3 retail experiences to win your customer’s hearts
We move in a highly competitive market in which the differentiation of product and price is getting more and more difficult. It’s been a long time since the customer not only valued the transactional component of what they buy but they also look for valuable experiences in exchange for their time and money. The customer must be ‘seduced’ in the point of sale. This starts by attracting them and, above all, awakening their emotions, and finding REACTIONS., because emotions guide the shopping decisions.
The emotional connection between a brand and a consumer is as essential as a battery in a Smartphone
Consumers need to receive stimuli from brands to keep remembering them. For this reason a new shopping experience that’s more than satisfactory, is of great importance in this Digital Era. The need for reinventing the shopping experience is key to ‘seduce’ the customer.
Retailers have in front of them a big opportunity to take advantage of different benefits that technological advances provide to connect, promote loyalty and improve sales. Successful retailers will be those that will be able to move the digital world into their stores, and ‘connecting’ (never better said) with their customers.
If the objective is to increase sales, a unique experience inside of a store can substantially increase the customer engagement, transforming the customer into a prosumer, a loyal brand specifier.
Here we recommend 3 digital retail experiences to seduce in-Store customers:
SMART MIRRORS: A new way of trying on clothes
Equipped with cameras, sensors and a touch interface, these electronic dressing rooms are looking to promote sales by reproducing a preview in 360º in an interactive screen without need to go through traditional dressing rooms. Aside from visualizing how a garment fits, these smart mirrors help to complete the look by suggesting garments that match the chosen one.
VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE: ‘Real Experience’ that excite you
The disco Stores with guest DJs that made shopping more pleasant only remain in memories. Times are changing and technologies evolve. In this sense, virtual reality is in favor with fashion retailers. Brands like Topshop and Dior have sat down their client’s to celebrities, in the Front Row with just by putting virtual glasses on them; Pepe Jeans made them walk by a vertical catwalk 4.000 meters in height at 300km/h, and Adidas, invited them to live the excitement of a professional soccer player by stepping foot on the Maracaná stadium by just putting boots on them. From feeling the vibrations of the stands of the mythical stadium or the smell of the grass, to the enveloping sound of the field’s roar on contact with your skin; this is a unique experience worthy of being remembered and, above all, shared.
MOBILE SHOPPING: Connecting Offline with Online
Even smartphones can favor retail, they can also be a great threat during the pre-shopping process (showrooming). Retailers base their strategies in benefiting from the mobile search. Omni-channel mix is the best of the offline environment with the online environment to take the retail-customer relationship to the next level.
Some retailers opted to facilitate their customers with Free Wi-Fi access in-Store or giving mobile devices to their customers disposition which they can interact with during the shopping experience. Others have recurred to artificial intelligence and computer vision to offer a unique, visual and completely ad hoc shopping experience. From incorporating visual search engines in their eCommerce to be able to access to the product’s information (garment composition, size availability, look book) with a simple capture, to gender identifying systems and customers style or recommend looks related.
Technology can be the magic potion retailers need to captivate shoppers; but retailers should not forget basic resources like kindness, courtesy, empathy, agility and efficiency. These are the basics to making the shopping in-store experience satisfying. The rest is just excitement.
