With more and more businesses moving to online platforms, it’s important to ensure that you have a channel available for a majority of your customers by recognizing that they have different experiences and behaviours. Customers enjoy feeling special and feeling like their presence has an overall positive impact on the company; for without them, there would be no business to run! Through personalized shopping experiences and having both online and offline channels available, you too can have loyal and satisfied customers. This method is known as an omnichannel user experience. Here are five reasons why you should adopt this strategy into your business right now:
1. Increased revenue
Countless studies have shown that an omnichannel user experience drives sales and increases revenue. The more channels a customer is able to interact with, the more money they will spend. A Harvard Business Review study showed that those who shop with an omnichannel brand spend on average 4% more in store and 10% more online than those who shop on single-channel platforms. Furthemore, six months after the omnichannel shopping experience, customers reported 23% more repeat shopping trips and were more likely to recommend the brand to their friends than those who used single channel platforms. Not only that, but because the omnichannel user experience focuses on the customer and allows them to choose their journey, it is less time and money spent on the specifics and touchpoints on that journey.
2. Stronger branding and loyalty
Using an omnichannel marketing strategy allows you to create consistent messaging across all your channels so that your business has stronger branding. A stronger brand means that more customers will return to your company over any competitors and creates a vision of trust and transparency, eventually leading to customer loyalty to your company. Again, with an omnichannel experience, customers are able to pick and choose what channels they want to interact with, creating more customer satisfaction.
3. Happy customers
Customers are at the heart of the omnichannel user experience. It allows customers to create a personalized experience where they have the control over what they see and the options available to them. Not every customer is the same; some may hate talking to chatbots through the website, and some may fear having to go into a brick-and-mortar store, that’s why the omnichannel experience will diversify and widen your customer base, leaving them happier at the end of the day.
Furthermore, as your happy customers return to your business the omnichannel strategy allows for personalized content and recommendations based on their previous buying habits, allowing the customer to feel more connected to your brand.
4. Employee satisfaction and retention
If your omnichannel business model is effective and flexible, your employees are more likely to be satisfied and happy within their jobs. Happier employees lead to more initiatives and engagement from your employees, which will eventually lead to a stronger brand and happier customers. You can gauge your employees’ overall satisfaction through informal conversations, surveys, and even observing past employee retention data. We talked a lot about the importance of employee engagement in our blog post about Key Performance Indicators which you can read here.
5. A better understanding of your company’s user design
An omnichannel user experience gives you a bird’s eye view of your customer’s journey and the way they interact with your company. The omnichannel experience puts your customer at the core, instead of your product, therefore allowing the customer to create their own personalized journey and what works for them. With more and more touchpoints in an omnichannel experience, it is easier to track the journey your customer made and the decisions they made to either buy or abandon their product. Additionally, should your customer contemplate buying or abandon your product, the omnichannel strategy allows you to create “win back” campaigns with individualized offers and advertisements in an effort to convert those those customers into sales.
Omnichannel user experiences are not randomized, it is aligned with the customer and the actions they took on certain channels.Each interaction alters their experience, making no two user journeys the same. For example, let’s say your customer is looking for a new wallet. They may end up on your online store, browse a few products, and perhaps even added a wallet they liked to their shopping cart, yet they don’t end up buying anything. Ideally, your customer would now begin to see advertisements all over their social media accounts for the same wallet, keeping the prospect in the back of their mind. Now, if the advertisements continue, yet your customer still does not return to your website, it’s time to up the ante by offering a personalized experience. This may be in the form of a special discount code or product offer. Advertisements and direct emails to the customer should then be reflected with the new personalized experience so that your customer now has incentive to go and buy your product. Now that your customer has decided to buy the wallet, their options for delivery are either pick up in store or home delivery. This allows for some customers to go in and view the product before taking it home and being certain on their purchase. Immediately after the purchase, your customer should receive a thank you email, and a couple weeks later they should receive a feedback email so that they can rate their overall buying experience and rate the product itself. Based on their reviews, you can continue to create a more personalized experience for them so that they keep returning to your business. Creating stickiness with your customers keeps your business at the top of their minds.
Switching to an omnichannel user experience is a must for your business if you’re looking to increase sales and customer satisfaction, while keeping human-centered design at the forefront of your business model. With all that being said, what are you waiting for? Switch your business into an omnichannel platform today!
Unsure where to start? Contact us at hello@impactsignal.com today to get in touch with us!
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