Members and guests came to hear me speak about “Integrating an Engaging Customer Experience in Multi-Channel Retailing”.

A shopper’s “Customer Journey” for any retail brand should be one and the same – regardless of a bricks ‘n mortar or online experience!

Focussing on how to maintain brand image when moving from one channel to another (for example from Visual Merchandising to Virtual Merchandising), I also covered:

• What’s happening in retail today…
• A new and unexpected threat to the retail category…
• Retail in the next 5 years…
• What’s missing online, an
• Who’s doing it right!

It was a great opportunity to provoke some interesting conversation around current retail trends in Australia – with an engaged audience of marketing services providers to the retail industry.

Many felt concerned by the fact that consumers are making purchases over the web and that these web customers are becoming more comfortable with the process. Others questioned whether Australians were actually comfortable with buying online?

With a strong belief that the physical retail environment is essential to sales, and that people like beautiful spaces to shop, the consensus was that it often depends on what exactly it is that you’re buying.

Where many people go to physical retail spaces to look, touch and feel a product, they often return to find the best price on the internet and finalise their purchase online.

If you’d like to receive a copy of the presentation, feel free to contact me direct and I’d be happy to send you the PDF.

Lastly, I’d like to say a special thanks to Terri Wilson (President of the “Retail Design Institute”) for inviting me to present, and to Peter & Fred of “Flash Photobition” for being fantastic hosts!

Remember the internet is not just a sales channel Down Under.

Like their American counterparts, more and more internet users in Australia are going online to research their purchases before buying in-store. The Australian Centre for Retail Studies (ACRS) has reported that up to one-half of consumers in Australia, did some online research before shopping in-store. That’s huge!

So I ask the following questions:

• How well are your products or services merchandised online? Do you have lots of product information available?
• How easy is it to navigate through the site while viewing products?
• How well are your products grouped and displayed online?
• Without the ability to touch and feel, do your photography and the use of online tools enable a multi dimensional display?
• Overall, do they look attractive and inspirational?

In essence, the online product display needs to mirror all the tried and tested offline merchandising techniques. This is what we call Virtual Merchandising.

These presentation standards will certainly strengthen brand equity and maximize sales.