Modern Retail: Guide to Retail Tech March 2019

GUIDE TO RETAIL TECH

MARCH 2019

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GUIDE TO RETAIL TECH MARCH 2019 CONTENTS Future is Fintech

6, 8

How augmented reality is transforming e-commerce order fulfilment

10, 12

Online retail tech trends

14, 16, 18

4 Signs that your digital commerce platform isn’t working

23-25

What is EPOS Personlisation?

28-29

How can EPOS grow bottom line

32-33

Online retailers: stop treating your customers like it’s the 90s

34, 36-37

What are Ai chatbots and how much do they cost?

41-42

CREDITS Editor: Rob Gamage - rob@modernretail.co.uk Advertising: Emma Mjekiqi - emma@modernretail.co.uk Client Services: Beki Rodrigo - beki@modernretail.co.uk Modern Retail is published by Ricochet Media Services Ltd (Registered Company 60434461) Unit 1b, Building 6, Croxley Green Business Park Watford WD1B8YH

THANKS Many thanks to all those who provided edlitorial content or images for helping us put together what we hope is a useful and informative read! Please send any comments or suggestions to rob@modernretail.co.uk

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THE FUTURE IS FINTECH

Global investment in fintech has tripled in the past year. Industry experts reckon that it’s a sign that it’s starting to take off in the business sector. With the number of eCommerce transactions soaring, this technology is set to help businesses grow at a faster rate while taking a larger share of the market segment. And unsurprisingly, it looks as though it’s going to change the business landscape forever.

What Exactly is Fintech?

Fintech is a word that has been formed from ‘financial’ and ‘technology’ because it is a combination of just that. It describes the use of technology to deliver financial products and services to consumers. It’s not a new concept but it is becoming more popular as people are increasingly using smartphone and tablet devices to shop and bank online.

Why is it Growing so Fast?

Fintech is growing quickly because it’s allowing businesses to expand their capabilities from multiple viewpoints through the use of electronic invoicing and open API’s. This finance solution is enabling companies to operate optimally at a manageable scale.

What Does it Mean for Startups and Small Business Owners?

Well, to put it simply, it means that it will be easier to access business funding as well as the

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ability to process payments globally. A common problem that many ​startups face is the ability to secure loans and investment, but fintech eases the process because all of a firm’s accounts are digitised. This allows bankers to see a startup’s potential, increasing the likelihood of it securing funds. In addition, another problem is being able to accept payments globally. Before fintech, small companies would have to seek the approval of at least one major credit card company that allowed them to accept payments from around the world. However, with fintech this is not the case. Innovative payment solutions like PayPal and Stripe make international payments a whole lot simpler, expanding retailers’ marketplaces.

How is it Changing the Retail Landscape?

Fintech is benefiting UK fashion retailers like Topshop, Miss Selfridge and ASOS as technology allows customers to ”buy now and pay later” – a huge selling point. Not only that, the fintech firm will even contact the customer for payment on behalf of the retailer, saving them time and money. Since the above retailers partnered with the Swedish fintech firm, ​Klarna​, online sales have surged. It’s clear that flexible finance solutions give consumers more choice and businesses more sales.

What does this Mean for the UK Economy?

According to a global fintech survey by the London Stock Exchange Group​, UK-based financial technology firms expect to see a growth of 88 per cent over the next three years. This prediction is impressive, although not surprising, as the UK’s fintech sector already contributes around £6.6billion to the economy each year.

How Will it Shape the Future?

Cash is no longer king in the eyes of a growing number of firms. In fact, many retailers prefer to receive payments through apps and mobile wallets because the transaction is more straightforward. Fintech and payment expert ​Peter de Wit says ”that in order to understand retail payments​, it’s good to understand what challenges retailers are facing at the moment.”

Many shoppers use their smartphones to look for deals and check reviews, so it’s already very much part of the customer experience. Peter thinks a multi-functional app is the way forward because it would allow a retailer to identify a customer instore and allow them to tailor the shopping experience to the individual’s needs. What’s more, this method will reduce fraud because the payment authentication could be based on bio-metrical recognition. So, a quick scan of your finger or eye would show that it’s you making the purchase. There’s no doubt that fintech will help enterprises to increase both sustainability and scalability in a number of ways.

