnichannel integration

You may run into some issues when you are setting up your omnichannel strategies for retail, such as:

• Multi-channel synergy.
• Issues with complex data flows.
• Managing the impact of change on your team.
• Data silos and integration issues.

These are common issues that come up when setting up an omnichannel retail strategy for your business. So, understanding these issues puts you in a solid position to manage them.

Here are some strategies to address these issues or any other issues that you may face.

• Sep up a central platform to manage customer data.
• Invest in employee training.
• Develop a consistent brand messaging strategy.
• Adopt agile, flexible and scalable tech solutions, like a composable DXP.

With these strategies, you can address challenges that come up while integrating your sales and marketing channels.

Case studies: Omnichannel success stories 

Dawn Foods

Before 2019, Dawn Foods took orders via phone and in person, but these channels were not unified. They also wanted an e-commerce integration platform that would serve their retail bakery customers.

Contentstack’s composable DXP and headless CMS offered them the right technology to implement their omnichannel retail strategies. It also enhanced the overall digital customer experience, and online orders rose by 50%.

Hear from Gireesh Sahukar, Vice President of Digital. "We know that we have made a really good decision choosing Contentstack. We’re extremely happy with our partnership. The kind of flexibility that Contentstack offers, not just to us, but also to the ecosystem partners that we want to work with, is pretty fantastic."

Here is how Dawn Foods found a recipe for success via Contentstack composable DXP.

Emma

Emma’s legacy CMS struggled in the face of hypergrowth. It could not unify its sales and marketing channels. 

The answer was to switch to a proper technology that supports an omnichannel strategy. Contentstack’s composable DXP enabled them to do that. It offered a headless CMS and integration of all channels, including its online platform, marketplace, third-party online stores, physical stores and retail partner stores.

Hear from Andreas Westendörpf, "The beauty of headless commerce is that it not only delivers short-term results but also that it opens an elegant, logical long-term set of options for the future. This is what we have found with Contentstack and MACH-based technologies."

Read more about Emma’s omnichannel retail success via a composable DXP.

FAQ section

What does omnichannel mean in retail?

Omnichannel in retail is about enabling brands to focus on their customers, engage them, and offer the most convenient shopping experience on any channel the customers are most convenient in, be it a mobile app, physical store, website, or social media platform.

What is an example of an omnichannel retail strategy?

A customer can head to your website, select some items, place an order, and then go to your physical store, where the storekeeper retrieves their data and completes the order. The brand can also then review the buyer’s history and offer them tailored discounts or relevant offers and recommendations on another channel.

What distinguishes omnichannel from multichannel retailing?

Omnichannel integrates all your channels from in-store to social media, mobile apps, etc. It focuses on the customer and puts them at the center. Multiple channels are quite different. Although they involve various channels, they are neither unified nor integrated like omnichannel. Also, they are more focused on products and services.

How can businesses create a seamless shopping experience across all channels?

They can integrate all their retail and e-commerce channels, giving the customers more options. A composable DXP helps with that. It also ensures they can tailor retail solutions, all of which ensures that branding, messaging and customer service are consistent across the board.

What are the main benefits of integrating e-commerce with physical stores?

It improves how you manage inventory. It leads to higher sales as customers can choose between two channels. It is also cost-efficient as brands can save on delivery costs when they use the most convenient physical stores to deliver orders made via the e-commerce platform.

How does technology help the omnichannel retail strategy?

It promotes e-commerce integration, as well as the integration of physical and digital retail stores. It also enables a tailored customer experience through data analytics.

Learn more

As customers' needs continue to evolve, omnichannel retail strategies offer brands a way to track their journey and deliver unified solutions. It enhances customer service and boosts sales. It also provides a convenient way to shop, as buyers can switch between various channels.

Adopting this approach helps you stay competitive. Hence, it is essential to choose a solution that powers your omnichannel approach. 

A composable DXP handles extensive integration, personalization, and agile content delivery, making it ideal for omnichannel retail. Request a free demo to see how it supports your omnichannel approach.