The way your customers shop has changed (and is continuing to change) drastically over the years. Instead of picking up the local newspaper to find a local business or wandering into your shop to browse what you have for sale, shoppers today reach for the nearest device to learn about products and businesses online before visiting them in-store.
With shoppers bouncing between devices, it’s important to have a strong omni-channel shopping experience for your businesses customers. Your desktop website, mobile website, social media campaigns, PPC ads, email campaigns, brick-and-mortar signage and any other customer touches should work together to create one fluid, integrated experience for your customers.
If a customer receives a promotional email from your business, they should seamlessly be able to visit your website to learn more about the promotion or a particular featured product that caught their eye. When they click through to your website landing page from the email they received, they should easily be able to take the next steps based on the call to action in your email to easily convert themselves into a lead. And, after they’ve learned all they can from your website and become a lead, the experience they have when they come in-store to check out the product in person should feel consistent with the one they had reading your email and browsing your website. Together, all of their interactions with your business should feel like one fluid experience that allows them to naturally transition from one platform to another.
Multi-channel is an operational view – how you allow the customer to complete transactions in each channel. Omni-channel, however, is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent. Omni-channel anticipates that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution. Making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be fluid for the customer. Simply put, omni-channel is multi-channel done right!
With a growing number of people jumping from device to device while making a purchase an interacting with a brand, it’s vital your business can ensure they can jump around and still be able to continue the same process in a fluid and organic way.
Your customers want the best shopping experience possible, and creating an omni-channel experience across all of your channels can help you deliver it, no matter what device they’re using.
