by Retaxis | Jan 24, 2017 | Ecommerce, Expand, Online Shopping, Selling
By being a local retail store, you have an advantage of targeting hyper-locals with whom you can get in touch in person & maintain a healthy relationship to achieve your targeted sales goal!
But what if, you get to know that by following this bygone approach, your viability of expanding your business & churning more profits out of it is dropping down as you are targeting a limited audience.
The physical presence of a retail store is must to cater local customers and strengthen your roots in the market but if you turn a blind eye to the on-going trends of eCommerce & m-Commerce, you are forfeiting your chances to the long run.
With the increasing number of tech savy user’s, business owner’s need to upgrade their working/selling methodologies to drive more sales.
To move with the ongoing technology driven market trends & to maximize your sales, you need to convert your retail store to an e-tail store.
How you can do that? Here the answer!
- Create a mobile-friendly responsive ecommerce website
Get an online website for your physical store is the 1st thing that you need to do. The retailer’s need to make sure that their website is up, running & accessible to the buyer and is updated with almost all the products from their catalogue.
The store owner needs to ensure that his website is responsive in design and can be browsed thru desktop or mobile phone with its proper functioning.
Today, more than 57% of the customers prefer browsing thru their mobile phones & there is a high possibility of their bouncing back if the website is not viewed properly on their handheld devices.
If you have a mobile site up and running, make sure that it fulfils the following requirement:
- Responsive design: Adaptive to any mobile or tablet devices.
- Product display & its description: Display the complete product catalogue with proper & visible description
- Loading & browsing speed of the website: The website should load faster.
- Search tools with automatic suggestions functionality: Search bar to search for products using their name or attributes.
- Scroll down for new products: Let the user scroll down to find new products rather than click for new pages.
- Single page checkout option with options to pay-online/wallet: User should be able to make the purchase by making his payments online.
- Go Cashless by using online/mobile payments solution
Retailer’s can drive their customers to their online web-store where they can browse thru the complete product catalogue without speaking to any of the sales executive. They can choose the products on their own and can complete the shopping using the self-checkout option.
Retailers can also install self-checkout kiosks in their physical store using which the user can browse thru their online store and can make a purchase of their preferred products by making online payments to the store.
POS devices can also be used to enable digitalization of the physical store.
The retail stores have many benefits of going cashless & by using their web-store to drive sales. By using this approach, they can cut down the hustle of hiring sales executives who assists the buyer in his shopping, the buyer can search and find the product as per his requirement and can make a selection on his own terms.
The physical store dependency of the retailer will not be an issue now as he has more ways to drive sales.
- Promote your business digitally
To get an online business up & running, you need to get the business promoted in the online space where buyers who are in search of any product/service related to your catalogue can see your listing with the link of your website. This marketing will increase your brand visibility which eventually increase in customer visits & order creation.
One of the easiest & most effective way to market your products is investing in the paid searches. These paid promotions ensures that your listing are showcased at the top of search engine results with immediate effects.
You just need to invest in the paid searches and boom! Any user who searches for the product related to your catalogue can see your name on the top of search engine/Google results.
The paid promotions empowers you to get quick results in searches while the SEO practise takes times in doing the same.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an organic way to optimize & improve your website’s visibility and ranging on search engine’s search results. As compared to paid searches, SEO takes some time to show the results.
- Showcase your online product catalogue
The user coming on the website wishes to purchase some or the other product listed on the website. The products are listed on a virtual platform where the user can neither touch & feel the product nor can use the trial room to check how it fits.
In this virtual ecosystem, brand/product catalogue plays a vital role in enhancing the customer’s buying experience and to increase the sales. The store owner needs to showcase the products on his website with the best of its images and the complete description & how to use instructions.
Online selling is all about how the products are displayed/showcased on the website.
The digital cataloguing process can be used to drive more sales by showcasing more relevant products in reference to the product being viewed by the buyer.
The technique of doing this is known as UPSELLING of products. Fusing the searched products with some more related products will lead to more user engagement which in turn would increase the number of orders which in turn would eventually increase the revenue churned.
- Run in-store promotions for buyers (Discount coupons & cashbacks)
Running in-store promotional activities like instant discount coupons, promotional cashback offers on the order amount, earning on referrals etc. are a great way to engage users to buy more products from the website and even to promote the website by referring it to their family & friends in order to qualify for the promotional cashbacks.
The website can also provide the buyer with some goodies/Freebies for his brand promotions & enhanced customer shopping experience.
Customer’s love to receive discounts, cashbacks, freebies/goodies which encourages them to make their purchases thru online medium rather than offline physical stores.
by Retaxis | Dec 4, 2016 | Online Shopping, Selling
Unless you are living under the rock for a couple of years, you must have surely heard about blooming market of e-commerce. It could have come in front of you in different formats and patterns or spheres and that too with different angles. You must have heard regarding different companies who are providing e-commerce because the commercials on TV are bombarded with numerous advertisements, going through the stories which are hyped with respect to services offered by the e-commercesites, looking into the huge valuations via web companies which are getting ample stock market-even though not making the profit.
Whenever you plan to build up the website related to the e-commerce, you should keep in mind few tips for which you should query and they are mentioned below-
- How are you planning to market your website? – Generally, clients are more interested in getting their e-commerce store online and do not provide ample importance to how to market the same online. This situation is generally followed by poor traffic or no sales on your recently launched online store leading to unrest and disinterest. Our best advice is to go through you expectation before launching your website. A successful website does require lots of attention and a well-planned marketing strategy, but unfortunately, there are lot of owners who plan to ignore the essential stuff.
