An omnichannel retail strategy serves as a powerful way for your eCommerce store to reach a wider audience of shoppers. However, maintaining a seamless and on-brand experience for your customers is still key, and this becomes a lot more difficult when you are managing a wide range of channels.
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BigCommerce vs. Shopify: Everything You Need to Know
An omnichannel eCommerce platform (also known as a multi-channel eCommerce platform) helps address these challenges by acting as a centralized hub that brings together all of your sales channels. When combined with eCommerce website management services for cross-channel eCommerce, these platforms can be highly valuable to anyone wanting to implement an omnichannel retail strategy. In this guide, we'll go over everything you need to know about these platforms so that you can enjoy the benefits of unified commerce.
What Is an Omnichannel eCommerce Platform?
An omnichannel eCommerce platform connects all of a retailer's sales channels in one place. These channels may include an online store, social media marketplaces, and/or in-store point-of-sale (POS) systems. This eliminates the need to manage each sales channel separately and instead allows you to integrate them into a single, centralized system. When you use a multi-channel eCommerce platform, things like managing inventory, tracking customer interactions, and ensuring consistent pricing across channels become a lot more streamlined.
For example, BigCommerce (when integrated with Feedonomics) lets you manage product feeds in real time on multiple marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. Similarly, Shopify's omnichannel capabilities include POS systems that blend online and in-store shopping, allowing you to create a unified experience for your customers.
Key Features and Benefits
An omnichannel eCommerce platform can deliver some valuable benefits to stores with multiple sales channels. Here are some of the top features of these platforms and the benefits that they offer:
Centralized Inventory Management
Managing inventory across multiple sales channels can be difficult without the right tools. An omnichannel platform centralizes inventory data, ensuring accurate stock levels across all of the marketplaces where you sell. For instance, BigCommerce and Feedonomics make it easy to manage product data feeds across marketplaces and automatically update inventory levels so you don't run the risk of overselling. We helped a wine retailer transition to BigCommerce and solve complex inventory issues, resulting in more sales and revenue.
Unified Customer Data
There's no overstating the value of customer data—and with an omnichannel eCommerce platform, you can track customer interactions and purchase history across all channels. This makes it easier to understand buyer preferences, create personalized marketing campaigns, and offer better support. Shopify’s POS system, for example, allows you to access customer data from both online and in-store interactions so that you can create a more personalized and seamless shopping experience.
Cross-Channel Analytics
Omnichannel platforms provide sophisticated analytical tools that enable you to track the performance of each sales channel in real time. This lets you take a data-based approach to cross-channel eCommerce and more easily identify areas for improvement. When combined with eCommerce management services from a full-service agency like Groove Commerce, the analytics provided by your omnichannel platform can help fine-tune your unified commerce strategy for better results.
Consistent Brand Experience
Consistency is one of the keys to a positive customer experience. With an omnichannel eCommerce platform, you can better ensure that your brand messaging and customer experience are consistent across every touchpoint, whether people shop on your website, through social media, or in a physical store. This means that customers will know exactly what to expect from your brand regardless of where they shop, so it can go a long way toward building trust and encouraging repeat business.
Why Your eCommerce Business Needs an Omnichannel Platform
A good omnichannel platform is a necessity for any retailer that plans to sell products across multiple sales channels. The biggest reason why these platforms are so beneficial is that they streamline a variety of operations, making it much less of a hassle to manage different sales channels. In addition to simplifying your operations, an omnichannel platform also helps create a more consistent (and all-around better) experience for your customers. This leads to improved customer retention and, ultimately, more sales for your business.
At Groove Commerce, we understand the vital role that the right platform plays in cross-channel eCommerce. That's why setting our clients up with an omnichannel platform is one of the first steps we take when building an omnichannel retail strategy. From there, we can help you manage and optimize your platform for even better results.
Conclusion
The right omnichannel platform can make a world of difference when it comes to managing multiple sales channels. Thankfully, solutions like Shopify and BigCommerce with Feedonomics are perfectly suited for an omnichannel retail strategy, enabling you to manage all of your sales channels from a single platform.
But choosing the right platform is only the beginning. If you would like to develop an optimized approach to omnichannel eCommerce, we at Groove Commerce can help! Check out our eCommerce website management services to learn more. You could also contact us or set up a complimentary performance audit of your website.
