2022 saw an extended period of challenging trading for a lot of retailers - expect more of the same from 2023
2022 saw an extended period of challenging trading for a lot of retailers - expect more of the same from 2023
For a lot of businesses and individuals, 2022 came to a close with a bit of a disappointing bump. For all the optimism, trading conditions have become increasingly challenging, and everyone is having to deal with increasing costs.
Intelligent businesses are now spending less time on 'trending graphical styles' and more time looking for 'better business practices'.
The volume of eCommerce orders reached a peak during 2021, but with the cost of living crisis, but we’ve already seen the speed of growth shrink significantly. In 2023, we’re going to be seeing the same challenges; rising inflation and the cost of living will bite, and spending power will diminish.
In that marketplace, customer loyalty becomes key.
The cost of acquiring a new customer is always higher that retaining a current one; current estimates show that it could be as much as five times more expensive! In the current climate, this only gets more important as recent research suggests that increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-90%.
The question is how to do this, especially as 60% of your customers will have looked at your competitors' products this year. Possible measures include:
After the pandemic and the global shipping crisis, everyone had predicted that 2022 would be a year of recovery, of things getting back on track. Shipping costs would come down, and we’d see the resurgence of the global economy.
That prediction may not have been accurate.
Shipping costs have come down, but while consumer expectations have risen (60% expect delivery within two days), supply chain challenges are still very real, especially in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Research has shown that two thirds of businesses are struggling with their existing supply chain and that they expect the situation to worsen in 2023. Just in Time supply chains simply aren’t holding up in the face of modern demand, so what’s the answer?
You can look at increasing your inventory holding (always fraught with risk), or diversify into multiple suppliers, but these options just aren’t always accessible. Taking steps to digitise your supply chain is an easily achievable way to increase your efficiency and reduce the reliance on your supply chain. Possible measures include:
Typical companies run too many bits of software. Sure, Office 365 is essential, but are all of them? Magento and Shopify users are forced to use plugins to solve every problem, which can lead to dozens of active pieces of software on a single website.
Even something as simple as eCommerce tracking quickly becomes complex. You might use Full Story or Hot Jar to build up heatmaps, Google Analytics to track site traffic, and yet another solution for A/B testing. If you're looking to bring in store sales into the mix, you're looking at yet another solution that will allow you to match sales data with customer location; it all gets very complicated.
Complex order management might require integrations with couriers like DHL, DPD, and Royal Mail, as well as links to ERP systems, Order Management solutions like Veeqo or shiphero, and many more.
Each one of these integrations has it's own pitfalls and crucially, it's own maintenance requirements. What this means is that a typical system is reliant on many plugins; if one fails, it all fails.
The solution is to consolidate your tech stack.
A well-designed platform, offering bespoke solutions, can reduce the need for unreliable (and expensive) third party solutions. That's why Unified Commerce solutions like OMNIS Retail are on the rise; they provide a really simple solution to the problem of omnichannel sales and reporting. With all of your data in one place, there's no need to build a hodgepodge of systems that struggles to communicate.
It just works; lower costs, increased efficiencies, fewer errors.
We've catalogued the issues our clients see on a day to basis, as well as how to avoid them.
This is a huge improvement on the off-the-shelf solution we had before.
Trish Crawford, Woods Furniture
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