Logistics, cash flow and supply chain management will all be improved, as will the retailer and customer experience.

Rob Gamage:

Rob Gamage is Managing Editor of Modern Retail. Combining many years of experience in publishing with a keen interest in small business and entrepreneurialism, Rob is passionate about sharing interesting and inspiring content with retailers to help them grow.

HOW AUGMENTED REALITY IS TRANSFORMING E-COMMERCE ORDER FULFILMENT

Augmented reality is an emerging and evolving technology that superimposes images and graphics on the user’s real-world view. This changed view of the world around us can make a range of everyday tasks easier, faster and more successful. And right at the forefront of efforts to implement AR technology is the e-commerce sector.

According to the Centre for Retail Research, e-commerce is Europe’s fastest growing area of the retail market. And it’s this fast growth that often causes small and medium-sized businesses serious operational headaches.

Order fulfilment in the e-commerce sector is a tricky process to get right, and failing to do so can have serious effects on a firm’s bottom line. But as the following benefits demonstrate, augmented reality is changing the way e-commerce companies process, package and ship orders to their customers.

Immersive Staff Training Training often works best when it’s immersive and interactive. When new recruits in e-commerce warehouses put on a set of AR glasses, the environment around them can be seen with instructions. For people not familiar with SKUs, barcodes, stocktaking and product picking, this always-on technology makes training and development a much more straightforward process.

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One of the big problems facing e-commerce businesses is the issue of picking accuracy. For firms selling hundreds of different products, human error during the picking process can lead to refunds, lost business, a diminished reputation and waste. But more and more e-commerce retailers are now utilising pick-assist technology, which is almost eliminating human error completely. Simply looking at a box on a shelf is enough to initiate the AR system — providing an in-vision product description the user can’t confuse with anything else.

Increased Staff Productivity When it comes to fulfilling e-commerce orders in a warehouse setting, time is money. Stated simply: the longer it takes to find, package and ship products, the less profitable the entire operation is. But AR technology helps staff to find items faster and more accurately. With a constant visual assistant in their field of view, fulfilment workers can execute more orders every hour — and that cuts costs and improves customer experience.

Automated Product Scanning Imagine being able to scan the contents of a huge warehouse without ever touching anything.

E-commerce workers with AR glasses don’t need to imagine, as they can simply look at the label on a box to count, accept or process it. Inventory levels are automatically adjusted, and orders are placed by the complementary software if required.

Voice Commands E-commerce warehouses are notoriously complex, and finding new ways to streamline operations within them is difficult. But companies using voice-command software in conjunction with AR technology can drive efficiencies during the entire order fulfilment process. For example, a worker with a headset, microphone and AR glasses can receive picking instructions from a manager. The AR glasses tell the worker where to look for the item, and then scan it to update the inventory. The worker can then tell the system that picking is complete, and request that the next stage of fulfilment commences. Voice command software reduces labour requirements and lead times, and it gets orders shipped more quickly than ever before.

More Efficient Packing Warehouse packers are usually under intense pressure to keep up with a constant flow of orders. As a result, packaging can be wasted — either through packing mistakes or choosing the wrong type of packaging. But with AR, packers get help choosing the type and volume of packaging that is most appropriate for the product. It’s even possible to provide workers with in-vision instructions for assembling the more complex packaging solutions.

Author: Rob Gamage Rob Gamage is Managing Editor of ​Modern Retail​. Combining many years of experience in publishing with a keen interest in small business and entrepreneurialism, Rob is passionate about sharing interesting and inspiring content with retailers to help them grow. You can subscribe to Modern Retail, for free, ​here​.

ONLINE RETAIL TECH TRENDS

As bricks-and-mortar stores continue to struggle and online sales rocket, the future for e-commerce looks bright. But while there are lots that online retailers are getting right, the system isn’t perfect, and the ever-increasing customer expectations and evolving shopping behaviours mean that even the most successful brands need to take note of how they can future proof their business.

