Nowadays, consumers are purchasing products online through different platforms.
For example, one customer might purchase a product from your Magento 2 store, another might prefer to purchase from your Instagram store, and a third one might buy from your Amazon store.
This above example only works if you have worked on all 3 platforms and ensured that everything is up to date. Otherwise, only some of the conversions may be possible. This is the level of personalization and flexibility that an omnichannel solution provides.
Omnichannel solutions provide you the freedom to reach customers on all the platforms they may be using to discover and purchase your products. Magento 2 omnichannel solution allows you to improve customer experience through personalized content and increased conversions.
In this article, we will learn more about Magento 2 omnichannel, how it works, and its benefits for your brand.
What is Magento 2 Omnichannel?
An omnichannel strategy involves setting up processes on multiple channels that your customers or potential customers use to discover and purchase your products.
What does it look like in action? When a customer places an order on your e-store and picks up the order from a facilitation center.
What channels are included in Magento 2 omnichannel?
Here’s a list:
- Online stores like Magento 2
- A dedicated application
- Brick-and-mortar store
- Internet of Things devices
- Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook
- Sales and customer service representatives
- Email and phone channels
- Newsletters (physical and digital)
These channels cover almost all touchpoints a customer may be interacting on.
How Does Magento 2 Omnichannel Strategy Work?
The Magento platform is stable and efficient, providing the ultimate flexibility with various integrations and extensions, allowing you to operate seamlessly with different platforms.
This is an advantage when adopting an omnichannel strategy, which requires you to be available on every medium your customer is available on.
Let’s see how Magento 2 omnichannel has to offer:
Third-Party Integrations
Magento has multiple third-party integrations allow you to connect your store to other platforms easily.
One of the things this helps with is POS integration. You can easily integrate your POS data with your Magento store by using an extension. You can use various extensions, like Magestore, Magefan, etc.
For a complete guide on how to connect third-party integrations for POS data, you can check out our guide on Magento POS extensions.
Security
Magento 2 is a powerful yet secure platform with robust features that make it safer than other store builders.
That said, making your Magento 2 store as secure as possible for customers to shop safely is essential.
To ensure max security, make sure you implement the following:
- Get a reliable Magento Hosting that ensures no hiccups in performance.
- Install an SSL certificate on your store. [Devrims offers these for free]
- Install security extensions like MageFirewall Security.
An omnichannel experience is only successful when security is at the forefront of your strategy. Hence, Magento 2 security is of paramount importance, and we hope that following the abovementioned steps will help you achieve that.
Create a Progressive Web App (PWA)
One of the many outstanding features of Magento includes the capability of creating a PWA.
What’s a PWA?
It’s a web app that combines the features of your website (indexation and UI) with the features of a mobile app (like offline availability) to give your customers the best of both worlds without having to create an app from scratch.
You can set up a Magento 2 PWA using Magento extensions like Webkul Magento 2 PWA extension or Magento 2 Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Extension by Setubridge.
Having a PWA will introduce another channel to reach your customers and boost their experience. Per the research, PWAs can:
- Decrease bounce rates by 42.86%
- Increase customer engagement by 137%
- Boost mobile sessions by 80%
Integrating Marketplaces
The Magento 2 omnichannel requires you to be present on multiple channels.
Thanks to the easy API integration offered by Magento, you can connect your Etsy, Amazon, and other marketplace stores with your Magento 2 store.
You can use various plugins and extensions, such as Magento 2 Multi-Vendor Marketplace Solution by CedCommerce or Marketplace Multi-Vendor Module for Magento 2 by Cmsmart.
These solutions will allow you to operate stores on multiple marketplaces using the Magento store to manage everything from one window.
Robust Reporting
Tracking your data is also essential when managing a business across various platforms.
Inventory, costs, visitors, conversions, and more can be tracked and analyzed for insights that can help you improve your business.
There are various extensions that you can use apart from Magento’s own sales dashboard, including:
- Magento 2 Advanced Reports Extension by Mageplaza
- Magento 2 Inventory Report by BSSCommerce
- Magento 2 Advanced Reports by Mipler
The right analytics on Magento can help you gain insights to optimize your store further and improve customer experience.
Easy Tax Management
Magento makes setting tax rules and managing finances easy across different channels. You wouldn’t want to be all over the place with your cash flows in an omnichannel setting.
It is easy to set up taxes using the built-in Magento tax rules. If you want to go one step forward and automate entirely the taxation process, use the TaxJar Sales Tax Automation extension, which takes care of everything from calculation to filing the sales tax returns for you.
What are the Benefits of Magento 2 Omnichannel?
Omnichanneling can have more than a few benefits for your store. Let’s look at some of these below:
Better customer experience and increased loyalty
Customers tend to stick with you for a long when treated to the best service. Moreover, consumers are happy to pay a premium for a better overall experience.
According to recent research, brands with an omnichannel strategy see a 7.5% yearly decrease in cost per contact and 9.5% yearly revenue growth.
Better insights for business
When businesses collect data from different sales channels, they better understand customer behavior. With diverse data, they’ll have an accurate picture of business operations and can make better decisions.
One advantage of this is that it helps you manage inventory better. As people often search online before purchasing from a physical store, better insights will eventually help you gauge what percentage of buyers are following this pattern. This will help you better manage physical stores and online inventories. Statistics show that 81% of shoppers in physical stores search for things online before or while purchasing something.
Therefore, by having more data and an excellent analytical sense, you can better understand your customers to improve their experience and increase revenue.
Higher customer retention rates
According to research, implementing an omnichannel strategy helps retain 89% of shopping customers. This means that 89 out of 100 customers will come back to shop from you again, reducing new customer acquisition costs and increasing revenue per customer.
Easier complaint resolution
An omnichannel strategy makes it easier for your customers to reach out with complaints and for you to resolve them as soon as possible. This adds to the customer’s experience and increases their chances of doing business with you again.
Less dependence on one channel
Omnichannel business keeps you in operation when a particular channel fails. With the onset of COVID-19, we saw physical stores lose out and shut down while businesses that had set up their online presence continued working, some with higher demand than before.
Statistics show that campaigns run on four or more channels outperform single and dual-channel campaigns by 300%.
Hence, in today’s rapidly evolving world with new challenges, it is better to be safe than sorry. An omnichannel approach protects you against unforeseen issues like a pandemic.
Conclusion
Magento 2 omnichannel solution is the modern strategy you need to implement for a better business.
The omnichannel strategy allows you to use your Magento 2 store to reach customers where they feel comfortable shopping. This not only improves your customers’ experience but also increases sales revenue.
For more such helpful Magento guides, keep following the Devrims Blog.
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