Picture this…

You’re browsing the Nike website for a new pair of running trainers and save a few pairs for later.

Then, you take a second look, pick your favourite, and add them to your basket.

However, at that moment, your cat runs over your keyboard, quits all your tabs, and you can’t be bothered to load them up again to checkout.

Later on, whilst you’re scrolling through Instagram, you see an advertisement for those exact pair of Nike running trainers. Coincidence? Probably not.

That’s the work of a great omnichannel marketing strategy.

In this article, we’re going to look at omnichannel ecommerce in 2024, as well as the trends and best practices that you can use to shape your Shopify store’s strategy.

But first, let’s define what omnichannel actually means.

Omnichannel marketing for Shopify stores

What is an omnichannel marketing strategy?

The purpose of this is to ensure that your customers can seamlessly interact with, and navigate through your products, offerings, and services.

As customers move down the sales funnel, they go through multiple touch points, both online, and offline. So it’s important for your businesses’ branding and messaging to stay consistent throughout their journey.

Omnichannel marketing also allows customers to engage with your brand on their own terms, and on whichever platform they are most comfortable, without friction, leading to a better customer experience.

Benefits of omnichannel marketing for your Shopify store:

Improved customer experience. Omnichannel integration ensures a smooth and consistent experience for customers, whether they’re browsing your Shopify store, engaging on social media, or visiting a physical store. This cohesive approach enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Increased sales opportunities. By offering multiple channels for customer interaction, such as online, mobile, and in-store, your Shopify store can capture sales from a much broader audience. Customers can start their journey on one channel and seamlessly continue on another, providing more opportunities for conversion.
Better personalisation. Omnichannel data integration enables a more comprehensive understanding of customer behaviour. This data can be used to create personalised marketing strategies, ensuring that promotions and recommendations match with individual preferences and shopping habits.
Identifiable brand tone and vision. When you prioritise having a consistent brand image across all of your platforms and channels, you become more recognisable and understood by customers.

Omnichannel in mobile commerce

There’s no doubt that mobile commerce is, and will continue to shape, both the present and future of Shopify and ecommerce.

By 2025, it’s projected that retail mobile commerce sales will reach $710 billion, far surpassing the $510 billion that was predicted for 2023.

Considering our mobile devices are always by our side, and sometimes without us even realising, influence our daily habits, these numbers aren’t hard to believe. So as a Shopify store owner, it’s crucial that you stay up to date with all of the latest trends when creating a successful omnichannel strategy in mobile commerce.

One way to prioritise an omnichannel approach in mobile commerce is to ensure that your business is both available and accessible on mobile devices. A few ways to do this include:

Create unified user profiles. Make sure that once your customers set up an account with you, they’re accessible across multiple devices and browsers. They should be able to access their accounts, preferences, and purchase history consistently, regardless of where the purchase was made.
Maintain a consistent design. Even though your desktop, mobile, and mobile app designs will differ slightly due to their individual needs, it’s still important that the design, branding, and layout stays consistent. This promotes brand recognition and means that customers can easily navigate regardless of the platform.
Prioritise cross-platform integration. This enables smooth transitions between devices for users. For instance, if a customer adds an item to their cart on your mobile website, ensure the same information is reflected when they switch to your Shopify mobile app.

Shopify mobile apps synchronize with your online store, ensuring that product details, pricing, and promotions are consistent across all platforms. It also means that customers can start their shopping experience on one device and continue on another without any disruptions. This consistency helps build trust and familiarity with the brand and ensures a smooth transition for customers, no matter where they choose to shop. To learn more about how to create a mobile app for your Shopify store, talk to an expert at StoreLab.

5 Omnichannel Marketing Trends for 2024

1 - Buy now, pay later services

One of the best ways to create an omnichannel consumer journey in 2024 is to offer buy now, pay later (BNPL) services.

BNPL services offer huge benefits to customers, allowing them to pay their full order amount over a certain period of time, which is especially important in today’s economy.

Integrations such as Klarna have risen in popularity, particularly since 2020, by offering innovative payment solutions. According to Juniper Research, there are currently 360 million BNPL users worldwide, predicted to grow to 900 million by 2027.

