Why brands should take direction from channel-agnostic consumers

As if the past decade was not chal­leng­ing enough for tra­di­tion­al retail, with con­sumers increas­ing­ly embrac­ing online chan­nels, the tumul­tuous cir­cum­stances of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic dras­ti­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed the shift. Brands have had lit­tle choice but to adapt.
In many ways, ecom­merce has been a life­line for con­sumers through the pan­dem­ic. With­out the abil­i­ty to buy online the shops and super­mar­kets that could open would have been over­whelmed, while those that were shut would have seen busi­ness grind to a halt. Brands rose to the occa­sion when con­sumers need­ed them the most.

For many, that meant going direct to con­sumers online to off­set the clo­sure of phys­i­cal stores. But while there was cer­tain­ly a short-term response need­ed to meet the exces­sive demand, the savvi­est com­pa­nies realise there are longer-term struc­tur­al changes that are like­ly to be per­ma­nent.

“The pan­dem­ic has not only dri­ven more peo­ple to shop online but also led to exper­i­men­ta­tion and will­ing­ness to try new things, cat­e­gories and prod­ucts,” says David Spitz, CEO of Chan­nelAd­vi­sor, a mul­ti-chan­nel com­merce plat­form that helps com­pa­nies sell online.

“A lot of these behav­iours will stick because, for instance, once cus­tomers have shopped online for gro­ceries they realise what a huge time saver it can be. They may enjoy going to the super­mar­ket peri­od­i­cal­ly because of the expe­ri­ence but, by and large, it’s a great con­ve­nience to have it done for them.”

In a UK study by Chan­nelAd­vi­sor last sum­mer, when coro­n­avirus restric­tions had tem­porar­i­ly eased, 60% of con­sumers were shop­ping online more fre­quent­ly and 40% said they were going to Ama­zon before check­ing any­where else. Some 37% had bought items they had not pur­chased online before, while 32% were buy­ing from com­pa­nies they had pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased from.

Mean­while, the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics report­ed an 80% increase in online and click and col­lect gro­cery ser­vices. Covid-19 has reshaped the retail land­scape and the indus­try shows lit­tle sign it will go back to how things were pre-pan­dem­ic.

To be suc­cess­ful in this new age of retail, brands must meet con­sumers where they want to shop. While many com­pa­nies dis­missed online mar­ket­places such as Ama­zon and eBay in the past, the real­i­ty is that con­sumers now grav­i­tate to these chan­nels. The younger gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers is also increas­ing­ly shop­ping through social media and while chan­nels such as Face­book and Insta­gram are still more about sto­ry­telling than trans­act­ing, brands must be ready to adapt and engage with these con­sumers as inspi­ra­tion changes to pur­chase intent.

While tra­di­tion­al retail focused heav­i­ly on pack­ag­ing, adver­tis­ing and shelf place­ment, the impor­tant fac­tors in the dig­i­tal world are prod­uct infor­ma­tion and fast, reli­able deliv­ery. The for­mer is about prod­uct attrib­ut­es, the fideli­ty and accu­ra­cy of data, and being trans­par­ent in areas such as user reviews. The lat­ter is the essen­tial com­po­nent of a suc­cess­ful ecom­merce oper­a­tion, not least because con­sumers increas­ing­ly expect to be able to buy some­thing and have it deliv­ered the same day.

“Busi­ness­es often over­com­pli­cate it, but the con­sumer equa­tion is pret­ty sim­ple: great selec­tion, great prices and con­ve­nience equals a good expe­ri­ence,” says Spitz. “Ama­zon recog­nised this more than 20 years ago, that is part of the rea­son it has had so much suc­cess. Brands ignore the chan­nels where con­sumers want to shop at their per­il. If they are not there, the cus­tomer will go to a com­peti­tor.

“With ecom­merce, it’s very easy to try new things. We’re big pro­po­nents of being agile. Brands must be able to try things and quick­ly adapt depend­ing on whether they are see­ing results. Agili­ty is about future-proof­ing a busi­ness, Covid-19 showed that pret­ty dis­tinct­ly. Com­pa­nies have to be able to move real­ly quick­ly, which is part­ly what we enable our cus­tomers to do.”

The key for brands is to take the lead from chan­nel-agnos­tic con­sumers. Pri­ori­tis­ing a con­ve­nient and con­sis­tent shop­ping expe­ri­ence across every chan­nel — whether that is a mar­ket­place, a brand’s web­site, social media or a retail part­ner — can only ben­e­fit the con­sumer.

“We’re a robust ecom­merce plat­form that helps our cus­tomers do all of that suc­cess­ful­ly,” Spitz adds. “You have to keep the con­sumer as the North Star. Con­sumers want to shop in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways, increas­ing­ly online but in some cas­es in phys­i­cal stores too. Keep­ing to that North Star is a good way to guide your­self. Those that did that dur­ing Covid-19 pros­pered.”

ChannelAdvisor’s mul­ti-chan­nel com­merce plat­form helps brands and retail­ers improve their online per­for­mance by expand­ing sales chan­nels, con­nect­ing with con­sumers glob­al­ly, opti­mis­ing their oper­a­tions for peak per­for­mance and pro­vid­ing action­able ana­lyt­ics to improve com­pet­i­tive­ness. Thou­sands of cus­tomers use the plat­form to secure­ly pow­er their sales and opti­mise ful­fil­ment on hun­dreds of chan­nels includ­ing the big ecom­merce play­ers such as Ama­zon, eBay, Google and Face­book, as well as more niche and region­al chan­nels around the world.

The tech­nol­o­gy not only enables brands and retail­ers to seam­less­ly con­nect to mul­ti­ple chan­nels, but it also then helps opti­mise those chan­nels for suc­cess through tools like data trans­for­ma­tion, advanced repric­ing algo­rithms, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, adver­tis­ing automa­tion, shop­pable media and com­peti­tor ana­lyt­ics. By doing so, the com­pa­ny allows brands to thrive in the evolv­ing mul­ti-chan­nel ecom­merce land­scape.

“If we look back over the past few decades, the retail­er and brand rela­tion­ship was often lop­sided in favour of the retail­er. That is not true any­more. My advice to all brands is to get clos­er to your con­sumer, meet­ing them exact­ly when and how they want to shop, includ­ing across a vari­ety of online chan­nels,” says Spitz.

“The progress of dig­i­tal isn’t slow­ing down, if any­thing it may speed up fur­ther, espe­cial­ly as deliv­ery options pro­lif­er­ate and give faster access to prod­ucts. The qual­i­ty of data and ana­lyt­ics is going to be a core com­pe­ten­cy need­ed by every brand to suc­ceed in dig­i­tal. Ulti­mate­ly, that’s what we do best. We help retail­ers and brands of all types and sizes con­nect to more con­sumers around the world, and do it effi­cient­ly. Our job is to help our cus­tomers suc­ceed in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it channeladvisor.com

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