Multi-Touchpoint Communication In E-Commerce: With The Help Of The Right Web Technology

Consumer expectations

User behaviour on the Web has changed markedly over the last few years. Stimulated by the interactive potential offered by Web 2.0, users now expect not only social interaction, but relevant (i.e. personalised) content - and naturally at any time, thus including mobile usage. This latter context at least would seem to be familiar territory for multi-channel delivery. Yet digital channels have long since transformed themselves into interactive touchpoints, which demand more than the simple delivery of web content to different devices.

Multi-touchpoint can therefore prove to be a decisive strategy: consumers are already utilising a wide variety of devices as touchpoints - and they expect these to remain available over the entire lifecycle of their customer relationship. Buying decisions, for example, are being made in social networks, away from the provider's website. The purchase itself is made in the shop and is followed by the creation of reviews, product ratings and recommendations or contact with customer service - all naturally on the go and mobile.

Regardless of the touchpoint used, customers expect end-to-end consistency - and continuity when switching touchpoints.

Actions businesses need to take

By applying an appropriate multi-touchpoint strategy, a company creates enormous potential for strengthening customer relationships, reducing service costs and, naturally, improving sales opportunities. Yet what are the key characteristics of an appropriate multi-touchpoint strategy? Three factors are essential: customer, context and consistency.

Priority must be given to the customer's perspective and needs - not to the particular channel and its technical requirements. The solution must support the strengths of the touchpoint in question and the applicable user context - not the lowest common denominator of website, mobile device and social network. From the customer's point of view, the shop is part of a wider buying experience. The user must therefore be presented with a consistent overall experience and not an isolated focus on a single touchpoint. One of the main causes of frustration reported in the online user experience is the changeover from one channel to another.

Data must be drawn from many different systems (from the CRM system, the ecommerce shop, web content management systems, social media platforms and search engines, etc.) before being processed and transformed into a format that matches the particular consumer and context. The consumer can be presented with a truly appealing ecommerce experience only once all of the involved systems (are allowed to) contribute their individual strengths.

Integration has a key role to play here - and not merely to avoid silos in the system architecture. Formerly, integration work was often conducted at layout level, involving what are known as "mashups": here, each system supplies appropriate (HTML) fragments that are then assembled piecewise into a single page. There are limits to this strategy, however, and these are met once the consumer has to be offered a uniform user experience across multiple touchpoints.

Accordingly, a modern web content management system must not only contain components for social interaction and the capability to output content personalized to suit many different touchpoints, but must also supply a powerful integration layer. This permits content to be aggregated from a variety of sources and reprocessed into higher-value objects: integration is conducted at the level of business logic rather than the data or layout layer. This architecture offers the benefits of logic and content reuse for each context within the multi-touchpoint landscape. In addition, the solution offers the advantages of uniform analysis, search over aggregated content, data currency and capabilities for information write-back to each contributing system.

Conclusion

A holistic multi-touchpoint strategy can only succeed if silos are avoided throughout the system architecture. Consumers can then enjoy the benefits of free choice of end-user device, consistency of the user experience and continuity when switching between touchpoints. By adopting this kind of strategy, companies profit from a more targeted use of consumer context coupled with extended penetration into all spheres of consumer activity.

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