Gone are the days when you could neatly segment your customer base into ‘online shoppers’ and ‘offline shoppers’. Today, brands need to focus on providing a seamless customer experience.
The first place to start is to understand where your customer is at during each touchpoint with your brand. Gaining a deep understanding of their needs, their thought processes, and decision-making process is as they progress throughout the sales funnel will help you engage with your customer in a way that makes sense to them in that moment.
“From here, technology can be used to shorten the time to purchase. Today’s shoppers have different barriers to purchase than a few years ago. Maybe a barrier to purchase is a lengthy registration form or trying to remember the password they use when buying products from your website. Sitting alongside your customer as they try to make a purchase will help you develop a deep understanding of what they are experiencing and how your brand can make it easier for the customer to complete a sale,” says Greg Martin from Tradeway.
Reducing the friction that your customer experiences when engaging with your brand is as much an art as it is a science. Digital technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality, for example, can give you key insights into the brand experience. Thinking outside of the box to come up with ways to collapse the sales time and remove barriers will require knowledge about your business, products, and customer experience.
Besides reducing the amount of friction that your customer experiences when buying from you, retailers also need to focus on making their systems instinctive and automatic. Consider the algorithms that online sites like Amazon and Spree use, where the products you viewed immediately come up in your social media feeds after you’ve visited their site. Or subscription models that notify you that your Nespresso machine has to be restocked, as well as automated playlists on Spotify. This type of marketing makes the process of buying from you simple, rational and logical.
Identifying each and every touchpoint that a customer or potential customer has with your brand, and then focusing on making everything shoppable and that the complete process is seamless, will help retailers stay ahead of the pack in today’s competitive marketplace.
Need help with your experiential marketing and customer experience? Then contact Tradeway today.