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The evolved relationship between the retail industry and consumers can be easily attributed to the transformation and innovation in retail. Here’s looking at it in 2022.

In the past couple of years, the upheavals and expectations the retail sector has seen (and has become accustomed to) is no less than a feat. Being first in the line of industries that bore the brunt of pandemic laden curbs and navigating through unending transformation to suit customer needs, the retail sector has undoubtedly become more technologically advanced. 

Though customers’ expectations today are clear and comprehensive, they are also continuously evolving. And to not just match up to these expectations but stay a step ahead, a close watch needs to be kept on consumer behavior. Bridging the gap between digital acceleration and focusing on building customer intimacy is the top priority for retailers. In addition, innovations need to be carried out, as customer loyalty gains a new dimension driven by a deeper customer-brand connection. Here are some retail industry trends in line with customers’ expectations in 2022.

Reimagining Customer Engagement  

In retail, customer engagement is seeing the emergence of new frontiers every day. While digital presence is continuously proliferating to get up close and personal with customers; however, at the same time, physical stores aren’t going anywhere either. In fact, they’re smartening up to match online experiences in ways never imagined. Amazon building physical bookstores since 2015, and its plans to open large-scale retail stores mark the beginning of something new entirely. Retail engagement is fast going from online experiences to creating experience centers. 

While traditional retailers are dabbling into self-checkout kiosks, click-and-collect points, augmented-reality dressing rooms, mobile checkouts and are trying hard to build an online presence—online-only retailers are exploring physical selling. It makes technological infrastructure and technology integration and transformation doubly challenging, and a key element in delivering customers what they want. 

Innovation in Service

While innovation in product isn’t going anywhere for a long time, innovation in service is what’s become a differentiating factor in retail. The battle will be fought not on discounts or lower prices but on differentiation of service coupled with product innovation. Even top product brands like Apple, Samsung, or LG, also rely on their service to differentiate themselves. And great service will play a decisive factor in providing customer experience, building customer loyalty, making service a unique selling point. 

Therefore, whether it is to provide delightful product experiences, impeccable buying journeys, exceptional customer interactions—outstanding service will become a thumb rule for success. And the one thing that will come in hand in serving customers would be trustworthy, excellent quality data. Hence, constantly identifying new data sources to assess customers’ preferences will become the mantra for success.

Art of Delivering Products 

Delivering products to the end customers is no less than an art, an art that stands on a robust, unshakable delivery engine. Last-mile delivery turned out to be the most stringent test for retailers globally during the pandemic, as supply chain lines got majorly affected. However, the revolution in delivery had started before that. In 2019, ‘Checkers’ supermarket in South Africa started a 1-hour grocery delivery service called ‘Sixty60.’ 

Many such examples of speedy delivery can be found across the globe. Amazon is a pioneer in this. More evolutions will happen in this domain; from curbside pickups to rapid hyper-local last mile deliveries, the pace of delivering products to customers will help neutralize the competition for retailers. In addition, innovative delivery mechanisms such as at-public places or in-car deliveries and drone deliveries will play a decisive role in building a superior level of trust with customers.   

Subscription Powered Retail

One of the next big things for retail (among many next big things) is the upsurge of subscription retail. Once again, Amazon has pioneered it through ‘Amazon Prime’ by offering preference benefits, discounts, free home deliveries, and painless returns to its Prime customers. Many fashion brands have also taken to providing subscriptions. Membership plans ranging from 6 months to a year for a small subscription fee are turning out to be a win-win for both customers and retailers; merchants get higher customer lifetime value, and customers get special attention and treatment through concessions and other benefits.

Quite clearly, technology is playing a significant role in it. For example, accurate data management of products, tailored offerings, personalization, and buyers having their individual dashboards displaying real-time status of buying activities—everything contributes to making shoppers buy more and more.

The inevitable shift to a connected environment is known to all, but the pace at which connectivity is increasing is truly magnificent. According to Cisco’s Annual Internet Report, by 2023, devices linked with IP networks would be thrice the entire world’s population. 

This kind of speed and scale in digitalization greatly affects the emotions and responses of consumers, altering their behavior towards a shopping environment forever; thereby, constantly raising their bar of expectations. Moreover, new buying patterns are emerging that shape daily lives and offer both challenges and opportunities to retailers. 

