Online education portals like Udacity and Coursera are really changing the world of remote learning in significant ways. By making free and high quality education accessible to a global audience, these platforms are opening up undreamt of possibilities for communities around the world to improve, grow, and prosper in the digital economy of the 21st century. Education at top tier colleges and universities has traditionally been a social and economic privilege, but now anyone can join in the learning revolution by sitting in virtual classrooms with the world’s best and brightest educators. Whether this involves learning how to code and build smart phone apps, or starting up a new business, or learning about public health literacy, the sky is the limit of what’s now possible.

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m-commerce-and-omni-channel-marketing-solutions-for-the-digital-business-part-2

by | Mar 18, 2014

Disruptive and emerging technologies in the areas of mobile, cloud, and social media continue to flood the market with new and creative innovations. As a result of these vast changes businesses must keep up with the new and heightened set of customer expectations about what it means to effectively engage with new products, brands, and services. Quite simply, to be successful in today’s hyper-competitive market, organizations need to be all things to all people; they need to appeal to and engage with customers when, how, and where they want it.   Businesses must meet the needs of mobile consumers who rely almost exclusively on their smartphones for purchasing merchandise. Businesses also must keep in-store customers engaged at all levels as well. The reality today is that shoppers entering your premises will be ready with their smartphones to check for the latest coupons and shopping incentives. So begin by asking yourself the following: “How is my business today prepared to meet the increasing needs and expectations of the modern, tech-savvy digital customer?”

 

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Creating an effective M-commerce and Omni-channel strategy requires cooperation and collaboration across all segments of your organization. The process will obviously vary from business to business, but there are two major paradigm shifts that all organizations must face before starting down this path. They are outlined as follows:

 

  • Mind your digital business: Understand what it means to be a digital business. Simply stated, a digital business is one that has made the transition to using technology as a competitive advantage in its internal and external operations. There is simply no other way to retaining a competitive advantage. Technology is THE key differentiator in today’s global market!

 

  • Become a social business: Similar to the definition above, but even more comprehensive, is the notion of a social business. A social business is one that draws on the latest trends in technology, work, and society to optimize business outcomes. To summarize one source, “Making social business work requires focus on a company’s culture, connections, content exchanges, and measurement and analytics.”

 

Once your organization has considered the modern conception of business as digital and social, it must implement the structural and organizational aspects of that model through a set of deliberate best practices. While by no means exhaustive, there are a core set of practical recommendations for mining the M-commerce and Omni-channels to marketing your brand, products, and services today. Let’s start first with those that focus more on the M-commerce segments of your digital business.

 

 

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  • Create a responsive web experience: In today’s competitive mobile market your business minimally requires a mobile optimized website that changes based on the device (laptop, tablet, phone) it is viewed on.

 

  • Be Multi-platform and multi-device friendly: This is a first step for developing a seamless, integrated, holistic user experience. Ensure that your customers can reach your brand on any device. Make it easy on the customer and they’ll return again and again and recommend your products to others.

 

  • Offer a great user interface (UI). Don’t go cheap when it comes to user experience design and testing. Each website and app should be faced with the same serious questions: “Is this easy enough for a three-year-old to use? A 103-year-old?”

 

  • Leverage in-store product scanning technologies: Provide customers with the option to scan products with their smart devices when they are physically in the store to gain incentives and savings. RedLaser and SnapTell are just some of the growing number of applications that enable this technology.

 

  • Be social media savvy: Ensure that your applications are integrated with social media; many customers will use their mobile devices to share reviews, rate products, and make comments on social media platforms.

 

  • Need for a store locator service: Ensure that the store locators are postal code enabled and that customers can find the shortest route to the nearest store with a GPS enabled device.

 

Stay tuned in Part 3 where we’ll discuss some further ways to ensure your digital business is fully aligned with marketing best practices that will provide your customers with many happy returns.

 

 

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Ralph Eck

About Ralph Eck

Ralph is an international businessman with a wealth of experience in developing; telecommunications, data transmission, CATV and internet companies. His experience and expertise positions him uniquely in being able to; analyze, evaluate and critique technology and how it fits into a business’ operational needs while supporting its’ success.