Tips to Help Retailers Mind the Multichannel ‘Insight’ Gap

Holiday shopping has certainly changed since the rise of e-commerce and world domination of the internet-connected device. Retail has gone thoroughly multichannel, with shoppers researching, browsing and buying in increasingly diverse ways. Yet the heart and soul of holiday shopping — as well as retail commerce year-round — is still the brick-and-mortar store. In fact, Gartner reports that, even allowing for the increase in revenue from e-commerce, retailers should expect 85 percent of their revenues to come from physical stores through 2016.

Many omnichannel retailers have a big analytic blind spot when it comes to in-store performance — a situation that has to change if they want to make the most of the holiday season. Here's how to get better at closing the "insight gap" between digital and in-store channels:

1. Broaden your data horizons. In the online and mobile world, retailers benefit from the fact that consumers leave a digital trail. Clickstream and social data provide valuable intelligence about shopping patterns, behaviors and preferences. Obtaining similar levels of insight in brick-and-mortar environments requires more than point-of-sale metrics. At a minimum, accurate traffic data (i.e., people counting) is a must. Knowing how many shoppers are entering/exiting in real time, as well understanding traffic patterns over time, is vital for measuring store performance and improving decision making related to staffing, inventory and marketing.

It's also important to capture data at queues (e.g., how long are shoppers waiting in line?) and to track behavior throughout the store (e.g., What paths do most people follow? What displays do they stop at? Are they shopping alone, with children or in a group?). Armed with this information, retailers can get more sophisticated about their brick-and-mortar holiday strategies.

2. Measure the right key performance indicators (KPIs). Being smart about how to analyze brick-and-mortar data is another consideration. For example, one problematic metric is average wait time. Stores sometimes use this as a quick way to assess register service, but capturing individual wait times is the only way to pinpoint specific experiences that can lead to unhappy customers and bad word-of-mouth. Think carefully about what you want to measure or your KPIs may not be helpful in providing the accurate insight needed to achieve service goals.

3. Accurate technology matters. Fortunately, today there are a number of new behavior intelligence technologies on the market specifically designed to help retailers collect and analyze data on in-store customer behavior. When selecting a solution, evaluate with an eye towards accuracy, since capturing data in real-world environments is more variable and susceptible to error than tracking data online (especially during chaotic shopping days like Black Friday).

Can your solution distinguish between adults and children? Between humans and inanimate objects like carts? Is it able to tell whether a shopper is exiting or entering a location? Accurately track a shopper's path through the store? Bad data equals bad decisions, so always consider the accuracy of your chosen data-capture device. The ability for a behavior intelligence system to integrate with workforce management and other enterprise retail systems is also important, particularly for understanding brick-and-mortar intelligence within the context of broader multichannel efforts.

The holiday rush is almost upon us. When it comes to your biggest and most profitable channel, better in-store analytics can help close the "insight" gap.

Steve Jeffery is the CEO of Brickstream, a provider of customer behavior measurement technology solutions.