With Klarna, users have the choice between “Pay in 30 Days” and “Pay in Instalments”. Klarna’s user-friendly approach also simplifies the checkout process by allowing customers to make a purchase within seconds, which significantly reduces abandoned carts.

The key is to offer buy now, pay later services across all of your sales channels and platforms, including on your mobile app, website, social media shops, and even in-store. To go one step further in promoting a coherent and smooth-flowing experience between online and in-store shopping is to offer similar services including:

Buy online, pick up in-store
Order in-store, deliver to home
Buy online, return in-store
Buy in-store, return online

Not only do these services offer benefits to customers, but also to you as a Shopify store owner. They’ve proven time and again to increase conversion rates, attract new customers, and help businesses to stay competitive.

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2 - Shoppable content

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all offer shoppable post features that allow users to purchase products directly from your content. Utilising these features creates a more direct, and unified shopping experience for your customers. Plus, interactive/shoppable videos have proved to increase conversion rates up to 70%.

Shoppable content turns an every-day digital browsing experiences into shopping opportunities. Customers can make purchases without even leaving the platform they’re using, which significantly reduces friction during their buying journey, whilst also increasing the number of low-funnel touchpoints.

Some of the most popular ways to create shoppable content include:

Instagram/TikTok live: Instagram and TikTok live can be used to create a shopping experience that allows you to market your brand, sell products and services, and interact with customers. As you present a product during your livestream, you can pin/link to that item on screen. Viewers can also actively participate by asking questions, providing feedback, and, most importantly, making purchases directly during the session.
Product tags: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok allow brands to tag products in posts and stories. This not only targets customers where they’re most comfortable, but also offers a more convenient shopping experience on a single platform. By clicking on tagged products, users can access detailed product information, pricing, and a direct link to make a purchase.
Influencer videos: You can utilise the power of social media by collaborating with influencers to create shoppable posts that drive both engagement and sales. This strategy uses the trust and authenticity associated with influencers, so that viewers are not only inspired by the showcased products, but are also inspired to make an instant purchase with a single click.

For example, Peter Werth launched a Look of the Week campaign on social media. Their posts consisted of a brief explanation behind the inspirational influences of the week and a shoppable photo/video with arrows pointing to each product on the model. Additionally, they created a #LookOfTheWeek hashtag, which was great for community building.

To learn more about how to improve your social media strategy, read our guide: 14 Organic Social Media Tips to Skyrocket Your Shopify Sales.

3 - AR & VR shopping experiences

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences can enhance your Shopify store’s omnichannel strategy by providing immersive and interactive elements that bridge the gap between the online and physical shopping environments.

This technology has revolutionised ecommerce by allowing customers to visualise products in their own environment before making a purchase, which can help you provide a more consistent customer experience across all of your brand’s channels.

AR & VR experiences drive 200% more engagement. Their main goal being to reduce uncertainties when shopping online and increase customer satisfaction. Shopify also found that products advertised with the option for AR/VR content saw a 94% higher conversion rate than products without it.

But the difference between the two is that AR adds digital elements to the real world, whilst VR creates an entirely computer-generated environment.

AR, in particular, has gained popularity by offering features such as virtual try-ons for clothing, makeup, or accessories. This enables customers to see how products might look, fit, or match their skin tone before buying.

MAC Cosmetics offer a virtual AR try-on tool on their website that enables customers to experiment with various products and shades on their mobile device. Users can try on eyeshadows, lipsticks, and even false eyelashes to see which best suits them, which also eliminates the hygiene concerns of testing makeup in-store.

VR, on the other hand, creates immersive shopping environments where customers can explore virtual stores, interact with products, and even stimulate real-world interactions.

IKEA recently launched IKEA Place, an AR/VR mobile application that lets you place 3D products in your home. So, if you’re looking to purchase a sofa, but unsure of what it will look or feel like in a specific room, you’ll have a true-to-size, real-life, and immersive experience to give you a realistic idea.

The Shopify app store offers many tools and plugins that enable seamless integration of AR and VR features into your mobile website, helping to enhance your mobile commerce strategy and customer experience.

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4 - Chatbots

You may already be using a chatbot for your Shopify store, so you likely already know that they’re one of the best ways to provide customer service. You’ve also likely seen how they enhance customer engagement, offer 24/7 assistance, and streamline interactions, which leads to an efficient, user-friendly, and omnichannel customer support experience.

