Earlier this month, I commented on the early holiday transition and the projected retail sales. “While I am normally somewhat conservative, I have a sense that retailers will do better than the projections. The early transition will stimulate activity and may put pressure on consumers to buy early as I expect inventory to be tight.”
I regularly talk about delivering a positive shopping experience in order to deepen loyalty. But, I recently encountered the antithesis of that while making an Internet purchase. Suffice it to say that the Webmaster of the site I’m about to describe has a few lessons yet to learn.
In the retail world nothing surprises me anymore. Why should it when we live in a world that is faster and more evolving every day. But occasionally, the surprise seems more absurd than ever. This last week I happened to be in San Francisco and I did a little shopping. I don’t get in to stores as often as I would like, but I made the time to see what was happening.
We often hear retailers say that the customer comes first. In reality, what they mean is we need customers. But, the customer experience across all channels for most retailers is still very siloed. Yes, improvements have been made, but the customer is not getting the seamless transaction they expect.