Therefore, while consumers are adjusting their behaviors to technology—products and service providers are adapting to both—customer behaviors and technology. And they must keep doing it.

Wrapping Up

Retailers have lived through an experience of a lifetime where opportunities and priorities have reshaped, industry rules have changed, and strategies have been renewed. To digitally differentiate themselves, retailers must make pointed, well-thought-out digital investments. Everything from supply chain to managing inventories to customers’ digital experiences must be in perfect sync. The Health and safety of both employees and customers have attained great significance and will remain central to customer behavior. Perceptions of cost cuttings will evolve; digital spending cutbacks would be the last thing on the minds of senior executives. New perspectives will emerge on addressing productivity, profitability, and partnerships. 

Retail in 2022 will be an extension of 2021 but will see newer dimensions to retain and engage customers and avert the risks of becoming irrelevant.

Online retailers may face a situation where they want to engage visitors via diverse and visually appealing content but are restricted by the content management capabilities of their eCommerce platform. Possible solutions to this challenge differ depending on weak spots of each platform and a retailer’s expectations can vary from customizing a page editor to integrating a standalone CMS.

In continuation of our guest blog series, we are happy to welcome another contributor: Darya Afonava. She is a marketing partnership manager at ScienceSoft, a US-headquartered provider of IT consulting services and custom software development with 500+ IT professionals located internationally. For the last 29 years, ScienceSoft has been bringing custom and platform-based solutions to large and midsized companies in Healthcare, Banking, Retail, Telecom, and other industries.

Online retailers may face a situation where they want to engage visitors via diverse and visually appealing content but are restricted by the content management capabilities of their eCommerce platform. Possible solutions to this challenge differ depending on weak spots of each platform and a retailer’s expectations can vary from customizing a page editor to integrating a standalone CMS. It’s the second solution we used in the project, that we are going to describe. Let’s see how integrating Pimcore (a full-fledged CMS) has worked out for a retailer working with Magento.

A Short Backstory

Our team was working with a fashion retailer who wanted to implement omnichannel in their business. To put it more accurately, they ran brick-and-mortar stores and presented products online in a Magento-based catalog. However, gradually our customer’s online presence matured into a classy media-rich web store, where they couldn’t just sell but announce in-store events and publish blog posts. The choice of the platform was settled as ‘Magento’, since it fully met their eCommerce requirements and they didn’t see any need to migrate. We too aimed to stay with the platform and deliver effective content management functionality for the customer.

However, due to many years in Magento consulting, we could quickly identify the limitations of Magento CMS for this project. They were:

• An inconvenient page editor
• Limited content types

The solution didn’t take long. We decided to engage two systems – Magento would keep on performing eCommerce functions (order management, marketing promotions, checkout, payment, and more) and a third-party CMS would take over the responsibility for the content. We opted for Pimcore as it provided the level of content management just in line with the customer’s expectations (a fancy web store with diverse content).

What The Integration Offered

When integrated with Magento, Pimcore upgraded the content management in the web store to a higher level. Here are the details:

1) Handy page editing with a drag-and-drop page builder

Magento’s default WYSIWYG editor is inconvenient to go beyond simple information pages and create complex page layouts with banners, images, product lists and more. To counter this inconvenience, Pimcore offers a drag-and-drop page builder. It uses various page types and blocks called editables (that includes banners, images, descriptions, product lists, etc.) to construct a page so that one can experiment with its layout and look.

We tailored the Pimcore application to the customer’s business and created a variety of page and editable types.  With that, we achieved a 5-step process of creating website pages for the customer:

1) Choosing a page type
2) Adding necessary editables to outline the page structure
3) Filling in the editables with content (text, images, links, etc.)
4) Previewing the page and polishing it if needed
5) Publishing the page

While editing pages, content managers work seamlessly with marketing and product information as the product catalog is synchronized with Magento. They don’t need to manually upload products for marketing activities; instead, they easily drag and drop required items while creating promotional banners or product lists.

Suitable for Non-Techies

The drag-and-drop page editor in Pimcore has one more advantage that has turned out to be critical for the customer. Creating a more sophisticated page design in Magento requires the knowledge of HTML and CSS. In our project, this contradicted the customer’s requirements as their marketing team (read: non-techies) handled the content management.
 
