We’ve been developing Magento eCommerce websites for 25+ years. We’ve helped many retailers deliver state of the art shopping experiences, particularly through the integration of external platforms like Adyen.
In their 2019 retail report, they highlighted how sadly, British retailers are still failing to deliver a satisfying customer shopping experience due to the lack of unified commerce. The consequence? A loss in revenue that amounted to a mind-boggling £102 billion.
Find yourself thinking “what is unified commerce?” This is the setup companies need in order to support omnichannel journeys, to create a unified view of the shopper and stock. – Adyen
Creating a seamless journey from the first time a user connects with your brand has to leave them impressed right to the end. Whether you initially reach them offline, on social media, through email marketing or via another channel, you want them to be pushed to browse a product and make a payment – easily and efficiently.
In order to do this, Adyen is showering you with exclusive insights into the retail industry to ensure you’re making informed decisions. You need to know how best to reach your target audience, give them what they want, offer innovation that encourages loyalty and increases revenue. Below are your answers…
Improve the in-store shopping experience
As much as we want to look at improving the online side of your retail business, after all, the online world is massive and its growth isn’t going to be stunted anytime soon, in-store needs consideration too…
A poor in-store experience can have a lasting impact, with only a fifth of Brits returning to a store where they’ve previously had a bad experience.
The main reasons for a bad experience? It’s obvious; out-of-stock items, long queues and not offering the right payment methods. – Adyen
Based on the research done by Adyen, we know that there are three main aspects that can make or break an in-store shopping experience. These include out-of-stock items, long queues and limited payment options.
1. In-store, In-stock
With the huge loss in revenue that retailers could be witnessing, it’s important we all adopt the motto “in-store, in-stock”. Just because you feel that users might turn to online shopping more, we’re not in a day and age where in-store purchasing doesn’t exist.
Online shopping, although is highly convenient for the majority of the time, has its limitations with inaccurate sizing, wait times for product delivery and misaligned consumer expectations.
In-store shopping can often cancel out these issues making you more likely to convert browsers into buyers as these in-store shoppers are often further along the consumer buying journey too.
Yet, out of stock items surprisingly topped the survey as the most frustrating in-store experience, accounting for over £14bn in lost revenue in 2018.
Often, in-store shoppers want to try on the goods, get a feel for the product and the right sizing. If their journey to your store was wasted due to product unavailability, they’re highly likely to go elsewhere and won’t even consider looking at the product online or at your other nearby stores.
Four out of five said they wouldn’t return to a store if their desired item was out of stock the first time. This shows the impact it has on customer loyalty. – Adyen
2. Cut down the queues
The second biggest turn off is in-store queuing, costing retailers over £11bn each year. Queuing at any given time gets the calmest character agitated. That’s whether you’re sitting in traffic, waiting on a phone call, for an appointment that’s running a little late or in-store when trying to buy your new sunglasses – can you tell that summer is on our minds?
Think about it. When asked to wait, for me, the issue is not knowing how long you’ll be left there to try and entertain yourself whilst trying to adhere to a busy schedule that is quickly moving out of grasp. Hence, two-thirds of users surveyed abandoned a purchase and left the store because of long queues in the past six months.
Adyen’s findings also showed that there’s not only an immediate impact on sales due to long queues but also a long term impact – with only a quarter of Brits returning to make a purchase. Prepare to forfeit revenue.
3. Offer the right payment methods
The final aspect of constructing a happy, customer-centric shopping environment is to offer multiple payment methods. That includes paying by contactless cards, cash, Apple Pay and even allowing discount codes from influencers, points systems and more.
With the number of online purchases growing each year, customers want to use their preferred payment methods when they shop, whether it’s on an app of the retailer, in-store with them or online with a different brand. Make sure you utilise all of these payment methods to avoid limiting the options for your prospective buyers.
Did you know? In-store, two-thirds of Brits say contactless would improve the store experience and over half of shoppers want to see digital wallets as a payment option.
Fortunately, 91% of UK retailers say they are placing importance on offering the payment options that their customers want to pay with. – Adyen
According to Adyen’s study, eCommerce retailers lost out on £8bn because the right payment methods were NOT available.
