Published April 14, 2014
I don’t know much about filters or “discovery experiences” as they relate to e-commerce, but an article published on RetailWire the other day caught my attention.
In a recent study of shopping experiences on top retail sites, Compare Metrics and the e-tailing group concluded that most participants find their current shopping experiences “uninspiring.”
How can this be? How can purchasing anything one desires from the comfort of his or her couch be uninspiring? And how does this relate to supply chains? It all boils down to the customer experience and how it relates to e-commerce. Innovations that benefit consumers, such as same-day delivery or customized ordering and delivery methods, help personalize customer experience.
Obviously, personalized customer experience is what’s missing here. And it can be remedied by a supply chain that is flexible enough to meet changing customer demands. If you have an inflexible, cookie-cutter supply chain backing your e-commerce efforts, then customer experiences are more likely to be “uninspiring.”
If you have a distribution facility that can only serve one channel, then you will be challenged to effectively meet the needs of today’s multichannel consumers. If your operations are not demand-driven, then you will struggle to keep up in a complex retail environment where customer expectations change as quickly as new technologies take hold.
What are your customers saying about their online shopping experiences? I’d be interested in hearing how your supply chain and fulfillment operations are changing to meet new demands.
More Resources:
- White Paper: Personalized Multichannel Logistics: Moving Beyond Traditional Distribution and Fulfillment Centers
- Video: The NEW Demand-Driven Operations
- Case Study: Growing E-commerce Company Seeks Distribution and Network Plan
Photo Credit: Michael
