You know Nike, right? Then you might already experience their omnichannel experiences and get satisfied. The concept is Nike spreads its presence into the sport environments with a seamless integration from virtual stores to the physical world. Magento 2 Omnichannel pursues the same goal.
Omnichannel means selling anywhere your customers feel willing to buy: from brick-and-mortar stores, online stores, mobile app, or via social media. All operations are run from a centralized hub where sales and inventory data are pulled through the system.
Do Not Mistake Magento 2 Omnichannel for Multichannel!
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The similarity: Both multichannel and omnichannel involve selling products or services via physical and digital channels.
The difference is, channels in multichannel have little or no interaction with each other. Different channels and stores have their own inventory. Hence, a product can be out-of-stock on ecommerce websites while being still available in retail stores.
The omnichannel tells a different story. All touchpoints to your business are unified to streamline customer experience from browsing to refunding.
For example, a customer surfed the Internet and found your Magento 2 website. They added some products to the cart; then for some reasons, they abandoned them.
Days later, they were on social media when catching sight of your business, with a message “Hey friend, we saved your cart for you. If you still like it, act fast to get 10% OFF.”
They clicked the link and hilariously; all products were ready to be checked out right on social channels.
This is called Magento 2 omnichannel!
The Omnichannel Basics
Customer Journey Through Omnichannel Tube
“Know your customer” mission lies at the heart of every business, both online and offline. Hence, it is essential to map the customer journey from the first engagement into a long-term relationship. Regarding Magento 2 Omnichannel, it is more important to identify the touchpoints of the customers and how to deliver saleable experiences at those points.
Omnichannel Commerce – Opportunities
We bet none of you merely runs a Magento 2 ecommerce website. At least, you have an additional call center or social account where you can reach your customers and persuade them into purchases. If you make all of them saleable, you have partly adopted Magento 2 Omnichannel strategies.
Thankfully, your opportunities are endless:
- The more touchpoints you reach, the more potential customers you get.
- A streamlined shopping experience makes repeat buyers. Your business will grow for sure.
- Omnichannel is the future of professional order management.
- A report by IDC predicted that the profit could reap up to 30% thanks to the reduction in inventory and the operational costs, as well as to the higher revenues.
Omnichannel Commerce – Challenges
Promising as the omnichannel is, you might still be hesitant. It makes sense, we know.
Opportunities and challenges go hand in hand. If you are about to start your own Magento 2 omnichannel strategy, there are many things to learn, plan, and prepare.
- The inventory must be associated seamlessly. Otherwise, every saleable experience fails.
- Bridging online and offline commerce requires you and your employees to be sensitive to shopping trends and a bit tech-savvy. Hence, you must train your staff properly. It costs time and money
- The choice of software is vital to fill the existing gap and lightening the customer experience. Cross-channel communication must be immediate to fulfill and manage orders efficiently.
Why Does Magento 2 Fit The Omnichannel Strategy?
If you are running a Magento 2 website, then congrats. Since Magento 2 is feature-rich and fully-customizable, you can complete whatever shopping experiences imaginable.
Magento ecommerce
Built with ecommerce solutions in mind, Magento 2 has all on-demand features to meet online shopping experiences and the management requirements of the merchants.
Even better, the platform has an unlimited ability to customize and integrations with third-party solutions. Hence, it will stay adaptive to the ecommerce world, even in the next century. To be specific, Magento 2 developers and vendors always keep on par with the latest ecommerce trends and technologies such as mobile apps or PWA.
Magento Order Management
Magento 2 allows creating an unlimited aisle for your customers, each of which reaches one or various touchpoints of customers. Specifically, you can build multiple sites, stores, brands, and warehouses.
However, it is not enough to start a Magento 2 omnichannel. You must invest in a professional Order Management System (OMS), or everything will become messy and end up a break experience for your customers or even hurt your revenues.
This system ties all sales and inventory channels together. What to expect:
- Data of all orders needing to be fulfilled from all touchpoints.
- An engine of configurable rules to orchestrate how to fulfill those orders from the available inventory.
- The instruction system to guide involved parties ways to complete orders, to carry out a dropshipping, to deliver the pick, pack, and dispatch. Many more – we might add.
Magento Business Intelligence
Data don’t tell a lie, most of the time. So, check all databases carefully to avoid technical hurdles and accelerate informed decisions.
When it comes to Magento 2 Omnichannel, data is more and more critical since you have to handle a more complicated system.
Magento 2 Business Intelligence helps, to be exact, in two aspects: data visualization and data management. It is a cloud-based platform that syncs data automatically into the Magento 2 dashboard throughout the day. Hence, you have all the information at hand so that you can do the analytics around the clock.
Magento 2 Omnichannel Is Not Overused
Omnichannel, in general, and Magento 2 Omnichannel, in particular, will become a norm of commerce soon.
Customers want to shop in all ways imaginable, both online and offline. If you fail to do so, sooner or later, they head for your competitors who provide a more streamlined and faster shopping experience.
BSS Commerce is one of the leading Multi-platform eCommerce solutions and web development services providers in the world. With experienced and certified developers, we commit to bringing high-quality products and services to optimize your business effectively. Talk to our expert now!
