Experience matters in omnichannel commerce
Experience matters in omnichannel commerce – both the customer experience and the software ecosystem that supports a buyer’s journey from initial discovery to customer advocate. Just as shoppers see products on display in physical stores, digital experiences have to provide relevant content and compelling interactions to convert browsing to buying: 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into providing a seamless experience. Connected consumers expect convenience and flexibility across channels, whether brick and mortar, catalog, print, in-store kiosks, web, mobile, or social. According to a study by IDC, shoppers who buy on multiple channels have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel. Nothing frustrates customers more than dead-end, can’t-get-there-from-here experiences. And second chances are rare.
Omnichannel commerce is a complex ecosystem. Many interrelated platforms, applications, and capabilities go into it, such as web content management (WCM), e-commerce, digital asset management (DAM), product catalog, product information, merchandising, inventory, pricing, promotion, order, fulfillment, reporting, analytics, and more. Unfortunately, many organizations have legacy, disconnected silos and struggle to bridge the customer engagement/customer experience side with content marketing for multichannel, back office, and transaction management. The value to businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies is greater customer retention rates.
DAM, e-commerce, and WCM make up the cornerstones of the ecosystem. When planning for a successful omnichannel commerce initiative, don’t assume that these other platforms will take care of DAM.
DAM Infrastructure
DAM serves as a core infrastructure underlying e-commerce, WCM, product information management, and product catalogs. With an ever-growing pool of images, photos, audio, and video to support commerce, digital assets should be synchronized with back office data management and the customer experience presentation. Mature and extensible DAM platforms provide integration with e-commerce and WCM to automate delivery of rich media in the proper format and size, across multiple channels, driven by either the WCM or an e-commerce system. Read The Forrester Wave™: Digital Asset Management For Customer Experience, Q3 2016 to learn more about the latest DAM trends, key benefits, and reasons why OpenText is named a leader.
Whether serving up digital assets for the e-commerce site, for public or partner catalogs, or for internal or external users, assets should all be sourced from a common repository – a single source of truth allowing for collaboration and brand consistency. Other important capabilities include automated synchronization and search capabilities within other platforms, localization, and security. DAM capabilities increase productivity by reducing time spent searching for assets and automating repetitive tasks to “media-enable” e-commerce and the entire organization.
Omnichannel vs. Multichannel
Rather than managing separate customer experiences through various channels as in a multichannel strategy, omnichannel strategy centers on the customer. It is an immersive, uninterrupted, and device-agnostic experience across channels that drives engagement, loyalty, and transactions. The customer is at the center. It’s about the brand, product, or service, not the channel.
DAM provides the core enterprise infrastructure and the key platform components and capabilities supporting and enhancing the omnichannel ecosystem. It delivers the efficiencies of create once/publish everywhere, to repurpose, re-express, reuse, and recreate digital content for compelling customer experiences. Product owners and brand managers can collaborate, easily find, and manage assets from a single library, synchronized and integrated with the other native platforms.
Omnichannel commerce meets customer expectations with consistent and connected experiences across all channels. Companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement (Aberdeen). Competition for customers is fierce, and omnichannel commerce can be a major differentiator. As you plan your strategy, remember that experience matters.
