Deliver a more seamless online/offline experience by connecting your POS and your eComm platforms.
Delivering a seamless customer experience can be a challenge for a business of any size. But it’s worth it because the higher conversion rates it creates goes hand-in-hand with customer satisfaction and business growth potential.Lately, we’ve spotted a disturbing trend that threatens client satisfaction. There is no way to show store and online orders in one place for the customer so they can reorder for example. And there isn’t an easy way for the eCommerce team to aggregate orders to better service customers and make better business decisions about the customer.
What gets in the way?
We’ve heard many reasons why business haven’t been successful making the connection yet. However, it simply boils down to an issue of technology barriers and cost/benefit to the business. For example:
1. “My POS and eCommerce systems don’t talk to each other”
Many businesses or stores opt for a Magento or Woocommerce-based website, but those platforms don’t easily connect with POS systems like Lightspeed.
2. “I have an integrated platform, but I can’t display online and store orders online”
Even with “integrated” platforms like Lightspeed, retail customer cannot see their store orders on the retailer’s website. This makes it hard to reorder items they may have purchased in the store.
3. “It’s going to be expensive and time consuming. Plus, I’m not sure I’ll be happy with the results”.
There’s often a challenge for businesses that set up their own site using a template or that hired a platform specialist. How can they get the integration development and user experience design expertise to make everything work. And if you’re a business owner who has tried, you can confirm exactly how time consuming it can be.
How to approach building the new experience
1. What’s your objective?
Before you engage your development team, a design team or any outside resource, you will want to be clear about your objectives for the project:
- Do you have a sales objective tied to the project? How much more do you need to sell?
- Is customer service your prime objective? What do you want the experience to feel like? Is it more concierge or convenience-oriented?
2. Engage the team
Whether you’re using internal or external resources to enhance the customer experience, it’s important to understand the overall structure of the project:
Assessment
- Assess the technology and customer experience to recognize the gaps
- Understand the quality of the set up for both in POS and eCommerce, including the underlying data and the presence (or lack) of API’s.
Strategize
- Research technology options
- Develop overall project approach
- Define the overall customer experience
Design
- Design front end to meet CX requirements
- Fix issues with current UX and UI
- Wireframes and visual design deliverables
Development
- Develop the connectivity or API
- Front End development
- QA, testing and deployment
Measure the impact
While we could start a whole new blog post on impact here, just make sure you have a measurement plan in place and that can identify the upside that is created. Also, get feedback from your customers to see how they are experiencing the change.