Tech Bytes: Top Three Customer Engagement Trends of 2015

In many ways, 2015 marked the year the customer truly took over. Retailers recognized that constant connectivity and increasingly sophisticated consumer devices have created an environment where customers decide what they want, when and how they want it, and then choose the retailer who can best meet their needs.



In this environment, retailers scrambled to engage customers in a more personalized and direct way than ever before. Here are the top three customer engagement trends of 2015.



On the Go

2015 is the year “mobile first” went from a general development strategy to an overarching customer engagement philosophy. Retailers made mobile the primary platform for digitally communicating and connecting with customers. Anything customers could do on a desktop or laptop, retailers made sure they could do as well or better on a mobile device.



In addition, more than ever before, retailers leveraged the unique capabilities of mobile to enhance omnichannel customer engagement. An increasing number of retailers used geolocation to send customers time- and place-relevant promotions, and shelf edge technologies grew as a means of helping shoppers navigate the store with their mobile devices.



Furthermore, 2015 was the year retailers recognized that apps, rather than mobile sites, are consumers’ preferred mobile browsing tool. Retailers released a dizzying array of new and upgraded apps throughout the year, avoiding the clunkiness associated with the typical “m-commerce” site.



It’s So Easy

The stereotype of the modern consumer who wants to just sit on the couch with their connected devices may or may not be true, but in 2015 retailers definitely treated it as gospel.



Retailers of all types went out of their way in the past year to make purchase and fulfillment as effortless as possible for consumers. Whether partnering with third-party delivery services or shared ride services such as Uber, or using internal resources, retailers provided deliveries in as little as one hour to homes, offices, stores and lockers.



For customers willing to venture out to stores, curbside delivery and click-and-collect services eliminated the need to go in a store and find merchandise. And advance mobile ordering allowed customers of food service retailers to have their prepaid, freshly prepared orders waiting, with no need to stand in line.



Image is Everything

Finally, 2015 was a year where image was paramount to digital retailing in a very literal sense. Throughout the year, retailers offered direct shopping functionality via online images.



In many cases, retailers were aided by visually-oriented social networks like Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube. Pinterest let shoppers make purchases directly from images with its Buyable Pins feature, and many retailers also enabled direct e-commerce functionality from Instagram photos and YouTube videos.



In addition, a number of retailers started offering visual search, or the ability to click on an image of a product and obtain information, or even make a purchase, without typing in any words. The web continued becoming a more visual medium in 2015, partially driven by the growing popularity of small mobile screens that make reading text difficult, and retailers adapted.



Next week, I’ll take a look at what 2016 holds in store for customer engagement.