The Power of Information: Why In-Store Analytics Matter
Understanding the customers’ in-store journey can be a complex task. You want to make sure customers are finding the products and information they need, while still delivering a branded, seamless in-store experience. Considering the average consumer attention span is only eight seconds, you must achieve all this very quickly. So how can you do this? The answer is in-store analytics. In today’s blog, we explain why online stores as well as brick-and-mortar stores can no longer be siloed entities. Website analytics – despite being important – are no longer enough. Companies need to leverage meaningful in-store analytics to help maximize the customer experience, increase operational efficiencies, and drive strategic business decisions.
Online Analytics
Your website is often the first-place consumers will go to learn about a product or service. Therefore, your site needs to act as a 24/7 sales representative by providing the right information to the right visitors at the right time. Because this first experience is so critical, many websites use robust analytics such as heat-maps, tracking tags, triggers, cookies, and more. This information is collected and used by your marketing team to customize and further enhance the online customer experience and to follow up with visitors long after they leave the website. Analytics enable your marketing team to stay relevant to consumers with emails, display ads that follow them across the internet, relevant product recommendations, and provides them with the knowledge they need to run targeted, effective re-marketing campaigns. Online analytics are important; however, they are no longer enough on their own to provide you with the critical information you need to understand your customer’s journey. This leads us into why you need in-store analytics to help drive your key business decisions.
In-Store Analytics
Just like website analytics tell you which pages and products your customers view, in-store analytics provide insight into which:
- products/devices your customers interact with most often,
- features they care about,
- areas of the store they spend more time in,
- devices in your store are online or offline, and even the health of the devices in your store. (Table 2)
Why are in-store analytics important? “The reason consumers prefer to shop in-store versus online is to see, feel and experience the product in person.”-Google 20191 Customers are not coming into the store to interact with a sales representative, they want to experience your products firsthand. As an example, look at the typical millennial shopper. This customer knows what they want, and they want to be able to experience the product with as little outside interference as possible. Your devices need to be able to serve as their own sales representatives, creating a streamlined, engaging, and self-sufficient process on the customer’s schedule.
By having this kind of system, your customers are going to have a more enjoyable and informative shopping experience than before. Additionally, while your customers are learning about and experiencing your products, you are gaining invaluable insights into their journey. However, the benefits of in-store analytics are not just for the customer. As a business, imagine being able to see which devices have the highest levels of engagement in every single store across the nation, in real time. Or being able to pull reports and view analytics dashboards on the data you find most important such as customer navigation, regional reporting, device launches, comparative performance (Table 1), the list goes on and on. Having access to this information will empower you to make faster, smarter business decisions all while maximizing the customer experience.
Want to learn more about in-store analytics? View our 10-minute on-demand webinar: Regaining Control of your Customer’s In-Store Journey
