Reimagining Retail
Digital transformation in a post-lockdown world
As non-essential retailers start to reopen their doors, restricted visitor numbers and reduced services mean business-as-usual is still off the menu. How can emerging technologies start to help the brands reconnect with consumers?
With e-commerce currently booming, according to the latest stats from ONS, the global COVID-19 virus has thrust retail brands into crisis to stay relevant–with huge implications for the future of industry at large. As lockdown restrictions begin to relax and retailers start to take baby steps back into the world, many now need to rethink long-held ways of working to readjust to unprecedented new circumstances.
Restrictions on gatherings present a huge number of challenges in being able to generate enough footfall to stay afloat. While the exact nature of recovery is yet to be fully seen, it’s obvious that COVID-19 has accelerated many pre-existing trends, from more sustainable thinking to wider acceptance of remote working. These social shifts, while hopefully inevitable, have arrived at our doorstep much faster than anyone would have imagined. The technologies touted to transform our day-to-day existence in some unspecified future now have to put their money where their mouth is and deliver on that promise today. Software, with traditional lead times of months or years now needs to be implemented in the here and now, with companies that hadn’t planned to undergo digital transformation forced to pivot in order to remain viable.
This article is part one in a three part series unpacking our thinking in response to the pandemic, revisiting past projects through a new lens, unpacking the innovations that can apply to the practical necessities of retailers today, as well as help retailers pivot to become more connected and more aligned with longer-term changes in consumer behaviours.
When we look at the challenges facing retailers there’s obviously a lot to unpack. To help focus our thinking we’ve established three themes where technology and design can have the greatest impact — People, Product and Spaces. This article kicks off with a look at people.
Reconnecting with consumers
From the obvious concerns about general safety for both staff and shoppers, how could we use digital to close the new social gap that exists between retailers and customers?
A recent report from McKinsey identifying consumer trends post-lockdown suggests that …
“in order to feel comfortable engaging with out-of-home activities, most consumers are waiting for milestones beyond the lifting of governmental restrictions”
A key milestone being more visible safety measures from stores, restaurants, and other indoor spaces.
When we talk about safety, we’re really talking about contact, or rather, becoming contactless in the way we engage with brands. Any in-store experience needs now to be navigable via personal mobile devices to minimise touch–be that physical products or more traditional forms of in-store digital such as touchscreens. Payments will need to be completely contactless regardless of size, meaning there’s an even greater role for how e-commerce platforms can work harder in-store as well as on-the-go. Gesture, voice and facial recognition are a few of the tools that start to become even more relevant–as well as answering some of the more practical challenges of physical contact they also unlock new, human-centric, ways of interacting with the world around us.
Discover Your Perfect Pair
In 2019 we worked closely with Amazon Fashion to develop a new type of voice enabled retail experience. Called ‘Discover Your Perfect Pair’, it was designed to find a unique and engaging way to navigate Amazon’s expansive denim collection.
In essence, Discover Your Perfect Pair was an Alexa enabled smart mirror. By walking into the ‘fitting room’ you would speak the call-to-action, “Alexa, Discover My Perfect Pair” which would launch shoppers into a two minute styling experience that live filtered Amazon’s denim database. For all it’s apparent simplicity, buying jeans turns out to be a big struggle for a large proportion of shoppers. Our initial research found a range of difficulties when it comes to finding the perfect fit. Even the same cut varies greatly across brands, with 46% of consumers struggling to find a pair of jeans they feel fits as well as it should. For us, the chance to simplify this process through intelligent digital design became our guiding principle.
We crafted Alexa’s flow to be affable, conversational and knowledgeable, asking questions about cut and colour before getting down to the specifics of wash and waist-rise — offering informed advice and opinions along the way. Throughout the scripting process we spoke with denim stylists to understand where people’s priorities typically lie and used those insights to design a question flow that could lead customers through the experience in an unbiased way, and help them make sense of the hugely varied options available.
Working with the data
Naturally, the underlying dataset was the unsung hero that allowed us to be able to return jeans that reflected the qualities that shoppers were searching for. The iterative scripting process was a delicate balancing act, ensuring that our stylist’s flow directly interfaced with the available product data to land on genuine results born out of people’s real preferences.
Where the data wasn’t available we used image recognition to analyse thousands of product images to find our own answers — important factors like shades of blue and whether the jeans were ripped, and to what level, would be huge deciding factors in people’s searches and something we knew was important to be able to surface.
Path-to-purchase
Two minutes later, shoppers were presented with their perfect pairs — up to three results all instantly shoppable.
We knew it would never work to ask shoppers to log into their Amazon account in a public space. We wanted to be able to seamlessly link the products on screen to the Amazon account on their device. To do this we used Amazon SmileCodes–Amazon’s answer to the QR code– to deep link shopper’s Amazon app to the product of their choice. Handing-over at the point of purchase to the customer’s own phones meant transactions could be handled privately and securely, streamlining the checkout process through a tried and trusted platform.
Intelligent analytics
It’s fascinating to think of the advantages that analytics could bring to the shopping experience. Anonymous metrics could give a granular breakdown of not just the products that shoppers buy, but also the specific product features that they search along the way — and it’s important to not underplay the role of data in the current market. Businesses with easy access to data around inventory, and customer’s digital buying patterns, will be able to react more quickly to changing demands and adjust their stock levels accordingly.
While supply chains have generally readjusted to new consumer behaviours, intelligent systems that can feed the decision making process are only going to become more valuable in navigating uncertainty in the coming months and years.
Talking next steps
When done right, voice user interfaces have the power to not only be a compelling and fun way to shop, but also offer an exciting way to navigate a product catalogue on a much more individual level, while also offering a way to cut through in our new, minimal contact world.
Voice, and it’s scripting, is another touchpoint that can be tailored to showcase a brand’s personality — more than a series of filters it becomes a conduit for product messaging and helpful advice that can help give confidence in uncertain times.
Ultimately, it doesn’t require a huge leap to imagine how this approach could be applied to any sales experience. From footwear, to consumer electronics, to car showrooms, the coming months will find retailers looking to new ways of being more customer-focused than ever before, bridging the social gap while investing in solutions to be able to meet the needs of today’s cautious consumers. The role of the store is evolving, but within that evolution are opportunities to discover new ways of re-invigorating the customer journey in more resilient, and technology-led, ways.
