Article

Why technology collaboration, integration are key for online retail success

There's robust growth predicted for the holiday online retail season but capitalizing isn't a sure thing. An expert offers up insight on what retailers need to do to attain success.

October 6, 2015 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com

As holiday decorations and other products start hitting virtual store shelves, earlier than ever given insight from retail industry experts, Retail Customer Experience is kicking off its holiday shopping season coverage earlier as well.

There is little secret why online retailers are pushing holiday products weeks before even Halloween: to make more money. That’s a viable reality given online sales are expected to grow by 12 percent just in the holiday sales timeframe. Juniper Research expects mobile e-commerce will contribute to a 60-percent global growth of the total number of online purchases in 2015.

Such growth is not a bad thing, but it does introduce some new challenges into the retail environment, such as keeping consumers engaged even longer than ever before, ensuring marketing and merchandising doesn’t run out of "gas," and implementing a strategy in which needed additional investment in marketing doesn’t cut into the expected additional gains.

In the online retail environment, many of these challenges tie into how a retail approaches all the consumer introduction points and the integration of those technologies. As one expert notes there are often more than 10 integration points on an ecommerce site, and just as many applications that need to work together to foster a good customer experience.

The focus, according to Glenn Conradt, global VP for CoreMedia, is attaining a seamless integration while decreasing complexity and increasing collaboration.

Retail Customer Experience asked Conradt to provide his insight on that challenge as well as several others facing online and brick-and-mortar retailers as the holiday season arrives.

RCE: One of the big trends, obviously this year, is the mobile shopper whether they’re in the store or online. Is mobile hitting its big stride as a retail integration point?

Conradt: CoreMedia is extremely optimistic about mobile’s role in increasing e-commerce sales. We believe this remains a vital driver. Not only are we seeing that improved mobile commerce a huge priority for our customers, we’re also hearing about its importance from the analysts we track. On the customer side we have seen companies make significant efforts to improve the scope and performance of their mobile web stores while also rolling out dedicated mobile shopping apps. For example, improved mobile data access on trains and other forms of transportation are encouraging commuters to shop with their mobile devices on long commutes. Millennials appear to be far more comfortable shopping from a mobile device and they now have more opportunities than ever before. A recent Forbes survey found that 47 percent of Millennials have downloaded a mobile shopping app on their phone.

RCE: With mobile commerce, are shoppers browsing more, price-checking more or buying more?
Conradt: In our experience, they are doing all of the above. As our customers have improved the performance and customer experience of their mobile apps and sites they are seeing a strong boost in actual sales. According to data collected by comScore Inc., virtually all of the top e-Commerce destinations have experienced a surge in mobile only shoppers. Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target are seeing mobile only shopper percentages at around 50 percent. Overall, mobile-only shoppers represent about 12.5 percent of all e-Commerce shoppers. But the experience of major retailers indicates that is swiftly changing.

RCE: So some retailers, especially in the small to mid-size end of the spectrum, only have so much bandwidth and yet have to prioritize just like the big brands on which integration point is most critical. What is a first step they need to take if they’re not sure which to focus on?
Conradt: You’re absolutely right about the limited bandwidth of some retailers. Given how much pressure they’re under its understandable that most have very little tolerance for solution that are going to disrupt their operations and not contribute visibly to the bottom line. Our recommendation is to focus on the most critical, "measurable" pain point first and to work in an incremental and non-disruptive manner. One of the things that we have learned working with our customers over the last year is how productivity and efficiency improvements can have a huge impact on the shopper experience. A lot of companies are not being held back by a lack of ideas. They know what they want to accomplish and they know what they need to do to improve the online shopping experience. What’s holding them back are poorly integrated, out-of-date tools that make it extremely difficult to deliver inspirational content, personalized experiences, rich media, and more. Anything that goes beyond basic promotions and the standard product grid requires significant IT involvement and long turnaround times. So our advice is typically this:

1. Focus on performance and productivity first and empower your business users to accomplish more on their own.
2. Provide tools that allow your marketing and e-Commerce teams to work in a seamless, coordinated manner.

RCE: Given all the online retail integration points, what are some missteps retailers tend to make that you can help them avoid?
Conradt: One best example of a "don’t do this" is when retailers who want to enhance their existing e-commerce systems with content management capabilities are pressured to commit to a major re-platforming project that hands over control of the entire online store to the new vendor. They are often forced to replace all of their existing technology investments, recreate valuable business logic, purchase software modules that they don’t need, spend more than they need to, and commit to project timelines that can last many, many months. We see too many vendors in this space with "all-in-one" suites that want their customers to take an aggressive "rip-and-replace" approach to deployment. The result are projects that can take months or years to complete — and an even longer time to produce measurable results. And by the time the project is complete, the industry has moved on to other technologies and priorities. We advocate an incremental approach to innovation that allows retailers to take advantage of what they already have and build on that. Our best practice is to advocate an incremental approach that minimizes disruption, allows them to retain existing IP, and see results faster.

About Judy Mottl

---

Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.

Connect with Judy: