Anyone else confused about how companies define “Online Sales”? What exactly do they mean? Do they mean that the customer received the product at home? Or that they paid for it online? Or that they selected the product on their phone?

The customer journey is now soooo complex that even advanced analytics struggle to accurately distinguish online and offline customers.

Look at the data for the non-food category on the picture.

Your customer can get interested in a product on YouTube, consult in an online chat, touch the product in a physical store, order home delivery and return the product to a pick-up point. Customers don’t care about your channels, they care about the complete experience.

“Let’s invest in online because it’s our future.” Red flag! 🙅
In my humble opinion as a digital leader, statements like these are dangerous because they ignore the omnichannel customer journeys. For the customer, the channel you invest in is not important at all. The key question to ask is: what can we do to improve our omnichannel customer experience?

If the online experience is excellent, but you mess up in the offline touchpoints, then the final experience for the customer will be bad 👎. And next time, they will vote for your competitor with their wallet 💸
(Bye-bye CLV👋)

All touchpoints in the customer experience are important.
And the share of “online sales” (whatever it is in your report) is just an indicator of a successful omnichannel strategy.