Back-to-School: Making shopping easier key to driving customer loyalty, engagement

This is the seventh installment of a 10-part series Retail Customer Experience is publishing this summer to help retailers shape and hone the all-important back-to-school sales strategy. We’re looking for some great ideas and efforts from the retailers for the final parts of series, so if you have a back-to-school retail experience to share, emailus!

As Retail Customer Experience has detailed earlier in the Back-to-School series, mobile technology is playing a greater role in the consumer shopping experience. New technologies are also providing a variety of functions, such as helping consumers integrate store-specific shopping lists and interactive maps into a store’s branded app. The maps show store layouts and guide shoppers along the most efficient path to pick up all the items on their list.

In-store software-as-a-service technology is proving successful for some of the biggest names in retail, including Target, Lowe’s and Meijer. The three retailers rely on Seattle-based Point Inside to track consumer data, so Retail Customer Experience sat down with its CEO and co-founder, Josh Marti, to gain insight on how retailers can capitalize on such tools to drive data insight. 

Considered an expert in wireless location-based services, Marti was responsible for several of Qualcomm’s largest gpsOne deployments prior to co-founding Point Inside in 2009. Voted a Seattle "40 Under 40" honoree in 2012, he holds a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from Seattle University.

RCE:What does today’s consumer want in a mobile shopping experience as the back-to-school season hits?

Marti: Most consumers view mobile phones as a tool to assist with their in-store shopping trip. According to Deloitte, 80 percent of shoppers plan to use their phones to help them shop for back-to-school items. When consumers search for an item on their smartphone, such as pink backpacks or Superman lunchboxes, they’re planning an in-store trip, not purchasing that item via their device. Therefore, mobile shopping experiences should be geared toward completing the purchase in the physical store, not on the smartphone. When doing back-to-school shopping, most consumers are in a hurry and want to get what they need as quickly as possible. Retailers’ mobile apps should help make their shopping trip easier by answering the two biggest questions consumers have when shopping in-store: “Do you have it?” and “where can I find it?” If retailers can answer those two questions, they will make consumers’ back-to-school shopping experience much easier. Today’s consumer also wants to save money and easily find relevant deals and product recommendations that are available in their local store, which retailers can enable in their mobile experience.

RCE: When a tool helps make shopping navigating easier isn’t that hurting a retailer in the sense a customer’s ‘meandering’ or ‘wandering’ (which can often leads to impulse buys) a lost opportunity?

Marti: Consumers enter big box retail stores such as Target or Meijer with shopping lists and if they can’t find items on their list, they’ll leave. We’ve found that customers’ number one frustration while shopping is that they can’t find items in-store. By helping shoppers find the items they need more easily, retailers are actually increasing sales. We’ve found shoppers who use a mobile app with Point Inside’s StoreMode platform, which includes in-store maps and navigation features, have an increased basket size of two to four times that of shoppers who do not use a retail app with StoreMode. Also, most shoppers allocate a certain amount of time to completing a shopping trip, so if they find all of their items quickly they will use the extra time in-store to find additional items that were not originally on their shopping list. In fact, 73 percent of shoppers are likely to buy additional items once in the physical store.

RCE:How prevalent is online back-to-school shopping compared to last or like five years ago? Are more consumers looking for the venue as a way to beat crowds, keep costs down, etc. and what can a retailer do to ensure that doesn’t hurt their business yet keep the consumer engaged?

Marti: Online shopping certainly makes up a portion of retailers’ back-to-school sales, but studies show consumers prefer to shop at physical stores. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, 83 percent of back-to-school purchases will be in physical stores this year. This indicates retailers should focus on enhancing the in-store shopping experience via mobile. In fact, mobile influenced about 30 percent of in-store sales last year and we can expect this number to grow given emerging technologies. Also, connected shoppers are more valuable. Those who shop digitally and in the physical store purchase up to three times more than a shopper who only shops in the store. Retailers will need to leverage the in-store and mobile shopping experience to keep consumers engaged and that will require a strong mobile-focused omnichannel strategy.

RCE:Back to school shopping is either something super fun or something a parent/child dreads. Can you share a specific example or anecdotes of enhancing the shopping experience for today’s consumer?

Marti: Our platform offers several features that are particularly helpful for busy parents who want to get their back-to-school shopping done as quickly as possible. For example, consumers can create shopping lists in Target’s mobile app before they enter the store, and when they open the app in-store it will show them the most efficient route to pick up the items on their list. They can also check whether a store has the specific item they’re looking for in-stock to avoid the frustration of making a trip to Target for a backpack that sold out yesterday. We’ve found that shoppers do actually find these features useful — shoppers who use features such as shopping list creation and product discovery show a four to five times increase in interactions compared to users of apps without such features, such as Point Inside’s StoreMode. Providing information that is genuinely helpful for shoppers to find what they are looking for, discover new items and shop faster enhances the in-store shopping experience.