Connective Ecommerce

What It Is & Why It Matters?

We saw that after the surge of the grave pandemic, the shopping behavior was shifted from offline to online purchases in the majority of relevant markets. Not just the pandemic impacted the eCommerce market, it was simultaneously affected by the changing trends and technology.

The stats say that the consumers are drifting more toward eCommerce while avoiding in-store purchases. Looking at such change, the eCommerce market is expected to grow by 11% P.A between 2019 and 2024.

Large enterprises, such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba changed the scope of online shopping. They integrated the trending voice commerce, such as Siri and Alexa, resulting in a new way for the merchants to interact with the customers.

Omni-channel is also among the latest trends in the B2C eCommerce space. It is for both offline as well as online retail storefronts. The reason is multiple channels available for the consumers to observe the price of the same product.

Many websites have become responsive watching the adoption of smartphones by most users and how convenient it has become to switch between different sites for product discovery from anywhere.

The reason for continuous change and changes in the eCommerce management services is to provide an effortless shopping experience while capturing their attention, guide them through the store, and finally convert them into loyal customers for continuous buying and retain them for a long run.

In order to render omni channel presence and maintain them requires monitoring of 24X7 customer activities while staying connected with the retailers. Here is where connected commerce drops in.

Did we say Connected Commerce? Yes! Is it the new method or style of commerce? Let’s read more.

Connected Commerce — What is it?

Let’s understand the current method of marketing style -

Beginning with an eCommerce website development — when you haven’t researched and hired an inexperienced web developer to build a website. Paying for advertisement every time as well as inventory storage and fulfillment on your own time are areas of risk selling online.

Here connective eCommerce can prevent risks and errors. Instead of completely relying on a web developer, it is better to rely on software, guidelines, and templates to create a highly interactive & robust eCommerce store so you do not have to worry about the experience and expertise of the developer.

The second point was storing inventory. Instead of wasting money all away on a fulfillment center, connected commerce is about using source quality suppliers willing to ship products on your behalf while you keep the profit.

Lastly, about the advertising investment that you do for brand visibility and to maximize your audience reach. Connected commerce is about using free methods to drive traffic to the store. Test all you want without the need for spending your hard-earned money on expensive advertisements.

In short, Connected commerce will enable you to differentiate from the ‘me too’ players and let you outshine in today’s highly competitive market that is ruled by big brands.

Why Does A Connected Commerce Matter?

For any business, it is critical and difficult to sustain while ensuring growth in the market regardless of its size. Connected commerce ensures that every customer interaction with your organization is impactful, reflecting and reinforcing your brand values clearly.

Connected commerce can help you deliver an exceptional and consistent experience to your customers across all channels while helping you attain your goals and objectives.

Connected commerce lets you quickly start and grow your online business with minimum risks. Try and test different products, messages, emails, offers, and discounts without the need for paying for these trials.

1. For a retailer, being connected with their customers will be -
2. Connecting across all channels without losing context.
3. Facilitating customers to connect with each other.
4. Serving customers anytime & anywhere.
5. Connected applications and enterprise to deliver exceptional customer experience.

In order to render connected commerce, it is important to understand the potential journey of the customer.

A customer only looks for a product when he thinks of it. Here when the customer arrives for shopping the important factor to be concerned about is the ‘line of conversion’, which helps in converting a user into a customer.

Do not think that the work is done by convincing here, this is just the beginning of the customer relationship for the retailers. For continuous engagement of the customers, retain the customer, and nurture the relationship, you must provide personalized services anywhere & anytime that will also help you to deliver lifetime value.

If you see the customers who have been continuously relying on their smartphones for quick shopping prefer brand presence 24X7 on mobile with no to minimal ads to annoy them.

Advertisements are good, but excessive use of them can irritate the customers resulting in brand abandonment. Hence the key to happy customers is to upgrade the eCommerce to a connected commerce platform.

Providing connected commerce through mobiles offers a deep mobile presence to connect and support customers while following their behavior to offer a better experience.

Does Connecting Commerce Mean No Ads?

However, we mentioned that no more spending that extra penny on advertisement but, that doesn’t mean you can promote your brand through ads at all.

You can certainly invest in the advertisement but only when you have achieved enough profit from the non-paid traffic generation techniques. As aforementioned, the purpose of connecting commerce is to generate business and run as quickly as possible while fine-tuning messages, items, and shops.

The online store is optimized and polished to generate sales fully, where your items are best suited to target your demographics and your messages become much more engaging for the customers to be convinced and walk through the storefront.

In short, with the connective eCommerce method, you get more consistent & systematic development, ensuring the way to success.

Customers Want Two Way to Experience

Customers have not completely boycotted offline shopping. However the journey for in-store shopping has limits, yet they want to have the same experience both in-store and on-screen. It has been observed that customers do -

• Showrooming — Customers, while being in-store, still look for better deals online for the products they like.
• Webrooming — Customers who research and like a product online will visit the in-store for the look and feel of the product before buying.
• Click & Pick — Customers who order online and go to pick up the product in-store.

Brands need to track these customer behaviors and ensure to deliver a consistent experience wherever they go for connected commerce.

How to Become Successful At Connective eCommerce?

Within this fast-moving world, digital business is a more powerful and accelerating method to generate revenue quickly and seamlessly. However, having a presence everywhere does not ensure success.

Connective eCommerce is the only solution that helps in better customer experience to improve business objectives, build an impregnable bond for continuous engagement, and a supply chain with the integrity for order fulfillment. To have a successful, Connective eCommerce strategy -

• Explain how to innovate your digitally enabled business models to generate quantifiable business results.
• Provide relevant, useful, and consistent services, products, experiences, and pricing to the most substantial client groups.
• Provide a smooth and personalized customer experience that matches continuously changing expectations across online and offline consumer touchpoints.
• Identify, analyze and develop a perfect operational model to produce long-term outcomes.
• Render secure and agile transactions ensuring payment technologies connect & match consumer preferences across multiple channels.
• Leverage consumers to choose, receive and return their items when they are not satisfied with the services or products whenever while being transparent.

In a Nutshell -

Retail and eCommerce distribution industries are constantly under continuous change. The solution to engage customers and keep them loyal regardless of this change, connective eCommerce is the answer to it.

Connective eCommerce will ensure that every consumer is engaged with the company’s brand values. The new Commerce also ensures that the customers receive a consistent shopping experience across channels while serving your brand as a differentiator to help you meet the objectives. To strategize your eCommerce and convert it from the traditional to connective eCommerce, you can connect with an eCommerce consulting services provider for better understanding and implementation of the same.