Social Media Retailers need to go beyond just building brand pages and integrate social selling into their overall marketing strategy at a high level. Close to half of social media users search through hashtags in order to find content, something that retailers too often forget. It’s not just about creating unique, branded hashtags, it’s about listening to your audience and correctly analysing what they are really looking for. Is it summer style inspo? Over 40’s fashion? Without connecting to the right search terms even the highest quality content will become lost. This may seem like common sense, but too many are forgetting (or never implementing) these elements into their social media campaigns.

As the prominence of social media continues to flourish, retailers need to start considering how they can use this platform not only to inspire but to sell. While audiences don’t want to be bombarded with promotional content, they do want to buy at speed. If a particular product catches a consumer’s eye on their Instagram feed, they don’t want to have to go to the website and search for it, they want to tap the screen, click buy and have their payment and delivery preferences remembered. In order to do these brands need to integrate all of their pages and ensure that they provide a seamless buying experience.

Video 55% of people view online videos every day and with the views on branded video content has increased ​258% on Facebook and 99% on Youtube​, the opportunities video presents can’t be denied. Consumers enjoy the bite-sized and multi-sensory nature of video content and ultimately find it easier to consume. Many retailers have started to take advantage of this, implementing video catwalks of their clothing or product on their pages, but there’s still lots of room for improvement.

Facebook live, Instagram stories, IGTV and Snapchat are just some of the prime examples of the consumer desire for live video streaming. Organisations should be taking advantage of these platforms and using them to show footage from events, in-store snapshots, new product installations and real time customer interactions. It’s not just harnessing live streams that are important, offering a 360 video can increase purchase intent by ​7% on smartphones and have an e-commerce rate of 4.51% ​– higher than the 0.56% found with traditional video.

Artificial Intelligence Personalising the shopping experience is key to creating long-term relationships with customers. Some retailers have already moved towards using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help with this by using the technology to help with size suggestions. This may seem to have little impact to the customer, but in fact, it can be the difference between the customer spending an hour in the post office returning multiple sizes of items and an hour socialising with friends and family – it’s easy to see which they would choose. This ease of ordering helps convince a consumer it’s just as easy to online shop as it is to walk into a brick and mortar store and also reduces the level of returns retailers might need to process.

Moving forward brands should be aiming to use AI to create an even more personalised experience, sizing is just the start. Another great move for fashion retailers is one that Missguided has done really well and that’s following the Tinder swipe model, allowing customers to swipe left or right on the items liked or not liked and then offering customised offers and products based on this. Not only is a method like this tapping into the behavioural traits of a specific audience it allows retailers to analyse customer reactions and offer a more relevant experience to the customer every time.

Chatbots Gartner predicts that ​by 2020, 25% of customer service operations will use virtual customer assistants or chatbot technology. Chatbots can be particularly useful for brands with large, simple customer service requests e.g stock checks and size recommendations. To make sure that this tool is effective, retailers need to make them visible and easy to access. Rather than hiding them away on customer service pages, chatbots should feature on every page, but getting the balance of convenience and intrusion right is future-proof, otherwise, they may serve as an annoyance rather than an advantage. The medium should also be considered and the pages tailored e.g assistants placed at the bottom for scrolling pages and at the side on a desktop.

Voice and Speech Recognition With Google ​reporting earlier this year that it sold one Google Home device every second, and

Comscore predicting that 50% of searches will be conducted through voice technology by 2020, there is a growing need for more voice-enabled results.

The potential for this technology in the fashion industry has not currently been realised, partly because it requires brands to ensure the personalised shopping experience they offer is far more accurate. However, brands can still look to implement voice searches as part of their customer service offering e.g. giving devices the ability to answer questions about if an item will come back in stock or when to expect new product launches. To order products in this way is a leap of faith for consumers, for example if they say ‘Order me a blue dress costing below £50’, they would be relying on the combination of AI (to assess their favourite shop, style and delivery option), but it can work if the foundations are put in place effectively. In order to do this however brands need to make their websites discoverable, and personalised offers far more precise than is currently achievable. The first retailer to succeed here though will make the headlines for sure!

