Much focus has been directed towards the online shopping experience since COVID-19 took over our lives. As this trend continues to grow, consumers and retailers will be facing new realities as more trends take shape in the customer journey. From how retailers engage consumers to connecting with shoppers during their shopping experience will continue to evolve.
Now, more than ever, retailers are using various channels to advertise and connect with consumers. Prior to stay at home orders, m-Commerce was already on the rise, but now the explosion of mobile commerce has been rapidly accelerated by COVID-19! Commerce is everywhere and is no longer one destination, nor one concept. Are retailers and consumers ready for the rise in m-Commerce?
One trend that continues to grow in popularity is connecting with consumers via mobile devices across multiple channels. Smart phones are now in the hands of more than 80 percent of Americans, up from just 35 percent in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011. [1]
Brands are realizing that they need to adapt to these trends quickly to optimize the customer experiences. It’s no longer sufficient to work within the old platforms that don’t allow for front end flexibility. The ability to browse on-demand changes is critical to the success of optimizing the customer experience before ever buying online or walking into a store.
Your brand is no longer one destination. It’s everywhere, and the rise of anywhere commerce requires an update to your commerce architecture. “Headless” commerce is a term used often and refers to the front end being decoupled from the back end so they are able to function independently. Such an architecture allows for different touchpoints (heads) to connect seamlessly to the back end via API’s. This provides the ability to add a new front end via integration easily and breaks down the silos for consumer facing options. This achieves the ultimate goal of ensuring that the customer experience is consistent across all formats.
Social media is one of the most powerful ways for retailers and brands to connect and engage with customers. Consider the fact that brands are now advertising and selling across all of the myriad social media channels. Today, around seven in ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves.[2]
By now, nearly everybody has been impacted by the targeted personalization efforts on Facebook. Twitter has long been popular in reaching customers as well, and brands are continually partnering with influencers and media companies on Instagram to both promote and sell their products directly from Instagram. And now, retailers are realizing that messaging applications (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, etc.) are the next frontier in reaching customers.[3] Retailers can use messaging applications to connect with customers to create excitement and awareness for new products, campaigns and launches.
From a marketing perspective, the better the combination of content and commerce capabilities will make for a better user experience. For example, research from Harvard Business Review reveals that 73 percent of consumers use more than one channel during their shopping journey. Additionally, omnichannel customers spend 4 percent more in-store and 10 percent more online than single-channel customers.[4]
With all of these social media channels, consumers are now considering the overall customer experience as the most important factor during their engagement with the brand. As retailers continue to evolve and embrace the trends by providing the ultimate customer experience, they need to find the right solution partners with the retail experience to ensure proper planning in finding an agile and simplified architecture. If you’re interested in learning more about how to best implement m-Commerce in your business, we’d love to invite you to a free one hour no-obligation consultation!
