To better understand the concept, let’s look at an example of a multi-channel eCommerce strategy.
Suppose you run an online pet store, and a customer finds your store and visits your website. They explore the site, subscribe to your newsletter, receive a $100 discount for being a first-time visitor and add dog food products to their cart. However, they abandon their cart before checkout and leave the website due to unforeseen circumstances.
In this case, multi-channel eCommerce software notifies your order management software and email marketing solutions about the abandoned cart, prompting them to send cart recovery messages, including the $100 discount.
When the customer opens cart recovery emails, they move on to research more about dog foods on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Walmart. Thanks to multi-channel eCommerce software, you can adequately represent your business on all these online marketplaces.
Your product information management solution can help you create engaging product pages on these channels, which leads the customer to conclude that they can’t get better products at a better deal anywhere else. On top of that, they’ll realize that they might lose out on the $100 discount if they purchase your products from marketplaces rather than your website.
They’ll swiftly move on to your business website, recover their abandoned cart and purchase dog food. You’ll end up making a sale because of the connected and seamless journey provided on every channel the customer chose to research and engage on.
Multi-channel Ecommerce vs. Omnichannel Ecommerce
Both omnichannel eCommerce and multi-channel eCommerce are strategies for selling products online, but there are some key differences between them.
Multi-channel eCommerce aims to reach customers wherever they are and offers a variety of options for making a purchase. However, channels are often disconnected, providing customers different experiences across each channel.
Omnichannel eCommerce, on the other hand, takes a more integrated approach. All channels are connected and work together to create a cohesive brand experience. For example, customers may start browsing products on their mobile phone, add items to their cart and then complete the purchase on their computer with their shopping cart and preferences saved and synced between devices.
Omnichannel strategies use headless eCommerce platforms to deploy a centralized backend for managing multiple frontends, customer touchpoints and sales channels. No matter which platform a customer chooses to engage on, they’ll receive a consistent and uniform brand experience.
In a nutshell, an omnichannel strategy is the next step after multi-channel eCommerce. Once you’ve successfully set up multiple sales channels, the aim should be to deliver a consistent brand experience across each one of them.
Primary Benefits
Increase Brand Visibility
Selling your products on multiple channels means putting your business in front of a wider audience, which increases your brand visibility. According to the marketing rule of seven, a prospective customer needs to hear or come across your brand at least seven times before they purchase from you.
The more they see your brand on new channels and platforms, the more they get familiar with it and become comfortable making the final purchase. Therefore, increasing your brand visibility can translate into converting more potential customers organically.
Improve Sales Potential
As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Multi-channel eCommerce software helps you diversify your revenue streams by tapping into every popular sales channel, including marketplaces, social commerce, personal websites, IoT, mobile apps and more.
Enhance Customer Experience
Today, consumers expect greater flexibility and options while shopping online. You can deliver on this expectation with a multi-channel approach. It lets you meet your customers at their preferred online location and provide them with convenient options to buy whatever, whenever and however they want.
Streamline Operations
Selling products on multiple channels is a great revenue-boosting strategy. But make no mistake. It’s a complicated task, and even the slightest errors can lead to angry customers slandering your brand on online review channels.
With multi-channel eCommerce software, you can streamline your daily administrative tasks and prevent human errors and mistakes from creeping into your workflows. It consolidates catalogs across every channel, automates inventory updates after each successful sale and tracks all orders.