Bespoke is better The retail space is changing at a phenomenal pace, so to get ahead of the game and not only attract but keep customers isn’t an easy ask. Bricks-and-mortar stores can easily stand out from one another through the adoption of immersive experiences that create unforgettable experiences for consumers and inspire brand loyalty. However, when interacting and purchasing through a screen, consumers are still somewhat removed from the brand experience, which is why it’s so important for brands to focus on constantly improving their online offerings and refreshing their capabilities. Too many retailers think that the answers to their online innovation quests come through using plugins, but these are rarely future proof and don’t set them apart from the crowd.

In order to produce the best possible experience, retailers should be looking to create their own bespoke back and front end technology that allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Whether its a platform to better understand the data that their customers are sharing, or some experience based technology that sets their app apart from the rest of the e-commerce world, retailers who can tailor the technology to their specific customer base will be the ones that succeed. But they must not underestimate the magnitude of a job like this, retailers should focus on retail and partner with technology partners that can not only guide them through the process but help them future-proof the technology to last. It is time for retailers to step up, listen to demand and embrace the technology that encourages them to own the catwalk towards success, not just walk in an orderly fashion.

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Four Signs That Your Digital Commerce Platform Isn't Working It’s never been a more critical time for retailers to ensure that no stone is left unturned on their online stores. That means having everything from optimised product pages to a frictionless checkout process, a well-executed delivery strategy, and everything in between.

And as it turns out, you simply can’t optimise every step of the customer journey without having a digital commerce platform that performs highly across all sales channels. So how can you tell whether or not your current platform is still the perfect fit for your business?

Here are 4 telltale signs that your ecommerce platform might not be working.

1. Revenue isn’t growing over time It really is that simple. If you aren’t noticing a steady and significant uplift in revenue with your current digital commerce solution provider, something is very wrong.

And that goes beyond conversion rates, by the way. With so many solution providers on the market, what often happens is that retailers either underestimate or overestimate their predicted return on investment when choosing a platform. Cut to a couple of months, or even years later and you’ll find that businesses have pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds into implementing an enterprise level solution that is only bringing in tens of thousands of pounds worth of sales.

Or, on the flip side, lots of retailers who are just taking their first steps into the online world choose an ecommerce platform based on whatever the cheapest option available to them was at the time. Then, as their online business scales, they discover that limited functionality within their chosen platform makes it increasingly difficult to attract, convert, and retain and expand their customer base through existing and new sales channels. For example marketplaces, B2B, or Omnichannel. So in order to keep up, they constantly have to bolster on additional features, which all come at a hefty price. Is your solution future proofed?

Therefore, it’s imperative that the return you’re seeing outweighs output. If the opposite is the case for your business, you need to sound the alarm.

2. Smart automation isn’t smart enough If you need to log into several different pieces of software to manage a single sale that comes through your online store, you may be spending far more time than is necessary on your digital commerce platform. Or, even worse - automation is possible within your current platform but due to gaps in the technology itself, you find that you purposely avoid setting rules and triggers simply because ‘it’s easier to just do it manually’.

When you have to license several different technologies to manage all of the moving parts of your online store (e.g. warehouse management, marketplaces, content management, order management), you not only open yourself up to error, but it also makes it extremely difficult to get a full 360° view of the key analytics that tells the full story of how your online store is performing. Your digital commerce platform should ultimately be making life easier - efficiency is key. Managing all sales channels under one roof to help manage inventory, cross sell and upsell and optimise the customer experience.

3. Your competitors are doing a better job Do you tend to shy away from running promotions on your online store, because every time you’ve done it in the past, your website can’t handle a surge in traffic? If your online store can’t keep up with those of your competitors’ during the busiest shopping periods of the year, you are losing huge market share. In such a competitive space, delivering a strong user experience is mandatory, whether there are 5 or 500,000 on your online store at any given time! That means having a robust digital commerce solution that can handle spikes in both traffic and sales.

Similarly, if you’re finding that the cost per acquisition on marketing campaigns is consistently sky-high, it’s likely that your platform doesn’t house the features and functionality required to drive higher conversion rates and average order value through customer loyalty, upselling and cross-selling opportunities and effective delivery mechanisms.

4. Scalability is compromised So, you want to offer click and collect as an option to your customers, but for one reason or another, stock can’t be synchronised within your digital commerce platform. Yikes! Or, perhaps you want to expand your products into a new market, but soon realise that means setting up multiple storefronts and manually inputting your product catalogue for each new language and/or currency.

