Omni Channel Retailing is on the Top of Sales Practice

Constant evolution of retailing makes merchants embrace more new selling models and patterns than ever during the life circle of their business. Customers actively push these changes towards technologically advanced and comfortable shopping, which allows them to reach products through multiple channels and by means of various devices. These market requirements replaced multichannel retailing by the omni-channel approach on the top of sales practice.

The Omni-channel approach to retailing is the result of evolution of multichannel retailing and aims to follow customers across all shopping channels and devices and gives them the feeling of permanent brand presence in their lives. As a result, every stage of buying decision process (information search, products evaluation, purchase decision) can be seamlessly made in brick-and-mortar stores, or in online stores, or both.

The Black Friday 2013 stats confirmed that customers use their mobile devices not only for online shopping, but also as in-physical-stores shopping assistants. Some retailers go further and let their customers not only check the price and availability of products, but use their mobile devices for in-store location.

The Omni-Channel Online Customer. 360° interaction

Online retailers has more chances to implement the omni-channel approach in their retail practice as they have more experience in applying of the universal supply software and more chances for its quick integration with their, already existing, ecommerce platforms. However, omni-channel retailing imposes extremely high demands on sellers:

Personalize

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform and provides an excellent chance for merchants to develop their stores in any way they like using ready-made solutions or customizations. Thus, merchants are able to meet the requirements of their customers in a unique manner and personalize their mutual interaction. Here are some useful Magento extensions, which make your e-mails and notifications really special:

Follow Up Email Follow up your customers with fully automated emails. Insert coupons, purchased products, pictures, tracking codes, restore cart links.

Pop-Up+ Promote your products, news, ads, and special events through attractive popup window.

Checkout Promo Displays promotional banners on Shopping Cart and Checkout pages. Banners are triggered by flexible rules.

Be Mobile and Sociable

Magento store owners have multiple opportunities to make their shops mobile-friendly or integrate them with social networks. They can use native Magento EE-ver. opportunities or integrate functional extensions for Magento CE. aheadWorks offers several Magento extensions which help Magento customers make easy and safe purchases from their mobile devices and go sociable.

iPhone Theme Revolutionary hybrid of a superior theme and a full-value Magento extension. Enriched with AJAX cart and integrated advanced navigation.

Sociable Lets visitors share links to any page from your store on the Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and many other Social Media Networks.

Analyze and Segment Data

The Omni-channel approach requires more knowledge, personalization, collaboration and synchronization from merchants. In order to correspond to the dynamic and continuous shopping behavior they should obtain and keep huge customer related data and be able to analyze and segment it properly.

Market Segmentation Suite Segment your target audience based on the required criteria and export segmented lists for further analysis.

Advanced Reports Perfect reporting solution with 10 customizable report types. It improves functionality of native Magento reports. Can be expanded with additional units.

Communicate

Omni-channel retailing make brands provide customers with new experience, knowldge, and advanced customer service.

Help Desk Ultimate Turnkey trouble ticket solution developed only for Magento. The best customer care and support solution on the market.

Knowledge Base Knowledge base solution for magento. Visitors can search and rate articles.

Motivate

Merchant should enhance customers’ interaction with multiple available channels and reward their active position. Likes, reviews, recommendations and etc. add new value to brands and merchants should encourage customers for these activities.

Refer a Friend Encourage customers to invite their friends to your store and reward them for contribution.

The Omni-channel approach in retailing is now perceived as a logical evolutionary stage of retailing, which should be embraced by all successful merchants. Online retailers have more chances to achieve it as they  may choose already existing ready-made fundamental solutions or functionality extensions, mentioned above. So, start your transformation now.