Customers still choose the store. They go for something an online experience can’t offer, the ability to see, touch, ask questions, and engage with experts in the moment. That is the store’s unique and powerful advantage. The moment a customer walks in, the experience rests on the associate standing in front of them. Equip that associate with the right tools to deliver an exceptional experience, and the visit pays off. Leave them under-equipped, and your investment in bringing customers to the store won’t deliver.
Stores still account for more than 76% of retail sales, versus e-commerce, which handled just 16.6% of total transactions in 2025. The data continues to prove that the store is not in decline, but the reasons customers come to stores is quickly evolving. Shoppers can buy almost anything online, so when they choose the store, they are choosing it for the experience.
Adyen's 2025 research found that 44% of shoppers still prefer shopping in-store, but they expect that experience to be as seamless and informed as the digital one. That expectation is the bar. Attentive's 2026 Personalization Trends report found that 83% of shoppers want a personalized experience with tailored offers and recommendations, and 90% want more personalized communication than they currently get. A customer who is recognized online and treated like a stranger once coming into the store does not separate the channels in their mind. They simply feel the brand does not know them. The store is where that expectation is either met or missed, in person and in real time.
Customers can buy anything online. When they choose the store, they are choosing the experience.
Every element of a great store visit, the welcome, the recommendation, the saved sale, the effortless checkout, runs through the associate. They are the interface between your brand and the customer. Yet most associates are asked to deliver a premium experience with tools that work against them.
Consider where their time goes. Recent store operations research found that 45% of retailers say associates spend too much time hunting for answers to customer questions, and 42% say they lose associates to technology support and maintenance. Every minute spent searching a back-room terminal, calling another store, or fighting a frozen device is a minute not spent with the customer. The associate is not the problem. The toolset is.
Give associates the right platform and the entire equation flips. That is the definition of an elevated store experience and is the difference between a customer who was merely served and one who walks out feeling known.
An elevated store experience happens when associates are equipped with unified customer, product, transaction and inventory data, turning a store visit into a personalized, informed interaction that a digital channel alone cannot replicate.
Business drivers map to specific capabilities. Without the infrastructure to deliver the capabilities, the experience remains an aspiration, not a reality.
| Business Driver | Required Capability |
| Recognize customers and personalize for their visits | Clienteling: unified customer profile, history, preferences, and loyalty in-hand |
| Free associates to sell instead of search | A single associate view of customer, product, and inventory data |
| Serve the customer anywhere in the store | Modern point of sale with mobility, line-busting, endless aisle, and save-the-sale |
| Convert engagement into revenue | Relevant cross-sell and upsell with consistent promotions and loyalty at the point of engagement |
| Deliver the experience reliably, even offline | Offline-capable, composable, API-first architecture |
Personalization is the price of entry, and the store is where it is especially important. When an associate can see a customer’s purchase history, preferences, wish list, and loyalty status on a mobile device, a transaction becomes a relationship. With an effective clienteling solution, the revenue case is compelling: engaged shoppers spend roughly twice as much as those who are not. Nordstrom reports a 15% lift in lifetime value among customers who shop across three or more channels. Recognition is a measurable benefit.
The fastest way to improve the store experience is to give associates their time back. When customer, product, and inventory data are readily available in the associate’s hand, the questions that used to force them to the back office or another system can be answered on the spot. Do we have this in another size? When could it ship? What did this customer buy last time? Selling time replaces searching time, and the same unified data that powers personalized recommendations closes the gap that nearly half of retailers say dominates associates’ day.
Empower associates with tools to maximize engagement.
The experience should never stall because a customer has to walk to a fixed register or hear “we’re out” when the item exists three stores away. Mobile POS lets associates check inventory right as the conversation happens to serve customers efficiently at peak demand. Endless aisle and save-the-sale turn a stockout into a completed order shipped to the customer’s door. This is the practicality behind the “commerce anywhere” concept, enabling the ability to serve the customer at any point in the store. Appointments, wish lists, and shared carts pull the digital relationship into the physical visit.
An equipped associate does not just serve, they enhance and grow every transaction. With customer context and a promotions engine in hand, cross-sell and upsell become naturally relevant while loyalty enrollment and consistent offers happen at the moment of engagement rather than as an afterthought. The interaction the customer enjoys is the same interaction that lifts revenue. Experience and profitability are not a trade-off. They are an investment.
These capabilities share one requirement: unified data, available to the associate in real time, on a device built for the floor. That is precisely what black-box, legacy point-of-sale systems cannot provide. Customer history sits in one silo, inventory in another, promotions in a third, and the associate is left to bridge them by hand or do without.
The common thread is a unified, composable architecture: one real-time view of customer, inventory, and order data; mobile-first tools designed for how associates actually work. And architected with offline resilience, because the experience cannot stop when connectivity does. OneView’s API-first, microservices platform lets retailers add these capabilities iteratively, without long, complex and risky rip-and-replace legacy upgrades. With a composable architecture in place, each new experience and improvement to your store technology builds on the last. To understand more about the operational and architectural depth behind composable commerce, our companion posts cover store execution in Unified Commerce in 2026: The Store Execution Playbook and the connected operating model in Connected Retail is the New Luxury Standard at Molton Brown.
Brand experience and profitability are not a trade-off. They are the same investment.
An elevated store experience is a strategy that should deliver results quickly. Leverage data to track outcomes from your first deployment in stores:
It is important to start from your own baseline versus an industry benchmark. With real data, you can build, test, learn and prioritize improvements that are compelling to senior business and technology leaders and gain buy-in to expand transformation goals.
The retailers winning on store experience do not re-platform overnight. They identify the moment that matters most to engage customers, rapidly give associates the tools to excel, and lean into the outcomes to show proof before scaling. On a unified platform, a better store experience is a capability you deploy, not a transformation you gamble on.
Ready to turn every store visit into an experience customers want to come back for? OneView works with retail operations and digital teams to put unified transaction, customer, inventory and order data in every associate’s hands. Schedule a demo to see how it can work for your brand.
A great store experience is personalized, informed, and seamless by leveraging digital tools that enable associates to recognize customers, answer questions instantly, and serve them anywhere in the store.
The store offers the chance to see and touch products, get expert help and be recognized as a loyal brand customer. Stores account for more than 76% of global retail sales, and customers increasingly choose them for experience rather than convenience alone.
How do store associates improve the customer experience?
Associates are the interface between the brand and the customer. When equipped with mobile tools and unified data, they personalize recommendations, resolve questions on the spot, and complete sales anywhere, turning a transaction into a relationship.
Clienteling is the practice of using customer information, such as purchase history, preferences, and loyalty status, to deliver personalized service. Shoppers engaged through clienteling tend to spend roughly twice as much, making it one of the highest-return uses of associate technology.
A single view, everywhere, of customer, product, and inventory data. Fast, intuitive checkout, including mobile POS to meet customers wherever they want to shop. And a commerce engine that includes promotions and loyalty at every point of engagement, plus offline capability to ensure there is no interruption to any transaction and engagement if connectivity drops.