It's heartening, in this day and age, to see numerous top-flight retailers making significant investment, both in terms of cash and resource, in their online business. Recalling conversations which took place in the early days of this century, when a website was often seen as little more than an indulgence on the part of the marketing department, we've come a long way. This is universally seen as a Good Thing, and last year's trading numbers showed the positive impact the online 'channel' is having on the high street's bottom line; without the continued explosive growth in online business, the overall picture today would be of utter disaster.
So today's high street is a distinctly 'multichannel' one, with room temperature operations comprising of what general parlance calls the key 'channels': instore, online, call centre and perhaps, in some cases, mail order and mobile. Each business treats these with varying degrees of integration and deftness, on which more at some other time. Something that's seeming increasingly odd, though, is the way the myriad ways of interacting with a brand online are lumped into one 'channel'. Instore is somewhat easier to encapsulate like this; the interaction is fairly simple and varies little from store to store, but the mercurial nature of the online consumer is somewhat harder to pin down in this way.
Let's take a sample sales cycle as a case in point, say for example I'm getting fed up with my crappy old fridge and need a nice shiny new one with all sorts of whistles and bells and so on. A lifestyle fridge, if you will.
- I'll probably kick off by just typing in the brand I'm after into Google. A few retailers will pop up, along with some comparison sites and the brand's home site as well. I'm initially interested in the price range, so I'll go with the most familiar retailer to start with.
- I'll browse the retailer's site, compare a few models and possibly email some of the URLs to my other half to get her opinion.
- Crucially, I'm not going to make a purchase yet. It's a big ticket item and I'm not going to drop a grand or more just like that. In all probability I'm going to do some more research, on review sites and at other retailers.
- Whilst on the way home from work, I'm going to pop into a store to have a look at the model I'm considering. I'll check out the door action and generally poke it about and fiddle with it. Again, I won't buy it here, as the store's about to close and I'm fairly sure it'll be cheaper online.
- So we're on the home straight - a quick price and delivery service comparison and I'm ready to buy.
Now, typically this would be viewed as a cycle traversing two channels. I've used both the web and the store as a research tool, eventually purchasing online. So far, so pedestrian, but think about the complexity of the online activity:
- Search: a vastly complex environment. My initial choice of website will be entirely informed by what comes back in the top three on the page. The page I land on once I click through will also affect my behaviour: is it just the homepage or am I presented with a Big Fridge landing page?
- Onsite Browsing: a totally different and possibly even more complex deal. At this point, the business knows exactly what I'm looking for, derived from my upstream traffic. Does it adjust my experience to account for this?
- 3rd Party Sites: Often working on the basis of an affiliate deal, these sites need careful management to ensure a mutually profitable relationship. A good 10% of a retailer's turnover can come through this channel, so it's worth paying some serious attention to.
- Email: A continuing frustration of mine centres around people emailing me broken links, or links which Outlook has helpfully truncated, rendering them useless, or links to dynamically generated pages which only lead to the homepage. Is this common interaction properly supported and leveraged?
So, in this brief sales cycle, I've actually used four distinctly different channels to interact with a business. The fact that I've used one interface (my PC) to do this is irrelevant. Now, for financial reporting purposes, it's fair enough to see 'the website' as one line. But in terms of operations, the opportunity in really understanding the intricacies of the interactions your customers perform with your brand, and allocating enough skilled resource to genuinely work that interaction, really shouldn't be underestimated.
So try not to see it as one distinct 'channel' - there's a lot more to it than that. Over the coming months, I'll expand on the multiple opportunities current technologies have in the retail space, but in the meantime, if you're keen to find out more about how you can make the most from your online business, drop me an email at dan.wilkinson@conchango.com.