A Complete Guide on Omnichannel Solution

November 23, 2022 | 9 MIN READ

Omnichannel Retail has become a necessity. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, more consumers are switching to online shopping, making it a requirement for successful eCommerce businesses. As per “Think with Google”, omnichannel activities account for over 80% of consumers’ in-store visits. Additionally, statistics show that up to 74% of consumers research online before going to a physical store. Now is the time to enhance your omnichannel strategy to attract and retain clients.

In order to cater to and meet every customer’s expectations, there are a countless number of products that one can use. However, Vinculum’s Omnichannel retailing solution makes this daunting task easier by far.

Omnichannel retailing incorporates all of your business’s channels to reach your customers anywhere and give them a tailored experience. To have a better understanding about the same, read the blog till the end.

How do we define omnichannel retailing, though?

The goal of omnichannel retailing is to simplify the shopping experience for customers. Your customers can benefit from the flexibility and convenience of a seamless buying process no matter what channel they choose – online or offline. It is entirely centered on the customer’s needs and designed to fulfill their perceptions and expectations.

Importance of Omnichannel

Omnichannel helps you to deliver a positive customer experience at every stage of your customer life cycle while reducing churn and upholding a positive brand reputation.

The core of Omnichannel Retailing is to put the customer over the product, involving all channels and selling across all of them. Communication needs to align with the purpose of a given channel and how it facilitates a seamless customer experience. By integrating online and offline experiences, omnichannel facilitates cross-channel interactions instead of treating channels as separate silos.

Why do you need it?

Brand loyalty and brand experience have become the main focal points due to changes in consumer behaviors. Given the significant costs associated with acquiring new customers, it is crucial to keep existing ones by giving them what they want and where they want it.

Every consumer is different. Hence, there are infinite ways to tailor services to each one’s preferences and needs based on permutations and combinations.

What should be your omnichannel retailing plan?

Organize the client’s experience – Understanding their channels and behavior across all channels can help you develop a clear plan for how you want the experience to flow across all touch points.
Improve the customer focus of your business – This is a crucial stage since training your staff to give customers a consistent experience is necessary for a plan and retailing tool to succeed.

Benefits of omnichannel retailing

Improves engagement

90% of customers claim that they desire consistent interactions with businesses across all of their platforms. This can be possible only through omnichannel, which reaches clients wherever they are.

Omnichannel retailing can improve your customer engagement both online and offline. A study by the Harvard Business Review of 46,000 consumers reveals that omnichannel customers spent 10% and 4% more online and retail shopping, respectively. Customers who use more than four channels have increased n-store spending by 9%.

Increases ROI

A Salesforce research revealed that 78% of customers would return to businesses that offer good service regardless of the channel. Customers will return because of the increased engagement and better customer experience from omnichannel retailing, which will increase the ROI correspondingly.

Let you understand the customer journey

Omnichannel will use the data to learn about customers’ preferences, what they’ve clicked on, and bounce rates. Building relationships and offering a better customer experience will be easier with a better understanding of consumer behavior. A customer experience map shows more technical consumer communications and retailing.

The conclusion

What should you do next if you’ve decided that omnichannel retailing is the best strategy for your business?

Before you start, take a step back and evaluate your consumer segments. Which channels do they use the most to deliver orders? It would help if you had a better understanding of the area from which your clients are coming. You can access that information through your current channels.

The first step in omnichannel retailing is to set up numerous channels to connect with your clients. Some concepts for eCommerce businesses include a variety of social media platforms.

Think about how those channels will function together to deliver an “omnichannel experience”. You may use each channel for purposes other than the creator. For instance, your blog may go over the numerous uses for your product, and your email newsletter could alert customers of sales and discounts. Make a smartphone application that seamlessly facilitates in-store sales.

Lastly, keep in mind the channels you already have and seek to enhance them to raise the click-through rates and in-person sales. The number of steps a customer must take to find what they’re looking for should be minimized. Examples include improving your landing page to get more leads or gathering customer feedback to identify weak points in your existing retailing plan.

You can set up feedback sections on your website using a form builder, enabling a two-way connection between your business and your customers. The form builders can gather the customer’s feedback after the transaction.

If you find the above steps challenging & tiresome, you can integrate with businesses that support omnichannel selling. Take Vinculum, for instance. We are the leading provider of SaaS-based solutions that enable Omnichannel retailing.

We assist companies and merchants in reaching and gratifying clients worldwide through a variety of channels with ease.

How does Vinculum do it?

Product Information Management

Brands today want accurate & total visibility of information throughout their business processes & sales channels to deliver a smooth shopping experience.

Fragmented and inconsistent master data can result in inaccurate product data in online and offline catalogs, mistakenly reported as being out of stock, slowly introducing new products, and the inability to adjust merchandising.

Vin PIM establishes a corporate store for product data, assisting you in the following:

Create a single source of truth that spans all merchandising, distribution, and catalog systems
Managing the product life cycle, including on boarding, editing, and deleting an existing product
Identify and use up sell and cross-sell possibilities

Single View Of Inventory

Brands frequently need help managing their inventory effectively, and when a particular channel fails to deliver the purchase experience that customers expect, there is no conversion.

To give your consumers an engaging shopping experience, you may handle orders and coordinate fulfillment with our omnichannel system. You can reroute online orders to the closest store by intelligent order processing algorithms.

Advantages:

Reduced costs in Reduced logistics costs
Faster delivery

Click & Collect –

Customers like to order online and collect them at a store or a kerbside, which serves as a hub for communication between the buyer and the seller and is the most convenient way to manage orders. Thus, it becomes an actual OmniChannel experience for customers to touch, feel, and try their buy before the collection.

Here, coordination and order management is crucial. We easily combine your online store or marketplace with offline distribution channels so that customers may pick up their online purchases at a physical location or the curb. By streamlining logistics and warehouse management, we provide you with an integrated solution that makes selling simple.

Advantages:

Best of online and offline
An additional possibility for sales
Eliminates delivery cost
Cost-efficient
Efficient logistics
Seamless user experience

Ship-from-Store

The offline store is an active order fulfillment center because it ships orders. An online order from a consumer far from the distribution center takes a while to fill. In this instance, businesses use the stock in their physical stores to fill online orders.

Locating the closest store with the necessary inventory is another aspect of this fulfillment process. Vinculum Solutions makes it easy to find these shops and quickly complete your order.

Advantages:

Fast delivery
Low transportation cost
Less logistic complexities
Higher consumer satisfaction

BORIS- Buy Online, Return in-store

A particular type of customer buys something online, has it delivered online, and then, after testing it, decides to take it back to a physical store. As a result, both ends of the return item transaction experience less bother. Integrating every channel is essential at this point to prevent dead stock.

After each purchase or return step, Vinculum omnichannel software solutions provide precise inventory information. One of the most sought-after characteristics of client pleasure is this one.

Advantages :

Supply chain cost reduction
Return mismanagement avoidance

BIMBO – Browse In-store, on mobile, and Buy online

Customers visit in-store brands before placing their orders online to experience the brand before purchasing it. They feel more confident about the product’s features and quality.

Vinculum software systems can track the correctness of inventory and combine every visit with orders submitted.

Advantages:

The high potential for sales
Reduced return orders

Endless Aisle

The two factors most responsible for lost sales opportunities are sizes and a need for selection options.

Constrained space in retail stores and the usual difficulties associated with maintaining inventory in several locations are the leading causes of this.

Our Endless Aisle solution expands your store assortment to include merchandise across stores and channels, giving your walk-in customers infinite purchasing alternatives.

Advantages: