[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/10\/15\/digital-trends-shopping-stores\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/10\/15\/digital-trends-shopping-stores\/","headline":"High-street shopping: A retail geek’s take on modern stores","name":"High-street shopping: A retail geek’s take on modern stores","description":"Modern shoppers want in-store experiences that mimic the ease of services they get online. Think of it as high-street shopping meets digital.","datePublished":"2015-10-15","dateModified":"2021-12-28","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/joe-ballard\/#Person","name":"Joseph Ballard","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/joe-ballard\/","identifier":106,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8bdda396c035f9641a783230d0170156e091b4e5e94d864d078d10511fff5fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8bdda396c035f9641a783230d0170156e091b4e5e94d864d078d10511fff5fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/FOC_2015-10-15_B_HERO.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/FOC_2015-10-15_B_HERO.jpg","height":370,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/10\/15\/digital-trends-shopping-stores\/","about":[{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/commerce\/","name":"Commerce","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Commerce","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q26643"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/marketing\/customer-engagement-marketing\/","name":"Customer Engagement","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Customer_engagement","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q5196451"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/e-commerce-solution\/e-commerce-general\/","name":"E-Commerce","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/E-commerce","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q484847"]},"Future of Grocery Retail",{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/e-commerce-solution\/m-commerce-mobile-commerce\/","name":"M-commerce: Mobile commerce","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mobile_commerce"]},"Retail Trends, Data, News"],"wordCount":1106,"keywords":["2015 Trends","Brick and Mortar","Customer Engagement","Personalization","Retail","Shopping"],"articleBody":"If the e-commerce boom of the past decade was driven by the \u2018shopification\u2019 of the web, then the next 10 years of commerce innovation looks set to be shaped by a reverse process: the \u2018webification\u2019 of the shop, where high-street shopping meets digital.It\u2019s obvious if you think about it.The future isn’t going to wait for you to catch up, this is how people want to shop right nowConsumer expectations have been raised sky-high by the ease and convenience of online shopping and omnichannel experiences, so shoppers\u00a0are beginning to demand nothing less than the same great experience from their visit to the local mall.      Gen Y and e-commerce: Brick and mortar still matters for CX                80 million people in the U.S. who fall between the ages of 18 and 35 spend more than $200 billion a year. Learn the stats about Gen Y and e-commerce.      The internet: Where high-street shopping and digital ease meetAnd\u00a0retailers, having discovered the major advantages of engaging with their customers through digital channels, are becoming increasingly keen to deploy those same techniques in their physical locations.It\u2019s all getting wonderfully mixed up and very exciting (well, exciting if you\u2019re retail geek like me…)      Retail isn\u2019t dead: Brick and mortar experience lives on                Don't play the funeral blues for retail quite yet. Powered by omnichannel, the brick and mortar experience is fueling modern retail.      High-street stores were supposed to be waining in popularity as digital shopping increases.(The name “high-street” signifies stores that have more ‘status’ than others, and emerged around the 12th century.)      It’s a small world after all: Disney revamping online and in-store retail to boost CX                Once upon a time, it was enough for Disney to offer their unique experiences only in-person, but not anymore. The simple truth is that no amount of magic can transform a bottom line that doesn\u2019t recognize the power of digital.      Five examples of in-store retail melding with digital to create seamless shopping experiencesPaying for stuff: On the web, paying for items is called one-click checkout; in the webified shop contactless payment (phone-embedded payment is already here \u2013 Apple Pay, Google Wallet etc.). The rapid uptake of contactless payments on mass transport systems suggests that consumers love this technology too much for it to fail in retail. Further ahead, prepare to see the cashier desk itself become obsolete as forward-thinking retailers enable customers to fill their baskets, do a wireless bulk-scan to pay and de-securitize their merchandise, and then go on their way. Some retailers are making a hash of self-checkout today \u2013 but believe me, wireless tech will make the dreaded \u201cunexpected item in the bagging area\u201d seem like a bad dream in a few years.Browsing for stuff: On the web, customers click through \u2018long tail\u2019 inventory; in the webified shop, kiosks and iPads showing an endless aisle. It’s a beautifully simple proposition: \u201cNot available in store? Not a problem \u2013 let\u2019s find the one you want on this iPad, and then we\u2019ll have it in stock for you tomorrow morning, or delivered to your home tomorrow night.\u201d This is not new\u2014a lot of leading retailers already offer something like. This is not just a trend \u2013 this kind of experience is becoming table stakes for any self-respecting retailer. In a few years, the endless aisle will be as mandatory as in-store heating and lighting.Getting recommendations: On the web: \u201cOther Customers also bought this\u201d appear in feeds; In the webified shop, it’s clienteling\/assisted shopping. Here we have a wonderful opportunity to develop some boundary-pushing human-machine hybrid intelligence. By equipping your store associates with an apped-up iPad and a means to identify their customer (e.g. via a scanned loyalty card), we have the means to harness the power of e-commerce personalization\u00a0algorithms and augment them with the common-sense that can only come from a human being to create the ultimate, smart, (and smiling!) recommendations engine.Delivery: On the web, it’s \u201cWe deliver any time, any place, any speed\u201d; in the webified shop, Click-Collect\/Store-to-Door\/BOPIS etc. etc. etc. This is another one that is already well-established in some regions. No mistake, omni-delivery is set to become a ubiquitous fact of retail life in the coming years, and retailers not doing this (or doing it with a poorly-architected, hard-to-scale solution) will have to invest the dollars in order to stay relevant and competitive.Marketing and analytics: On the web, clickstream analytics and cookie-marketing; in the webified shop, micro-spatial analytics and personalized promotions. This is the really intriguing one for me.There is a bunch of stuff going on here.Right now, mass adoption of smartphones, the advent of low-cost tracking tools like iBeacons, the ultra-relaxed attitude of the millennial generation towards data privacy, the proliferation of real-time big data analytics tools \u2013 as all of this converges, it points to a tantalizing (and slightly scary?) future where our every step, our every\u00a0pause, our every\u00a0glance in a shop can be used to engage and sell to us more effectively.Far-fetched? I don’t think so. For a rising cohort of managers weaned on Google Analytics, and for a generation of facebook-obsessed shoppers, this won\u2019t seem sinister, it will be perfectly natural. And this is not a sci-fi dream, the solutions are already out there, and more are coming.The challenges of high-street shopping blending with digitalThe demand is there, the technology is there, and the future trend is clear. So the only question is this\u2014is your business ready implement a truly webified store experience? I humbly offer you two pieces of advice.First, have the courage to be profoundly innovative with your stores. Innovate store layout, innovate store tools, innovate store people-processes, innovate store budgets and P&Ls\u2014nothing should be sacred. Just because it always worked in the past doesn’t mean it will always work in future. Your customers\u2019 habits are changing before your eyes. Keep up and you keep your brick and mortar locations open.Second, it\u2019s now a top-level priority to bring store IT systems up to date using a fresh approach and web-centric philosophy. Hardware is becoming secondary to software. The POS as we know it is going extinct. Running a webified shop demands that you ditch your reliance on clunky batch-mode transfers and hard-coded \u2018point\u2019 integrations, and begin to fully embrace real time data, flexible APIs, and proper store connectivity.The webified store is happening\u00a0now\u00a0\u2013 how are you going to react?  Shifting retail landscapes.Varying buying behavior.What makes people click “buy”?We’ve got the answers HERE.\u00a0"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2015","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"10","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/\/10\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"15","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/\/10\/\/15\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"High-street shopping: A retail geek’s take on modern stores","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/10\/15\/digital-trends-shopping-stores\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]