Seamless, omnichannel approach keys to success for e-commerce players

GlobalCollect’s David Jimenez talked about a variety of interesting topics, including their partnership with Intel to further develop the ‘Internet of Things ’ and the rationale behind ingenico’s acquisition of GlobalCollect. Jimenez also made the point that 20% of their customers identified omnichannel sales as a key challenge for the payment industry that needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

Michelle Beeson of Forrester Research gave a thought provoking presentation on the future of e-commerce in which she highlighted the fact that UK consumers spend more time connected than asleep. She said that we are in the ‘age of the customer’ that requires a deep understanding of their behaviours to the point of being ‘customer obsessed’. Beeson also pointed out that the customer journey is no longer linear, with more than half of customers in China and 21% in Europe using multiple devices when shopping. On the topic of mobile, Beeson said that micro transactions for companies like Starbucks “don't just enable mobile payments, they enable mobile engagement" through loyalty schemes, coupons, rewards, and product information. She stressed that enabling ‘mobile moments’ create expectations of instant gratification for customers.

Àlex Camps d'Azpiazu of the Barcelona based clothing brand Desigual, said that they want to offer a seamless payment experience on mobiles and desktops with an aim to optimise the user experience to increase conversion rates.

On the topic of innovation, Michel Léger of ingenico Labs, said that we’ve seen more innovation in the past 4-5 years in payments than in the previous 25 years, indicating that the industry will experience even more remarkable breakthroughs in a relatively short span of time that businesses need to be prepared for.

I also had a chance to talk about innovation in the travel industry and the emergence of unique Traveller Tribes that have specific behaviours to cater to, many of which we’ve highlighted in our most recent report, Future Traveller Tribes 2030: Building a more rewarding journey . One point I made was that there will be multiple moments of payment and each traveller segment will have particular preferences that travel players need to take into account. Offering multiple payment options at different times of the travel cycle, seamlessly across all devices will be a key element in this and the Amadeus Payment Platform is ideally suited to deliver this to the travel industry.

Did you attend the conference? What were your key takeaways? Have a look at the #Insights_EMEA hashtag on twitter for pictures and more updates from the event.