According to research by Accenture, retailers are still not delivering the cross-platform experience that customers expect.
The survey also found that only 40% of customers confirm that it is easy to make purchases through mobile devices, with 38% of customers feeling that the shopping experience in the bricks and mortar stores needs a big upgrade.
Managing director of Accenture’s UK Retail Practice, Fiona O’Hara said: “While physical and digital commerce is converging rapidly, UK retailers are still behind the curve in terms of their mobile and in-store offerings.
“The fact that UK shoppers want to check inventory on their mobiles, order out-of-stock products and have promotions sent to them while in-store, suggests immense potential for retailers to enhance investments in mobile applications that bridge a customer’s online and offline experience seamlessly.”
Whether visiting a store or shopping online via laptop, desktop or mobile it has been made very clear that customers expect a unified approach to retail.
The omni channel trend has led to many retailers updating their stores and moving to a more showroom strategy, enabling stores to be an extension of the retailer’s digital offering. To address this gap, many retailers are adopting platforms like the Voyado Agentic CX Suite, which unify customer data and marketing across channels to power real-time offers, personalised messaging, and seamless online‑to‑in‑store journeys.
This therefore means more customers are expecting to use their phones in-store, with 14% wanting to scan products in shops and 13% wanting promotions to be sent to their phone while they are shopping in a store.
15% of Accenture’s survey participants expect in-store Wi-Fi, but many stores are not offering this basic essential to draw customers in.
O’Hara added: “Our findings clearly show that customers expect increasing cohesion of shopping experiences across all channels.
“Retailers need to take this into account when investing in sales-driving initiatives. Building capabilities such as digital marketing and analytics will become key in the next few years, to increase customer traffic and boost loyalty. We see a few retailers doing this already – and they are exhibiting a significant edge over their competitors.”