Omnichannel

Do you remember when your favorite retailer didn’t have a website? Can you imagine not being able to find your favorite store online today? Unthinkable, right?

With the traditional video game industry in decline, the world's largest video game retailer GameStop figured it would have a lot to lose. Rather than become a dinosaur in a fading industry, however, the Grapevine, Texas-based cross-channel retailer took a series of steps to adjust its business model to remain relevant in an evolving and dynamic marketplace. Chief among those steps was a shift to providing consumers with more digital content.

J.C.Penney is set to launch two new online retail businesses this summer — Gifting Grace and CLAD — thanks to a marketing partnership the retailer formed with Hearst Magazines. The goal? To gain a significant share of consumers' growing e-commerce spend.

As we ring in a new year, many retailers are wondering what's in store for 2011. With an economy that's still bouncing back from the Great Recession, it's hard to predict the future (yet we're going to try anyway). For many retailers, 2010 proved to be a year of recovery. They're hoping to continue down that path again this year. To help you get a feel for what lies ahead, Retail Online Integration surveyed leaders in the cross-channel and e-commerce retail space in the fall of last year to get their predictions for 2011. Here's what we learned.

A new breed of shopper is emerging. Informed, empowered and always connected, this ultrasophisticated consumer demands real choice when it comes to selecting and purchasing goods. Unlike traditional multichannel shoppers, this consumer uses all channels — store, catalog, call center, web and mobile — simultaneously. Enter the omnichannel shopper.

Inferior live chat interactions provide no benefit and, in fact, can be worse than no live chat at all. In a way, it’s just good sense to do something well if you’re going to do it all. But website owners might be surprised to find out that they’re actively turning customers and prospects off if they don’t do live chat right.

New marketing vehicles such as the iPad bring cross-channel retailers innovative ways to reach consumers. But they also complicate life, making it a challenge to get a clear picture of which marketing activities are driving the most traffic to a website.

Toys R Us has taken its Great Big Christmas Book holiday catalog and made it available in a digital version for the iPad, letting children drag items they want to receive into a gift box to create their must-have list for family members.

The recession didn't help many industries, but it may prove the savior of print coupons. Even consumers in their 20s and 30s appear to be adopting the coupon-clipping habit, defying what once looked like long odds, declining newspaper circulation and the growth of digital media.

We're excited to offer you Retail Online Integration's 50 best tips of 2010. Our editorial staff reviewed every word published in our print publication, e-newsletter (The ROI Report) and website over the past year. From there, we've extracted the best money-making and cost-saving pointers. Enjoy.