The E-Commerce Evolution

Introduction

The following shows the timeline of the commerce, from the brick-and-mortar store to an Omnichannel approach.

Brick-And-Mortar

Web Page

Ecommerce

Multichannel

Omnichannel

All of us know the traditional brick-and-mortar store when consumers go to store to buy what they need. Everything happen in the store, from the sales to the marketing.

When the www (World Wide Web) came to life, many stores published their business on a web page (many of them still do). This webpage usually shows business information, the product catalog and product detail, mong others. The particular characteristic of this kind of web application is that consumers only can browse the page and do not interact with the web application, for instance to search a product by a keyword is not possible.

The evolution of the a simple web page is the e-commerce. In a e-commerce web application consumers interact with the application. They can search products, filter results, have a shopping cart and finally make a payment. We usually call this kind of system “transactional system” because there is a backend system where business transactions are executed. A transaction can be a credit card payment, for instance.

Multi Channel

With the arrival of mobile technologies like tablets and smartphones a new form of commerce appeared, it was called the Multi-Channel retailing. Here retailers implemented different channels (web, mobile phones, stands, etc. ) to allow consumers to access their businesses. The problem of this approach is that every channel is like a silo, usually independent, with a different user experience and using different back end systems. This brings some problems like data islands, different look and feel, more infrastructure costs, lack of coordinations for shipments and stock control, more costs for the operations among others.

Omnichannel

The next step to the Multi-Channel approach is the Omni-Channel, where the concept of silos is removed by providing an integrated and unified experience to consumers.

On this approach there is a high level of integration among channels, they are completed integrated to offer an unified and seamless experience to customers. Omni-Channel can help shops win customers’ attention by managing the customer relationship and influencing loyalty program using every single channel. Al data (shopping carts, products, customers, profiles, history, etc.) are centralized and managed.

Thanks to the centralized routing of every access, an Omni-Channel platform boosts the visibility across channels, which means that customers can be tracked over channels to comprehend and serve them better. The omnichannel approach is good for following the whole shopping experience that usually shoppers do.

Omnichannel's pros

Summary

Nowadays online information systems are playing an important part for selling products and reach more customers globally. In 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online, and the US Department of Commerce announced that 53% of the global internet users made an online purchase in 2016. As we can see these statistics show us how huge is this market and why it so important that shops must have online presence of their business. In the article Boost the Mall Business In the Digital Era is discussed a bit deeper why an omnichannel solution should be implement and how it can help Mall business.