How Retail Business Give Boost To Your Business

Have you ever wondered why the retail stores are creating their own websites and apps to reach out to their customers? Why are the brick and mortar stores struggling to generate sales? Well, thanks to e-commerce industry which has already disrupted the retail industry in the last few years. With the advancement of technology, major players such as eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Target, and thousands of smaller eCommerce products have already flooded the market with their products. In order to stand out among your competitors, win more customers, and, as a result, increase your revenue, retail stores should keep an eye on the latest technological advancements.

Alibaba revealed that they make more money from their mobile customers (all 427 million of them!) than from their non-mobile customers. Alibaba isn’t alone. eBay announced that $9.5 billion of their sales in Q2 of 2016 came from mobile (or 45% of their GMV). Even more impressive, 57% of all of eBay’s Q2 sales were touched by mobile at some point. Alibaba and eBay are just two examples of how big of an impact mobile customers have on retail.

As the consumers are more comfortable using mobile apps to buy, the number of people who are doing so is increasing rapidly. Now that so many purchases are made via mobile apps, retailers need to make sure their mobile experiences are living up to consumer expectations.

Many retailers have mastered the in-app experience (such as Amazon, Starbucks, and eBay), so it’s extremely apparent to consumers when the experience is bad. Consumers have little patience for bad mobile experiences. If a mobile app doesn’t live up to their expectations, they will ditch the app in favor of retailers who have great mobile experiences.

The following innovative tools and solutions have proven to be the most beneficial in retail:

Mobile capabilities
Retail brands can target their potential customers using mobile apps. Mobile apps help retail brands to:

(i) Access to mobile analytics and customer data including geolocation, shopping behavior, preferences, activity (more on that later).

(ii) Customers can access their personal accounts, track their orders on the go, redeem digital coupons, and collect loyalty points.

(iii) Push notifications allow you to target your customers with personalized offers and timely discounts.

(iv)  Retail stores can use Beacons, small Bluetooth devices that use proximity sensors to detect nearby people and send promotional messages.

Mobile payments

Customers can pay for their bills using mobile apps. Mobile apps provides facilities to their customers to pay for their bills by any credit/debit card or using net banking on the go.

Personal shopping assistants and chat bots

Retail store also provides personal shopping assistant, it can be either operated by human or by AI. It is better if retail store uses AI based technology, that will be more efficient in terms of operation costs and performance.

Chat bots use popular chat apps as a basis, providing on-demand personal shopper services within a convenient and familiar conversational interface. Besides that, a chat bot can be used for customer service, automatically handling simple requests and reallocating the more serious ones to professional agents.

Data analytics
Retail companies can improve their shopping experience with the use of data analytics. Retail stores get access to huge amount of data of their customers, they can analyze their data and according to their preferences, deals and discounts can be provided.

Advanced payment options
Most of the companies are adopting advanced methods of payment. Even the companies are allowing their customers to use third-party apps like paytm, freecharge etc. to pay their bills.
A noteworthy example of innovation is Amazon Go. The concept offers a checkout-free shopping experience, allowing you to take what you need and simply leave the store. The system uses computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning technologies to automatically track your purchases through a virtual shopping cart and charge the customer’s account soon after the shopping.

Virtual and augmented reality
Besides gaming and entertainment, virtual and augmented reality can be used in retail, providing an advanced shopper experience.

By using their IKEA Catalog app, you can see how a certain piece of furniture will fit your interior. You can take a photo of your room, add different items from the catalog to it, and move them around to see if they look good in your home.

Sephora, a cosmetics store chain, also uses virtual reality to allow customers to “try on” different products, experiment with looks, or view virtual tutorials within its Virtual Artist app.

A more advanced application of the technology might require specialized hardware such as wearables, AR-enabled devices (interactive mirrors, fitting rooms, shop windows).

Conclusion
It’s important to remember that customers play the most important role in your business. In order to achieve great results, you should focus on providing superior customer experience across all of your retail channels, be it a physical store, a website or an app.
Is your retail business future-ready? Don’t miss out on the opportunity to increase your exposure, recognition, and grow your business with the help of mobile apps.

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