Now, the customer is happy with the simplicity of creating content in Pimcore. Marketers can just focus on achieving the desired look and feel of the website, instead of coming up with ways to implement their ideas technically.

2) Diverse Content

The customer wanted their web store to be a community of people passionate about style and fashion. A blog for creating engaging content and a website section for announcing events, were the tools to put the idea into reality.

Magento limits available page types to informational (Home Page, About Us, Customer Service) and catalog (categories, products) pages. While staying solely with Magento, the customer couldn’t engage with their audience in the ways they wanted.

Pimcore supports different content types. As for the described project, we came up with a ‘Blog’ and ‘Events’ section. It is also safe to say that we will be able to scale up easily if the customer wishes to diversify their content in the future.

3) Intuitive Interface

Pimcore comes with a user-friendly interface. There are 3 key elements – Documents, Assets and Data Objects – that are basically the core of content management. Users create website pages in Documents, upload images to Assets and have structured data (categories, products, events) in Data Objects. After a short introductory training, the customer’s marketing team quickly got comfortable with the platform, and now they easily create, transfer, change, replace, and remove content objects.

What CMS Brings To eCommerce Businesses

Online retailers should stand by their ideas to manage the content in their web stores efficiently. Even if an eCommerce platform lacks a strong CMS component, there is always a possibility that can provide an appropriate technical solution. For example, having integrated Pimcore into an eCommerce business, we provided the retailer with a possibility to quickly create pages with complex layouts and rich graphics, announce events in the web store and engage with visitors through their blog.

You neither ignore any customer nor the customer experience. And DAM is necessary across all customer segments to deliver engaging and personalized CX across multiple channels.

Today, customers have tremendous power. Can you imagine what your business looks like without adding the dimension of customer experience? From revenue growth and CSAT perspective, it is unthinkable to turn your back on CX. In both long-term and short-term strategies, you must up the ante to shape your organization’s future of customer experience. Digital assets are one of the essential layers in the sphere of CX that need full attention.

Why? Because enterprises need to deliver the right digital media assets at the right time across all customer touchpoints. These digital assets are also instrumental in marketing, product catalogs, promotions, website creation, and everything else that enriches the customer experience.

But with changing customer expectations, you cannot scale fast without robust capability in digital asset management along with infusing creativity, maintaining brand consistency and integrity, and decreasing the risks of infringement. When all these pillars permeate in the right direction, they automatically bring upliftment in the customer experience universe.

Ignorance is NOT bliss in DAM

You cannot ignore any customer. You need to build interest and trust with all types of customers that your communication is accurate, relevant, and aligned with where they expect. Increasingly, DAM is necessary across all customer segments to achieve this feat, including:

• Improve digital asset creation cycles with transparency and efficiency
• Deliver essential assets for advanced marketing programs like real-time personalized marketing across multiple channels
• Classify and organize digital assets in a robust data taxonomy
• Enhance asset utilization and internal search metrics
• Speed up asset identification, tagging, editing, and cropping
• Distribute diverse digital asset types to a broad array of marketing technology engines
• Deliver consistency and continuity in all brand interactions

The Connection of CX and DAM

Digital asset management is, directly and indirectly, related to customer experience programs. It is hard to provide an engaging CX without mastering the art of managing and distributing digital assets throughout the customer journey. Digital asset management offers tremendous capabilities in order to improve customer experience across diverse channels. They engage the customer, help in developing a personalized touch, and make informed decisions. Here is how:

Customer Experience

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

What’s next?

Once you know customer experience priorities, the next step is to eliminate the challenges with DAM capabilities. First, you must analyze whether a basic DAM solution is suitable for your needs. If not, you also need capabilities like product information management, content management, or digital experience management platform. Along with that, you must also determine how your preferred DAM solution will integrate into your existing ecosystem to improve customer experience across the length and breadth of your sales channels.

The quick gameplan

Investing in customer experience improvement not only benefits customers but can also help your operational teams through improved productivity to focus on things that truly matter to customers. Significantly, a better understanding of customer behavior can serve as the catalyst for taking CX to the next level. So, launch your DAM projects to quickly capitalize on your customer experience journey. Quick things to take care of:

• Develop a business case with a well-defined CX scenario
• Analyze requirements and create the roadmap
• Align stakeholder-developed use cases
• Identify the systems and tools that your DAM system may need
• Select the right-fit integration approach
• Rope in a dedicated DAM specialist to drive real CX values

Virtual reality solutions are becoming popular in almost every industry and real estate field is no exception. Currently, virtual reality Virtual Tour for Real Estate is being used by many companies as a new way to promote and introduce new real estate projects to a wide range of customers.

