Online shopping has become the way of life: the speed, ease and convenience driving sales up 16.2% year-over-year. Intuitive UI, Chatbots and other facets of technology have already redefined the way we decide, choose, and experience new products. But that is one part of the story. A recent survey revealed that if given a choice, 64% of online shoppers, including millennials and Genz, prefer buying from physical brick and mortar outlets.

It’s becoming clear that while Millennials and Gen Z enjoy the convenience and speed of online shopping, aspects such as tactile satisfaction, instant gratification, and social dynamics are creating a resurgence of retail stores. But we aren’t talking simply about old school, simple brick and mortar outlets. Retailers will need to reimagine how they can combine the best of online shopping experience with tactile satisfaction. Technology is the key to blend the best of the online and offline worlds, creating unique shopping experiences and opening opportunities for companies to dramatically reinvent how they understand and engage consumers.

A recent survey from Tech Pro Research showed that 88% of respondents said that using in-store technology (such as mobile, AR/VR and automated payments) made shopping easier. 67% said technology made shopping more enjoyable.

Experience-driven Retail
To augment the online shopping experience, curated retail experiences are proving to be popular. Retailers are beginning to use virtual reality (VR) content to design immersive, interactive experiences where the customer becomes part of the story. For e.g. one of Nike’s store, customers can try out new sneakers on a simulated basketball court, an enclosed soccer trial area, or on a treadmill/jumbotron combination that simulates outdoor runs.

Technology impacts various aspects of retail experience; from product launches to revolving storefront offers to in-store retail experience. Retailer use VR, virtual fitting rooms and augmented reality for customers to try products in different scenarios without even stepping out of the store.

Being Social
Retailers recognise the influence and impact of social media on millennials and GenZ shoppers, and are expanding the experience to their brick and mortar facilities. Shoppers may discover products online, read peer-to-peer reviews and come half way through their decision making cycle, but they still want to touch, feel and explore before purchasing. Shoppers also, often, want the opinions of their family and friends before making the purchase. Technology is extending this experience, through geo-targeted ads directing customers to the nearest store or offer, where retailers have a view into the shoppers shopping history, preferences, etc.

Focus on convenience
Bridging the gap between click and brick, retailers are opting for high-tech features such as robot parking valets and integrated parking apps to help shoppers find parking spaces, e-hailing pickup zones and fast-charging EV stations.

Take for instance IKEA’s Place app, that virtually brings IKEA products into your home, allowing you to gauge how the product will look in the determined space even before you step into the store. It’s a whole new way for customers to experience convenience and make more informed decisions.

New retail technology is providing customers with relevant products, better customer service, and the ability to experience products before making the decision to buy the product.

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Global e-commerce sales exceeded $2 trillion in 2017, and are on pace to more than double by 2021. Yet average online conversion rates have remained doggedly low: Fewer than 4% of consumers arriving from desktop browsers buy, and the number is lower still for tablet and smartphone users (3% and 1%, respectively). These are a far cry from offline retail conversion rates, estimated to be 20%–40%.

Question is, why do so few online shoppers convert to purchasers?

Consumer behaviour research suggests that trust is essential to forming an intention to purchase. When trust is high, people are much more likely to take risks and engage in trade. In traditional business contexts, trust emerges and evolves in a physical space, and between two or more people interacting in person. But in the e-commerce setting, a prospective customer usually does not have any such contact, and so they must rely entirely on the digital experience. So, how exactly does
consumer trust emerge online?

Our teams of experts have tried to provide an exact answer to this question, one rooted in deliberative cognitive processes. They use decision models to describe sets of logical factors related to the formation of purchase intentions, such as an individual’s preexisting disposition to trust or a website’s structural assurances, such as indicators of strong encryption and security, privacy policies, and return guarantees. Deliberative processes assume strong causal relationships, hard constraints, and that people expend explicit cognitive effort as they make their trust assessments.

While the notion of deliberative models is appealing, it does not explain research showing that many visitors ignore “hard” factors such as privacy and security policies, while being influenced by seemingly insignificant factors such as font styles
and colours. Thus we were curious: Is it possible that online consumers also rely on less deliberative, “fuzzy,” instinctual processes, such as those commonly used in interpersonal trust situations? Could it be that online shoppers actually commit very
little explicit cognitive effort when making the decision about whether to trust a website?

One system of reasoning is deliberative, rooted in symbolic structures, rules, and established patterns of logic. The other system is associative: diffuse, approximate, and no deliberative, based more on personal experience and intuition than on formal rules. The associative system is not irrational per se, but it may not be consistent with formal rational logic.

