Real-time inventory is critical for customer experience.
I recently had a terrible online buying experience.
I purchased a set of wine glasses from a well-known retailer’s website. I completed the transaction and received a confirmation email for my order, including a pick-up location and date.
Three days later, I received an email notification that my order had been cancelled because the wine glass set was out-of-stock.
Excuse me? I was counting on them to deliver. Fat chance I’ll ever buy from that retailer again. They gave me a bad customer experience, because they couldn’t manage their inventory effectively.
Do your customers experience this problem? Are you even aware whether they do? If so, it must stop. The problem can be solved, by providing real-time product availability.
This post will explain why real-time product availability is crucial for delivering an exceptional customer experience. We’ll also discuss what technology you need to achieve it. (more…)
Magento SEO: Setting Changes & Tips to Increase Rankings
Many retailers are focused on increasing their social presence or optimizing their online advertisements. But, in fact, 51% of all visitors from B2B and B2C websites come from organic search. This blows paid search and social out of the water.
With the majority of visitors are coming from search engines, it’s critical to optimize your Magento store for search. This post will focus on increasing your Magento SEO ranking. (more…)
What We’re Reading: Retail Tech Spend, Trends for 2015, Blurring Online and Offline
Being the beginning of the year, a lot of time is spend within retailers determining what went well last year and what didn’t. Oh, and how do you fix it THIS year? These articles show where retailers ran into challenges and where they are planning on focusing their efforts and dollars in 2015.
How to Select the Right Multichannel Retail Systems
Selecting the right point solutions to execute your multichannel retail strategy is difficult. You must evaluate eCommerce platforms, enterprise resource platforms (ERP), and point of sale (POS) systems. And, it’s complicated to figure out which ones will work together to support your multichannel business processes.
For example, if you want to list different pricing for your B2C website versus your B2B website, does your ERP support that? How about your eCommerce system? More importantly, how will those systems communicate to make sure each has the right price displayed?
Many vendors do not build software that supports the key requirements to building a multichannel business. They built their software in the last decade (or sometimes the last century!) and are trying to milk every dollar they can from it. Some are not interested, others are incapable of making their systems multichannel-ready. You, the multichannel retailer, will feel the weight of that this problem.
But it doesn’t have to be that way! (more…)
What We’re Reading: Future of Retail, Operational Efficiency, Customer Data’s Importance
This week we’re reading about the future of retail, how to leverage operational efficiencies, and the importance of customer data. These are all ideas that help you build a better business. Use these articles (actually, one is audio) to inspire your multichannel retail strategy. How are you going to win, tomorrow?
