When you decide to buy a product, do you end up buying from a single source? Or, do you first research about it online, compare its features and prices, check it out in a physical store, and then finally decide to purchase it?
If you happen to be in the latter category, you’re not alone.
A study conducted by HBR on 46,000 shoppers concluded that 73% of customers use multiple channels during their entire shopping journey. As the number of retail channels increases, so does the complexity of the customer journey.
And to ensure that your products reach effectively to the customers at every channel, you need a robust multichannel commerce strategy along with a platform that can help you leverage the benefits of every avenue of retail.
Lately, Shopify Plus has emerged as one of the most powerful platforms for enterprise eCommerce with features that not only support multichannel selling but also boost it with flexibility and ease. In this article, we explore multichannel eCommerce strategy in-depth and how Shopify Plus features can help businesses ace it.
Let’s begin by understanding what it means to achieve multichannel success in the world of digital commerce.
What is multichannel retailing/commerce?
Simply put, multichannel commerce is the practice of retail that involves selling at different platforms and channels – be it online marketplaces, exclusive eCommerce websites, social media platforms, mobile applications, or physical stores.
As per a survey conducted in 2018, half of the online purchases start with online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, where consumers explore different brands and products. Similarly, another research by Global Web Index shows that 37% of internet users depend on social media for their product research.
In fact, the thin line between online and offline shopping has also been constantly blurring since the dawn of the mobile internet. A st0udy concluded that most shoppers check prices online even when they are in a physical store, and around 45% of global shoppers buy online and then pick up in a physical store.
Indeed, the customer of today is omnipresent, and it is a business’s responsibility to reach them everywhere and make them take notice of its products and offerings.
How will multichannel commerce benefit my business?
It is true that today’s customers are smart and are everywhere. However, they have also raised the bar of their expectations. Customers have a shorter attention span and shift quickly to another brand if they are not happy with the service or if your products are unavailable at their preferred platform.
Thus, businesses need to ensure that their footprints are at every place their customers scroll upon, and multichannel commerce can make it happen. Here’s a quick look at what multichannel commerce can do for your business:
- You can reach customers at every stage of their journey: Today, shopping is no longer a linear process. A customer’s journey begins long before they land on your product page. For example, a customer may find you on Instagram or during a Google search. With multichannel commerce, you can ensure that your presence is felt at every possible touchpoint.
- You understand customer demands better: Customer preference and expectations are not just ever-changing but are also spread across various channels. If an eCommerce business plans its inventory based on the data collected from only one channel, it is bound to go wrong. A multichannel commerce strategy helps keep a tab on the demands on every channel and provides an accurate representation of customer demand.
- You can lower sales risks with multichannel commerce: In today’s time, it is not wise to rely on only one sales channel to gain momentum. With multichannel commerce, you can leverage different marketplaces, channels, and platforms to increase your sales and conversion rate.
- You can reach a wider target market: Similarly, selling your products on multiple channels helps penetrate new markets and reach new customers. For example, building a brand on eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon or eBay can help you create a name internationally, which wouldn’t be possible with a single channel.
How does Shopify Plus features help in achieving multi channel success?
Enables hyper-personalization in the customer experience: The customer groups in multichannel commerce are never uniform – be it geographically, age-wise, or by their buying behavior.
Some of them might come across your product through tier social media channels, while others may have reached you through a marketplace. Similarly, some customers might have bought from you more than twice, while some of them may be making their first purchase.
Your key to delighting all these customer segments lies in understanding their customer journey and pain points in their user experience. Backed by powerful insights and data analytics, Shopify Plus can help you dive deep into the unique customer behavior of every group.
You can find out the platforms they found you on, how much time they spent on the product page, and the geographical region customers belong to. Further, you can use this information to implement customer segmentation and curate a personalized user experience for them.
In fact, Shopify Plus supports high-end personalization in many ways. Let’s take a quick look at them –
- Shopify Plus enables complete customization of the checkout process for tagged customers – from exclusive discounts to payment options, you can provide different facilities to different customer segments.
- Furthermore, Shopify Plus also allows the admin to personalize the homepage for different customers. A repeat customer will get product recommendations based on past purchases, while a new customer may receive a first-buy discount.
Simplifies managing multiple storefronts: The essence of multichannel commerce lies in building a sales presence in numerous regions, channels, and platforms. However, managing various storefronts with the same efficiency and ensuring a unified commerce experience is not easy.
This is where Shopify Plus comes in!
It has features curated especially for sellers who operate on various platforms and support their business with automation and ease. Here’s a quick look at some Shopify Plus features that streamline the management of multiple storefronts –
- Different stores for different countries: You can create up to 9 storefronts other than your main store with Shopify Plus for different regions. In fact, Shopify Plus also supports a large number of local payment options, an automatic currency conversion to enable internationalization, and a customized admin dashboard in regional languages for easy supervision.
- Social selling: From buyable pins to Instagram shopping, digital commerce has now reached the brimming platform of social media and is only growing day by day. With Shopify Plus and its built-in tools, you can integrate platforms like Facebook messenger and Pinterest and even build custom integrations for any social channel that you would like to sell on.
- Online marketplaces: Shopify Plus also consists of features that allow admin to integrate with Amazon and eBay with a few simple steps and manage their stores from one single admin panel.
- Product information management (PIM): Shopify Plus facilitates centralization of all the product information, including pictures, videos, and listing, so that you don’t have to spend time replicating the information at every channel.
Streamline supply chain and inventory management: Managing inventory in a multichannel commerce setup is more challenging than you might think. With Shopify Plus, you can get real-time updates about stock at every channel so that you avoid both overstocking and out-of-stock situations. Furthermore, Shopify Plus allows the addition of up to 20 inventory locations to ensure that you get a unified view of overall inventory at a single source of truth.
Final take
Besides the advantages of Shopify Plus discussed above, there are many different ways through which Shopify Plus supports multichannel commerce. With features like Launchpad, you can schedule and automate major events on multiple platforms. Moreover, it supports bulk ordering, volume-based pricing, and automated reordering based on past data.
An enterprise eCommerce platform built primarily to support expansion plans of the business, Shopify Plus ensures that you have everything that it takes to launch your business in the global market and reach diverse target markets.
What you would need in this journey are a trusted Shopify Plus Partner and a plan that saves time and effort. If you are still on the lookout for them, you could explore more about our Shopify Plus services and our exclusive accelerator plan.
Until then, happy selling!
