The IMPACT Omnichannel Index 2022

Baggrund

As one of Scandinavia’s largest commerce consultancies, we specialise in building extraordinary omnichannel experiences. In 2021, one of the most outstanding omnichannel experiences we created wasn’t for one of our clients, but for retailers across Scandinavia: The IMPACT Omnichannel Index.

What is the IMPACT Omnichannel Index? We’re glad you asked. Part-conference, part-content, part-contest, the IMPACT Omnichannel Index is a piece of long-form original content and analysis that sheds light on the best-performing brands and retailers in the Nordics and the trends shaping the future of omnichannel retailing.

Every other year, we spend months compiling and crunching data, inviting pioneering retailers and brands to share their expertise in its pages, and delivering the insights and most thought-provoking (and original) numbers at a series of IMPACT-hosted, free-to-participate conferences in the Nordic capitals. We even publish hundreds of physical copies.

So, why do we go to all this trouble? At IMPACT, part of our strategy is inspiring businesses to drive change and provide quality customer experiences – regardless of the channel their customer encounters them on. We’re also committed to building and nurturing a unique community within the commerce space that spans across customers, people and technology partners. Given our size and our veneration for omnichannel, we see it as our responsibility to uncover the highs and lows of Nordic omnichannel. The Omnichannel Index is one of the key methods we use to shape that community and future. Not to point fingers ay anyone, but to collectively improve the customer experience across countries and industries.

What’s different this time? In December 2021, the Swedish commerce masterminds from Stockholm-based Improove joined our team in our biggest-ever merger & acquisition. This development sparked some significant changes to the Omnichannel Index. This time around, we wanted to place Swedish omnichannel excellence and sustainable retail at the heart of the learnings. That meant launching the report in Stockholm, Sweden, and widening the pool of brands we sampled and surveyed to include more Swedish retailers than ever before. Additionally, the data represented a pre v. post-Covid-19 pandemic world – adding an intriguing extra dimension to our findings.

IMPACT’s purpose is changing commerce for the better. Here’s how we succeeded at that with the 2022 Omnichannel Index.

Løsning

With 277 companies audited, 65 customer-facing touchpoints analysed and more than 18.000 data points crunched in total, the third edition of the IMPACT Omnichannel Index is the most comprehensive analysis of omnichannel performance ever produced in the Nordics.

The bi-yearly 150+ page report is based on the original results of a combination of in-store mystery shopping, digital performance analysis and desk research. IMPACT is responsible for methodology, data-gathering, research and analysis. As part of our methodology, we pre-defined criteria within each touchpoint that we believe retailers need to live up to in order to deliver best-in-class omnichannel experiences. That means the Index is an outside-in, objective analysis of how the surveyed retailers perform. Everything is told from a customer journey perspective.

Last year, the Index evaluated 113 Danish, 95 Swedish and 67 Norwegian companies across key industries: fashion, electronics, footwear, opticians, house and garden, pharmaceutical & beauty, children, jewellery and watches, sport and leisure and furniture and home interiors.

In the Index, we examined each of the five phases of the customer journey to assess how each retailer performs: from awareness and evaluation, to purchase, service and loyalty.

At IMPACT, we’ve defined our purpose as ‘changing commerce for the better’. In 2022, we added a new section that taps into our goal of being a responsible company that promotes better commerce experiences: sustainability. With customers increasingly favouring shopping at sustainable brands, we decided to look into how Scandinavian retailers are performing on key sustainability parameters, such as filtering based on sustainable products, climate-offsetting and fossil-free shipping. While sustainability may not be part of a hardcore commerce experience just yet, we felt a strong responsibility to explore and inspire the topic on behalf of our entire industry. We know that commerce equals consumption, so we hope this new category will help spark discussions on how we can counter the negative footprint on the environment.

The Index isn’t limited to just number-crunching though. It also includes insights from leading omnichannel subject matter experts from IMPACT and our ecosystem of partners: Struct PIM, Digizuite, Raptor, commercetools, Contentful, Adobe, Occtoo, Salesforce, Danske Bank, Omnium, Relewise, Voyado, Talon.One, Algolia, Umbraco, Streamify, and our marketing brand of IMPACT Commerce’s business; IMPACT Extend.

Resultat

In addition to hosting four events to promote the launch of the Omnichannel Index in Stockholm, Oslo, Aarhus and Copenhagen, we knew the report would serve as a high-quality, evergreen piece of thought leadership and educational content. One that continues to attract attention from our target audience – long after the in-person events and marketing promotion wrapped up.

Even before we released the Index, we received many comments from people keen to get their hands on some early insights.

To increase the longevity of the Index, we created a permanent mini-site (https://www.omnichannelindex.com) where businesses can download the report, access benchmarks to gauge their omnichannel performance, and even (re)watch the keynote speakers’ talks from the Omnichannel Index Tour events. They’re also able to book a tailored 1-2-1 omnichannel workshop for their business, which several businesses in Denmark and Norway have done.

In the first three months of 2023, the Omnichannel Report has been downloaded 220 times. Overall, the Index has been downloaded by 1000 people.

We’ve also repurposed key figures from the report in alternative formats, like an infographic and fast-fact posts on our social media channels which have continually high engagement.

The Omnichannel Index also received positive media coverage, including in Mediet Markedsføring (link: https://markedsforing.dk/artikler/nyheder/ny-undersoegelse-butikker-halter-paa-personalisering/).

It’s clear that the IMPACT Omnichannel Index is one of the highlights of the IMPACT Commerce brand. We’ve become well-known for it, and each drop of the report is keenly anticipated by our clients and professionals working in the retail industry. We’re providing a valuable data-filled benchmark that wouldn’t otherwise exist for our industry. Thanks to the entrenched methodology and format of the report, it’s highly scalable and simple to replicate. We love that we don’t have to choose quantity over quality content: the Index is the best of both worlds.

Beyond these hard metrics, we’re also proud to say that the Omnichannel Index has helped boost our brand awareness in Sweden, a country we’re increasingly expanding into.

We’ve found that the lifespan of a report like the Omnichannel Index is around two years, before its usefulness begins to degrade. In our industry, that’s a very long time. On that note, we recognise that results change over time – and the pace of change is especially dizzying in retail. That’s why we’re already busy planning the release of the fourth edition of the IMPACT Omnichannel Index in 2024!