Consumer is king — now more than ever. The rise in consumer choice has put shoppers in the driver’s seat, forcing brands to compete not just in-store and online (or through the new hybrid experience) but across marketplaces, streaming TV and just about every other place a consumer views throughout their day. Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, brands must develop a winning sales and advertising strategy to match.
With more places to buy — and even more places to advertise — the only way for brands to keep up is to gain insights from their full ecommerce data story. But consumer and marketplace fragmentation make accessing cohesive ecommerce data a major headache. What’s a brand to do? WBX Commerce is here to help with advice for tracking your customers’ journeys in today’s environment with our omnichannel data platform.
In an increasingly complex market, accessing, understanding and forming strategies based on omnichannel ecommerce data is more critical than ever. However, we’ve established that the way customers and markets are fragmented makes this incredibly challenging. From Amazon to Walmart to Shopify and more, you may be selling products via a number of marketplaces which, let’s be honest, don’t communicate with one another. Transparent ecommerce data is scarce, gathering it is time-consuming and analyzing it to form a comprehensive marketplace picture is seriously labor-intensive. In order to stay competitive, brands need a more reliable and efficient way to understand the full picture of their buyers’ journeys and identify category-specific shopping trends. This is where omnichannel data comes in. 
Before we dive into how to leverage omnichannel data, let’s get down to basics on what exactly we mean by omnichannel ecommerce.
When it comes to selling products, brands can use a single-channel approach (like a brick-and-mortar store) or a multi-channel approach, with online and offline options (or maybe a variety of online options like Amazon and a branded Shopify website). Omnichannel ecommerce takes the stage when multiple shopping channels are connected in such a way that the consumer has a consistent brand experience regardless of where they shop.
Omnichannel ecommerce breaks down shopping silos and facilitates a seamless buying journey.
The customer journey is the path that begins with how a product was discovered, the platform on which it was initially purchased and finally, any subsequent purchases of a brand’s products, which may or may not take place on the same platform or marketplace. For example, a customer learns of a product through a streaming TV advertisement, makes a purchase on Amazon, and finally ventures to the branded Shopify site to purchase more products from the brand’s catalog. A key part of leveraging ecommerce data is understanding this customer journey: how, and more importantly, why the buyer gets from point A to B to C.
WBX Commerce combines extensive Amazon expertise with an industry-leading data science team to help brands access and understand this critical omnichannel data. Using our proprietary intelligence tool WBX Insights, WBX Commerce is able to concisely show the key metrics that brands care about, including how many new customers a brand acquires, how many repeat customers make purchases and the lifetime value of those customers. By coupling our WBX Insights tool with data from the Amazon Marketing Cloud, our team is able to produce a clear, comprehensive view of a brand’s ecommerce data. 
One of the most common challenges brands face is getting bogged down with focusing on one tactic of an advertising strategy instead of viewing the full picture as being interconnected. This can be a costly mistake. The advertising tactics at the top, middle and bottom of the advertising funnel, in combination with retail readiness, are all equally important to a brand’s success. (If you aren’t already doing so, here is your sign to begin utilizing Amazon DSP ads, search-based ads, and data from the Amazon Marketing Cloud. WBX Commerce has a guide to help you get started.)
According to WBX Commerce data, customers who were exposed to streaming TV, display and search-based ads resulted in conversion rates 2–5x higher than those who were just exposed to lower-funnel search-based ads.
When you employ omnichannel data, you can create a seamless experience for shoppers who are exploring your brand and can tailor your ads and product catalog in such a way that keeps them coming back for more. For instance, with a full picture of your brand’s omnichannel data, you may discover certain products that are often purchased together can inform not only a new advertising strategy to sell more, but also products that can be bundled together for an entirely new offering. 
Remember: some customers discover products for the first time on Amazon (where nearly 3 out of 4 customers are beginning their search), but ultimately make subsequent purchases on a brand’s website when they develop trust with the brand. This is why it’s important to prioritize each stage of the advertising funnel, so you can catch customer attention no matter the touchpoint. Omnichannel data keeps you alert to where you are earning the most business, and how to pivot from there.
In summary, the biggest piece of the puzzle when it comes to using omnichannel data to grow your business is accessing your brand’s data in a transparent way. WBX Commerce’s WBX Insights platform gives brands a clear, comprehensive and actionable view of their ecommerce data to grow their marketplace business. WBX Insights helps measure your business’s performance across marketplaces, understand buying trends and identify new opportunities for revenue (like in the product bundling example we mentioned earlier).
Take the pressure off your in-house team and partner with WBX Commerce today to access a centralized, transparent view of all your ecommerce data.
