Experience-driven commerce keeps your customers coming back
Consumers have higher expectations than ever for their digital interactions
That’s where experiential commerce comes in.
Experiential commerce engages and builds a connection with consumers throughout their journey. From the initial research stage through the transaction process, it gives customers the content they need to make decisions via a robust, personalized, seamless experience that keeps them coming back.
The first steps toward an experiential commerce strategy
Personalization drives revenue and conversions. In fact, businesses that personalize their digital experiences see their revenue jump as much as 15%. You also gain higher customer lifetime value by being customer-centric and meeting your customers where they want to be.
In other words, experiential commerce removes reasons for your customers to leave you for a competitor.
Not surprisingly, executing an experiential commerce strategy is not an easy lift. The hardest part is often getting an infrastructure in place that enables you to own that experience and capture the “commerce moments” that matter.
Before rolling out a new experiential commerce strategy, it’s important to have a clear vision of the ideal consumer journey. The first step is to identify what customers need and expect throughout the entire process. Analyze customer feedback, survey historical data, and look for industry trends related to consumer behavior. All this information helps you create experiences that address unique needs and desires.
Next, you’ll want to answer a few questions to make sure you’re prepared to enhance your customer experience:
1. How important is content to your current shopping experience?
2. How does your marketing team feel about your product content today? Is it robust enough? Are you able to use rich imagery and video?
3. Do you have the content to support personalization?
4. How complex are your shopping experiences?
5. What is the timeframe from concept to launch for a website promotion?
6. How quickly are you able to change experiences to meet customer needs?
7. Will multiple audiences be involved in the process, especially with a B2B model?
8. Do you need to manage localized experiences?
Implementing experiential commerce
Once you have the foundation in place, the key is for your marketing team to be able to pivot quickly to keep up with demands and expectations. TA Digital’s proprietary Commerce Factory solution, powered by commercetools and Acquia, streamlines the creation and distribution of content, empowering your digital marketing team with faster speed-to-market. Commerce Factory enables the nimble experience changes that dynamic and evolving marketplace demands dictate.
Marketers can design new pages without any reliance on IT, thanks to pre-built commerce components and page-builders. They have full control over the design, sites, and code, letting them own the experience and lowering your total cost of ownership.
Case in point: A global manufacturing company needed to pivot during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to focus more on online sales. They needed a content / commerce solution to drive conversions on expensive products that had primarily been sold in brick-and-mortar stores.
Within 13 weeks, we had them up and running with a robust commerce site that provided:
· 3D visualization for product research
· Streamlined content management
· Seamless transactions across all devices
· Multi-brand, multi-regional capabilities
If this pace seems too good to be true, so were the returns on this investment: The company saw a 25% year-over-year increase in sales in the first 2 months, leading to a 2,000% increase in revenue.
Bottom line
Customers demand great experiences when navigating your website and searching through your products. Providing them with that experiential commerce interaction will ensure they keep coming back.