With more people returning to in-person shopping, it might be tempting to expand your brick-and-mortar retail store. However, more people than ever are still doing their shopping online. And let’s face it: expanding a retail store online is a much simpler process.
Before the holidays hit, here are 8 tips to help you expand your offerings, reach more customers, and boost your bottom line.
1. Write Honest and Compelling Copy
People put their guards up when shopping online, especially during the holidays. With so many messages vying for consumer’s attention, choppy, hacky, or inauthentic copy sticks out like a sore thumb. Promises that sound too good to be true are also immediate red flags that make people scroll right by that ad you’re running or content you’ve created.
When writing copy for your online retail store, aim to be honest and concise with your message. Tell customers what they’re receiving or use testimonials from loyal customers to say it for you. During the stressful holiday season, shoppers appreciate businesses that make decision-making easier for them.
2. Narrow In on Your Target Audience
Similarly, people appreciate when a message, offer, or advertisement is written with them in mind. Social media targeted ads make it easier than ever before to get in front of your target audience—but the real question is, do you know for yourself? And what do you know about them?
Expanding your retail store online comes down to how well you speak to the people who buy your products. If you haven’t already, create an avatar of your ideal customer, perhaps using data to help decide how you can speak to them when marketing.
3. Use Analytics to Drive Decisions
Data is king, and it’s here to stay. Whether you use data to make decisions about website traffic, sales funnels, the customer experience, or the entire customer lifecycle, there are myriad tools and agencies willing to help you sort through information and draw conclusions from it.
Piloting a massive data initiative right before the holidays may not be the right move, but you can still dip your toes in the water with online ads, website traffic, and other key indicators to measure performance and make adjustments.
4. Simplify the Buying Journey
Your online payment processor should make the eCommerce shopping experience simple for customers. Sleek design, adequate security, and options to customize make for loyal customers and repeat buyers down the road.
If one issue detracts buyers, it’s errors or delays at checkout. Bounce rates increase drastically when this happens, which could leave thousands of dollars of merchandise left unsold or abandoned in the cart.
5. Lower Shipping Costs
Thanks to Amazon and other big-box retailers, we live in a world now where having to pay for shipping could deter someone from buying your product. As an independent retail store online, it’s in your best interest to keep shipping costs as low as possible when considering an expansion.
For those who sell physical goods or services, BOPIS (buy online, pick-up in-store) could be a method that eliminates shipping and encourages customers in your community to take advantage of your online promotional offers..
6. Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Shoppers lean heavily on the experience of others to help them decide where to buy.
When it comes to expanding your retail store, making sure you deliver exceptional customer service is one area always worth investing in. Even a handful of negative reviews—which are commonly left when people feel slighted or unhelped—can paint your business in a bad light, and may drive potential customers to look elsewhere.
7. Invest in SEO
There are many ways to advertise, but no strategy offers as much of a long-term reward for your efforts as search engine optimization. Websites with high-ranking content on Google and other search engines could get hundreds or thousands of eyes on their platform simply from one piece of quality content.
This is a long-term strategy that may not pay off this holiday season if you’re just diving in. But done properly, you’ll benefit from the holidays for years to come.
8. Lean Into Email Marketing
Oftentimes, we think of expanding a retail store online as needing to find new customers.
But if you aren’t building relationships and maximizing value for the people who already like what you do, you’re leaving money on the table—especially if you offer a recurring service or membership clubs. Your email list is a great place to start.
Learn more about Pinpoint’s merchant payment processing solutions to see if they can help expand your online retail business.
