Adobe Rolls Out Solution to Help Retailers Deliver Better BOPIS Experience
As an increasing number of consumers vie for the “buy online, pick up in-store” option, retailers and brands are struggling to meet the operational and logistical demands of this aspect of digital convergence.
To help companies improve the BOPIS experience and smooth out the bumps across mobile devices, web sites and in-stores as well as with call centers, Adobe Analytics is now offering “Customer Journey Analytics” for retail.
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“Brands can now bring together disjointed data (via Adobe Experience Platform) across areas like their web site, mobile, support center, in-store, voice and more,” the company said in a statement. “And then with a set of Photoshop-inspired analytics tools, they can dig in and exercise some creativity in pulling out the most important insights — showing how shoppers move between channels. This will help teams make a case for investment in services like BOPIS, while engaging shoppers in a more intuitive way.”
Adobe said the impetus behind the launch of this service is based on growing online sales. The company said aggregated data from its Adobe Analytics platform “shows consumers spent $142.5 billion online from November to December, growing 13.1 percent. Nearly $10 billion was spent on Cyber Monday alone.”
The company said while the online sales were robust, it found growth in one key aspect of it. “Once considered a death knell for some, physical stores have become more of an asset,” Adobe said in a statement. “BOPIS has grown a whopping 35 percent [year-over-year] as shoppers value the speed, cost savings and theft prevention.”
Additionally, based on its own survey of more than 1,000 consumers, “82 percent of BOPIS users are likely to shop for additional items at the store.” Adobe said just a handful of retailers are getting BOPIS right. It’s been challenging to meet “customers on their terms.”
“The challenge is that a blended retail experience also requires the backend analytics to follow suit,” the company said.
To illustrate the point, Adobe said to consider a typical fashion retailer today — one with physical stores as well as e-commerce, which it said “equates to an incredible number of touchpoints with customers.”
“Signals coming in from interactions on web sites and mobile, are intertwined with in-store activity and customer support channels,” Adobe explained. “The problem is that all this data sits in different systems, and it creates multiple and disjointed views of how customers experience the brand. This is especially pressing in retail, where shoppers have become comfortable leveraging every channel available to them.”
In response, Adobe Analytics’ “Customer Journey Analytics” platform “can break down some of these walls, but also provide a visual and interactive way to see ‘steps’ in the shopping journey — all of which is aggregated and anonymized.”
Adobe said, for example, that a brand could be informed by a variety of “digital activities” such as e-mails, digital ads, web site behavior, etc. that “drove people back into specific stores and eventual purchase — giving them a roadmap of where to invest and refine.”
Using this technology to unlock the nuances from the shopper’s omnichannel shopping experience has “leveled the playing field in many ways,” Adobe said, adding that this new platform will open up opportunities “for retailers of any varietal and size to pursue growth strategies anchored in data.”
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