Can you give an overview of what Hatch is?

Hatch is a global omnichannel solutions provider which has recently been acquired by PriceSpider. With a mission to make the world shoppable, we work with leading brands, retailers, and agencies to deliver the tools to turn customer browsing into buying. Our solutions empower brands to embrace multiple channels across physical and digital touchpoints to get closer to their customers. Some of our key solutions include Where to Buy technology for both online and local outlets, guiding a customer’s journey to their location of choice to make their purchase. Our technology bridges the gap between the physical and the digital, guiding customers to whichever shopping location they prefer. With Hatch technology, brands can ensure their digital touchpoints, from social media to online reviews, are ‘shoppable’ – in other words, that they facilitate a customer making a purchase right there and then!

How did the idea for Hatch come about?

When I was still a student, I started my first e-commerce company. We were selling consumer electronics online but began to notice that many people were mistaking our office for the retailer itself, where they expected to pick up the product. This confusion was being created because consumers could see our office address on their website dealer locator. This problem sparked the idea of integrating our website with the brand’s website by adding purchase links to the brands’ product pages and instantly re-directing browsers to our shopping carts. Thanks to this implementation, consumers could complete their online orders with fewer hurdles. In this, the idea for Hatch was born.

For you, what does effective e-commerce look like in 2022?

Effective e-commerce must think omnichannel in 2022. A key lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that single-channel retail cannot always be relied upon in a market that could change overnight. For that reason, truly effective ecommerce comes with a strategy that considers multiple channels and customer touchpoints. Creating a holistic and sustainable ecommerce strategy involves facilitating a customer’s journey across channels like social media commerce, online retailers, the brand’s own ecommerce, even navigating between the physical as well as digital. This means much more than simply fostering ecommerce growth from a brand’s online storefront and considering the value of customers viewing a company’s social media, reading online reviews, and browsing in-store. All touchpoints should interconnect and help progress the customer journey. In 2022 and beyond, effective e-commerce considers the interplay between every channel and does not value one over the other. Omnichannel tools such as Where to Buy technology and Buy-Online-Pickup-In Store (BOPIS) are each characteristic of a sophisticated ecommerce strategy today. Both social commerce and BOPIS established their growing value during the early stages of the pandemic, but two years later they have proven that they are just as popular in 2022.

What role does Hatch play in advancing e-commerce both for the consumer and the brand selling?

Hatch offers brands the instruments needed to facilitate their customers’ journey. Our solutions are customer-centric, designed to help brands adapt to what shoppers are expecting from them. For the consumer, this means shopping is easier and more seamless than ever: with Hatch solutions, prospective consumer can easily turn their browsing into buying, whether they are browsing a brand’s Instagram or reading online reviews. Hatch enables brands to make these touchpoints ‘shoppable’ – meaning the consumer can make a purchase through both social media platforms and product reviews, without having to externally search for the product through the brand’s online storefront. For brands, Hatch helps keep customers engaged across multiple channels, meaning that customer retention is more likely, and the buying journey is fostered whether a shopper wants to make their purchase online, through Instagram or Facebook, or even locally. We support the customer’s journey throughout and help drive sales for our clients, delivering key consumer insights to the brands along the way.

In your opinion, what are the current challenges of ecommerce today?

One of the primary challenges of ecommerce today is building and retaining customer loyalty. As younger consumers shape trends, Gen-Z shoppers are less brand loyal than older consumers. It will continue to be a challenge for ecommerce brands to retain their loyalty, with research indicating that the fluidity and speed with which they cycle through trends and brands make them more challenging to target. However, brands should remember that customer-centricity is key: engage with their needs and preferences, and you’re more likely to retain them as loyal customers. In fact, brands using three or more channels in any one campaign earn a 287 percent higher purchase rate than those using a single-channel campaign.

What does Hatch’s recent acquisition by US giant PriceSpider mean for the company and e-commerce at large?

Between our combined expertise and extensive retail network, the merge fully establishes us as the undisputed market leader in omnichannel commerce solutions. We believe that it’s reflective of the great strides ecommerce has made over the last couple of years, as the unpredictable nature of the pandemic meant many brands came to realise the importance of adaptive solutions. Instead of placing all your eggs in one basket, ecommerce today is much more omnichannel-oriented. In other words, it caters for customers who navigate multiple brand touchpoints during their buying journey, from social media to online reviews, and right back to the online storefront again.  We believe this is the future of ecommerce at large and Hatch and PriceSpider are proud to be right at the forefront of it.

The ecommerce market is forever evolving and growing, for example, social commerce has really taken off and we’re seeing shopping via the metaverse steadily growing also, what role will Hatch play in the e-commerce of the future?

Our intention is to further facilitate ecommerce growth for our customers in their landscape of omnichannel capabilities. From social commerce and indeed to the metaverse, what we are seeing is that more and more channels are being made shoppable. This is precisely the purpose of Hatch: to transform all customer touchpoints into seamless and easily-navigable paths to purchase. With PriceSpider, we will continue this shared objective into the future. The merge guarantees our position as the global leader in omnichannel solutions and together we will be utilising our expansive global footprint to assist brands worldwide in pursuing omnichannel solutions.

Over the course of your career, what have you learned is the most important thing to remember when it comes to the buyer’s journey online?

I think the most important lesson is that brands simply need to make it as easy as possible to buy their products online. The attention span of prospective customers is getting shorter and shorter, consumers don’t have hours to spend comparing prices online. Instead, they want to buy a product where it is most convenient for them, not where the brand thinks it is best for the consumers. Simplifying the customer journey will never go out of fashion, and in my experience, enabling different purchase options on different sales channels is key.

What e-commerce trends do you see growing, evolving or discontinuing over the next decade?

The future is increasingly customer-centric, so I am sure we are going to see innovations that cater to the customer first and foremost. According to Gartner, by 2025 unified commerce experiences will be seeing at least a 20 percent uplift in total revenue, meaning omnichannel commerce will be shaping the most successful and lucrative ecommerce trends. Other trends I expect to see will no doubt relate to Artificial Intelligence and Augmented/Virtual Reality innovations, particularly when it comes to brands implementing tech that speeds up or assists the customer’s decision-making journey. For example, beauty brands implementing technology that helps the customer determine whether their products match their skin tone or realistically apply virtual cosmetics are likely to represent the kind of hyper-personalisation that AR/VR innovations offer. The lines between physical and digital will be increasingly blurred with the help of AI technology, and we can expect to see many similar trends in this fashion. In terms of what might be discontinuing over the next decade? It’s always easy for some to say that brick-and-mortar is on the decline, but I wouldn’t be so quick to count it out. Especially as we enter an optimistic post-pandemic phase, we can expect many shoppers to enjoy in-person browsing into the coming years. However, brands should expect a continued trend of shoppers manoeuvring between touchpoints before making their final purchase – so it’s important not to value one over the other, whether it’s a physical or digital channel.

About Hatch

Hatch is an Amsterdam-based global omnichannel commerce solutions provider that aims to revolutionize the e-commerce landscape. Their “Where to Buy” solution connects brands with global retailers, both online and in-store, to create an omnichannel buying experience that seamlessly allows customers to purchase products at every touchpoint within their buyer’s journey. As e-commerce continues to experience an exponential boom, Hatch expects to manage over 60 million leads by the end of 2021. Hatch currently employs 80 people across its offices in Amsterdam, Kyiv, Bangkok, Moscow, and Taipei. For more, see gethatch.com.