Online has settled at around a quarter of UK retail sales. Shops still take the large majority. Yet most customers use both, often for the same purchase. The retailers who win treat stores and online as one business.
Customers don't think in channels
Customers have a relationship with you as a brand, not with one channel. Most will research online before buying in a shop. Some will visit a shop and then buy online. They're not shopping in a binary way, so we shouldn't plan that way.
I look at this through two lenses.
Lens 1: One view of the customer
You need to know how each customer shops with you across both channels. Without that, you can't recognise your best customers or talk to them relevantly.
A fashion retailer in the US invited one of its most valued customers in for a personal shopping session. The manager knew what she had bought online and in store over two years, and had picked out items from the new collection in her size. She bought most of them and told her friends. She felt like a somebody, not a nobody.
Lens 2: Bring the best of each channel into the other
Bring online into the store
- Customer reviews, comparisons and video content at the shelf, through QR codes or screens.
- Personalised offers when a customer identifies themselves in store.
- A checkout as quick and painless as buying online.
- Fast delivery when the item isn't in stock.
Bring the store online
- Live video chat with a knowledgeable colleague before buying a high-ticket item.
- Recommendations based on what the customer has bought before.
- The reassurance of click and collect and easy returns to store.
Stores make your website sell more
There's good evidence that opening a shop increases online sales in the surrounding area, and that when a shop closes, the sales don't fully move online or to another branch. Stores let customers see, touch and ask. It's much harder to create that with a website alone.
That matters when you're deciding which stores to keep. A shop's value includes the online sales it supports nearby.
Use data in store as well as online
Ecommerce teams have always had rich data. Stores are catching up. Footfall counters, dwell-time tracking and heatmaps show where customers slow down, engage or hesitate. Shoppers also behave differently by time of day, and stores can respond to that.
The levers are the same
Whether you trade from shops or a website, growth comes from traffic, conversion and basket size. The average conversion rate online is around 3%. In a physical store it is far higher. So there's plenty for each channel to learn from the other.
Where to start
- Join up your customer data so you can see shopping across both channels.
- Plan one trade calendar for stores and online, with the same offers in both.
- Pick one online benefit to bring into stores, and one store benefit to bring online, and test them.
Those who say the high street is dead should take another look. Stores need online as much as online needs stores.