Physical retail continues to attract customers. But it must constantly reinvent itself to meet their expectations and new habits: more and more of them are turning to e-commerce.
Combining the physical and virtual world, phygital carries with it the promise of a unified and personalized user experience (UX). At the heart of this omnichannel strategy, digital signage has a central place. Connected and intelligent, display communication devices help retailers take full advantage of customer data and knowledge to give phygital the reputation it deserves.
Phygital gives consumers what they want
The health crisis has accelerated online purchases. In particular, it has forced consumers to abandon physical spaces. One question is now preoccupying retailers: will customers come back into their sales outlets? One of the virtues of any crisis is to boost a movement. Retail, badly hit in recent months, can take advantage of a new impetus that favors the customer experience.
Meeting consumers’ expectations, attracting their loyalty and increasing their average basket – all objectives which phygital can support. It prefigures a customer journey where the friction between virtual and physical spaces is abolished. However, this customer-centric approach requires consistency of information across all channels.
Digital technology serving the phygital strategy
A simplistic, even mistaken conception of phygitalisation remains. It is not enough to simply disseminate digital tools in physical environments to create an omnichannel journey. It is not just the point of sale that must be digitized, but the whole customer relationship.
Phygitalisation involves embedding digital devices within physical stores to make the customer journey truly fluid. It involves making the information from the various sources and messages at every stage of the customer journey uniform.
An omnichannel strategy for phygital retail
Retailers have taken the message on board. Data has become the lifeblood of their business. Provided the raw data is transformed into relevant information. Omnichannel solutions, based on Internet of things (IoT) technologies, allow the most benefit to be derived from this information bonanza. The benefits are multiple and tangible. First, strengthening and better-exploiting customer knowledge.
The ability to hybridize digital and physical journeys provides a better understanding of customer behavior. This knowledge allows the offers and messages to be adapted. In an economy marked by mass production, customization can make a difference.
A fashion retailer would be able, for example, to highlight its raincoats on dynamic screens when rain is forecast. At the same time, it would text a customer passing by near the store that an instant sale of raincoats is underway, while also telling them that some in their size are still available!
Digital transformation through the Internet of Things
“Digital transformation remains a means. It must enrich the customer experience by stimulating emotion. The convergence of the physical and virtual world of the IoT has unlimited potential for value creation”, Valérie Besnard, Brand & Content Manager at Cenareo.
Digital signage has really taken off
Automatic data collection is the cornerstone of screen communication. Digital signage solutions can connect to a variety of data sources. These include web pages, data feeds, Instagram, CRM and weather information.
Communication screens can deliver up-to-date, geolocated information to customers.
Dynamic content delivers the omnichannel strategy. It uses a customer interaction model that is based on a principle that is now widely known: delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. It is establishing itself as the vector of the most sophisticated marketing scenarios, based on contextualized data.
By relying on both internal and external data – for example, weather or public transport timetables – retailers can offer high-value services, such as the ability to order a taxi via digital signage screens.
It is a fact, 87% of consumers seek information on merchant sites before finalizing their purchases in sales outlets. Given this fact, retailers need to focus on the most viewed products online to accelerate the conversion to in-store purchases.
Cenareo offers an intuitive, scalable SaaS solution perfectly adapted to the needs of communication professionals in all sectors of activity.