Physical to digital: how to maximize the user experience
The consumers can be intercepted physically, virtually and in both touchpoints. The phenomenon of the fusion of physical and digital is in fact typical of our age and marketing strategies almost always involve a mix of online and offline.
Many brands have brought digital into the physical store, for example tablets to view the complete catalog in clothing shops, scan and buy service to speed up the final step of payment in supermarkets, digital signage and so on.
To engage the user inside the shop, a series of elements have been included to facilitate the shopping experience and make it more interactive and enjoyable.
It is less common, however, to bring the in-store experience into the digital space. Often, the focus is on the digitisation of the physical store, but the appeal of the in-store experience must not be forgotten also on the website and in social communication. In fact, the customer who knows the shop must be able to experience the same context on the website, from the values conveyed with a warm welcome to the service and support services.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to design the company’s website and visual communication considering the various elements of the brand, including the customer experience in the store.
Omnichannel customer experience
To realize immersive online and offline experiences, it is necessary to create an omnichannel customer experience, which allows the customer to move from the physical to the digital channel experiencing the same brand elements in a different way according to the touchpoint they intercept.
Understanding the brand values, the context that the shop offers to its customers and what kind of user journey you want to create online, are the starting points for creating an omnichannel user experience in line with brand identity and business objectives.
Personas at the heart of the design process
Giving a personal and human touch to the target audience helps to realize an omnichannel customer experience that always puts the needs of consumer users at the center and thus creates value for the business. Personas are an excellent strategy to give a human face to the target audience and build effective online and offline projects.
To create personas, UX and UI designers acquire a range of information about their online users to define the behavior and needs of their target audience. Once the user’s needs have been identified online, to create an omnichannel experience, the same work is done offline. The consumer’s behavior and the situations they experience at the retail shop are then studied, defining the specific characteristics of the experience at the physical store. New aspects are thus added to the personas with renewed and added characteristics to allow the creation of an omnichannel project that engages the online and offline target with the same atmosphere and immersive experience with different aspects depending on the medium of contact, be it the physical shop, the website, the social network or the telephone helpline.
Properly created personas thus help to make design decisions focused on the experience to be delivered to the target audience and to shape the direction of the online and offline project with the right mix of elements.
In the course of time, personas can always be updated in order to optimize the service offered according to any new needs of the target, the context of the market or new business objectives.
Omninext designs experiences
Omninext’s multidisciplinary team succeeds in creating a customized omnichannel experience that responds to consumer needs and business requirements.
Through quantitative and qualitative research, the UX/UI Design team establishes user personas to build the optimal solution for a website or app that the user can use intuitively and quickly. And for an omnichannel experience, an online and offline branding plan is created together with Consulting experts to make the overall experience engaging, interactive and driving the customer to generate conversions and thus business value.
