Learnings from a crash course in omnichannel shopping options
by Steve Bishop
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How fast can shopping get a lot more "omnichannel"?
The answer is very fast. My wife broke her leg pretty badly in a ski accident last winter – and BOOM! Suddenly our shopping habits changed – a lot.
For retailers who are wrestling with the transition to omnichannel, here’s a shopper’s-eye-view of what that transition looks like and a checklist of what mattered most to us about the omnichannel experience.
1. Bring it to me.
My wife couldn’t walk or drive for about a month, and I couldn’t stop working to take care of her and the house. We needed delivery service in the worst way, so we leaned heavily on Instacart. It covers a lot of the stores we shop, like Jewel and Costco, and we used them for occasions at both ends of the spectrum: immediate need and stock-up. Since Instacart is really a middle-man, we couldn’t access our store reward programs or get the Costco rebate. The website was easy to use though; we could update online orders up to the last minute, and the shopper would call before they left the store to see if we needed anything else.
For us, the biggest downside was not being able to access the full store inventory easily. You can type in specific items that aren’t on Instacart’s list (or even submit a picture), but we noticed that the shoppers often had trouble finding these items.
2. Cook for me!
We also needed meal help. Sorry, I am not a cook, and even though my wife was at home, she wasn’t allowed to stand up except briefly – so MyFitFoods went from a once-in-a-while option at our house to our regular meal source. They cater to people like us who can’t or don’t want to cook, but who want to eat fresh, healthy prepared meals. You order online and pick the meals up at the stand-alone store. The 3-day lead time wasn’t great, a loyalty program would have been nice, and I wished they would change up the menu more often, but it was a lot of what we were looking for – a way to eat healthy while getting through this. (I’d have signed up for delivery if they’d offered it.)
3. Get personal.
Here’s where Walgreen’s shined. My wife could order the exact personal care products she wanted online (me and 400 varieties of shampoo, not good odds). We could also collect prescriptions and minor groceries/household goods at the same time. They made it easy to use the rewards program online, and I could pick up the order or have it delivered. That was great flexibility and convenience.
You may have noticed all three of the above are digital/physical hybrids, but we did our share of online-only shopping also.
When timing wasn’t an issue, we shopped frequently at Amazon.com. We tried to shop Ulta for health and beauty care products, but when their online store didn’t offer the same products as the brick and mortar, we went to drugstore.com – a new service for us, and one we’ll keep using. When we needed to buy a specialty supplement from Whole Foods that wasn’t listed on Instacart, we opted for Amazon rather than take a chance on them not getting it right.
The result: An omnichannel checklist
Retailers have a lot to think about when they’re transitioning to omnichannel, and the details can be so overwhelming that it’s hard to keep the goal in focus sometimes – that is, the goal of serving shoppers’ needs better.
In that spirit, here’s a checklist of what mattered most to us about our deep dive/plunge into the omnichannel experience.
- Could we order full in-store inventory online? Could we make that order from a mobile device easily?
- Was the previous order saved for future shopping lists?
- Did we have the option of delivery if wanted/needed ?
- Could we get access to good-for-you prepared meals, not just ingredients?
- Did our loyalty programs follow us in these new areas?
- Could we get in and out of the store fast if we were picking up an online order?
We probably won’t keep up this level of omnichannel activity in the future, but I also know we won’t go all the way back to where we were before either. And the checklist? It’s become a pretty good report card for how we evaluate retailers’ omnichannel offerings and their ability to fit into our live
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