A great digital commerce strategy is one that always strives for expansion.

That could mean expanding your delivery options through omnichannel or expanding your audience through cross-border trading. It even goes as far as deep-diving into your insights to further expand your business model itself (e.g. opening up a B2B offering). However, if you find that there is limited opportunity to scale in the way you wish (while still keeping operations lean), it might be time to press the reset button. Because if one thing is for certain, it’s this - your digital commerce platform should future proof your business, not leave it behind for others to overtake at speed.

There’s no doubt about it - eCommerce is complex. So too is choosing the right digital commerce platform for your business. If you start to notice these red flags in your current solution, it’s time to rethink your future strategy.

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Contributor: Ciaran Bollard, CEO - Kooomo

Ciaran Bollard is the CEO of Kooomo. With his first-hand experience as an entrepreneur in the digital space mixed with his commercial and technical background, Ciaran is focused on taking the complexity out of digital commerce to help brands extend their reach to a global audience. Since taking the helm in 2016, Kooomo ​has powered over 1 billion transactions through the platform, and been recognised by Gartner every year since then​. Kooomo services clients in the B2C market as well as caters to the explosive growth in the B2B eCommerce space, working with world-renowned businesses to increase revenue by an average of 20%​.

WHAT IS EPOS PERSONALISATION? AND HOW CAN IT GROW MY BOTTOM LINE?

Retail businesses in the UK are under unprecedented pressure to control costs and make every sale count. Modern point of sale systems allow small retailers to do just that, but they’re often set up generically. This is where ePOS personalisation comes in.

Use an out-of-the-box ePOS solution​, and you won’t be able to take full advantage of all the latest management tools. But personalise your ePOS system for the specific needs of your business, and the sky’s the limit.

Personalised ePOS systems can be designed to suit your products, your service style and your own inventory. You can add your own logo, and brand all of your receipts, for example. You can arrange the menus and sub-menus in a way that expedites transactions as quickly as possible.

And you can pair items with complementary purchases in order to facilitate upselling.

In effect, you’re creating your very own ePOS system. And when the trading environment changes (which it does regularly), your ePOS can change with it.

ePOS systems are now organic. You don’t have to stick with the same configuration until an update is available. If you discover a way to improve your own system, you can make the changes there and then. Whether you need a specific report or a more logical sales menu, the required changes can be made, on the premises, in just a few minutes.

How Can a Personalised ePOS System Grow My Profits?

Too many business owners make their store operations fit their existing ePOS system. In actual fact, it should be the other way round. Only you know how best to serve your customers, and how to manage your business operations. A good ePOS system can adapt to the most

specific of requirements to deliver the following benefits:

Sound Financial Management An ​ePOS system that is designed with the needs of your store or food business in mind should make accounting a breeze. Sales data feeds into your primary accounting reports, helping you to forecast sales, pay your taxes on time and plan for the future.

Accurate Stock Management You should be able to personalise all of the products listed on your ePOS system. In the case of a restaurant, this function is crucial. For example, imagine you’re selling a lasagne made from a unique recipe. By adding a costed recipe to the ePOS system, all the individual ingredients can be removed from the inventory each time the dish is sold. This helps you to manage portion control, ordering and wastage.

Drive Staff Performance By tailoring an ePOS system to your business’ needs, you can accurately monitor and assess the performance of your employees. You can enter each employee onto the system, and give them each their own login credentials. Once you’ve done that, you can access reports on a range of metrics, including transactions per hour, total sales and total margin. You can also devise sales incentive schemes that target particular lines.

Improve Customer Service To set your business apart from the competition, you have to provide a unique proposition. The products you sell may be available elsewhere, but the customer experience you deliver can set your retail business apart from the rest.

A personalised ePOS system allows you to deliver the kind of service that will earn you repeat business and word-of-mouth marketing. For example, you could set up a system using standalone iPads — and allow customers to search for their purchases. You could take payments on the shop floor, rather than making people stand in line. You can also set up the menus and sub-menus in a way that maximises transactions per hour at peak trading times.

Investing in a personalised ePOS system allows you to take full control of customer service, stock control, financial management and staff performance. The retail industry has never been so competitive, so make sure you steal a march on the competition while you can.

