TIP #1

Celebrate, Not Subjugate

Many brands and retailers invite us to put down our technology at home only long enough to go to a store to use more technology.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: I’m the first to evangelize the unprecedented array of technologies at our disposal and the fact that all can add value to the shopping experience. But none of them should be implemented at the expense of the wonderfully physical, human, and kinetic nature of the store. The physicality of a store is not something we should be subjugating with digital, but rather something we should be celebrating!

TIP #2

Feed the Need

We are gatherers. We need to touch, feel, taste, smell, and experience products in a visceral way.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: It’s not about speaking to a chatbot about your product needs. It’s relating with an enthusiastic and delightfully human product expert. It’s not using virtual reality to escape the boredom of the store. It’s using a remarkable store to escape reality—that is, to enter a different world—just for a while! Consumers crave physical experiences at retail not because they can’t get the goods they want online, but because of an almost primordial need to interact with the things we gather.

Photo: TonyV3112/Shutterstock.com

TIP #3

Find the Balance

Finding the critical balance between the physical and the digital is a matter of skillful experiential design.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: Searching for experiential inflection points where shoppers can be physically engaged and immersed is key. Technology can be a vital component of bringing remarkable store experiences to life, but in their rush to accommodate an increasingly connected consumer, retailers must also respect and augment the joyfully kinetic nature of the store.

TIP #4

Integrate Social Merchandising

It’s all about finding the right balance between digital and traditional retail. That’s where digital signposts come in. Every day our consumer behavior is being steadily reprogrammed by digital inputs. We check our devices an average of 220 times per day, but the retail experience can be devoid of the digital signposts we’ve grown to look for.

MAKE THE CONNECTION: How to integrate? Who wouldn’t want to see which styles receive the most likes on Facebook or pins on Pinterest? Wouldn’t it be great to have user-generated video about a high-ticket product offered on the shelf, instead of consumers having to search for it on YouTube?

Successful retailers will be those that stop wringing their hands over the monetary value of a like, pin, post, or follow on someone else’s network and instead begin driving that same digital currency down to their own shelves, where it can be of the greatest value to their shoppers.

Now is the time to truly integrate and connect the online and offline worlds. It’s not about using technology to push more irrelevant coupons or offers at consumers, but rather about using it to offer the valuable social data that’s become an essential part of how they shop.