At IrisLogic, a longitudinal logistic regression analysis study was conducted to fully understand the trust differences across various groups, and this revealed two major findings. First, when faced with the hypothetical, zero-risk decision, our subjects relied on deliberative (rule-based, logical, rational) processes. Second, when faced with an actual, and therefore riskier, decision, many of our online shopping subjects turned to associative (intuitive, diffuse, approximate) processes. When making decisions involving risk, such as an online purchase from a website, consumers tend to rely more on intuition than on deliberation. This is important because it challenges the established deliberative perspectives of consumer trust formation
and offers an explanation as to why things like aesthetics, professionalism, and other implicit clues matter for building online trust.

Understanding that online consumers do not always engage deliberative processes, but often rely on intuition — especially when making higher-risk decisions — has profound implications for redesigning online consumer experiences. “Simple”
changes (such as page layouts and choices of fonts, images, and colours) may be far more critical to associative trust-formation processes than we previously understood. Our findings suggest that what seem like merely aesthetic design choices may actually be the way your customers learn to trust you (or don’t). And that will influence whether they decide to make a purchase.

At IrisLogic, we continuously work with our technology partner to develop strategies and development platforms catered towards e-commerce and adoption. We help our customers understand what it necessitates to have a higher click through’s transformed to real business through mobile and web platforms. We provide e-commerce analytics that helps our customers understand business cycles.

Whether its integrating secure payment engines or using crypto currency enablement, we can help businesses identify critical aspects and plan for the future. Real-time alerts and feedbacks of inventory, supply chain, merchandise, check out,
and security is not only important but gives confidence to the customer to shop at your virtual location! Contact us to explore how IrisLogic can help you grow your intuitive click through.

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The worldwide e-commerce industry is witnessing an ‘explosive’ growth spurt, with predictions estimating an average growth of 6% YoY, and the industry topping $27 Trillion by 2027.  There is no time like now to be in the e-commerce business and internet retailers are aiming for big growth in 2024.

An e-commerce business allows you to reach new customers, across the globe, with relative ease. While ambitions and plans are ripe, the questions that e-commerce business owners must ask themselves is, ‘Is the product or service relevant to a wider audience’, “Is there a demand for it?’ and ‘Is your infrastructure ready for the growth and expansion?’

For businesses ready to expand globally as well as locally, here are 5 key tips to make sure your infrastructure is growth-ready:

1) Design a scalable e-commerce infrastructure:

When building your infrastructure and defining back-end processes keep expansion in mind. Ensure that the infrastructure is cloud-based and offers flexible growth packages. Prefer providers who ensure secure off-site technology resources and flexible automation.

2) Make the most of ‘Data Analytics’:

In addition to maintaining a 20% redundancy, create predictive IT models based on data analysis to link to business goals. Predictive models will help you identify the present status and determine the required IT infrastructure for the coming year.

Additionally, implement a converged infrastructure for user data and online trading information. Drawing insights from the vast amount of data available increases your capacity to predict oncoming traffic and their patterns so your infrastructure is ready 24×7. The icing on the cake is that it will also help you personalise the experience for your customers. Customers have been exposed to personalised experiences from the likes of Amazon and Netflix, and have come to expect the same level of personalisation from online retailers, where product offerings are highly targeted and not simply ‘one size fits all’.

3) Be Mobile-ready:

Mobile commerce has come a long way over the past few years. The mobile commerce sales are expected to account for over 25% of a successful e-business, and it’s not an avenue to overlook. Customer expectations have evolved too, driven by larger screens, smoother buying experiences, better mobile search and context-driven discovery. Customers no longer expect simple optimisation or the website to just ‘work’ on their mobile phones. Designing a unique experience that works in synergy with a phone’s size and functionality is critical and not seeing a phone screen as the newest ‘shop-window’ is an e-commerce pitfall.

4) Price it right:

Pricing is the key to competitive advantage and in the world of ever-changing dynamics in e-commerce, it is best to embed an automatic price intelligence solution. An automatic price intelligence solution can record, store and analyse price related information from other sites in real time. Use this information to automate the adjustment of the price of your products within acceptable margins, and stay competitive while improving your overall gross margin.

5) Fulfilling the commitment:

The most critical step in an e-commerce business is of course fulfilment. Invest time in building a detailed operations-plan to deliver robust logistics and support capabilities. The plan should include supply-chain and transportation plans based on information from local teams, and should also allow for real-time inputs from the on-ground team covering the entire process from order receipt to delivery.

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