7 Omnichannel Retail Tips for Shopify Store Owners

Omnichannel retail isn’t just a trending term in today’s commerce landscape, it’s a powerful strategy for boosting your sales and revenue. Just think of it this way, the more channels you use to sell products, the more sales you can potentially make. 

Even Google found that omnichannel strategies drive an 80% higher rate of incremental store visits for retailers. While selling products and solutions exclusively through your Shopify store is fine, branching out with an omnichannel approach gives you a better opportunity to reach and convert customers that have different shopping habits.

But, as with most things, there’s an art to omnichannel retail. 

Based on our experiences working with omnichannel brands, here are our top tips for Shopify store owners to consider in 2024, and beyond.

What is an Omnichannel Retail Strategy?

An omnichannel retail strategy involves integrating multiple different sales channels to give customers multiple ways to purchase your products or services. Notably, it’s not just about “selling through multiple channels”. For your strategy to be truly omnichannel, you need to connect all of those channels, and ensure the experience is seamless and consistent from end to end.

Since running and optimizing your Shopify store can be time-consuming and complex enough, you might wonder whether adding more channels to the mix is really worthwhile. 

The truth is, it does require more work, but it also pays off. With an omnichannel retail strategy, you can give your customers a better experience, ensuring they can shop on the channels that appeal most to them. You also differentiate yourself from the competition, and boost your chances of extra sales.

One study even found omnichannel customers (people who shop on various channels), spend 20% more than people who only use one channel. 

Tips for Omnichannel Retail with Shopify

The good news for Shopify store owners is that Shopify actively supports omnichannel selling. If you have a Shopify account, you can sell through your own online store, through marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay, and through social media. You can even leverage Shopify POS for in-store selling. 

All you need is the right strategy. Here are our top tips for success.

1. Find Out Where Your Customers Are

Creating an omnichannel retail strategy doesn’t have to mean selling through every possible channel. That would be time-consuming and expensive. Instead, you should be focusing on serving customers where they already are. A good way to figure out which channels your customers already use, is to look at the Acquisition reports available in Google Analytics. 

This can help you identify which social media channels and other pages are driving customers to your store, so you can create social selling campaigns. 

You can also look at where your competitors are already selling. If the top competitors in your niche already have their own retail location, storefronts on Amazon, and Instagram or Facebook shops, there’s a good chance you’ll benefit from adopting a similar strategy. 

2. Take Advantage of Marketplace Selling

While there’s no guarantee that your customers will use marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay, there’s a big chance that they do. In 2023, Amazon accounted for 40% of all ecommerce sales. If you’re not sure where to get started when expanding your sales channels, Amazon is a good first stop. 

You can use dedicated apps like Shopify’s Marketplace Connect, to immediately list your products across platforms like Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Ebay. Plus, you’ll be able to manage everything from within your Shopify admin account, making it easy to track inventory changes, manage customers, and deliver a consistent experience. 

If you notice a lot of customers are shopping for products on Amazon, you could also decide to offer Amazon Prime as a payment and delivery option in your Shopify store. This gives you an opportunity to streamline the checkout process for customers, and give them the benefits of faster delivery. 

3. Increase Social Media Sales with Video

As noted above, one of the easiest ways to launch an omnichannel retail strategy with Shopify, is to sell on social media. You can easily connect your Shopify store with Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and a range of other platforms (as well as their associated ecommerce tools). 

Plus, you can add your Meta Pixel to Shopify too, which can help with tracking marketing and sales campaign attribution rates. With Shopify, you can give your customers the freedom to buy products directly from their social media accounts, reducing the friction points on the path to purchase. 

However, if you really want to turbocharge the results of your omnichannel campaign, you’ll also need the right marketing plan. Our advice is to dive into the power of video. According to Oberlo stats, 54% of customers want to see more video content from the brands they support. 

Plus, 50% of customers say videos help them figure out which products to purchase, or which brand to buy from. Create shoppable videos you can share across all of your social platforms, and make sure to highlight videos on your website too. 

