Accelerating Retail with Data-Driven Storefronts & No-Code Automation

In this next normal, solely depending on a basic eCommerce storefront is no longer enough. To engage shoppers and nurture loyalty, retailers have to invest in a rich, multi-channel, intuitive customer experience built on a foundation of data-driven but actionable insights.

"It's frustrating", Sangeeta said. "Half the time my fav color is not available, and at other times the product itself is sold out. Why are they trapping me with good-looking pics if I can't buy anything?"

"Well, don't trust everyone selling on WhatsApp or Instagram," Deepak chimed in.

This is very often the state of online retail today. A set of broken windows across your storefront.

94% of online shoppers say a negative review from someone like Sangeeta or Deepak convinces them to avoid a business. Yet, only 2% of retailers actually invest in building a centrally connected, multi-channel online storefront that avoids such pitfalls.

Rising Acquisition Costs & Purchase Flywheel

In the early days of eCommerce, paid marketing alone was a viable, economic customer acquisition channel. But this soon changed. Customer acquisition costs have never been this high. Even before the pandemic, organic reach in FB and Instagram was down to a mere 5%, forcing more ad-spends, which in turn drove up paid marketing costs. In fact from 2015 to 2019, paid marketing costs increased a whopping 50%.

This shift is now compounded by the fact that in Q4 2020 alone, online retail grew by 36% in India. By 2024, India is on track to become a $100Bn behemoth from a mere $30Bn in 2019 – surpassing the USA by 2026 to become the world's 2nd largest eCommerce industry.

On the other hand, customers are now shopping online for experience along with convenience – not just for the price. According to McKinsey, consumers were more willing to switch brands in 2020 due to rapidly growing choices online. Couple this with the massive adoption of digital shopping in all age groups & income segments. Today, if a shopper does not get a good experience, she quickly loses trust and moves on to the next seller who fulfills her need, instantly.

And then, she tells her network about her bad experience.

In this next normal more than ever before, the customer purchase journey is no longer a funnel but a flywheel. As a retailer if you Attract a shopper's attention but cannot Engage and Delightthem into a purchase, you're left paying a pretty heavy penalty by losing not just her but her network of trusted followers.

Most brands & retailers rely on large operating teams to accelerate the flywheel. Service providers also promise relief – but often leave them with bulky patch-worked systems that need high maintenance. Both these approaches are not scalable, and very expensive.

So, how can retailers get stellar shopper engagement and customer delight without breaking the bank?

Actionable Data & No-code Automations

The foundation for a high growth business which flawlessly scales their customer experience is actionable data.

When retailers come online, abundant data often ends up becoming a confusing mass of spreadsheets needing specialists. Each channel, each part of the flywheel is silo-ed, creating more complexity.

A centralized backend connected to all channels is ground zero. Without software know-how, this can seem like a herculean task – but today, self-serve SaaS platforms like Shopify integrate channels, from WhatsApp to Amazon, in just a few clicks.

The next step is constantly monitoring these multi-channel data streams in order to catch every shopper drop-off point. There are several eCommerce SaaS apps today that convert raw data into actionable workflows. Such data-driven workflows only need a one-time setup and no coding knowledge.

For example, Privy helps sellers automatically target the right messages to shoppers who've browsed but not purchased or added products to their carts but not checked out. Yotpo helps sellers automatically collect & share the most recent UGC from Instagram as social proof the minute shoppers interact with their products. Other apps like ModeMagic enable dynamic highlights on best-selling products based on data of top sellers, or mark products that are selling out as 'only x left' etc. to create a real-time storefront across channels.

Next Normal is Connected, Omni-Channel, Real-Time

Creating data-backed intuitive shopping experiences is pivotal to online success. Large brands & retailers set up enormous operational teams and implement expensive on-premise technologies, often through service providers, to try and achieve this today.

But as more consumers resort to 24/7 shopping from the comfort of their homes, operator-led workflows and dependency on service providers will no longer work out.

The answer to anytime+anywhere shopping is SaaS solutions connected to real-time data streams, and NoCode Automations have made this accessible for everyone.

So, the next time Sangeeta catches her 5-year-old's favorite red dress on Instagram, she can rest assured that the retailer is only showing real-time information to her across channels. Sangeeta and Deepak will be able to buy the exact dress their daughter wants so much for her birthday, without getting disappointed just as they're pulling out PhonePe.

About the author

Kausambi Manjita, Founder & CEO, Mason

Kausambi Manjita is the Co-Founder & CEO at Mason, a no-code SaaS platform that is helping small businesses to transform their e-retail storefronts. She is an award-winning & venture-capital backed entrepreneur with 12+ years of Enterprise, People & Product expertise.

With a decade of experience, Kausambi brings in unique insights across multiple segments of the industry such as product analytics and management. Having grown up in small towns across India, Kausambi strongly believes in the importance of making access to technology to succeed in the online world.

Kausambi holds an MBA degree from the Indian School of Business Hyderabad, one of the country's most prestigious B-Schools. In the initial years of her career, Kausambi worked with some highly reputed companies like Yantra (acquired by IBM Labs, then in IBM Labs, NCR Corporation), Paytm, and Myntra. She has won the WEQ 2017 Award from Gracehopper Foundation & DST (Govt of India) as the top emerging women tech entrepreneur.

Her love for stories, media, product & community manifested into her first startup called Storeo.io – the first of its kind Community-Led Podcasting Platform for South Asia. in 2018, she also founded Kubric, a video and banner automation platform to help designers remove limits from their creativity and imbibe innovation.