By Ruth Richter • April 19, 2017
Online shopping used to fall significantly behind in-store shopping, but those trends changed last year when Black Friday online purchases overtook in-store purchases. This trend is only expected to continue, and companies wanting to stay ahead of the curve have increased their online shopping offerings, many using Sage 100 e-commerce integration applications that help them process more orders, faster and better than their competitors.
Whether you’re already using your Sage 100 system for e-commerce integration, or you’re just now considering it, here are four interesting trends you should be aware of for this year’s e-commerce initiatives.
Learn more about Sage 100 e-commerce integration or e-commerce tips and tricks without having to read: contact ROI Consulting online or by phone at 402-934-2223, ext. 1 to get the most up-to-date e-commerce information from the experts.
- Omnichannel Shopping
Omnichannel has been a trend for a few years now, but even your most patient customers now expect a seamless experience across multiple channels. Back in the day, this multi-channel integration was limited to marketing and brand messaging, but now customers expect that they can get the same discounts, layouts, options, and experiences no matter how they’re interacting with your company.
While a good e-commerce platform goes a long way toward standardizing your customers’ experience on their phone and desktop, your company will also have to have instant, real-time access to customer orders and preferences, so you can answer any questions they have before, during, and after their order process.
- Personalized Service from Chatbots
Offering live chat has been an online differentiator that many companies are still considering. With the advent of chatbots, your customers can now get the interactive, helpful shopping experience they crave—and you won’t have to man your live-chat portal 24 hours a day to ensure customer satisfaction. E-commerce platforms are increasingly offering this new technology, and companies that integrate their Sage 100 system are sure to pull ahead in terms of customer insight.
- Interactive Shopping
How do you shop? Do you collect everything you’re interested in all at once and then remove options as you compare? Do you find a few items that match your interests and then search for similar items? Do you search by color, shape, size, or solution type? However you shop, it’s unlikely you choose the first option you find—and it’s unlikely your customers will either.
To add more complexity, if your customers call your offices for help, your team will have to offer a similar shopping experience to your customers over the phone; but to do that, your employees will need to search your Sage 100 system in their own unique ways.
Sage 100 e-commerce integration will help your company create a number of classifications for all of your products so that your customers can search how they want … and so that your employees can search for products in their unique ways as well.
- Increased Mobile Purchasing
A recent study by Cisco suggests that mobile purchasing will reach 80% by the year 2020, and that means that any time, anywhere shopping is on the rise. Since digital wallet software such as ApplePay and Google Wallet are also now starting to become more popular, that means that customers won’t think twice about making snap purchases no matter where they are.
The bad news about this is that, since your customers are making purchases impatiently and on the go, you’ll also need to get back to them about their order fast. If your customers spend too much time obsessively checking their mobile email because your slow data-entry process delays their order confirmation, the more likely they are to regret their purchase and possibly cancel.
E-commerce integration will help you speed up order-processing time on your end so that you can deliver customer confirmations in record time. This way you can deliver customer satisfaction to your customers anywhere and any time.
Stay Ahead of the Sage 100 E-Commerce Curve
Trends come and go, but having more ways to sell to your customers and delivering better customer service are always best practices. Speak with one of the e-commerce integration experts at ROI Consulting to learn how your company can meet or exceed customer expectations when you sync up your webstore with your ERP.
Learn more when you contact ROI Consulting online, or call us at 402-934-2223, ext. 1.