4. Launch Your Own In-Person Store (Even Temporarily)

With online shopping on the rise, it seems almost pointless to go through the effort of leasing and running a brick-and-mortar store these days. However, with digital ad costs rising, it’s actually becoming more expensive to attract customers online than it is to sell in-person. 

As a result, one Forrester study found 32% of brands are planning on establishing their own in-person shopping experiences going forward. Plus, many organizations are now experimenting with temporary retail locations, like pop-up stores and showrooms. Here’s an example from Glossier:

Experimenting with physical retail could significantly increase your sales, and your online store traffic. One report found that brands get an average of 37% more web traffic the quarter after they launch a new physical store. 

The good news? As a Shopify store owner, you won’t even need to pay for extra point of sale software to launch a brick-and-mortar experience. You already get Shopify POS Lite built into your subscription plan, so all you need is the right hardware (and a location). 

5. Bridge Online and Offline Experiences

Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store already, or you’re planning on launching one, it’s worth remembering that truly omnichannel retail requires a seamless approach to connecting online and offline experiences. So explore some of the top options to bridge the gaps, such as:

• Buy online, pickup in-store: 59% of customers in 2023 said they appreciate options to purchase products online and collect them in store. Giving your customers this opportunity means they can access the products they want faster, without having to worry about additional shipping costs. 
• Buy in-store, ship to home: Alternatively, why not reduce the amount of inventory you need to keep in your physical space, by offering a buy in-store, ship-to-home service. You can allow customers to try on and test out products in your physical store, then order that product to be shipped directly to their address from your Shopify site. 
• Buy online, return in-store: The increased costs of shipping are having a negative effect on online shoppers. No-one wants to deal with the stress of having to pay to return a product they don’t want. If you can offer customers the opportunity to return products in-store, they’re likely to feel less concerned about buying products from you online. 

6. Prepare for Increased Demand

The great thing about omnichannel retail is that it can significantly increase your sales. The downside of that, is that you need to figure out a way to handle that increase in purchasing volume. There are a few ways you can prepare for an increase in demand as an omnichannel retailer. 

The first is to look at your logistics and shipping processes. Consider working with a third-party logistics company for help shipping products at speed to customers all over the world. Alternatively, explore the dropshipping approach, so you don’t actually have to purchase, store, and send inventory to customers yourself. This can reduce the strain on your teams. 

Make sure you’re monitoring your inventory levels consistently across all channels (with the help of Shopify’s dashboard), and avoid running out of stock at all costs. 

Another point to keep in mind is your approach to customer service. Increased sales can also mean increased service requests. This could be the perfect time to consider creating an FAQ for your store, or using an AI bot integration to handle common service requests. 

7. Experiment and Consistently Track Your Results

Finally, when you’re first getting started with omnichannel retail, experimentation is key. You might want to explore the benefits of offering customers exclusive discounts through different channels, to see if it increases your sales. For instance, you might give customers a discount if they buy directly from your Shopify website, rather than buying a product on Amazon.

The key to success is making sure you can track the impact of all of your campaigns, so you know which methods are really driving your revenue up. 

Take advantage of the multichannel attribution tools offered by Shopify, and tools like Google Analytics. The more you learn about how customers shop with your brand, and which strategies increase conversions across different channels, the more you can optimize your omnichannel methods.

Bonus Tip: Get Help from a Shopify Expert

All of the tips above should help you to run a more successful omnichannel retail experience with your Shopify store. However, there’s another way to give yourself a competitive edge. Working with a Shopify developer can help you to take your omnichannel efforts to the next level.

An expert can show you how to take advantage of Shopify’s headless commerce capabilities, or automation solutions like Flow to streamline the shopping experience across all channels.

They can also work with you on the development of apps, programs, and strategies that deliver a consistent and seamless experience to customers across all channels.

Take your omnichannel strategy to the next level by hiring a Storetasker expert today. 

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