Author: Rob Gamage Rob Gamage is Managing Editor of ​Modern Retail​. Combining many years of experience in publishing with a keen interest in small business and entrepreneurialism, Rob is passionate about sharing interesting and inspiring content with retailers to help them grow. You can subscribe to Modern Retail, for free, ​here​.

HOW CAN EPOS GROW MY BOTTOM LINE?

Sales are great, but the bottom line is king. A healthy profit isn’t just about selling, it’s also about controlling costs. And if your business is struggling in this area, it might be time to let an advanced ​ePOS system​ help out.

Whether you’re running an independent clothing store or a cafe, and ePOS system can help you to manage costs and drive sales. But you need to know how to utilise it correctly. Let your own system help you in the following ways, and higher profits should follow.

Minimise Wastage Wastage and shrinkage are enemies of profit. Whether you’re losing stock through theft, expired use by dates or poor inventory management, your ePOS system can alert you to the issues before they cost your business money. Your expected inventory is adjusted after every sale and delivery, so you should be able to see where you stand on wastage at any given moment.

Imagine you’re selling chocolate bars in a coffee shop. You notice that a batch of them is due to expire in a week, so you obviously want to sell them before you have to throw them away. ​An ePOS system can be programmed to deliver a promotional prompt to the server on every sale.

Reprogram the system with a discounted price, and encourage all your employees to offer every customer a chocolate bar with their coffee.

Setting Prices There’s a fine line between maximising profits and putting shoppers off when setting prices.

Set them too low, and you’re essentially throwing money away. Set them too high, however, people will simply look elsewhere. An ePOS system tracks sales of individual lines over a long period of time. From the reports you receive, you can identify the most attractive price points that generate the highest margins.

Efficient Scheduling

For many brick-and-mortar businesses, labour is the single largest cost being managed. Again, there’s a fine balance to be struck here. Understaff your business, and you’ll lose out on sales — or fail to meet the service expectations of your customers. Overstaff, however, and you’re throwing money away needlessly.

Scheduling is a complex process. There may be several peak trading times in a single day.

Factor in issues such as minimum shift-lengths, breaks and training, and creating an efficient rota can be difficult. But an advanced ePOS system can extrapolate all of your sales-by-hour information. And by cross-referencing employee data, it can create draft schedules that make economic sense.

Hone Your Sales Techniques It often pays to favour high-margin products over low-margin items. But not always. For example, imagine you’re selling burgers in your restaurant. You have a basic offering, as well as a premium burger that delivers a significantly higher margin. Your ePOS system will tell you which of these burgers is delivering the most profit to your business.

If sales of the cheaper option are delivering more overall profit, you might need to change the expensive burger in order to make it more appealing. Alternatively, you may need to train your staff on the art of upselling.

Modern ePOS systems deliver reports that tell you everything you need to know about the buying habits of your customers. By understanding in great details what people are looking for, you can tailor your line-up and your special offers accordingly. Use your gross margin reports to dictate the products you offer your customers.

Take the Human Error Out of Ordering A single digit in the wrong box can often result in a delivery you just don’t need. Ordering errors and poor judgment are two of the biggest reasons for waste and inflated inventories.

But you can take the human error and guesswork out of ordering by leaving it in the capable hands of your ePOS system.

Based on real-time, historic and seasonal sales data, the system can make sales forecasts. And based on your current stock levels, it can compile orders that take advantage of sales opportunities without tying up precious cash.

A modern ​ePOS system does involve a significant investment. But this is money your business can make back in a matter of months — through the increased profit margins you can look forward to.

Author: Rob Gamage Rob Gamage is Managing Editor of ​Modern Retail​. Combining many years of experience in publishing with a keen interest in small business and entrepreneurialism, Rob is passionate about sharing interesting and inspiring content with retailers to help them grow. You can subscribe to Modern Retail, for free, ​here​.

WHY RETAILERS ARE PUTTING ECOMMERCE PERSONALIZATION TO THE TOP OF THEIR AGENDA The growth in consumer demand for real-time personalization is at an all-time high. It’s a fact, customers are not only becoming more connected, they are also becoming more informed, demanding and unpredictable. Given the wide range of options consumers have online, retailers are finding that the key to converting their visitors into loyal long-term customers is real-time AI-driven ecommerce personalization.

