The Weekly - July 30, 2020 - 13

Resources and Education
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increase in conversion rates can
obviously grow revenue.

Joe Erfle

Matt Collins

Doubling Down
on Digital Experience
Digital shopping has experienced an unprecedented rise during the
pandemic. As we head into the holiday season, how can brands and
retailers adjust to ever-shifting consumer behaviors?

F R O M L E F T; CO U R T E SY J O E E R F L E , CO U R T E SY M AT T CO L L I N S

THE DRAMATIC, UNWANTED DIS-

ruption we've seen this year will
continue into the holiday season.
Critical holiday shopping days like
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and
even Small Business Saturday will
be altered like never before. During the pandemic, digital experiences have played an outsize role in
driving direct e-commerce sales,
as well as impacting every other
sales channel. How can outdoor
brands succeed? We talked to Matt
Collins, chief experience officer;
and Joe Erfle, creative director, at
Gorilla Group, an award-winning
agency, consultancy, and tech
company, to better understand
how to adapt digital strategies for
the coming season.

What consumer behavioral
changes will remain long term?
What behaviors will return to
pre-pandemic norms?
The pandemic caused severe supply
chain disruption. So this holiday
season, there will be concerns with
shipping times and fulfilling product orders by a Christmas cutoff.
That's something brands need to
consider as they plan their promotional calendars, even beyond their
ability to have stock on hand to
fulfill those orders. As we go into
the holiday season, consumers are
going to be looking at snowshoes
and cross-country and backcountry
skis. The idea of buy online/pickup
in-store gained a lot of traction over
the last couple of holiday seasons. It

will remain at elevated levels for the
extended long term.
Are there quick wins brands and
retailers can implement to capitalize this holiday season?
These are not silver bullets that
will apply to everyone, but one
thing brands and retailers could
look at is quick data enrichment. If
the purchase journey is primarily
online now, are your top-selling
products offering the breadth of
data a person needs to enact a purchase? Are there hangups in the
checkout process? Are there fields
that could be quickly streamlined?
Every field you eliminate from a
checkout flow can increase conversion rates, and any incremental

What role can digital experiences play in complementing
a multichannel/omnichannel
customer journey?
It should be as rich a story as you
can put together on your brand
site. It needs to be more than just a
shopping opportunity. The brands
that haven't been investing in proper storytelling are going to be at a
disadvantage. There are very few
single-channel purchase journeys
anymore. If you need a gallon of
milk, you drive to the grocery store
and buy a gallon of milk. That's
a single-channel journey, but for
almost everything else, people are
researching online, looking at reviews, doing price comparisons, et
cetera. So digital is impacting the
majority of all purchases, whether
it's online or offline.
What key traits define digital
leaders? What can others
do to accelerate their digital
transformations?
The big message is service-and
that service is going to have to be
delivered online. Those who have
personalized or one-to-one shoppers and customer service teams
that are staffed appropriately
need to make sure this is not just a
channel model and that it has been
staffed to accommodate for growing site traffic.
Tune in to take a deeper dive
into consumer behavior in
the digital space with Gorilla
Group's Matt Collins and Joe
Erfle when they join us for a
wide-ranging conversation on
The Weekly Chat, Thursday,
July 30, at 4 p.m. Eastern / 1
p.m. Pacific. Register here.

OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020 / THE WEEKLY 13

https://www.outdoorretailer.com/events-education/webinars/ https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1348905&tp_key=1e5cc2eb93

The Weekly - July 30, 2020

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