Linking in-store and online commerce using Sitecore Commerce and Valtech Vantage Part 1

January 12, 2018

Valtech Vantage, our proprietary smart beacon technology, is a unique solution that gathers consumer behavior insight offline, in-store and then connects it with your web analytics. By capturing data offline that is consistent to and comparable with online data, valtech_vantage provides a holistic view of customer behavior across all touch points. The technology allows you to understand the influence that both online and offline touch-points have on each other and on purchasing decisions, as well as measure and improve the entire customer experience accordingly.

In this series of posts we explore how valtech_vantage, Sitecore Commerce and Sitecore xDB can be combined to create that unified view and personalize the experience across channels.

How does valtech_vantage work?

First, let’s start with a primer on how the valtech_vantage technology identifies people without them needing to install any apps or software.

1. All mobile devices emit WiFi, Bluetooth and/or cellular signals (GSM/CDMA) providing the opportunity to uniquely identify a device to the person it belongs to.
2. The valtech_vantage technology detects and uses these signals to show you visitor count, location and more.
3. Additionally, upon completing a process of registration as simple as connecting to WiFi, users can be identified.

What can we track with valtech_vantage and Sitecore?

1. valtech_vantage provides in-store analytics. Metrics like number of visitors, most viewed zones/product categories, duration of a visit, and bounce rate are all possible.
2. valtech_vantage also gathers data on anonymous visitors & loyal customers in store. New vs returning customers ratio, Mrs X’s frequency of visits, preferred product categories, missed product categories, engagement over time, etc.
3. Beyond in-store. A unified view is where we combine valtech_vantage with Sitecore to reconcile your customer’s behavior on each of your touch points, creating a holistic view of their behavior within your brand experience.

How does this work?

So, how to we make all this work together? The in-store valtech_vantage devices broadcast events to Sitecore (we’ll cover more on this in a later post) which are then ingested into Sitecore’s xDB driving xProfile and personalization. Sitecore can also broadcast events back to valtech_vantage to drive the in-store experience. As a customer enters and moves about the store these events allow us to draw a picture of movement and interests throughout the store, and yes multiple stores are supported.

The result in Sitecore’s Analytics is a view of the customer that includes both online and offline interactions. In the following screen, we can see an overview of a user that has been identified as a kitchen buyer in the online channel (using Sitecore profiling) and has triggered an in-store visit on October 8th.

In a subsequent post we’ll explore how the valtech_vantage connector for Sitecore was built and how this will change with the release of xConnect.