Last year, 88% of ecommerce customers reported that they had at least one conversation with a chatbot.

However, when your chatbot was added, it was most likely designed for the desktop version of your site. If your chatbot has too many buttons, form fields, or options, it can very quickly become overwhelming for a customer to find answers to their questions.

Remember, to provide the best omnichannel experience possible, you need to maintain a consistent customer experience across all of your platforms. So you need to optimise your chatbot for mobile.

Unlike traditional chatbots, mobile-optimised chatbots are designed specifically for smaller screens, touch interfaces, and the on-the-go nature of mobile users.

Responsive design. Ensure your chatbot’s interface is responsive and designed to fit the smaller screens of mobile devices, which provides a great user experience without compromising its functionality.
Touch-friendly interaction. Tailor your chatbot’s interactions to be touch friendly, considering the behaviours of mobile users, such as swiping, tapping, and scrolling, to enhance accessibility and engagement.
Quick responses and concise information. Optimise your chatbot responses to be concise and quickly digestible, considering the limited attention span of mobile users. It’s also important to provide information in a clear and efficient manner to keep interactions smooth and focused.

Gymshark’s chatbot stands out as one of the best examples of mobile optimisation, perfectly blending functionality with a user-friendly design. It not only navigates users through product queries and sizing information, but also integrates with popular messaging apps, such as Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, meeting customers where they’re most comfortable.

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5 - Tailored product recommendations

With 76% of consumers saying they’re more likely to purchase from brands that personalise, Shopify businesses are prioritising the delivery of highly individualised shopping experiences.

Many are creating personalised, tailored product recommendations based on customer profiles and buying history. By analysing data across various touchpoints, including in-store, websites, mobile apps, and social media, online store owners can anticipate customer needs, creating personalised suggestions that lead to a more streamlined shopping experience for customers.

But to use tailored product recommendations as part of your omnichannel strategy, you need to personalise your communication across ALL of the channels that you use to connect with your customers. Only then will you be able to create truly impactful personalisation for shoppers. This includes through your SMS messaging, email marketing campaigns, push notifications, social media advertising, and more.

Here’s some tips for doing so effectively:

Unify customer data. By bringing together data from various sources such as social media interaction, website browning behaviour, and purchase history, you can better understand each customer and their unique buying patterns.
Utilise AI integrations. There are many apps on the Shopify App Store such as Octane AI and Wiser Product Recommendations that use AI technology to generate accurate and timely personalised product recommendations for your customers.
Create customer profiles. Establish unified customer profiles based on data from all touchpoints. Shopify’s omnichannel capabilities allow integration of customer data across both online and offline channels. This unified profile ensures that personalised recommendations are consistent and relevant.

One of the best examples of using tailored product recommendations is ASOS. Their commitment to understanding customer behaviour allows them to create a more personalised and enjoyable shopping journey for their customers. They are renowned for showing:

Styles based on your shopping habits
Sale items similar to styles you’ve viewed, added to your basket, and purchased
Items similar to your saved items
Alternative items for sold out items that you’ve previously saved
Key picks from categories you’ve been looking at

Recommend have written a great case study about ASOS and their use of AI product recommendation and machine learning technology. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can read the article here.

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Omnichannel Ecommerce FAQs

What is an omnichannel marketing strategy?

Taking an omnichannel approach means prioritising a consumer-focused viewpoint by delivering a consistent and harmonious customer experience across all of your brand’s channels. This includes your brick-and-mortar (physical) store, mobile app, website, and social media profiles. The purpose of this is to ensure that your customers can seamlessly interact with, and navigate through your products, offerings, and services.

What are the benefits of omnichannel marketing?

The main benefits of omnichannel marketing for your ecommerce or Shopify store include:

Improved customer experience
Increased sales opportunities
Better personalisation
Identifiable brand tone and vision

Why is an omnichannel approach so important for your customers?

As customers move down the sales funnel, they go through multiple touchpoints, both online, and offline. So it’s important for your businesses’ branding and messaging to stay consistent throughout their journey.

Omnichannel marketing also allows customers to engage with your brand on their own terms, and on whichever platform they are most comfortable, without friction. This ultimately leads to a better customer experience.