Nice writeup on how click-and-mortar have jumped ahead in ways past the pure online, and where pure online is still winning (barely).
Amazon.com made waves in July when its stock price topped $300 a share for the first time - but the e-commerce giant is not the only game in town. Omnichannel retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy are taking aim at the Seattle giant by rolling out innovative bricks-and-clicks business models that combine the best of online and in-store shopping.
So who will win the battle for consumer hearts-and-minds - and their wallets? Will the pure-play online retailers like Amazon and an increasing number of niche online-only sites like Bonobos and Fab.com, or omnichannel retailers that have the power of the Big Box behind them, win the revenue race?
New data from OpinionLab's Customer Feedback Index, which analyzed millions of pieces of real customer feedback who shopped at hundreds of the world's greatest brands, found that pure-play etailers are currently outperforming their omnichannel counterparts. The study found that, despite deploying a bevy of tactics to meet the needs of the omnichannel shopper, bricks-and-clicks retail brands are still struggling to build seamless customer experiences across channels.
However, the race isn't over yet, and customer experience levels are only slightly higher for online-only retailers - an index score of 458 for omnichannel vs. 481 for pure-play. Omnichannel retailers are delivering impressive shopping experiences in some key areas, including homepage and product page presentation and checkout. That means if omnichannel retailers continue to deliver on these shopping experiences, as well as improve functional areas where pure-play retailers now have the lead, they have a chance to catch up to, or even surpass, pure-play competitors.
Let's dig into the data to see where omnichannel retailers succeed, and where they have room for improvement. The OpinionLab study also benchmarked Functional Mean Ratings (which score critical functions on a 1 - 5 scale) for both omnichannel and pure-play etailers. According to the research, omnichannel retailers are champions of the checkout with an average rating of 3.65 for the checkout experience, compared to 2.93 for pure-play etailers. This finding flies in the face of conventional wisdom; one would think etailers had mastered online checkout, since they invented it in the first place. However, omnichannel retailers have leapt ahead of pure-play etailers in offering various 'fulfillment options', allowing customers to pay by credit card for home delivery; buy online but pickup in-store; reserve online and then pay in store with cash or credit, etc. They've also innovated in the offline-to-online direction, allowing in-store shoppers to make online purchases via tablets and kiosks. Omnichannel retailers provide customers with ample options to complete their purchases.
Omnichannel retailers also received high ratings for their homepages and product pages, achieving mean scores of 3.06 for their homepages and 3.01 for product pages vs. 2.74 and 2.78 respectively for etailers. With decades of catalog commerce behind them, omnichannel retailers are experts at product presentation and branding. Their websites are often "prettier" and easier to navigate than those of pure-play etailers, many of which are stuck in 1999 in terms of site design. (A new generation of online-only etailers such as Bonobos and Fab.com are bucking this trend, but Amazon has yet to shift away from the cluttered "over-SKUed" look that has generated billions in revenue.)
Where do etailers have the biggest advantage over their omnichannel competitors? Pure-players succeed in the 'nuts and bolts' of e-commerce: account services, search and the presentation of information. Shoppers gave etailers high marks for site search, account management, ease of finding information, and service and support.
Read conclusion of article at Source link on Multichannel Merchant
