Cross-channel strategies to bring the consumer from the website to the store are increasingly being implemented by companies. How to satisfy consumers during these new uses? What are the best practices in order to offer a smooth journey for the consumer from the e-commerce site to your physical point of sale?
Improved customer experience thanks to a revisited user journey
Web-to-store strategies combine the advantages of different channels:
- The speed, convenience and ease of comparison of e-commerce
- Instant availability and the sensory experience of physical points of sale
By studying and optimizing the journey of your customers via the different touchpoints they use, you will put the odds on your side in order to offer a completely fluid customer experience from their point of view.
For this, you must absolutely analyze what value you offer your consumers at each stage of their journey. Is this added value sufficient? Can you suggest better? Can you do better than the competition?
On the other hand, it is also better to explain your strategy to your customers, in terms that are easy to understand and remember. For example, you can use diagrams or GIFs to explain the process of ordering on your website and of "delivery" or payment in store (principle of e-reservation or click-and-collect). During these explanations, it is obvious that you must also highlight the benefits of using these cross-channel services. For example, you can highlight the time saving that will be achieved, the practicality, the financial gain with regard to the price of the delivery, etc.
Identify the benefits of these cross-channel shopping principles and try to highlight them in visuals and short, easy-to-understand texts. Indeed, your distribution strategy may seem obvious to you, however not all consumers are aware of this type of practice.
On your e-commerce site, think for example of create a page dedicated to your physical store. On this page, highlight the main and differentiating characteristics of your store. Do not forget to indicate a certain lots of practical information such as the address, a plan that locates your store thanks to Google Mapp, your telephone number, links to your social networks, etc.
Your store's dedicated web page can also highlight its bestsellers, store events and current promotions.
When you set up a web-to-store strategy and more particularly, a click-and-collect strategy (and other similar strategies), consider offering on your e-commerce site the possibility of choosing the time at which pick up their ordered products from your store (pick-up time). This will avoid many disappointments such as the fact that a consumer goes to the store to pick up his order and that it is not yet prepared.
Take inspiration, for example, from the strategies put in place for Drive. For example, like Leclerc, ensure that an area to the right of the site summarizes the user's basket regardless of the page of your website on which it is located.
The importance of e-merchandising for web-to-store
When optimizing a web-to-store strategy, it is also about think about your e-merchandising. In other words, consider what your assortment of products will be available for online purchase and in-store pickup. The ideal is to offer a very broad offer. However, the difficulty then remains always have the necessary stock in store to fulfill web orders.
Mix promotional offers via all channels
While consumers use solutions like click-and-collect to save time, you can also get them to make impulse purchases. Even if the latter have no time to waste in store when retrieving the order made online, it is always possible to offer complementary products for purchase or of highlight the latest collection not yet available online.
In this way, you satisfy the consumer since he was able to make his online purchases without stress, quickly and recover everything a few hours later in store without paying delivery costs; but they can also find rather hedonic benefits in glancing at products they haven't seen online. You arouse his curiosity!
It's up to you to know your customers and their orders perfectly when they pick up their web purchases in store so that you can personalize the offer or promotion that you will offer them face to face!
