5 Ways To Refine Your Omni-channel Strategy

By / June 13, 2023
5 Ways To Refine Your Omni-channel Strategy

Today, customers use a variety of channels to engage with businesses, and use those channels of communications simultaneously. 

Customers these days start their research by browsing on their smartphones. Then they simply switch to social media communities to check what others are saying about that particular business. 

If they get satisfied, they will come back to the online store, add items in their shopping cart, then switch to their laptop to complete the purchase.  

And you know what they expect?  They expect they can do all of this without getting into the hassle of going through this long process all over again when they switch channels or devices.

If you’re looking for strategies to improve your eCommerce customer’s experience then it’s high time you start looking for ways to refine your Omni-channel eCommerce strategy.

Omni-channel eCommerce strategy

Previously brands used one or two channels to interact with their customers. Due to the rapid change that has been observed in the past few months in customers behaviour, brands have started switching to a more customer-centric strategy i.e. omni-channel marketing.

Omni-channel marketing strategy and eCommerce businesses

It’s 2021 and eCommerce merchants are still pretty skeptical about this new trending approach. They ask questions like, Why do we need such a strategy when our primary goal is to generate profit? Or ‘Why cannot we expand our customer base through our brick-and-mortar store?

Well to be honest, getting more customers isn’t the best practice if you want your business to succeed long term. The ultimate success is when you’re able to nurture your existing customers who will stay loyal to your brand and will support you throughout your journey.

As Keven Richards, CEO of Ventura Web Design and Marketing states,

“Retailers often resist omnichannel selling because they want to focus entirely on their own webstore. We encourage our clients to embrace marketplaces as an advertising and customer acquisition strategy.”

He further added,

“Once those buyers experience what makes you special, repeat buyers will come directly to you for expanded inventory options and a customized buying experience. Omnichannel marketing is a key component to ecommerce success (and world domination).”

If you look at the statistics, in 2020 we found out marketers who used three or more touch points in one marketing campaign earned approximately 285% higher conversion rate if compared to those who used a single touch point to run their campaigns. 

That being said, adopting and implementing omni-channel marketing strategy is not important but essential. However, this task of implementing and then tempering omni-channel marketing strategy can be pretty daunting.

Hence, today in this article we’ll outline 5 ways you can use to refine your eCommerce omnichannel strategy.

5 ways to refine eCommerce omnichannel strategy 

1. Decentralizing customer-care service

Since, the number of engagement channels are increasing over time, the number of stakeholders and departments involved to create seamless customer experience across every channel has also increased.

Decentralizing customer-care service

According to CGS survey, apart from customer care representatives, even stakeholders like the company’s CEO, IT leaders, and CFO are actively taking part to improve the customer experience across every channel that customer uses. 

This indicates companies who are delivering exceptional omnichannel experiences don’t follow a centralized control mode. They took a new approach to decentralize customer care services and make this initiative responsibility of every employee working in their company. 

2. Localizing content across every channel

Certainly , there’s no better way to gain your local customers’ confidence, than serving your customers with local content.

Let’s be honest, would you like it if you’re made feel alien on your home ground? Never!

If you want to refine your omni-channel marketing strategy there’s no better way than to make your customers feel local when they visit your website. 

Nike is a note-worthy example of a brand that perfectly implements international omni-channel marketing strategy (well they should with all that money they have).

Just take a look at the two different versions of their site. 

Localizing content across every channel

What’s more astonishing, not only is the language different but content too.

Well all know about the importance of customer reviews. Now, imagine:

People from Portugal reading customer reviews given by other Portugese-speaking people. People from China reading customer reviews of Chinese-speaking people. If that’s boosting your sales conversion rate, we wonder what will. 

Let’s have a look how Nike showcases customer reviews in local language based on the customer’s location.

Nike

That’s not it. Apart from localizing currency and content on your website you need to do more. Step out of your eCommerce store and localize your social media profiles too. 

Adidas (one of Nike’s top competitors) is implementing this localization strategy very seriously.  If you visit Adidas Indonesia IG profile, you won’t only see typical Adidas celebrities like Karlie Kloss or Lionel Messi but local influencers too. 

All in all, in order to win you need to localize content across every channel to refine your omni-channel marketing strategy.

3. Embracing customer-centricity

In this customer-centric era, it’s imperative that your omnichannel marketing strategy is centered around your customers. First explore which engagement channels are mostly preferred by them.

If you don’t have a clue where your customers are, how will you be able to serve them?

For this reason, it’s essential to understand how are they are engaging, including where are they conducting researches, their presale queries and concerns, what sort of personalized experience are they seeking etc. 

Therefore after laying your omni-channel marketing foundations, it’s important to pay attention to refine your response time. 

Not only faster and refined engagements will work but you need to remove the friction from existing engagement channels. 

Embracing customer-centricity

Moreover, to improve your omni-channel strategy integrate all your customer support channels with all the record keeping existing systems. Keeping a clear record of customers’ concerns and queries – whether they are shared through social media, emails, chats or any other communication channel.

Having proper records of customers will facilitate your customer service team to keep track of all the queries and concerns of customers no matter if they are made via different channels. 

You can also take your audience’s preferences to further refine your omnichannel strategy.

4. Providing consistent customer experience

Imagine, you sent an email to your prospect who has recently signed-up for your newsletter program. He opens the email and clicks on your brand’s Facebook page link. When he is redirected to your brand page, he is surprised to see your brand’s profile displaying a different logo and out-dated banner.

In the worst case, he will get confused by this discrepancy and might question your brand’s legitimacy. 

Providing consistent customer experience

To refine your omnichannel strategy it’s essential to not only keep your visual content consistent but the language and messages you’re sending must be consistent across every channel.

Avoid sending any conflicting messages and be consistent across all the channels. 

Familiarity strengthens trust, don’t forget this. 

Provide singular customer experience across every touchpoint. If prospects can’t count on you for guidance during their pre-sale journey, certainly they will remain skeptical about your business and probably won’t invest their valuable resources on your brand. 

If you’re facing hard time in maintaining consistency across all the engagement channels, we suggest you to implement a centralized approach across every engagement channel your prospects are using.

Using this approach will not only refine your omnichannel strategy but will make it much easier to ensure that you’re giving the same information to your prospects no matter where they are.

5. Having backup plans for disruptions

Effective omnichannel experience can be only delivered when every underlying technology is operating properly. Customers highly demand for flawless and uninterrupted customer services. 

If any severe disruption is caused in channel by a natural disaster, hardware failure or cyberattack it can have outrageous consequences on your brand’s image and credibility especially if your customer care team is unprepared to handle any such chaotic situation. 

Therefore it’s essential to plan a robust proactive strategy to effectively overcome any disruption that can cause commercial damages. Additionally, all the stakeholders in every department must clearly know the plan and how to implement if any dire disruption is caused.

CGS conducted a research and identified that even though companies have a sturdy proactive plan to deal with disruptions, however the majority of the employees are unaware of it. 

So another way to improve your omnichannel marketing is to share your proactive backup plans regularly within your workforce to avoid any chaos during disruptions.

Final Thoughts

To repiculate it all, omnichannel marketing is essential to deliver a seamless customer experience. Implementing this trending marketing strategy is not enough, you need to refine it from time to time to stand out in the cut throat competitive eCommerce market.

We hope this guide will help you to easily refine your eCommerce omnichannel strategy.

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A writer by profession, Maria Ilyas is an eCommerce and digital marketing enthusiast and is always digging into the latest marketing trends, best practices, and growth strategies.