That Crucial First Step in Your Retail Store and Where it (Really) Happens

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“RETAIL IS A CUSTOMER BUSINESS. YOU’RE TRYING TO TAKE CARE OF THE CUSTOMER—SOLVE SOMETHING FOR THE CUSTOMER. AND THERE’S NO WAY TO LEARN THAT IN THE CLASSROOM OR IN THE CORNER OFFICE….”
ERIK NORDSTROM, PRESIDENT, NORDSTROM DIRECT

So much time is spent to carve out an excellent guest experience in the retail store that we sometimes forget the first place they “step inside” and it’s not at the threshold of your store.

Why is this important?

Because one really has to understand the actual parameters of their store, from the customer’s view.

This is what we dealt with while rebranding one of the largest co-ops in the Midwest with well over 80,000 members.

We’d spent a good portion of a year redefining what their message was, developing the design and their brand vocabulary and how to present all of these message points to shoppers and members.

But before they ever enter a store, they browse.

And listen to people who are complete strangers.

Online.

The Great Disconnect

This “front door” goes well beyond your physical threshold to your store.

Essentially, it’s not your front door, but your customer’s front door.

And that door has moved to their computer and mobile device.

With Mega (as many a brand would), we had to tackle the stores first.

Yet, those who knew the “old Mega” weren’t aware of the changes because the first point of contact and entry, their online presence, was an artifact from before the rebrand.

Well, last week, we finally went live so those who had not yet discovered the joy of the new shopping experience could now get a sense of it from their computers and their mobile devices. This “gap” is now closed so the online experience parallels with the in-store experience at the retail level.

This is important for this reason: operations personnel often look at these as separate pieces but in the eyes of the customer, it is one connected experience. It either works or it doesn’t.

While there are lots of details I could cover here, I just wanted to give you a quick snapshot of how dramatic the change is, as shown below. Seeing is believing.

Hitting the Road

And the mobile experience was an even more dramatic transition since the old site was not mobile-responsive. The prior result was an online experience that was outdated plus the size of type was reduced to something so small, only Ant Man from Marvel might be able to read it.

Here is an example of the previous home page:

And here is one of the new pages showcasing the Mega Kitchen with high quality photography and imagery and easy-to-read text.

The takeaway is this:
Know what your parameters really are and get every aspect of your brand to be the same high caliber as each other with the same attention to detail.

Your customers will notice.

And so will your bottom line….