5 Vital Considerations for Your Enterprise Brand's Omnichannel Ecommerce Transition

Taking the omnichannel route for your enterprise marketplace?

Planning to orchestrate a seamless user experience across multiple channels? Wondering how and where to start from?

Well, before taking off on the omnichannel ecommerce transition, let us understand why this is a step in the right direction.

Why this is the right time to implement Omnichannel Ecommerce

Gone are the days when customers used to walk into the brick-and-mortar store and make a purchase. The digital age customers are dependent on technology today, they research for a product on multiple platforms before making a final purchase.

And with the customer’s ever-evolving buying habits, enterprise marketplaces are compelled to use multiple touchpoints to convert potential buyers.

No, we are not saying this, it's the numbers speaking. 

Have a look: 

• 86% of consumers tend to use at least 2 different channels 
• 60-70% of consumers research and purchase both online and in-store across categories
• 76% of customers expect consistent interactions with the brands
• 73% of consumers expect companies to know their needs and expectations
• 43% of companies feel that customer demands for omnichannel experiences have increased 
• 30% higher lifetime value of omnichannel buyers than buyers who use a single channel 

Source: Trengo

The omnichannel ecommerce approach has gained a lot of buzz in today’s e-commerce landscape and it has never been more important!

What is an omnichannel ecommerce approach? 

An omnichannel approach is where the brand offers multiple channels to buy its products and services to its customers. The omnichannel way of selling takes your enterprise brand where the customers are. It provides a unified experience to your customers across multiple channels like online marketplaces, mobile apps, online stores, social media, or anywhere through retargeting ads. A true omnichannel shopping experience takes customers beyond brick-and-mortar stores offering enormous benefits to both the customers and retailers or business owners.

Why should brands take the omnichannel ecommerce route?

Customers today interact with an enterprise brand on at least 4-5 channels before making a final purchase. Going omnichannel is hugely known for boosting consumer spending if offered a unified and immersive buying experience.  

Here are a few benefits that brands can enjoy by taking the omnichannel route for their business: 

• Boost conversion by targeting customers on multiple channels
• Add new frontends to engage customers on touchpoints like wearables, voice-based devices like Alexa, and other IoT devices
• Boost customer loyalty with consistent and seamless buying experience across channels
• Cut overhead costs by automating processes and improving operational efficiency across channels
• Boost revenue with personalized omnichannel ecommerce marketing strategies
• Get access to data-driven insights from multiple sources to plan strategic business moves
• Plan inventory better by pushing stocks to customers through the highest-selling channels

The omnichannel strategy of selling is not only limited to retail or D2C enterprises but has also become a common trend for B2B buyers. Aligned with personalizations, brands can set their business on an upward growth trajectory by adopting omnichannel ways of selling. 

5 Considerations for your enterprise brand's omnichannel ecommerce transition

With so many new ways of buying and selling surfacing, going omnichannel is just the right step for your enterprise marketplace. With cross-channel sales picking up at a fast rate, it's time to consider your brand’s omnichannel transition. 

Here are 5 considerations to make before going onboard with omnichannel: 

Evaluate how omnichannel ecommerce transition would benefit your business 

No enterprise brand would go for an omnichannel transition if it does not offer better growth opportunities. The first task is to consider how a multi-channel selling approach benefits the business. Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the business and understanding your customer behaviour helps you design a target buyer persona. Ask questions like the shopping interests of the buyers, shopping channels used, etc to use the data while running promotions and offers.

Once the customer behaviour is understood and the goals of the business have been evaluated, you need to design your omnichannel approach. With a better understanding of the customer journey, you can offer a highly personalized omnichannel buying experience. 

Decide on omnichannel ecommerce solutions and integrations 

To gain the maximum benefits from omnichannel ecommerce, businesses need to be able to offer a seamless buying experience across all touchpoints. As you break down the barrier between multiple channels, you build a unique and personalized omnichannel ecommerce ecosystem. It becomes important to consider the omnichannel solution that can offer you a future-proof solution and enable seamless integrations on all touchpoints.

