Best Ways To Bring Your Business Online For Retail Shops

After setting up a physical retail shop, the next stage would be to market your business on online platforms – a trend that all big and small retail shops are quickly adopting. There are many ways to market your brand, shop or product online by using well-created marketing strategies which can impact the footfall of your brick-and-mortar store as well. E-commerce is the most visited platform by customers, and it presents tremendous opportunities, especially with businesses that are small-scale and just making inroads.

Here is a list of tips and tools that will help you to generate enough traffic on your website/online platform as well as footfall in your physical store, thereby enabling you to keep pace with competitive business dynamics.  

Also Read: Best Mobile Apps To Manage Trade And Payments For Retail Shops

Tips To Bring Your Business Online For Retail Shops

Get your website outreach through popular search engines

It is important to take the assistance of prominent marketing search engines that will help your website show up in top searches. This will help you gain visibility and customer traffic. At the same time, you should register with specialized sites and directories which function as a repository of information. This listing will enhance your popularity and drive traffic to your websites, while the business details shared on your page will help customers access your physical store.

Find out how you will fulfill your orders

It is important to understand the management of logistics that come with online purchases. An e-commerce business entails higher volumes and swift deliveries for which you would need to tie-up with a courier agency or make frequent trips to the local post office. Initially, the orders would not be big. However, once the business picks up, then you would want to engage the services of a door pick-up courier agency with the best and timely delivery record. You would also want to consider shipping charges for your customers, or perhaps offer ‘free shipping’ to make it attractive, without incurring the additional costs.  

Also Read: Best Ways To Organically Reach Customers For Retail Shops

Create an app for your business

Another great move towards making a successful foray in online business and increasing sales would be to elicit the services of an ‘App Developer’ for building your very own mobile app. Most customers prefer downloading business apps through Play Store or the App Store for browsing through the latest products and offers. 

Marketing via email

E-Commerce businesses can be boosted only if you are able to strongly communicate your offering to the customers. Email marketing is a great way to do so. It is a platform where a customer database is leveraged for sending time-to-time emails and follow-ups along with promotional messages. There are various tools that can help you in doing so such as ConstantContact, MailChimp and AWeber among many others.

Also Read: Tips On How To Maintain Best Mix Of Stock (Retail-Mobile)

Make sure that your site appears trustworthy

There is a spike in the number of fake sites and fraudulent online transactions, particularly when it comes to credit card payments. Your website should appear to be trustworthy to the customers.  For this, you should start getting accreditations and trust badges from PayPal or McAfee, which will add an element of trust and motivate your customers to purchase from your website.

Having a help desk in place

Once your online business takes off, then you will need support tools and a ‘Help Desk’ that can manage product complaints, customer communication and requests.  This is essential to ensure great customer service. You can take the assistance of various support platforms for such tasks such as ClickDesk, HelpSpot, Get Satisfaction, among many others.

Also Read: Best Practice For Mobile Shops

Be active on social networking sites

There are various popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter that can help you in direct sales. These sites are a great place to start a business because of the massive number of subscribers who can potentially be your future customers. Be regular in sending updates with announcements, offers and even blogs and stay in constant touch with customers.

Free giveaways

People love coupon discounts and free giveaways.  Use this online tool for generating interest in your products by announcing free samples, promotional freebies and discount coupon codes. This is a great way to generate customer traffic and push sales.

Also Read: Best Mobile Apps To Manage Trade And Payments For Restaurants

There are various strategies ranging from mobile applications and online press releases to freebies and push notifications that can help in generating customer traffic to your page/website. Not only do these tools and services help in driving customer traffic, but they also help in boosting footfall of your brick-and-mortar store. In any case, Indifi is the one-stop destination for understanding how you can build your online business most effectively.