Hybrid is a term that we are seeing a lot right now, as businesses across the globe look to combine homeworking with office-based employment. It’s not flexitime, it’s an effective blend of central offices and productive, supported homeworking.

It sounds brilliant on paper: company cultures will still thrive, people can bounce ideas off their colleagues, but life will be easier to manage as people are able to work from home much more often.

The same approach has to apply to retail.

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Julaine Speight, First Internet

Brands will need a blended strategy that combines online shopping, with the option to collect, and still offer in-store browsing. This will provide the most effective solution for consumers and still allow the high street to thrive – Hybrid Retail.

It means linking product packaging, website design and in-store activity more than ever before, providing a joined-up approach that drives awareness and sales to different consumer demographics. The packaging of a product will come to the fore as it needs to work online and on-shelf. Touch will still be important but online selection tends to be based on search, so the overall design will be vital – colours and shapes need to jump off the screen and product messaging needs to convey the things that are most important to today’s consumer: sustainability, cost and confidence in performance.

Make it user friendly

Ease of use and encouraging people to place orders quickly is the priority on an e-commerce site.  This is becoming even more important due to Google’s increased prioritisation of UX – this month, Google is releasing a new algorithmic update which will show preference to sites they deem to have good user experience, thereby fulfilling Google’s Core Web Vitals Assessment.  Sites deemed to have good usability will be labelled as such, immediately making them more appealing to consumers.

Get your images right

Make sure you optimise your images (compress them so they are the right size) and use functionality like lazy loading  them so they don’t load up all at once and slow everything down. This will affect page speed; optimising greatly improves experience, as the user can scroll and interact with a page while an image loads, without getting bored and leaving the site. 

Keep it positive

Over recent years, Google has introduced several assessments to rank the usability of websites. These assessments are conducted to understand how positively or negatively a person responds to a web page. When you first click through to a website, lots of processes are kick-started behind the scenes: HTML, CSS and JavaScript are gathered and loaded. This can drag the experience downhill and the browser struggles with other tasks in the meantime. It gets technical, but you can tell the browser which page or part of a page is most critical, so do consider this for delivery menu pages  – you aren’t necessarily making the page load faster, but giving the illusion that it is, which gives the user experience that all important boost and sends them to the right area.

Make it mobile

Over half of global traffic comes from mobiles, so you need to make sure your offering is suitable to use across all types of device. In fact, it should be developed using a “mobile first” mentality.  

Security

The UK has seen a 31% increase in cybercrime during the pandemic as less secure home servers are manipulated. Interpol’s cybercrime threat response team reported a ‘significant increase’ in attempted ransomware attacks around the world.  If you are asking consumers to pay online, or taking any information, you need to ensure your system is intact.  Having a valid SSL certificate is the very minimum requirement, and beyond this you need to be ensuring your website is up to date and well maintained.  If you’re using a WordPress site, out of date plugins are the easiest way in for hackers. 

Reviews

93% of consumers read an online review before buying, so it’s hugely beneficial to generate good reviews for your service – both on your own and on a third-party site. Don’t feel shy about asking for these reviews – 68% of customers will leave a review if asked. Include the best comments on your pages, and do respond to good reviews. If reviews start to get negative, it’s best to try to take the conversation offline or onto a private platform. 

Drive traffic the right way

Invest in promoting your site through hyperlocal news sites, local media, other local businesses and social media channels. Use effective SEO (search engine optimisation), Google Ads, organic and paid social media promotions.  

As consumers were ordered to stay at home over the last 14 months, it accelerated the move from bricks and mortar shopping to online retail. E-commerce leaders have seen a huge growth in sales as we all stayed in – Amazon recorded almost 200 per cent increase on profits in 2020. Online retail revenue in Europe alone is predicted to rise from $394b in 2020 to $465b by the end of 2021.

Competing with the likes of Amazon while still making a brand relevant in-store AND selling online may sound a challenge, but if brands apply some simple rules to their website, they can still survive and thrive in a world of Hybrid Retail.