Digitalisation and the changing face of retail

Now retail is slowly reawakening, with stores opening again and retailers looking to draw customers back in-store. But both the in-store and online retail experience will be very different to how it was before the pandemic and the digital experience is going to more important than ever.

What challenges do retailers now face in coming up with a genuinely digital first strategy, what role does personalised content play in this and how important is a strong and consistent user experience?

The digital customer experience

Consumers have higher expectations in 2020 than they have ever done. They want the latest products, at a competitive price. They want interesting and personalised content from brands, not generic communications that holds no value for them. It is easy for people to take their business elsewhere if the experience does not measure up to their expectations and needs. A recent Nuxeo study: Navigating the new normal: How customer experience has become even more important for retailers and brands as they look to the future’ revealed the importance of the digital customer experience. Predictable contributors to a positive digital shopping experience included easy navigation, rapid search, and clear pricing. But today’s consumers also expect a detailed view of products – with images and video - as well as well-worded and accurate descriptions.

Shoppers also want easily digestible access to information about products. Online, consumers increasingly want to be able to view products from different angles, to replicate as much of the physical shopping experience as possible. Fashion-wise, this might be the ability to view items in other colours not currently available in store.

Content is also a central component of the digital experience and the Nuxeo research illustrated just how important content is. 41% of UK shoppers said they engaged at least once a week with a brand or retailer’s mobile app; 42% via a retailer’s website and 28% via a brand’s web site, while social media was also widely used to engage with brands.

24% of respondents said they engaged with a favoured brand’s content via Facebook every day, with 15% doing so via Instagram and 10% via Twitter. Just 5% of consumers overall engage with retailers and brands via TikTok every day, but in the youngest age category this rises to 14 per cent.

The nature and quality of this engagement can build and develop relationships with customers. 29% of consumers said personalised content from a retailer makes them feel more valued and 28% said it made them more likely to buy again. More than four in 10 of UK shoppers say they have recommended a retailer because of the quality of the content they share, rising to almost six in 10 of 16-to-24 year-olds.

Delivering digital Customer Experience with Product Asset Management

Retailers and brands struggling to bring new product innovations to market quickly, or to respond in a timely way to new trends, risk losing valued customers to rivals. But delivering such an experience

is no small undertaking. Suppliers can have an inability to generate and distribute relevant product information and enticing visual experiences, quickly and efficiently.

In many cases, it can take brands and retailers many months to bring a new product to market, with all the positioning and promotional materials required to support the launch and subsequent sales. The good news is that the technology exists today to satisfy these requirements. With a coordinated approach to Digital Asset Management (DAM) across the customer journey, retailers and brands can give customers the confidence and appetite to purchase and to keep coming back.

DAM has long been an important technology in terms of marketing, but in recent years has become invaluable when looking at the larger product lifecycle and has evolved into product asset management (PAM) approach. PAM is a strategy to leverage enterprise digital asset management technology across the product lifecycle.

Product Asset Management and the digital supply chain

By providing a common platform for critical product information (both assets and data) at key points in the product lifecycle (design, packaging, campaign development, etc.). The result is that the role that digital assets and data play in helping retailers and brands bring new products to market more quickly has grown and will continue to do so as consumers demand this.

Adopting a PAM strategy enables companies to bring new products to market more quickly by enabling a digital supply chain and eliminating previous analogue dependencies and bottlenecks. This approach creates value by connecting the product data with the associated content assets in an intelligent way. PAM supports a consistent view of product-related assets and associated data throughout the product value chain, in turn driving revenue growth through reduced time to market.

With consumer demands growing around digital experience, PAM becomes an even more important strategy moving forward. It takes content beyond the marketing department, connecting it to data and other assets across the organisation. This connection means that PAM informs the digital experience across different business functions and at multiple touchpoints, making it easier to be more consistent in message and tone, and better meeting consumer requirements regarding the digital customer experience.