The online shopping experience
Now that you know how to avoid negative in-store experiences, let’s venture onto the web to uproot the online hurdles to retailers.
It’s not just about payment methods. Levelling up your checkout and limiting the amount of falsely identified fraud creates happy shoppers. – Adyen
4. Improving your online checkout
In 2018 Adyen found that the checkout process caused the most annoyance among online shoppers. Often this resulted in a high basket abandonment rate. As customers are living in the age of micro-moments, they want every aspect of the payment process to be smooth, efficient and quick. To do that, it means eradicating long, painful manual forms.
To do this, you can implement automated or social media login ability, offer alternate payment methods that have guest payment details already safely stored and more.
On the positive side, Adyen’s study found that improving checkout experiences ranked as the highest priority for eCommerce businesses, with a third of retailers working on the optimization of their online checkout.
Extra reading? 5 Ways to Simplify Mobile Checkout Experience or Magento Checkout Tips to Reduce Basket Abandonment
5. Implement a fraud system that results in fewer false-positives
Although the eCommerce world is continually working on minimising the risks of cybercrime, it still exists. The Adyen 2019 Retail Report shows that a quarter of Brits would decide to up their number of online purchases if they felt a retailer had a good fraud protection system in place.
Sadly, the research highlights that only half of UK retailers feel prepared to tackle fraud – including managing and limiting the number of valid customer transactions that are erroneously declined.
RevenueProtect with Adyen
Adyen have a RevenueProtect feature that enables them to use a data-driven approach to block fraud with a unique risk management engine. You can easily detect fraud online, in-store, in-app and wherever else your business goes next using their all-in-one payments platform.
With it, you can reduce the manual work and gain full visibility of your transactions using a smart fraud system that combines rule-based components with the latest in machine learning.
Extra reading? Retailers: Learn how to fight payments fraud.
Cross-channel shopping experience
Finally, it’s important as a retailer to ensure all of your efforts create a seamless shopping experience that pours from in-store to online with no or little obstacles.
Shoppers want to be able to go from channel to channel as they move through the buying journey and on each channel they should be able to buy your products, at any given time. They also want a personalised shopping experience that caters specifically to them, not them as a number within your target audience.
6. Cross channel buying options
Nearly a quarter of Brits made additional purchases in the last 6 months because a retailer offered them a cross-channel buying option. – Adyen
Cross channel buying options means offering everything from shopping through your online store, a market place like Amazon or eBay, a catalogue, from social media (particularly with the new “Instagram Shop” feature) or from a physical store.
Offering multi-channel purchasing works particularly well for those brands who are making their products available on global market places so don’t be afraid of the initial smaller margins.
Extra reading? How to go global with your eCommerce business.
7. Contextual eCommerce
Common phrases describing people to be “glued to their phones” and “living within the age of micro-moments”, confirms that people are more connected but also, busier than ever. As a result, it makes it harder for retailers to get in front of their target audience at a time they’re most likely to convert.
It’s your job to make sure that shoppers can purchase your products in a way that effortlessly integrates with their lives. This could involve in-app purchasing may it be your own, Instagram or Facebook or even buying through a smart speaker. “Alexa, order my favourite chocolate coffee beans”.
45% of Brits told us they use social media frequently to shop, however only 17% of UK retailers offer the option for customers to purchase on their social media channels. – Adyen
8. Recommended products and personalized offers
Adyen reported that in 2018 there was a £15bn shaped hole left in the economy by businesses not offering recommended products or personalised offers. Yet, customers were actively demanding this personalisation and in return, 22% of UK shoppers would be willing to increase their spending at a store if they were given it.
You can start to personalise their shopping experience by implementing the following:
- On-site product recommendations
- Social media remarketing
- Personalised emails – at a minimum, address them by their name
- Suggest similar items – messaging like “you may also like” is commonly used
- Suggest best-sellers that are related to their previous purchases
Extra reading? Nosto, The Perfectly Personalised Shopping Experience or Customer Personalisation: What do shoppers actually want?
Next Steps…
Don’t let unified commerce catch you out. Implement a seamless multi-channel shopping experience to give your business the best chance of generating optimum revenue.
Get in touch
We know commerce, let us help you improve customer experience, increase conversion rates, and make that digital change.
- hello@iweb.co.uk