Retail experiences are quickly converging. No longer are customers shopping exclusively through one channel – customers may check out a physical store only to end up buying a product online, or vice versa. Web-enabled mobile devices add yet another angle to the mix. Retailers need to mix up their approach to maximize their sales.

As recent data from Forrester Research suggests, various retail channels are increasingly affecting other sales avenues. The percentage of web-influenced retail sales are expected to hit 53 percent by 2014 – a time when the web will account for $1.4 billion worth of sales made in physical retail locations.

Traditional retailers need to rethink how they are engaging consumers. It's important to realize that someone could be coming to a store because of a promotion they saw through the web. More than 200 million Americans have access to the internet, according to data from comScore, and this is a huge audience of potential customers for merchants to tap into.

Retail software can be leveraged to help merchants better capitalize on this untapped audience of prospective sales.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, March 2nd, 2012 at 10:43 am .