Although we are all increasingly doing business online and e-commerce is booming where bricks and mortar stores are not, in many cases, there are still plenty of things that online retailers can learn from retail shops in the real world.
If you are setting up your own e-commerce business, don’t discount the wealth of experience that bricks and mortar retail outfits have because a surprising number of them will still be applicable to you, including the following:
This is a contributed post. Please refer to my disclosure for more information.
Design Matters
Bricks and mortar retailers often call in retail design companies like http://www.design4retail.co.uk to redesign their shops and switch up the layout so that their shops are more inviting and their products are more likely to be purchased. If you’re running a business online, you obviously don’t have any real space to redesign, but you do have a website and the way that looks, how easy it is for people to find the products they’re looking for and how prominent your special offers are, still matter. If your website is poorly designed, few people will buy anything from you, and even fewer will come back a second time, so it is so important that your online shop looks the part.
The Personal Touch is Important
When you walk into a bricks and mortar shop, you are almost always greeted by a friendly space who will say hello and ask you if you need any help, or who you can go to if you have a problem – your online business should offer the same kind of service. You can do this by offering live chat apps that customers can immediately access when they need to ask about a particular product or make a claim. The better the levels of customer service you offer, the better your reputation will be and the more satisfied customers, who will return to you time and time again, you will have.
You Have to Actively Sell Some Products
There are some products that we all need, such as toilet paper and food, which require very little marketing in the average shop, but there are others, such as expensive walking boots like the ones at https://www.salomon.com/, for example, which are a harder sell due to their cost. That’s why many bricks and mortar shops have live in-store demonstrations to really sell the benefits for those more premium products. What can you learn from this? That some products may require videos showing your e-commerce customers what they can do as well as detailed descriptions. Never think that a brief description will sell any and all of your goods because it probably won’t.
Sales Boost Sales
How often do you see signs in shops pointing out that there is a sale? Pretty often right? Are those signs prominent? You bet they are. That’s because sales and other offers attract way more interest to the average shop. That means, that you regularly offer sales in your e-commerce store and not only that, but you should also advertise them prominently on social media, your own website and anywhere else that your target audience is likely to look.
Embrace technology, but don’t forget traditional techniques for making sales and keeping customers happy and you will do just fine!
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