Many businesses, despite spending a huge amount on driving new traffic to their websites are still experiencing poor conversion rates and lack of insight into their visitors requirements

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Provides each customer with a relevant and personal experience Increases customer loyalty and lifetime value Increases online conversion and average order value Retailers start seeing results from day 1 – the AI automation never sleeps The AI works with both huge and sparse data sets

26.6%

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WHAT ARE THE KEY FEATURES OF ECOMMERCE PERSONALIZATION? Advanced AI Real-Time Recommenders Continously learns and adapts itself flexibly to new user behavior Much more powerful in the art of conversion and increasing average order value

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ONLINE RETAILERS: STOP TREATING YOUR CUSTOMERS LIKE IT’S THE 90S

It’s 2019 and mobile use, especially mobile eCommerce, is on the rise. According to ContentSquare data, on average 63% of traffic to apparel, luxury and cosmetics sites comes from mobile devices – indicating that consumers are no longer shopping like it’s the 90s.

However, many digital teams, are guilty of treating eCommerce like it’s the 90s. So, are you one of them?

Because many eCommerce teams are stuck in the past when it comes to acquiring and analyzing data; they’re suffering from being Data Rich, Insight Poor (DRIP). With a vast range of analytics tools now available, there’s no question that digital teams have access to a bucket load of data. But despite the wealth of information, these teams often can’t get the relevant, actionable data they need to optimise their online retail space.

As an online retailer, your time is far too important to be spent manually tagging your website.

It’s too important to be relying on tools and systems that only provide half of the information you need to make critical decisions about your website. And it’s certainly far too important for you to sit around waiting on analysts to decode the answers to questions that you need answering now.

Houston, We Have a Data Problem

The stakes are now much higher than they were before the rise of the always-on, always-available online storefront. Your competition now has access to a bounty of detailed insights about a customer’s journey and engagement that can revitalise a customer’s experience to enhance conversions and retention.

Extracting actionable insights that can inform your optimisation efforts at speed is the first hurdle for UX and optimisation teams. Traditional analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, used in isolation to inform optimisation decisions, can only provide limited insight into visitor behaviour online.

Often, it’s easy to be drawn to surface-level metrics, like click and bounce rate, that doesn’t answer the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’. This can lead optimisation teams to run tests based on best practice or ‘gut instinct’ – neither of which are much better than guesswork compared to data-driven insight.

Some organisations are relying on other tools like session replays or heatmaps to try and drill down into visitor behaviour to understand why users behave as they do on their sites. While session replay tools and heatmaps can be used by teams across the organisation, they rarely aggregate data that is both easy to understand and representative of the entire visitor population. While these tools provide plenty of data, they don’t provide enough insight.

Further, these tools don’t provide insights in real time.

It’s time for digital teams to work smarter, not harder, to get the actionable insights they need.

Thankfully, there is a solution to DRIP and a way to work smarter. Rather than relying on resource- and time-consuming traditional tools and methods, like manual tagging, teams can now access a new breed of behavioural analytics to better understand not just the “what” of user behaviour, but the “why” as well.

Using UX analytics platforms to review real-time behavioural insights like click recurrence (how many times on average a visitor clicks on particular page elements like a CTA or banner), brands can easily identify user frustration and friction in the buyer journey.

Another example is using revenue metrics (measuring revenue generated by a specific web element or block of content), which can help teams discover how much revenue their product-specific landing pages or a new home page banner has generated week to week.

Of course, with any data collection, if you rely on a few individuals to collect, process and interpret it for you, you’ll inevitably hit a bottleneck, and limit the number of people who can access insights quickly and effectively. The key to working efficiently is to democratise your data to empower more than just a team of data analysts.

Excuse Me, I Believe You Have My Data

One of the biggest hang ups digital teams experience is that they can’t answer their own questions about optimisation. Too often, they’re relying heavily on analysts (who, might we add, are likely very overworked with their own day jobs) to provide data and insights quickly.

Content teams, digital teams and UX teams should be able to mark their own homework.

