Do More. Improving digital commerce by delivering the experience consumers expect.

Transcription

1 Do More Improving digital commerce by delivering the experience consumers expect. Skava White Paper

2 CONTENT Consumer Engagement 1 Consumers Choose How to Interact With Retailers 2 What Does Omni-Channel Mean 3 Four Roadblocks Retailers Face Creating, Designing, and Building Campaigns Time Management and Work Load Systems to Manage IT Requirement How Can Retailers Do More For Consumers While Overcoming Roadblocks? Build. Design. Reuse. Repeat. Maintain Workflow Do It Yourself Technology The Skava Solution 6 Key Takeaways 7

3 Consumer Engagement: How Do You Engage and Standout? The number of online shoppers in the U.S. increased from million in to over million in 201. As the number of digital consumers continues to increase, they are also becoming more demanding of digital shopping experiences. Today s digital consumer is looking for personalized assistance finding products through the use of gift guides, product finders, wish lists, and more. Such interactive lists and guides, help customers break down their options to quickly make a purchase. Additionally, consumers are constantly looking for sales, promotions, and deals. Featuring promotional campaigns across digital touchpoints helps attract customers and drive sales. According to Internet Retailer, flash sale retailers do well in mcommerce by allowing consumers to instantly make 2 purchases. These, and a variety of other digital commerce enhancements, are now necessary for retailers to stay relevant and maintain customers. Retailers must strive to provide the most engaging shopping experiences and push the standard functionality of search engines and product feeds all while keeping shopping simple, consistent, and efficient. i Statista. (201). Number of Digital Shoppers in the United States from 2010 to ber-of-us-internet-shoppers-since-2009/. Internet Retailer (2013). Mobile Commerce Comes of Age. 1

4 Consumers Want Omni-Channel Retail Thanks to new technologies, consumers are more tech savvy and knowledgeable than ever before. They are taking control of how they interact with retailers and they expect information to be readily available on any touch point they choose. For retailers to fulfill consumers ever-increasing demands, they must take the omni-channel approach. Consumers want flexibility and up-to-date product information across all channels as they utilize multiple devices to achieve their personal shopping goals. Price and product assortment consistency across all shopping channels are important to consumers. Although consumers use smartphones to shop for or research products in and out of store, customer experience and engagement are lacking on retailers mobile websites. According to the UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper Study by comscore and UPS, 1% of respondents preferred shopping on a retailer s full website versus 3% on a mobile website and 2% on a 3 mobile app. Online shopping experiences are not just about the look and feel of a website, but more about the information and offers presented. Retailers must find ways to remain consistent in consumer satisfaction between mobile, desktop, and apps. 62% of consumers are expecting omni-channel initiatives from retailers. 3. comscore. (201). Study: Consumers Demand More Flexibility When Shopping Online. es/201/6/study-consumers-demand-more-flexibility-when-shopping-online. 2

5 What Does Omni-Channel Mean Omni-channel is a retail strategy focused on seamless shopping experiences for consumers across all available channels including mobile, tablet, desktop, in-store, and more. The ultimate goals of omni-channel are to gain brand and consumer loyalty, drive sales, and deliver a positive consumer experience. According to a recent Forrester study, 39% of retailers surveyed said they strongly agreed that they would drive more sales and profit by becoming an omni-channel company. Meanwhile, 62% of consumers are expecting omni-channel initiatives from retailers. That puts consumers expectations ahead of retailers by 23%. In the same survey, 9% of retail decision makers said that their companies face significant barriers to becoming an integrated omni-channel 6 company. Although it may be a necessary shift, retailers are facing major roadblocks in achieving omni-channel strategies. Personalized shopping and buying experience Drive consumer loyalty Increased consumer satisfaction Drive sales Omni-channel supports new consumer model of online shopping.. 6. Accenture. (201). Customer Desires Vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding The Omni-Channel Commerce Gap. Accenture. (201). Customer Desires Vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding The Omni-Channel Commerce Gap. Accenture. (201). Customer Desires Vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding The Omni-Channel Commerce Gap. 3

6 Four Roadblocks Retailers Face 1. Creating, Designing, and Building Campaigns Taking the omni-channel approach means creating a number of campaigns that work seamlessly across every channel. Often building a marketing campaign, setting up daily and weekly deals, or adding new banners to a landing page requires retailers to create each campaign from scratch. For example, if a retailer wants to create a marketing microsite, they would have to build a layout, plug in photos, add content, save, and test the campaign before publishing. 2. Time Management and Work Load Building a seamless experience with a consumer centric view requires a significant amount of time and work. Retailers must optimize all campaigns for every channel to reflect trends and consumer behaviors, which can cause delays on tight deadlines and make deploying consistent campaigns in a timely manner difficult. 3. Managing Systems Although some retailers have dedicated omni-channel teams, conflicting priorities and organization are still major challenges. A cross-functional leadership team is needed to implement and manage cross-channel initiatives. With the many complexities in managing each channel, teams must be put in place for each channel to maintain organization and manage projects.. IT Dependency IT departments have more work than they can do. Complex ecommerce requirements make the completion of campaigns dependent on limited IT resources. Retailers rely largely on IT to integrate their ecommerce instead of investing in and adapting to new technologies.

7 How Can Retailers Do More For Consumers While Overcoming Roadblocks? Build. Design. Reuse. Repeat Retailers should invest in a solution that allows them to build and deploy campaigns easily and effectively in a timely manner. To save time, the ability to reuse campaigns without starting from scratch is essential when creating digital shopping experiences. Maintain Workflow To maintain organization for every project, set up workflow processes to ensure appropriate focus and consistency. Tracking campaign changes and updates allows retailers to go back to any version and review changes. If a retailer has multiple campaigns to publish, they should be able to set a date and time to deploy with an integrated scheduling tool. Do It Yourself Technology Adopting new technologies can help eliminate reliance on IT. The primary key is to invest in a platform that allows for simple integrations, customizable features, and system interactivity without coding required. When retailers can build, design, and deploy campaigns without depending on IT, they are better able to focus on meeting consumer needs.

8 The Skava Solution SkavaSTUDIO, the world s first cloud based platform to help retailers easily build, deploy, and manage unique, commerce enabled digital shopping experiences, empowers retailers to create a more consumer centric, omni-channel strategy while maintaining smooth workflows from a single dashboard. Leading retailers are already using SkavaSTUDIO to create campaigns and standardize campaign rollout. SkavaSTUDIO s scheduling tool is beneficial for the use of flash sales, daily deals, mailers, seasonal gift guides, and other marketing campaigns. The platform allows retailers to save, clone, and edit their work to quickly and simply refresh previous campaigns for reuse. All of these features and more help retailers save time and money by bringing immersive digital shopping experiences to market faster and easier than ever before. For more information on SkavaSTUDIO, contact Skava at or info@skava.com. 6

9 Key Takeaways Consumers are taking control of how they interact with retailers Retailers need to recognize consumers needs to maintain loyalty and drive sales Omni-channel retailing is not an option, but a requirement. Retailers must overcome roadblocks of creating and designing campaigns, time consumption, cross-channel management, and reliance on IT. Solutions to these roadblocks are available and retailers must adapt to new technologies to overcome these challenges. SkavaSTUDIO aids retailers in overcoming these challenges to focus on consumer needs rather than products. 7