The global projections of online retail shopping show that it’s a consistently growing industry. In 2018, the global e-retail sales amounted to $2.8 trillion. They are projected to grow to $4.8 trillion by 2021. Hence, an online presence is increasingly necessary for businesses that want to make it big. By not having an online presence, businesses can lose out on customers and their chances of survival are slim. However, when a business decides to ’go online,’ several challenges arise. Here are a few tips for bringing your brick-and-mortar business online.
How Do You Transition From Brick-and-Mortar to Online?
The first thing you’ll have to do to shift to the online platform is to choose the right platform. There are so many e-commerce platforms out there and they’re not all suited to you. For example, most retailers want to go to Amazon. However, you may have a very specific niche that people can’t get at Amazon.
You have a lot of options. Make sure that your choice is the foundation of your online store. The storefront you design is the basis of your physical store. Hence, the platform is the basis of your online presence.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
According to Statista, mobile retail commerce is set to take over nearly 73% of all online retail shopping by 2021. Hence, optimizing your online presence for mobile devices is the smart thing to do. Already, over half the internet traffic in the world, nearly 63.4% is being generated by mobile devices. In totality that represents 3.7 billion people globally.
Mobile shopping is not only more convenient, but it also enables shopping anywhere with an internet or cellular connection. This is a share of the market that you can’t afford to ignore. Hence, it’s in your best interest to optimize your site for mobile devices. This includes building your website to accommodate screen sizes and optimizing scrolling and touch-based interactions.
Design to Impress
The design of your website shows your customers what kind of taste you have. It projects on to the customer the kind of business practices, products, or services you provide. A website that is designed not just for aesthetic impressions, but also for fluidity, is a pleasure to browse around. Hence, perfecting the design of your website will get you a lot of visitors that stay for a long time.
This includes, of course, designing your website for all screen sizes. It also includes the option to navigate through the website easily and allowing access to all different parts of the website from each page. Your website design will be the very thing that separates you from the competition. It is what will succeed in inviting potential customers to your retail site.
Simplify the Checkout Process
Selling platforms always pair you with a merchant account. This is then used to process payments through the website. This is what makes or breaks the user experience at the end of the day. Your merchant will decide how fluid and easy it is to pay. The merchant will decide how far the customer will go before abandoning their cart. Online sellers grapple with this every single day. People make it as far as the checkout page and then never click on pay. This only because they go through a grueling process of data entry, and subconsciously decide it’s not worth it. Putting up so many barriers in front of them allows them to overthink their decision and decide not to buy.
Hence, find a merchant that will reduce data entry as much as possible and not require multiple pages to pay. Also, try finding a merchant that allows for multiple payment options. For example, don’t go for a merchant that doesn’t have PayPal if you’re in the US. If you’re selling to Chinese customers, don’t forget to add AliPay or Tencent support.
Leverage Your Brick-and-mortar Store for Marketing
Do you know that there are a lot of online stores that are opening up physical locations? According to a report by NPR, several e-commerce stores have opened up physical locations in the US. E-commerce may have changed the way we shop, but brick-and-mortar locations still attract sales. Hence, you shouldn’t completely disregard your physical location after establishing an online presence.
Your brick-and-mortar store may help you improve online sales too. You can advertise a lot of your products in the physical space. For example, even Amazon has physical locations that people can visit and browse around for books. Nothing’s for sale there, but after you peruse the books, you can buy them online.
Also, customers that return things at physical stores can sometimes find something they like instead. Hence, you may be getting a return, but making another sale at the same time.
Hire an Online Business Manager
This is the most important thing you need to do when establishing an online presence. Shifting from brick-and-mortar to online stores is very tricky. You need to figure out a thousand different things. However, if you get an online business manager to help you, the transition will be much smoother.
Take the example of landing pages, local SEO, or digital marketing. These concepts will not be familiar to you if you’ve just served walk-in traffic at your physical location. Online business management requires a very different approach. It involves figuring out an online aesthetic, a different approach to marketing, figuring out social media, etc.
You also need to know how much of your resources you need to allocate to your online presence before investing. All of that will have to be run through a dedicated manager. Not only will this allow you to skip the mistakes and blunders that online retailers make, but also profit quickly.
To stay ahead of the evolution, consider working with an Online Business Manager for your construction business. We will help you streamline your business and manage your day-to-day business functions so you can focus ON your business and not stress IN your business. Contact us today for a Client Discovery call.
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