Virtual Tour Trends in the World and Vietnam

VR Tour 360 is a technology that allows users to enter a virtual world that is simulated as real, fully, and vividly reproducing real images and experiences. This is a technology using real images or 3D simulation images so that users can easily move around, rotate 360 degrees, zoom in and out of locations or view detailed product information right on the website.

In Vietnam, real estate companies are transforming to apply Virtual Tour for real estate technology as an effective sales – kit to increase the ability to close deals with customers. 

Applications of Virtual Tour for real estate

1. Providing true experience

To get the most detailed Virtual Tour, the space of the real estate will be captured 360 by Flycam at the right height or visually simulated 3D for viewers to have a general view, specific visualization, easily interact, move, rotate 360 space, zoom in, zoom out, …

For example, with the LA RIVIÈRE project, you can see firsthand the panoramic view of this villa from above, move and rotate 360 degrees to visit the campus as well as the traffic around the villa or interact specifically with each room inside the model house.

2. Selecting each area to explore easily

With Tour 360, customers can choose to follow the arrow to visit each area as if they were visiting a real project. In addition, customers can choose to move to the desired area through the moving map integrated right on the display screen.

3. Exploring the interior design of the property

In a simple way, after seeing the overview of the project, internal facilities and external facilities,…customers can view the interior design of the property. Here, customers will be able to visit the 360 space of the area, easily move, zoom in, zoom out, in addition, they can also see all the information and attached services from the distributors of the project.

Distributors of real estate projects can integrate additional information to promote images and enhance the value of services they bring. As a result, customers can not only experience the space, but also be provided with more information and then compare and choose the right property.

4. Register to view the project, order, rent,…via  Virtual Tour for real estate platform

In parallel with visiting on virtual reality, Virtual Tour can provide customers with information on booking/renting/buying projects integrated right on the website platform. The system will be redirected to the website, or contact directly via the hotline number provided.

Getting more competitive advantage by using Virtual Tour for real estate 

The investment for Virtual Tour helps many real estate companies gain more competitive advantage in consulting and persuading customers to deposit. The strength of Virtual Tour not only helps customers see the planning, apartments, utilities,… but also helps them have the experience as if they were being present in their future home, even though that project has not yet formed. Besides, Virtual Reality Tour 360 has flexible rendering on any device & browser, which means that customers just need to sit at home and have a smartphone in hand to use it saves. This technology is really the solution to save time, travel costs and increase online interaction!

In addition, real estate companies can also integrate additional information such as: price, address, location on Google map … inside 360 images or videos so that customers can click on the hotspot there and see the information easily. 

Other typical features integrated in Virtual Tour 360 for real estate

1. Locate on Google Maps

This feature is integrated in Tour 360 to help customers determine the location of the real estate project they are interested in, surrounding utilities, traffic connections, etc., from which customers will easily easy to come as well as make decisions

2. 2D Video Integration

To enhance the customer experience, Virtual Tour 360 can directly integrate 2D videos onto the TV/projector screen in 3D space. Thereby providing more information to customers, while simulating the experience like customers are visiting in reality.

3. Moving floor plan in Virtual Tour for real estate

Besides building 3D apartments, Floor Plans are also an extremely useful feature for real estate agents to introduce apartments to customers. The integrated floor plan is not simple to view but fully interactive to move between points in the room. There are 2 types of floor plans that can be selected to be integrated into tour 360 to increase interaction between pixels.

4. Virtual tour guide

The virtual tour guide feature will integrate a Tour Guide to guide customers directly, helping them better understand the project. In addition, Virtual Tour 360 can also integrate with many different languages, helping to diversify the approach to many audiences.

5. Live Guide Tour 

Live Guided Tour – allows you to video call live and guide your customers while they are experiencing Tour 360 on any smart device, helping customers have an authentic product experience like being guided by the service staff like a traditional experience. If you are looking to build a Virtual Tour for real estate for the project you are distributing, do not hesitate to visit our website https://panoee.com/ for more details.