Rather than relying on one or a few analysts to provide insights on performance data, these teams should have unlimited access to measure the impact of their digital actions in order to ask role-specific questions and answer them, without the outside help of an analyst.

You may be thinking “Well, I’m not capable of learning how to be analyst!”. But, you really don’t have to if you equip your teams with a new breed of UX analytics, like ContentSquare, which will empower your teams and accelerate speed to actionable insights.

You Had Me at Better Data

As an online retailer, you deserve a better way to not only understand your site’s performance and customer journeys, but also a more efficient way of accessing that information.

Rather than relying on outdated legacy tools and tired analysts, it’s time to shift your analysis process from the 90s and into the present. Advanced technologies like UX analytics and insight platforms are crucial to empowering digital teams to work faster, smarter and more efficiently.

These tools create breathing room to prepare for eCommerce events far in advance.

Retailers who have jolted themselves away from outdated methods are able to implement practical ways to give themselves a competitive edge in the mobile eCommerce experience while extracting actionable insights without drowning in data.

Contributor: Content Square

https://contentsquare.com/gb/

UX ANALYTICS PLATFORM

I S Y _ U R O P T I M I S AT I _ N STR_TEGY MISS_NG SOMETH_NG? Discover what really drives on-site and in-app behaviours.

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1. TRACK VISITOR JOURNEYS

2. ANALYSE CONTENT PERFORMANCE

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3. VISUALISE AND SHARE KEY RESULTS

WHAT ARE AI CHATBOTS AND HOW MUCH DO THEY COST?

A few years ago, chatting with a chatbot was a comedic experience. Now, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a chatbot driven by AI and a human.

The way e-commerce delivers customer service is changing. Driven by rapid digital transformation, which is being called the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, e-commerce is on the cusp of automating online customer service. The introduction of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and recognition to chatbots have spawned a new generation of AI chatbots that understand semantics, complex queries and answer them with human vigour. Deployed without label, they can pass as human.

You might have spoken with one yourself. Last year, Apple unveiled Business Chat for iMessage, a way for businesses to communicate with customers directly within Messages.

Then there are Messenger Bots, which is Facebook’s version.

Put your phone down, and you’ll find a chatbot in the Amazon Echo (Alexa) and in Google Home (Google Assistant). And let’s not forget about Siri.

For e-commerce and online business, AI chatbots have numerous benefits.

The most obvious benefit is improved customer service and improved customer service availability. AI chatbots don’t sleep, nor do they bring human error into the conversation. If the key to a successful online business today is helping and delivering important information in real-time, AI chatbots certainly deliver.

And let’s not forget about customer engagement. The majority of e-commerce websites today are remarkably old fashioned. Research shows that consumers engage with brands more when they spark a conversation or deliver information proactively. Static content, the average product page – it isn’t good enough anymore. Chatbots can step in, typically when a user is scrolling for information, and ask the question: would you like me to explain how this product works? I tell you, you’re pretty likely to say yes.

The cost of AI chatbots OK – so AI chatbots are the next big thing in direct customer service. Consumers are demanding information to be delivered in real-time, which AI chatbots can low-interest better than a web page. The benefits are obvious. So, what’s the cost?

GoHire spent roughly $41,000 (£32,000) developing GOBe, a job search Facebook Messenger chatbot. A much more complex chatbot, developed as a custom build by Argentica-based elMejorTrato, cost roughly $340,000 (£265,000). So, the prices for a custom AI chatbot range from £30,000 to £300,000.

For an off-the-shelf AI chatbot, the costs are lower. Chatbot builders allow you to make your own chatbot using existing code and an existing AI. A good chatbot for a small e-commerce store will typically cost £10,000. However, if you want a top-of-the-line chatbot with advanced Natural Language Processing and recognition, you’re looking at five times that as a base price.

So yeah, the technology isn’t small change.

For start-ups and scale-ups, financing a chatbot makes sense. If you have a healthy e-commerce business, investing in a chatbot will pay for itself over time. The efficiency improvements alone are remarkable. The retail finance market is highly competitive right now, with low interest rates and secured and unsecured funding available from ​Nationwide Corporate Finance​.

©MODERN RETAIL 2019