With StoreHippo enterprise marketplace solutions, you can integrate multiple channels like mobile apps, PWA, website, social media, offline store, for an effective omnichannel experience. StoreHippo offers an advanced omnichannel solution to help build a marketplace that your buyers can access on multiple platforms. With central control of all these sales channels, StoreHippo helps businesses run their day-to-day business operations efficiently. With StoreHippo you can also integrate the best in breed tools and service providers for each of your sales channels so the buyers get a unified, frictionless and hassle-free buying experience on each channel.  

Leverage the channels preferred by your buyers 

The customer journey is no longer linear. Buyers have dispersed to engage with their favourite brands on at least 3-4 channels. With 61% of the shoppers using mobile phones to make a purchase and with 75% of the retailers already selling on social media platforms along with the website, it is time to leverage the channel loved by your customers. Selling on various platforms like online stores and mobile apps also helps businesses gain customer loyalty.

StoreHippo offers a ready-to-use omnichannel solution that enables you to add new customer touchpoints quickly using the same backend logic and APIs. You can seamlessly build different mobile apps designed for each location of your multi-store ecommerce business. StoreHippo comes with an in-built mobile app builder that helps you build Android or iOS apps directly from the dashboard. You can quickly fulfill orders by auto-routing to the nearest physical store. With a detailed analytical report from StoreHippo, you can also find the best selling channel for your business and leverage that particular channel to grow your business.

Customer segmentation and personalization 

It is the age of hyper-personalization. With 60% of the customers more likely to repeat purchases if offered personalized shopping experiences, enterprise marketplaces need to go overboard with personalizations. 

With an omnichannel strategy at hand, you can seamlessly offer consistent personalized experiences on various channels by integrating all platforms. As you identify your target customer segment based on geolocation, product lines, ticket size, buying frequency etc, you can leverage personalization and offer a customized buying experience. 

StoreHippo offers an inbuilt reporting and analytics solution to help you understand your customer behaviour on various platforms. You can also integrate with your preferred analytics and reporting tools as well to get in-depth insights for data-driven personalized marketing strategies. Enterprise marketplace solution, StoreHippo is built on decoupled headless architecture to help you implement multi-level personalization for different audiences, categories, and different platforms. You can easily offer multilingual content to help your buyers buy in their native languages as well. As you leverage the channel lived and preferred by your customers, you can take your business ahead of your competitors.

Build an omnichannel marketing strategy 

Before making an omnichannel ecommerce transition, enterprise brands must consider building a marketing strategy that helps them stand out from the crowd. And how can an enterprise brand take care of this? Well, it is the age of social media and social commerce is  forecasted to reach $30.73 billion in sales in 2023. It becomes all the more important to consider social media targeting as a wise option for brands looking for stupendous growth.

For example, a customer is looking for shoes, and lands on your marketplace website but did not complete the purchase. You can now send a personalized notification to the buyer about the price drop, show a social media retargeting ad about the sale on shoes, or send an email asking them to visit your store for a new collection.  

StoreHippo comes with a host of in-built marketing tools to help you create an engaging marketing strategy. It offers an in-built discount tool to create personalized discounts and coupons for your customers. You can also recover abandoned carts with real-time personalized emails and push notifications. With a well-aligned SEO strategy, you can rank your enterprise marketplace higher on SERPs. StoreHippo offers a wide range of tools and features to help you leverage quick, smart, and successful marketing campaigns. You can try new market-product-channel mixes or do A/B testing to analyze which strategy works best for your business. 

Conclusion

Taking the omnichannel ecommerce route brands can offer a first-class shopping experience to their customers. However, before powering the brand with omnichannel solutions, you also need to consider the enterprise ecommerce platform and the features offered. StoreHippo solutions help businesses provide a unified shopping experience to their customers and help boost conversions.

StoreHippo comes with 300+ inbuilt features and helps businesses to create the most engaging omnichannel buying experience. With the headless architecture from StoreHippo brands can create, handle and deliver extremely personalized content from a central control. StoreHippo helps brands establish a unique enterprise marketplace with its 250+ API endpoints to customize the themes, order flow, payment process, checkouts etc. 

Are you ready to power your enterprise brand with omnichannel ecommerce? Start your 14-day free trial now and explore the wide range of features from StoreHippo.