How to unify the customer experience online and offline

As customers continue to use online channels for their purchasing needs, it drives merchants to merge their offline and online experiences, allowing users to get the most out of both ways of shopping. Everyone has different preferences on how they interact with a brand’s products. It is therefore paramount for companies to have the right options and experiences enabled both online and offline.

Omnichannel integrations

Having a strong omnichannel integration strategy is the key to improving the customer experience, as this approach links a variety of channels like physical stores, apps, websites, and social media accounts. Ensuring a seamless omnichannel experience, where users are provided with a consistent experience independent of their touch point, can be vital to a brand’s success.

Achieving consistency across channels can be difficult, since different teams, objectives, and often tools can be sparsely dispersed inside one organization. However, focusing on creating a convenient, personalized, and effortless experience for users can make all the difference. For example, a user may see an item online, try it in a store, and only then make a purchase online with a secure digital wallet. Facilitating these experiences gives users possibilities that might not have been available before, and which come together to drive their decision to purchase.

Connected to this, having omni-channel payment options, where users can choose their preferred payment method regardless of whether they're shopping on your app, website, or social media, helps simplify the customer experience.

A robust customer loyalty program

Investing in repeated purchasing behavior across online and offline is key to drive brand attachment. One of the many ways this can be achieved is with a strong customer loyalty program. These programs are becoming more common as businesses realize that incentivizing users to return and purchase more, regardless of the channel, drives bottom line results.

By offering points, discounts, or perks to users with a loyalty program, the goal is to create a sense of achievement for users. When consumers understand their loyalty pays off, they are more likely to keep coming back.

Cross-channel personalization

Personalization is a strong factor in unifying the experience of users online and offline. When brands can successfully create a personalized experience across a variety of channels, it improves brand perception and connection.

A common example of cross-channel personalization is the creation of unified customer profiles that help you build a picture of how someone prefers to pay in-store or online. By using this information to tailor a user's experience, you will remove friction from the checkout process and improve the quality of interactions with your brand. Another example is offering customized recommendations or promotions based on a customer's purchasing or viewing habits.

Smart businesses with several data points on user preferences are creating optimized experiences that their competitors struggle to imitate.

Key takeaways

For brands that interact with their audience online and offline, establishing a consistent user experience across channels is critical. By focusing on providing omnichannel integrations, creating a rewarding customer loyalty program, and tailoring cross-channel personalization, brands can take the next step to properly unify the experiences of their customers.