Robert RosarioRobert is Co-founder at Twixxies.
People often wonder where the app market is going and how it will benefit them. If you’re in the retail space here is what you have to look forward to in the near future.
Connecting the Physical To The Digital
Currently retail stores use many platforms and tools to manage the digital products and their physical products. We’re seeing more companies offering a one-stop solution. One of the newer solutions that I like is the Stripe POS platform that now offers website hosting. This is along the same lines as Shopify, but seems to be a much better design and experience.
User Tracking and Analytics
Data visualization about your customers will be key. This ability to filter by specific traits – where they live, how often they buy, or what price points best suit them will give indepth information about their buying behaviors and projections. Stores currently rely on excel spreadsheets that are calculated by corporate then distributed to the stores. Stores then have to take this data and input the proper values into their local excel sheets so they can plan the day or weeks ahead. This is extremely time consuming and not an optimal solution for any company. This method doesn’t give the stores the key information on their products and customers either. There is a disconnect between company goals and how to get there.
We’ll see a new centralized system that will use scripts to allocate from the top down the proper projections, employee performance, product opportunites all based on local store data and goals/projections from corporate. Say goodbye to wasting time crunching numbers and hello to focusing on what matters – customers and training staff to connect with them.
Smart Apps
One of the biggest opportunities in the market is smart apps and data for retailers. Being able to gather data from your loyal customers means you’ll be able to make better decisions that impact the company’s brand and profitability. This will work closely with data visualization to give top executives raw data to analyze and see where the biggest opportunities lie. Analyzing user behaviors daily rather than using a survey every 6 months to a year or looking at the company from broad to specificwill be essential.
The overall progress has been shifting to frictionless experiences for both customers and businesses. This saves you two valuable resources – time and money. The last piece of the puzzle to make the future come a bit sooner would be affordability and that’s what we at Twixxies strive for. We believe in empowering businesses with technology. Businesses shouldn’t have awkward excel spreadsheet meetings or long processing cycles. They should be focused on their customers.
