What Is Omnichannel Commerce? Tips for Merchants

Create a better customer experience across every touchpoint.

Consumers can now use as many as six different touch-points when buying a product and 90 percent say they have high expectations for omnichannel commerce experiences. – CX Today

What Is Omnichannel Commerce?

Omnichannel commerce involves providing your customers with a memorably great experience as they interact with your brand across multiple channels. Whether your customers are inside one of your physical stores, shopping on Instagram, or browsing through your goods online, they should experience the same ease and convenience.

Why Does Omnichannel Commerce Matter Now?

Omnichannel commerce matters, because the internet, social media, and smartphones have converged to transform the way people buy goods and services. Your customers spend more time online researching different products and they often interact with your brand in multiple places online and in-store before making a single purchase.

Shoppers explore marketplaces like eBay and Amazon on smartphones. They get product reviews from friends and family in private messenger apps. And they explore their own interest areas on tablets and dedicated niche shopping apps while watching streaming TV in the evening. That’s not to mention ‘real-world’ browsing and buying. Great brands serve their customers a consistently excellent experience across every touchpoint.

The omnichannel approach allows you to provide the same experience, cater to the same preferences and remember the same past purchases and buying behaviors across channels and devices. Customers get a better experience and more convenience. Businesses enjoy seamless data collection that enables continuous improvement and a more complete picture of their business and customers.

Multichannel v Omnichannel vs eCommerce

A merchant with both physical stores, localized websites and an app may think they have an omnichannel brand. But it’s not the case. These are the features of a multichannel approach, where customers can browse and buy your products across a number of different channels.

A true omnichannel experience provides your customers with a unified AND personalized experience across every place they find your products. For example, they will be able to easily do things such as:

• Order online and pay and collect in-store
• Pay in-store and have goods delivered at home
• Make quick purchases through social media
• Use loyalty rewards gained on one channel in another
• Have a great customer experience across any device
• Be remembered as an existing customer across channels
• Be able to easily manage subscriptions, deliveries, and returns
• Pay and be refunded in home currencies if buying cross-border

Three Omnichannel Tips For Growth-Minded Merchants

Merchants should consider these three ways to edge closer to an omnichannel experience for their customers.

1. Simplify Payments

With Rapyd, merchants can integrate preferred local payment methods across channels. Merchants can also use tokenization, to ease shoppers’ frustrations with having to constantly re-enter payment information across channels. A great payment experience is central to a great customer experience.

2. Reward and Remember Loyalty

Customers dislike being treated like first-timers when they have bought from you many times before. Retailers like Uniqlo reward shoppers who buy clothes through their app with a voucher for in-store use, and vice versa.

3. Provide A Blended Browsing Experience

The Uniqlo app also has a logical design and layout that makes it easy to browse clothes by size, style, gender, and sale type. Be sure consumers experience the same level of ease, convenience, and speed when interacting with your products.

It’s clear that businesses need to unify their payments and commerce technologies to work across all channels and omnichannel commerce platforms to satisfy today’s growing consumer expectations.

Build An Omnichannel Payments Experience

Discover Rapyd’s powerful API to integrate preferred local payments anywhere and everywhere your customers find you. 

Sources:

“CX Today.” https://www.cxtoday.com/contact-centre/delivering-an-excellent-omni-channel-experience/.