Scott Lester, CEO Imagine this: two individuals are shopping for running shoes. Both have decided to shop online for convenience and to try and get the best price. However, this is where their similarities end. One shopper values brand, style, and the look of the product, while the other is more interested in shoes which enhance the running experience through in-built technology. This begs the question—how does a retailer serve and retain both these potential customers?
“Retailers need the tools to provide personalized shopping experiences,” answers Scott Lester, the CEO of Flixmedia.
In order for retailers to attract and retain consumers online, they must move away from offering a one-size-fits-all approach, and instead create tailored shopping experiences. “Sending marketing emails based on a shopper’s purchase history, and which feature exclusive discounts and such, no longer constitutes an adequate personalization strategy,” states Lester. Retailers must move beyond this, and Flixmedia is well-positioned to support this shift, harnessing relevant shopper data to carefully curate the online shopping experience. At the heart of this is rich, engaging content on brands’ and retailers’ product pages, including 360-degree imagery, zoom functions, product descriptions, social media ‘share’ buttons, product recommendations and descriptions, stock information, video, and more. Flixmedia’s range of retail solutions allows brands and retailers to deliver relevant content and messaging to shoppers. The core portfolio of digital content solutions is used by global companies, allowing them to tailor various functions and features on a channel. Retailers are buckling under tremendous competitive pressure to optimize conversions, both in-store and online, and critically, to optimize the margin on those sales. Flixmedia’s innovative services help them to address these challenges, optimizing conversions, basket value and profit margins on sales.
"Experimentation and adoption of newer technologies are vital if retailers are to successfully reinvent the shopping experience, and role of the physical store"
This is achieved through the customization of various functions and features of online channels to categorize the different ways in which individuals shop. “We aid retailers in meeting the ‘basic shopper expectations’ and then innovate beyond so as to enable brands and retailers to surprise and delight the shopper,” says Lester. “In other words, exceed their expectations and enrich the shopping experience.”
Flixmedia has over a decade of experience in the industry, and is now a trusted partner to over 100 of the world’s biggest brands and 1,600 of the world’s biggest retailers.
Personalization: The Holy Grail of Retail Growth
Flixmedia helps retailers and brands to meet and exceed customer expectations in an ever-changing merchandising ecosystem. Designed from the ground up by experts with deep experience in the global retail sector, the company’s solution and services portfolio focus on delivering profitable outcomes for brands and retailers alike. Ultimately, Flixmedia helps to uplift sales conversions with compelling product pages enriched by engaging images and text.
Flixmedia’s MiniSites and INpages solutions deliver fully automated, rich product pages for over 100 leading brands. Keeping in mind that some customers like to click while others prefer to scroll, these proven ‘Instant On’ solutions provide a content syndication service that ensures pages are automatically updated with the latest and greatest brand content as soon as products become available. This increases ‘Add to Cart’ sales uplift for retailers. Displayed on a product page as an icon, the MiniSite is a pop-up window behind a clickable button that comprises images, videos, award logos, 3D views and more, used to deliver brand messages directly to the shopper. INpages provides enriched product pages and pushes the content in the MiniSite. Without even clicking, the shoppers experience beautiful product pages with easily accessible content.
We aid retailers in meeting the ‘basic shopper expectations’ and then innovate beyond so as to enable brands and retailers to surprise and delight the shopper
The main product page image space also plays a key role in the aesthetics and calibre of the online shopping experience. Flixmedia’s Dynamic Hotspots solution focuses on maximizing the impact of the product that need to be promoted by making product discovery more intuitive with the aid of interactive images, eliminating the need to scroll down product pages. To drive up sales conversions, retailers can also utilize the Shopper Reviews function, which adds consumer reviews to product pages. This function helps shoppers to make more considered purchase decisions. The Product Recommendation Widget solution optimizes brand upsell and cross-sell opportunities, enhancing the personalized shopping experience with recommendations that interest the shoppers.
