Report reveals digital best practices

Digital touchpoints are accelerating the pace of retail from all perspec-tives, including consumer demands.



A new report from digital benchmarking firm L2 identifies "must-have" omnichannel features that retailers can deploy to meet rising consumer expectations. The study evaluates the approach and performance of 96 re-tail brands with regards to key omnichannel pre-requisites.



Key findings from L2's fourth annual “Intelligence Report: Omnichannel Retail 2016” report include:



• The Bare Minimum: Features like buy online, return in store (70% adoption), store locator links in the header of the home page (72% adoption), and providing directions to the store natively on their e-commerce site (79% adoption) were widely embraced. These fea-tures, along with free standard shipping and charging for two- and next-day shipping, represent the bare minimum for omnichannel re-tail.



• Table Stakes, or Lip Service: Only 6% of retailers analyzed rank as leaders in omnichannel. While 18% of retailers effectively use their digital sites to drive consumers in store and 13% focus on e-commerce initiatives, 63% of brands fall into the laggard category.



•The Full Package: As more retailers begin to stress the importance of e-commerce, last-mile efforts — like packaging and unboxing — are seeing new attention. Among premium shoppers, 51% indicated that custom packaging makes the product feel more valuable, and 44% said it incen-tivizes a repeat purchase.



"Since its inception, digital has accelerated opportunities for always-on interaction and sales channels, but it's taken a while for the retail industry [via infrastructure and technology] and consumers [via behavior and de-vices] to realize omnichannel potential," noted Evan Neufeld, VP of in-telligence for L2. "Although consumer behavior is catching up, for merchants, successful omnichannel is still the exception, not the rule.”