Customer experience: How to attract consumers to “go shopping” in the era of online shopping?

In an era of online shopping, how can we attract consumers to reenter offline commercial spaces and experience the fun of "shopping"? From the perspective of customer experience, this article explores how to create an immersive experience space to give consumers a unique and unforgettable experience during the shopping process.

"Shopping" is a unique offline consumption experience!!!

In this era of experiential consumption, customers’ requirements for commercial spaces are no longer limited to meeting basic consumer needs.

They desire unique and memorable experiences during their consumption process.

However, in an increasingly competitive market environment, many businesses have fallen into the dilemma of homogeneity.

How to create a commercial space that truly touches people’s hearts?

When a themed space can appear frequently in customers' experience touchpoints in a variety of forms through different channels in a relatively short period of time and continuously convey the brand concept, it can bring customers a deep immersive experience.

I recently stumbled upon a coffee shop on a podcast that embodies this concept perfectly.

Their store adopts an industrial chain layout from source to terminal, purchasing coffee beans directly from the origin and processing them themselves. Originally for quality control and cost management, it unexpectedly became the starting point of their innovation.

Because they have their own processing links, they produce a large amount of coffee by-products on a daily basis, such as coffee grounds.

Most companies might just treat these as waste, but they came up with a clever solution.

They turned coffee grounds into a series of unique cultural and creative products: handmade soaps with coffee aroma, aromatherapy full of coffee flavor, and various exquisite accessories made from solidified coffee grounds...

Even the ashtrays in the outdoor area were filled with wet coffee grounds ⬆️, a practice I also saw at Qiu Shan Coffee Shop.

Coffee grounds can actually have many secondary uses if you use your brain. They can repel mosquitoes, absorb moisture and remove odors, remove dirt, exfoliate, and even be used as fertilizer for potted plants...

Let’s get back to our topic. When you “wander” in the store, various coffee-related elements appear repeatedly in different forms, creating an immersive experience atmosphere, which is the most important part of the offline venue.

The genius of this approach is that it is more than just a simple theme decoration, but works on multiple levels:

1. First, environmental value

By creatively using coffee grounds, they demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, which is particularly resonant as consumers become more environmentally conscious today.

Nantou Ancient Town Orange Treasure Project (Source: @前海桌大喵-Xiaohongshu user)

I have a good friend who runs a toast shop (Yangu Toast) in Nantou Ancient Town. The production of toast regularly produces discarded flour bags. They invite sewing experts, designers and community residents to jointly make environmentally friendly bag samples based on flour bags.

Taking environmental protection as the starting point and promoting community relations through old item transformation activities is also a particularly interesting ♻️ environmental protection practice in business.

Second, professional image

When customers see that coffee grounds can be processed into so many exquisite products, they will naturally think: If they can handle coffee grounds so carefully, then their main product - coffee itself must be even more attentive. This is a clever psychological hint.

This reminds me of another brand: Wang Xiaolu.

As a braised food brand, they took "quality" as their core theme and accidentally noticed that in the Tmall user review data, many users mentioned that the chicken feet were delicious but they did not remove the nails.

When they realized that such a seemingly small but crucial detail is actually the MOT that customers perceive the brand's professional image, they would rather increase costs and insist on manual processing when the factory machines cannot completely solve this problem.

This persistence in details allows customers to immediately feel their craftsmanship, and more importantly, activates customers' perception of quality experience.

If you observe carefully, you will find that some barbecue restaurants will take the time to cut off the sharp spines of each bamboo skewer. It's actually the same idea.

Third, the cultural atmosphere

By integrating coffee elements into every aspect of the space, they successfully upgraded a simple beverage shop into a complete coffee culture space. This approach allows consumers to feel that every detail here speaks of the love and persistence for coffee.

The Eslite Bookstore, which we are all familiar with, should be a typical case in this dimension.

They not only sell books, but also carefully create a cultural space. Each area has a unique design concept: the literature area uses warm wooden bookshelves and soft lighting to create an immersive reading atmosphere, while the children's area attracts young readers with bright colors and friendly layouts, and corresponding background music is played in different areas.

4. Finally, sensory experience

The mobilization of multiple senses such as vision (cultural and creative products), smell (coffee aroma), and touch (different materials) allows customers to have a richer and deeper experience. This all-round sensory stimulation can effectively deepen customers' memories and emotional connections.

The revelation that these cases give us is that a successful commercial space must not only have a clear theme, but also know how to strengthen this theme through carefully designed details.

There are several points we can learn:

1. Have a clear theme – Find your core characteristics and always focus on them
2. Pay attention to details – Incorporate theme elements into every aspect, but pay attention to changes and innovations in form.
3. Value transfer – conveying brand concepts and values ​​through space design
4. Emotional resonance – creating experience points that can trigger emotional resonance in customers
5. System thinking – organically integrate different elements to form a complete experience system

Remember, a truly touching commercial space is not just a place to sell products, but also a place to deliver value, create experiences, and establish emotional connections.

In the dimension of "visible, tangible, and experiential", we slowly and carefully explore every detail that can be involved in the design. When we make them echo and complement each other, there is a great chance to create an unforgettable immersive experience.

above.