Retail has moved beyond treating online and in-store shopping as separate entities. These days, you’re much more likely to hear talk of ‘blended shopping experiences’ where elements of ecommerce and physical retail merge together.
This certainly reflects modern consumer behaviour. Four out of five shoppers say they research purchases online before going into a shop to buy items. Three-quarters even use their phones to compare prices and check reviews as they shop in store.
But customers using their phones as they shop is one thing. What about purposefully creating these kinds of ‘blended experiences’? What does that look like? And what’s the business value of doing so? Here are five examples.
Smartphone POS integration
Use of smartphones at point of purchase is already well established thanks to contactless payments through mobile wallets. But the role of mobile at POS can go much further than that. ADVANTECH-AURES POS solutions offer wireless connectivity with customers’ phones to manage things like instant digital receipts, loyalty scheme bonus points and rewards, or even gathering customer data with post-purchase surveys etc. The benefit is smoother, more efficient processes at POS – no waiting for tickets to print or customers trying to find their loyalty cards to scan. Plus, no more receipt roll purchases and better first-person customer data.
On-shelf QR codes
The purest form of online-offline retail blend is customers using ecommerce and physical channels simultaneously. One way to facilitate this is with on-shelf QR codes that link to your digital product catalogue when customers scan them with their smartphone cameras. The benefit is that you can share far, far more information about a product than you can on a shelf label or packaging. You can give the full story about provenance, materials/ingredients, sustainability credentials etc. And provide links to customer reviews to add the element of social proof shoppers love.
Endless aisle screens
Another thing customers can do with QR code links to your online store is explore your whole product catalogue. You can’t have every product on your shelves, especially in sectors like fashion where you might have lots of size and colour SKU variations. But you can make all the options available to browse online. QR codes and smartphone scans aren’t the only option for this, either. Many retailers are deploying touchscreens at strategic places around the store specifically to give customers that ‘endless aisle’ experience of being able to browse the full range. This also allows customers to check stock availability if an item they are interested in isn’t immediately available and even place an order for delivery to the store or to their home from online inventory.
Click-and-collect
Also known as BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store), this is one of the ways that retailers can blend fulfilment across online and physical channels. Both names are self-explanatory – it simply means that purchases are made online, before items are collected in store. The benefit is giving customers the choice of not having to wait for delivery, while also cutting out delivery costs for the vendor.
Ship-from-store
Another option focused on fulfilment; this time it’s about using shop inventory to fulfil online orders. The key benefit for businesses is saving on the cost of running parallel digital services – no warehouse space to rent, no extra staff. Unified inventory can also provide better consistency for customers.