Holiday and Online Retail

With the holiday season fast approaching, now is a good time to examine your company’s web presence. Online retail exposure is not a fad that is going away anytime soon. In fact, it is a growing segment with which you can augment your brick and mortar store. Each kind of business and clientele requires different approaches. Depending on your current online presence, it may only require minimal work to drive more business through your door. Some businesses need a way to sell products on the web, while others may just need more avenues to spread the word about their business.

You can use the web to create a two-way dialogue with your customers. Tools like Facebook and Twitter allow you to tell your company’s story, as well as update customers about new products and accomplishments your company has. Some companies are weary of creating an open public venue for customers to provide feedback because of the possibility of a customer leaving a bad review. This may happen, but the key to making it work to your advantage is how you will address such complaints. This will be where you can let your customer service shine. Consider if the customer had not left the complaint on your public page and instead posted it on their private page. This kind of thing may already be happening. Without providing a venue for customers to give feedback, you will lose the opportunity to correct their poor experience.

When it comes to selling products online, there are a lot of different ways to facilitate the shopping and purchase process. The best way to go for most is to have a custom online store with a custom cart that keeps the customer on your site. When a customer is taken away from a site to make the purchase, there is a lot of distraction that can happen, and the purchase process is more difficult. During the multiple steps, customers lose confidence in the process, and some even give up if there are any problems along the way. If you have a custom store and cart built, you can keep the customer on your site from beginning to end. By doing this, you streamline the process as well as minimize the possibility of customers quitting mid-purchase. A custom store and cart allow for more flexibility in running sales and specials. With these tools, you can turn hits (site visits) in to conversions (purchases).

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Joe Hart