When your small business has thrived in the local community by serving for years, it would be daunting to establish an online store. Having an online store would definitely require twice the amount of work for no guaranteed gains.
The question is would your customers use an online store ?
An online store or e-commerce website serves an incredible tool for the small- business owners for leveraging numerous benefits. When setting up an online store it requires some time that pays for itself as the sales starts rolling in. You can always hire a new employee when you end up with a high volume of purchases.
The e-commerce store can be combined with the online marketing tools and tactics for achieving the knock over results of the new customers rendering towards social media marketing and search engine optimization.
The online stores serve as the perfect complement to your brick- and- mortar store. You can weigh the benefits against your doubts on reservations and choose a budget to go ahead with your e-commerce initiative.
Reaches the large audience instantly
Increasing your audience significantly increases your sales. You had already saturated your local market making known everyone within the 20-mile radius assuring you do exist. Thereby people had made up their mind to choose a competitor or to patronize your business. You can easily advertise about your online store to this local audience. But it may not be an easy way for keeping them away from your competitors.
You can aim for the low- hanging fruit, where people live 500 miles away and love to purchase from your store but have no other way to get there. Here comes an option of an online store that instantly opens doors for the people across the nation and around the globe. You can go for a modest investment setup for increasing your sales by not limiting your local audiences.
You can end up increasing your local orders too. Nowadays people are busier hence online shopping would be more convenient for them. Your neighbors would always love to support your business, but they don’t have enough time to stop the storefront when it’s open. Through online shopping, people can browse your product pages online and make a convenient purchase even at 3 am.
Collection of Data and Behavioral Insights
The online store gives access to built-in analytics and data for the customers and their shopping habits. For instance, you can check what kind of products are frequently bought, so that you can give special discounts or you can cross-market those products on other web store pages.
You can frequently give offer discounts by checking whether it is used by the first-time customers or the repeated customers for understanding the impact on lead generation and the customer’s loyalty. These data can troubleshoot your website or prices indicating which web page can cause people to leave your site or what type of products are abandoned in carts
Does your shop convince people to purchase or does your visitors leave ?
The time they spend on your site and what’s their average order value ?
You can track these types of behaviour or data that is virtually limitless. But you would require a hand from a web developer or the marketer for setting the right tracking system. The data you want to collect isn’t automatically offered through your e-commerce platform like Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics tool.
The Use of Online Marketing Tools
You need to have an online presence to take advantage of the online marketing tactics. Usually, an online store yields you a marketable web presence to show up in the search engine results, that can be shared on social media or to collect emails for a newsletter campaign. Obviously, your website or shop can’t achieve these automatically.
You have to actively use the social media for posting ads, search engine optimization and email marketing techniques to accomplish your specific goals. These may include grabbing the attention of people towards your website for making a purchase henceforth increasing your revenue.
The success or failure of your online store depends on creating effective marketing campaigns. Avoid the mistake of establishing an online store and not marketing it. You can either start with a simple postcard or email newsletter campaign for alerting your current customers for making an online purchase. To retrieve the best results, the ongoing need for marketing can be factored in your store budget along with the initial estimate of designing and creating the store.
Ways to maintain relevancy and competitive
It’s now the time to say yes to e-commerce, consumers have got the taste of convenient purchasing through online that lets them deliver their products at their doorstep. But if your shop doesn’t render for online business, there is the risk of losing customers to your competitors.
This is true when you cater to busy people. For instance, You sell products for toddlers or babies, the moms are your target audience, as they are typically busy making a store purchase, they would look for a convenient online shopping option. These moms would make an online purchase and refer their friends too.
The E-commerce platform is the best option for your small business, as it allows convenient payment methods like Paypal, Apple pay, Stripe and credit cards.
An e-commerce store can have these features of payment options more than a physical store. Ensure to have an SSL displayed clearly before your domain name for customer’s information’s security and safety purposes.
Cut down the rental costs
The important factor you consider to rent a space for your small business is the location. Do you really feel happy with the foot traffic you generate for your location in exchange of the rental cost ?
By using the option of an online store, you would never require a physical location. You can store the inventory in your basement by checking the zoning and tax requirements. But if you opt to maintain a space where customers visit for making a purchase, then you could rent an affordable space.
Instead of using a location as a source of advertising, your number- one priority must be online marketing. Thereby, the money you save on rent can go for your marketing efforts. There comes a flexibility in terms of your daily schedule, if you transit completely to e-commerce.
For instance, the orders can be processed and responded to customer emails at any time. You have to consider attention towards the post office closing time as you have to send your packages on time.
