As retailers move closer to an omnichannel strategy we need to see what more can be learnt from the eCommerce channel and applied at the shelf edge in stores. Of course ways to increase revenue and profitability are particularly interesting. One source of information about eCommerce is a benchmark report from RSR called eCommerce 2012.  In this report RSR identified what retailers thought were the top opportunities to increase eCommerce revenues.
At the bottom of the list of opportunities were third party deal offers such as Groupon, deals of the day and embedding more social capabilities into eCommerce sites. It’s interesting that the retailers identified as “laggards” all regarded these opportunities as more valuable than the retailers identified as “winners”.  The winners have moved on. They see a bigger picture which is less eCommerce specific and more focused on the business and improving the service to shoppers.
So what was No1 for the “winners”?
The top opportunity for the winners was providing richer product detail information, including photo’s and video’s for products sold on their eCommerce site. Surprisingly this came out higher than areas such as improving the fulfilment and payment processes. I suspect that the laggards would like to have selected the richer product detail opportunity too but had more fundamental issues around data to resolve first.
So if the winners in the eCommerce channel regard providing richer product detail information as a key opportunity it makes sense to look at applying a similar approach at the shelf edge in physical stores.  It’s what I call promotional tickets that sell.
What are Promotional tickets that sell?
A promotional ticket that sells contains an appropriate set of information that encourages shoppers to make more buying decisions at the shelf edge. In addition to price and legal requirements it might contain an offer, reasons to buy, product pictures, specifications, customer recommendation scores and access to video and further information via a QR code. Have a look at this animation to see it in action.
Promotional signage is viewed as increasingly important and in our conversations with retailers they quickly see the benefits of promotional tickets that sell.  But sometimes, as in the eCommerce world, their challenge is organising and managing the data to be able to produce them. This is changing.  A number of retailers are working with us to trial promotional tickets that sell in concept stores using a bounded service. Others will be implementing the infrastructure to make managing the data much more straightforward in the near future.
My next blog will be about the No1 feature of a promotional ticket that sells – according to the eCommerce channel.