One of the biggest opportunities for personalized retail lies within the luxury market. Last Fall, for example, Neiman Marcus debuted “Snap. Find. Shop,” a 3-D visual fashion search and purchase feature, and made it available through its mobile app. The high-end retailer has been successful in leveraging its in-store success online; 21 percent of its revenue is derived from its e-commerce initiative.

It pays to be first with innovative technology; “Snap. Find. Shop” lets NM app users snap images of fashion items and instantly be provided with all close-matching products currently available at www.neimanmarcus.com. Being at the leading edge positions the company as forward thinking, and attracts the sought-after Millennial segment.

Other luxury retailers, such as Bloomingdales, Saks and Nordstrom’s, are also in the high-tech game. The benefit of providing apps that attract users is all that information they gather. By capturing orders and analyzing key information about the customer retailers are building loyalty and taking full advantage of their clienteling solutions. Clienteling incorporates many technological solutions that, in union, provide data that can be analyzed by retailers to provide customers a personalized, relevant shopping experience.

Omnichannel businesses are becoming the norm, and the most successful ones develop a consistent brand across all channels.

Barneys New York, for example, re-launched its e-commerce sites (Barneys, Barneys Warehouse and The Window) earlier this month, incorporating “responsive design”— an approach that optimizes e-commerce sites across a variety of devices. So shoppers will feel comfortable browsing via their smartphone, for example. Better presentation online means less scrolling and resizing images, which means customers are less likely to become frustrated and go to a competitor’s site.

The new sites provide an omnichannel view of the shopper to Barneys; they incorporate what a shopper has bought in store as well as on its sites. That provides a holistic view of a customer who might buy a Ball shock-resistant Engineer Hydrocarbon Spacemaster Orbital II watch for $6,000 in-store, but might not online. In addition, the three sites are more inter-related, particularly Barneys with its editorial site, The Window. That site offers content on all things fashion and fashionable — from what to pack for a spa vacation to A Day At The Farmers Market With Freds’ Executive Chef. The Barneys retail site provides the perfect tie-in for where to buy the items featured in The Window’s editorial. The company says that visitors to The Window site are 15 times more likely to shop at barneys.com than other visitors to the site, and they spend 40% more.

The interconnection of the Barneys sites illustrate the next step in omnichannel and providing that just-right customer experience, particularly for the luxury set. And the strategy’s resulting boost to the bottomline ensures that technology will continue to create innovative retail solutions.

Tags: omnichannel