We at i95Dev believe in experiential ecommerce, and hence we watch the industry leaders closely. Year 2018 is surely going to see a heated ecommerce race, and behemoths like Amazon and eBay are surely looking to power their way through innovation.
Ecommerce in 2017 laid emphasis on more traditional methods such as fast site performance, ease of navigation, and omnichannel/multi-channel selling. 2018 is going to be the year of customer experience and personalization, i.e., ease of shopping, finding informative content, and using interactive tools to make online shopping more immersive.
Magento’s Contribution to Experiential Ecommerce
What name pops into your mind when you think of the term experiential commerce? It is almost imperative that Warby Parker stands out as a trailblazer in experiential commerce.
The growth registered by Warby Parker in the last five years is simply exponential, creating a staggering $1.2 billion ecommerce empire. The secret recipe for Warby Parker’s success is the finesse with which they did the simple things right. They relied heavily on word-of-mouth publicity by delivering excellent promotions, and Magento stood as a bulwark in their ecommerce success all along.
How Magento and Warby Parker Wove Magic?
When Warby Parker entered the market, Luxottica was virtually maintaining a monopoly over the domain. Warby Parker was able to undercut the established Luxottica through its innovative business model and loosen its stranglehold over the supply chain. People were able to shop for affordable eyewear under $100 from the comfort of their homes.
Magento helped Warby Parker create success by providing enhancements such as:
- Helping customers try their selected eyewear easily and virtually. This achieved the ease of shopping, which is the primary step toward creating a personalized shopping experience.
- Allowing the development team to perform easy customizations to suit their evolving workflow. This gave them the ability to develop a highly flexible ecommerce platform that could be integrated with backend systems such as ERP and CRM.
- Helping Warby Parker develop a highly informed workforce. They were able to provide resources with the information needed to make informed and personalized decisions about particular customer queries.
- Helping Warby Parker achieve high-level personalization for shoppers. This included providing personalized discounts and giving shoppers a range of shipping methods to choose from based on their preferences and budgets. In turn, this helped strengthen their word-of-mouth marketing strategy and further establish the Warby Parker brand.
Upon close observation, you can clearly realize the underlying strategy. All the steps taken by Warby Parker can be considered standard, but they fit into the bigger picture of providing personalization.
Personalization forms the basis for developing a good experiential commerce solution, which is exactly what Warby Parker achieved.
How Can You Emulate Warby Parker’s Success?
Warby Parker spawned a great number of innovative startups. So, what does it take to successfully emulate them? The following factors can help achieve ecommerce personalization:
-
Knowledge at Fingertips
Gen X and Gen Y shoppers are increasingly knowledgeable thanks to the internet, and a poorly informed resource can result in a lost customer and, worse, a bad reputation. Empower your resources and customer service representatives with updated information. Let your service representatives inform customers about the latest inventory based on their previous preferences and purchases.
How to achieve this?
Ecommerce integration with CRM systems can help provide vital customer information such as preferred brands, past order history, preferred shipping methods, and previous complaints. This information can help ecommerce businesses make effective decisions, enable quicker responses from customer representatives, and streamline customer interactions. -
Mobile-Centric Ecommerce
Do not let mCommerce become an afterthought in your strategy. Make your web store mobile-optimized and let your customer service representatives provide product and inventory information directly to customers via email or SMS.
How to achieve this?
First, choosing the right ecommerce platform, with mCommerce at its heart, is very important. Magento collaborated with Google to combine Progressive Web Apps to enhance its ecommerce capabilities. Read more about this here. -
Improving the Checkout Process
With the rise of one-click and guest checkout options, adding these capabilities to your strategy can make the purchase journey easier. Apart from these, incentives such as offering a strong returns policy, innovative shipping options like dropshipping, and customized thank-you pages are great ways to improve the checkout process.
How to achieve this?
Magento offers features that give customers easy checkout options, including guest checkout and advanced payment integrations. To learn more about Magento and its role in success stories like Warby Parker, click here. -
Personalized Loyalty Program
We repeatedly reinforce the thought, “No two shoppers are the same.” This forms the basis for personalizing your ecommerce strategy. Do not treat all your shoppers the same. Offering tailor-made loyalty programs can go a long way. Loyalty programs that provide discounts to specific groups of shoppers are one way to enhance your personalization strategy.
How to achieve this?
An ERP ecommerce integration can do the trick here, and choosing Magento for integration can be a great move. By integrating your ecommerce store and various selling channels such as eBay, Amazon, and Etsy with your ERP framework, synchronizing different pricing and discount rules becomes easier.
No matter which touchpoint your customer uses to shop for your products, their information can be synchronized back to the central system. This makes providing a personalized and consistent discount program easier and can take customer loyalty to a higher level. -
Providing Advanced Shipping Options
Shipping is often an overlooked factor in ecommerce operations, but it can define your success or failure. Shoppers place significant importance on the shipping options you provide. Introducing options such as dropshipping, free shipping for orders above a minimum threshold, placing fast-moving products with shipping providers, and linking shipping benefits to customer loyalty can go a long way.
For a more detailed insight into ways to offer free shipping, read our blog.
How to achieve this?
Shipping played its part in establishing the Amazon brand, which honed this skill to perfection. Consider offering innovative shipping options such as dropshipping, which can help reduce costs. To achieve effective dropshipping, identifying the most sought-after products and placing them at the right locations is important.
An ERP ecommerce integration can help monitor inventory levels at various locations, making dropshipping easier. ERP ecommerce integration can also reduce backorders, greatly reducing the strain on your delivery network.
Conclusion
The entire Warby Parker brand is built upon the perception of providing eyewear to shoppers in an economical, personalized, and convenient way. These three factors helped it stand out from well-established peers like Luxottica, while Magento provided a solid foundation for achieving that vision.
i95Dev has been operating in this domain since 2001 and has worked with its share of Warby Parker-like ecommerce operations. Even during the early days of ecommerce, we helped businesses achieve personalization and provide convenience for their shoppers. This greatly reduced their operational costs and increased their revenues.
2018 is going to be the year of “Personalization and Experiential Ecommerce.” If you are contemplating taking the big leap forward, contact us at info@i95dev.com.