In addition, combining Flixmedia’s extensive video production experience with their syndication technology, the team has developed a tool called Virtual Advisors that engages the shoppers with product text page and key buying information, delivered in an emotive way. The Virtual Advisors solution elevates a consumer’s online experience by replicating critical elements of the type of experience a retailer can offer in-store. The Virtual Advisors are on hand to offer a human touch to shoppers, answering any queries the shopper may have in real-time through an online chat service. These Virtual Advisors can be interacted with directly from the product pages, offering an efficient and easy customer service solution.
“Goodbye” to Cart Abandonment
Rich Product Pages using MiniSites and INpages are currently benefitting an impressive client roster that spans multiple verticals. The solutions have helped retailers to boost sales and traffic while simultaneously reducing bounce rates. Flixmedia’s recent partnership with Office Depot Europe demonstrates the success of these solutions results of independent testing of this solution. Office Depot Europe was keen to see the specific effect of Flixmedia’s syndication service on the behavior of its customers. A recent test of the INpages service showed both an uplift in conversion and a reduction in cart abandonment on the Office Depot Europe website.Shedding more light on the outcome, Annemie Van Der Donk, Interim Personalization Manager Office Depot Europe noted, “We’ve thoroughly tested Flixmedia in the majority of our product categories. We’ve seen an overall strong result by conducting an A/B test having reached a 99 percent significance level that proves an increase in conversion rate, a decrease in cart abandonment and an increase in ‘add to cart’ rate.
It seems by showing richer product information to our customers they are more likely to convert and less likely to drop in our conversion funnel.”
Ben Perrins, Chief Customer Officer at Flixmedia, added, “Many of our global brand and retail partners are interested in the impact of the Flixmedia service on basket conversion, but this test also proved a reduction in cart abandonment. Intuitively, a shopper that has been better informed before they click ‘add to cart’ should have a higher propensity to complete, but this test validates that assumption rather elegantly.”
This level of success shows why over 1,300 of the world’s largest retailers and resellers in the U.K., U.S., India, and India and other 68 countries consider Flixmedia as a trusted partner.
Bringing Back the Glory Days in Merchandising
From rising rents, outdated POS technology, to impersonal customer service and fragmented processes—bricks-and-mortar retail hasn’t fared too well in recent years. High-street closures and worrisome sales figures have only furthered the slide. “Experimentation and adoption of newer technologies are vital if retailers are to successfully reinvent the shopping experience, and role of the physical store,” says Lester. Flixmedia has recognized the need to constantly elevate the consumer experience and offer a more engaging, personalized way of bridging the various shopping channels. New technologies entering the retail market include cryptocurrency, which Flixmedia believes is set to revolutionize transaction technology. Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum—in addition to a growing list of new cryptocurrencies—deliver benefits such as the ability to verify a product’s authenticity, reduce counterfeiting, bolster security, and zero fees for retailers.
Ben Perrins, Chief Customer Officer
The team has also championed the use of virtual and augmented reality technologies in the retail space. During 2018, Lester predicts, the industry will witness the emergence of AR-as-a-Service, providing retailers with an accessible way of incorporating augmented reality into their retail offering. These businesses will be able to deliver an elevated, immersive shopping experience without having to invest in the expense and time of building an infrastructure for these types of technologies from scratch. Flixmedia is closely monitoring these developments, and will ensure its clients are primed to embrace and reap the benefits of AR.
Carving a Successful Route
There is a growing interest among retailers to combine the right mix of emerging technologies to deliver an effective omnichannel merchandising strategy. “However, the technology is changing, literally, every month and it’s time-consuming for retailers and brands alike to keep up,” says Lester. The work for Flixmedia begins with understanding the retailer’s KPI and ROI targets before deploying newer technologies into the marketing mix. Lester and his team at Flixmedia see no point in advising clients to spend money on a fun, new emerging technology project that looks great but achieves no clear ROI. “We study the market, observe the wider global shopping environment and configure the services/ solutions that meet the retailers’ KPI and ROI targets,” says Lester. “We’re honest about what we can and cannot deliver. We’re the only genuine option for brands that want to plug into a global network of retailers. Period.”