- How to customize the overall presence of your online store to latest technologies? –Technologies have taken a remarkable leap and have showcased an enthusiastic environment in the recent times. Due to which it is soaring high in the market and people are getting inclined towards it. In many of the cases, if you are having an online presence then surely your company’s logo, color schemes etc. should be reflected on the e-commerce site. In case if you don’t have the presence online then surely you should go ahead with following the color patterns of your logo for your e-commerce site. There are lot of templates which can be customized by an e-commerce website development company or thru a DIY panel where you can make changes to the layout without much knowledge of HTML & CSS.
- Pattern of payment system? –You need to ensure that it should be secure and safe with respect to customer’s confidentiality. We usually recommend signing up with a payment gateway provider which is PCI-DSS compliant and offers a solution on an HTTPS secure page hosted on their website or on yours. Recently we have come across various payment gateways offering payment on page options also wherein you can accept payments directly on your website without going to the payment gateway provider website. Your payment gateway should be equipped to support 3D-secure payment validations to safeguard your customers.We at Retaxis is currently integrated with almost each payment gateway in India and can also help you in acquiring a free payment gateway.
- How to take care of customer service? – Customer service plays a crucial part in enhancing the experience of your customers. Well a user is putting his money on stake for a product he is buying on your website, he might face issues due to delays in delivery or due to a damaged product and at this time he needs someone to listen. Some of the wide user support systems helps buyers to request inquiries using live chat, email, telephone or even thru social media.
- How to determine shipping cost? – To sort out shipping costs you should contact a logistic company whom you have chosen for delivering products. They will be providing you shipping charges according to zones and weight of the shipment. In case your competitors are offering the shipping free of charge, then surely you need to look into it as to how you can absorb the shipping cost.You can look into Delhivery or Ecom express as your partners in Logistics.
- How to handle product description and images? – It is always believed that images speak more loudly than words. Online shoppers are unable to feel, touch or smell the product, so its beneficial if you are able to describe the product in best possible manner. The product description should be short and relevant which should add the features of the product.
- Enhancing your site via comments and feedback of the customers – Customer feedback or comments plays the crucial presence on the website due to which it reaches to numerous people across the globe. With the comments of customers, other new customers are gaining momentum on the website and feel like exploring more. Even you should showcase your presence on the social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest.Since these are comments by a fellow buyer they also work wonders in increasing reputation of the product.
- How to attract shoppers? – Once your e-commerce store is online you need to make it using various channels that you might have been it work of mouth marketing, banners, paid ads or organic search results. You should also create an identity for your e-commerce store on various social media websites and do a link back to the same on your store.Marketing for your online store is a continuous effort and we do recommend looking for a vendor to assist you in doing search engine optimization, paid ads (PPC) or affiliate marketing options.
- How to handle returns? – You should be prepared to handle returns of your products, these returns could be part of replacements or even refunds. You should make sure that your current e-commerce website can handle returns efficiently and update inventories in case of a refund done by the client.Along with the update on stock inventories, the system would also trigger an email confirmation to your buyer as a notification of return.
- How to track the success of the store? – Like any other business you need to keep a track on the top line and bottom line to be sure you are heading in right direction. With e-commerce, the biggest benefit is to be able to track and analyze actions done by various visitors on your store which is missing in a brick and mortar business. You should definitely use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to track actions of visitors coming on your website, analyze them and make changes to improve conversions.Create a Goal and then see how to achieve it, it’s your responsibility to help your buyers get the best buying experience on your store.
Hoping that now you have some clear idea about setting your ecommerce store you can also check out for what leading players in the industry are doing. Learn from their short upcoming and rectify them in your ecommerce store.
You can even ask us at Retaxis to help you create your online e-commerce store. Call us for NO OBLIGATION FREE DEMO.
by Retaxis | Dec 3, 2016 | Online Shopping, Selling
Selling a product through your online store is no small feat and you know I’m right if you run one. The prospective buyers can only see the product and have to imagine how the product actually feels i.e. your expectations. When the product is delivered, sometimes your expectations are met and other times your buyer is cursing you. Many researches have shown that many people fear the latter situation, so they just window shop but don’t buy anything. So how do you turn each window shopper into a buyer? Panic not; there is always a way.
- Bathe your products in limelight – Before buying everyone naturally wants to know what the product is made of, the color, the size, shape, beneficial features and even texture. So focus on giving details on why they should buy this product rather than what this product is for. Though both of these purposes seem almost similar they are not. The former purpose helps in materializing the sale than the latter one.
- Reinvent your about page – Most of the buyers are inquisitive about who runs the store and how it all started. So look at your About page, evaluate it. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think if your story is really capturing. If not, then rewrite from scratch. Write about yourself and the venture you’re heading. Your goals and interests help the ultimate users know what you exactly are.
- Play some videos – In the recent times; before we buy a product, we want to make sure someone has used it so that you could use his or her reviews on the product. So what’s better, request for videos from your existing customers and record everything they’ve to say about your product and service. This will help your prospective buyers in selecting what they really want. That way, they are sure what to buy and will buy more when they’re satisfied with your products.
- Welcome sales returns – When we buy a product, the perceptions connected to it change after we have the product. Some may like it and some may not. For those who do not like it, an easy “return before ___ days” policy is a boon. This policy helps you in retaining the customers; it lets the customers know that their welfare is your priority.
- Building Brand value – Encourage customers to write reviews be it good or bad. And do not filter the reviews but keep them in the chronological order. Reply to every review of the customer and share your testimonials online. If your brand has been mentioned in any journal, magazine or newspaper, make sure you publish the same online. This increases your reputation even faster.
Running your e-commerce store you are constantly looking at improving sales and to achieve the same do various activities to promote, acquire or discount but if the traffic that comes on your ecommerce store can not trust your brand or is not driven by the desire to buy your products then all the efforts put in are in vain.
