The 7^th Annual Professional eBay and eCommerce Sellers Internet Conference will be held this May at the Gold Coast. If you’re serious about your online business then you’re sure to find this Exhibition of interest to you.  Meet with hundreds of other online retailers and learn skills, new developments and get insights from major players, like eBay, PayPal, Australia Post and many more.

Qdos Technology representatives look forward to meeting you at the Conference at Booth 5.  We’ll talk to you about our multi-channel solution, and how we can integrate your entire business operations – including your bricks and mortar stores, webstores, ebay, and Warehouses.  Qdos’ offering includes Magento, Temando, eBay, Social Media, Third Party Logistics – all in one complete solution, in the cloud!

It’s no secret that I love to shop. I enjoy going into retail stores, and looking at all the lovely products. Sometimes if I’m in a rush I’ll grab a business card and try to go online later to have a better look at what the store sells. If the website looks fresh and inviting I enjoy browsing or shopping online just as much as going into a store. But I can’t tell you how disappointing it is sometimes to discover that there is no online store. It seems almost strange in this day and age that a retail business does not have an online presence.

Last week there was a segment on the ABC program ‘The Business’ which discussed findings of a new report into the small business sector of Australia, commissioned by Google – ‘a third of enterprises have virtually no digital engagement. Of those businesses that were surveyed, 35% had no to very low digital presence, 24% had a low presence (only a basic website or a simple digital marketing strategy), 25% were medium (those optimising their web presence and pursuing a more sophisticated digital strategy), but only 16% had high internet use’.

Further, the findings were that businesses that were more plugged in online were four times as likely to be hiring than those who aren’t connected. Those who have taken the plunge to invest in an online strategy have reaped the benefits of growth and becoming more profitable.

Those not involved will experience missed opportunities. Small moves towards an online presence can have enormous economic benefits for small businesses. Businesses should consider taking the first leap, and then building on their online strategy over time – it doesn’t have to be a ‘big bang’ approach. ‘Even moving up one level of digital engagement can have a 20% impact on a small business’ revenue’.

So why are retail businesses not jumping at the change to get online? I often discuss the subject with business owners and I’m always interested to hear the answers…take the mature aged lady who owns a beautiful, established traditional lighting store, writing Orders manually and then unable to locate my Order when I returned to finalise my purchase – ‘oh no it would be too complex to go online, its much faster the way we do things now’…cue to the younger shop assistant standing behind her who rolled her eyes at me – clearly she’d had enough. And I was rather frustrated too…during a home renovation it would be just so grand to be able to order your preferred products online from home.

Then there was the local high-end furniture and homewares store, downsizing their current massive showroom to a smaller showroom due to rental costs. ‘Excellent…great idea…and if you go online customers can view your products there anyway’ I say. ‘I’m not good with computers I wouldn’t know where to start’ was the reply.

To summarise, here are a few reasons why Australian retailers are getting left behind:

• Traditional mindset
• Risk averse
• Lack of a clear online strategy
• Lack of understanding of what can be achieved online
• Have already invested in non-effective legacy systems.

In fact, as a country, our online presence is lagging behind other international retailers. It is ‘estimated’ that up to 40% of online purchases are going outside of Australia. Countries such as the UK and US have capitalised on the growth of online retailing while Australian retailers have been slow to take action. We are approximately 3-5 years behind these more established online markets.

Australians want to shop online and the percentage of online shoppers is growing. According to the National Australia Bank Online Retail Sales Index (February 2013) ‘the rate of growth for online sales remains well in excess of that of the traditional retail sector’. This is an exciting opportunity for businesses to log onto the digital world.

www.qdos.com.au

Omnichannel retailing – what is it?  We’ve all heard of multichannel selling – selling your products through various channels such as the Internet, bricks and mortar stores, direct marketing, call centres, group buying and so on.  The omnichannel approach takes things to the next level - promoting your products to customers in exactly the same way across all your sales points.  Customers don’t see channels, they just see brands, and customers expect the brand to be consistent no matter which way they choose to shop with you. 

Welcome to the world of the ‘Connected Customer’.  This customer is empowered, informed, and tech-savvy.  Their shopping experience starts on your website where they browse your products and do their research.  Their research continues on their mobile phone where they search your eBay store, engage in social media such as Facebook and Twitter, until finally, when they know exactly what they want, they come into your store to make their purchase.  This customer is looking for the complete customer experience – the same ’story’ across all channels.

Research has shown that omni-channel shoppers spend up to 15%-30% more than multi-channel shoppers and exhibit strong brand loyalty, often influencing others (via their social networks and online activity) to use and support a brand.

Customers actively research products, and they form an impression of the retail brand, the products being sold, the range provided, and the price points they sit at.  This customer driven demand for a seamless experience from brands operating in multiple channels is key to why omnichannel is so important for retailers to grasp.  Without really committing to, investing in and improving the customers experience across all touch points of the brand then you will not meet the needs of your customers.

Omnichannel success

The key to successfully embracing omnichannel retailing is twofold: Commitment and Investment.

Commitment

It requires a complete buy-in from the boardroom; and in turn this commitment must be mandated throughout an organisation in order to be effective - the Marketing team needs to be communicating the same messages to customers across all touch points.  Customers are getting smarter, and so in-store sales staff need to be more knowledgeable about the products they offer and production processes. 

Investment

A paradigm shift is required in the thinking of what a ‘store’ actually is – in the new omnichannel world, it is not just the physical bricks and mortar store that we once knew ‘retailing’ to be.  It is all the possible ways that a customer can buy a product from you.  Embrace this concept and make your store ‘bigger’ – promote products through channels and markets you may not have thought of before.  You may currently have a physical store and a website.  Add more avenues for sales –multiple eBay stores in multiple countries, utilise Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, introduce another physical store in a new location - locally or overseas. 

And this is where it gets complex, because all of a sudden we’re talking about additional channels and emerging markets all the while utilising traditional business applications that weren’t built to accommodate this purpose. 

Companies wanting to grow using the omnichannel strategy will need to invest in the right technology. Your IT solution must be capable of introducing and supporting these new channels in a speedy and consistent manner, without long development and deployment timeframes.  It should promote data integrity by maintaining 1 customer record and 1 product record across your entire omnichannel ‘store’, rather than multiple applications working in silos. 

You may like to consider the following: Does your current software application manage the entire supply chain process across all your channels end-to-end?  Does it offer real-time store inventory levels and central management of all orders? Is it easy to push multiple products to your website, multiple eBay stores and manage the challenges of selling in overseas markets such as languages and varying currencies? Can you select shipping carriers in real time and batch dispatch Orders?

Can your business execute across all channels, with consistent branding information, from a single solution?

Contact Qdos Technology if you are ready to expand your business using omnichannel retailing, and we’ll show you what your new ‘store’ can look like! 

This might seem futuristic but all the technology is available today and retailers who are ahead of the curve are implementing these ideas already. Have a look at what Harvard Business Review predicts... http://hbr.org/2011/12/the-future-of-shopping/ar/1