Sunday, March 4, 2018

Multi-Channel Ecommerce: How to Create Anywhere Commerce

By: Aaron Orendorff

The buzz words are all around us. Cross-platform touchpoints. Multi-device optimization. Experiential ecommerce.

Every brand wants to capture its market in totality, to reach customers new and old through mediums familiar and not. Today if your company doesn’t have a multi-channel ecommerce strategy … good luck keeping up.

And yet, defining and optimizing a multi-channel strategy is no easy task. If you’re not prepared, wasted time, wasted capital, and uneven results can find you long before profit ever will.

The way forward is marked by five stages that culminate in a principle that’s anything but new …

1. Definition: What Is a Multi-Channel Ecommerce Strategy?
2. Identification: Where Does a Multi-Channel Strategy Start?
3. Model: How to Track Multi-Channel Ecommerce?
4. Unity: Who Should a Multi-Channel Strategy Serve?
5. Value: Why Is Multi-Channel Ecommerce Not Enough?

What Is a Multi-Channel Ecommerce Strategy?

Definition: multi-channel ecommerce is marketing and selling anywhere your customers buy. Beyond advertising, it brings commerce to various channels — namely, marketplaces, social media, messaging apps, and online communities — where your target market already spends their time.

A true multi-channel ecommerce strategy does this natively in a way that honors …

1. Consumer choice
2. Purchase patterns
3. Platform usage

Even for large online retailers, growth stalls when a website and direct-response advertising are your only means of reaching shoppers.

The best brands sell to their customers wherever they consume content, whether that is through buyable Pins, shoppable Instagram posts, a native Facebook store, or marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Houzz, BuzzFeed, etc.

When you create natural purchase paths on those channels, multi-channel ecommerce comes to life:

Although sometimes used interchangeably, omni-channel retailing goes beyond multi-channel by harmonizing those touchpoints with a single view of each customer, thereby delivering a tailored and interlocking experience:

In an omni-channel retail strategy, everything works together seamlessly:

Read More >> https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/multi-channel-ecommerce-strategy

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