Month: October 2019

Do you avoid putting your business online because you aren’t sure where to start or how you’ll handle the demand? It does take some effort to get your online store set up and manage the additional business. However, it also gives you another source of revenue, particularly during times when cash flow is a trickle.

The amount of U.S. online sales for the second quarter of 2019 was around $146.2 billion. Global studies that show around 40% of consumers bought something online. If you don’t have an e-commerce store, you’re missing out on potential profits that may put you ahead of the game. As a small business owner, anything you do to improve sales could mean the difference between success and failure.

In addition to increased potential revenue, discover eight reasons to transition to an e-commerce store. 

1. Collect Customer Data

An online presence gives you a way of connecting with people in your target audience. Offer a discount, a newsletter or other content. Use this information to draw in the buyers you want most, then get them to sign up for your mailing list. 

You can even target people in a specific location with your online advertising. Draw customers from your area to your online store while encouraging them to visit your physical site.

2. Put Inventory in the Cloud

No matter what type of business you run, an easily accessible inventory is a must to see what you need and what you have too much of. Small businesses can compete on an international scale with cloud computing. If you have sales agents out in the field, they can also access the inventory via the online portal and mark items sold.

Bon Bon Bon creates artisan chocolates in Detroit, Michigan. When they took their stores online, they knew they needed a highly-responsive e-commerce design to highlight their unique confectioneries. They highlight the ability to build your own box, a customized experience similar to what you’d see in a brick-and-mortar store.

3. Automate Customer Service

Customer service can make or break your store. An online presence, on the other hand, gives you a chance to automate most interactions. For example, you can add a live chat feature to your website’s product page. Most bots are automated, able to answer common queries — like a product’s best uses or ingredients — without human interference. 

Train agents to deal with customers who buy online and in-store. A multi-channel customer service approach makes your brand highly attractive to young professionals. 

4. Offer a Wide Variety

With drop shipping, you don’t have to worry about display space. Therefore, you can offer a wide range of products in your online store. E-commerce is an excellent place to experiment with items you wouldn’t usually carry but would like to test out. Order a limited quantity and see how they move before committing to a large volume.

Costco is well-known for its wholesale stores. However, they also have an online presence where they offer things you can’t purchase in-store. They separate offerings by the department, including a section called “Business Delivery,” where businesses can order in bulk and have items delivered.

5. Solidify Your Branding

Reaching people and making your brand a household name is difficult on a local level. Sure, you can attend local trade shows, send out coupons in mailers and advertise in your newspaper, but many people will simply overlook these efforts. 

On the other hand, you can send out highly targeted digital ads, drive people to your online store and convert them into buyers. A website offers the opportunity to post articles on topics related to what you sell. After, share your expertise on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. 

6. Market Special Promotions

You likely offer specials from time to time, but it’s difficult to let everyone know about your promotions. With an online store, you can begin to collect emails. When you have a new announcement — BOGO sale going on! — send the ad to everyone at once. 

You can also advertise specials on Facebook or Google, targeting users based on their location. This method, called geolocation, ensures only consumers within a certain radius gets the message. 

Taylor Stitch offers to clothe online and in brick-and-mortar stores. You’ll find similar items in both. However, one advantage to the online store is expanded sizes and more color choices compared to what you’ll find in the physical location. Once shoppers know their sizes and how things fit, they can go online and place additional orders without the need to visit the store and try pieces on. 

7. Tap into Different Needs

Some people are very tactile. They want to come into a store and touch items before buying. Other people hate getting out in the crowds and would rather shop at home. If something doesn’t fit or they don’t like it, they’ll return it to the store.

An online version of your store taps into the needs of different users and allows you to reach people where they’re most comfortable. 

8. Sell More for Less

The overhead costs of online stores are far less than renting a building, hiring employees to staff a retail location and paying for utilities. Instead, you only have the cost to host and maintain your site, plus employees needed to fulfill the orders. 

When you open an e-commerce store, you create a new outlet for selling goods without spending additional money. The result is more profit for your business.

E-commerce Is a Process

In the beginning, your online store may not pay for itself. However, as it starts to turn a profit, and you become smarter with your marketing efforts, you can invest more time and money into dynamic advertising geared at specific, individual users. 

Your strategic campaigns will become highly-personalized and more successful. With a little effort, you’ll find your e-commerce store is a vital part of your business model. 

About the author

Lexie is a branding enthusiast and web designer. She loves checking out local flea markets and taking her Goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.

Andrea Pretorian manages content at BitIRA, where for the past year she’s been leading efforts to get women more involved in crypto and blockchain. When she’s not crusading to empower people with knowledge, she’s likely firing up her camera or learning to play drums. She’s prepared this awesome article below to help you build a better customer experience and scale your business:

Building rapport with prospects is a critical step on the way to conversion, but it’s just important to maintain—if not, develop—relationships with existing customers.

In our world of cryptocurrency IRAs, we have to tackle a healthy dose of lingering skepticism. Alongside the public’s knowledge of the wild west days of early crypto, some reservations may from a thirst for more information surrounding retirement savings and investment options. But the nuances of these specific needs betray the same central problem every business faces: retention, which in turn relies on keeping customers satisfied and engaged.

Earlier this year, we released our My BitIRA portal to give our customers 24/7 access to their accounts. We were strategic about how exactly we went about doing this.

1. Listen to what your audience asks for.

Ask your customers for feedback. This can be a quick online survey you share with your audience or even a brief add-on to a phone call. Offer up a few quick ratings to gauge where you most need to grow, and then end with an open-ended question.

It became clear that our users wanted to be able to check their account information 24-7, as well as flexibly initiate transactions. We knew that these two features were vital to our portal, which we then built to center around them.

2. Know when to say no.

Listening to your customers is extremely important, but this is only true when you also remember that your business is the industry expert. While you should meet your customers’ needs, it is also your job to remain the authority and to serve your customers with best practices. They are paying in part for your expertise, and so it is your responsibility to wield it towards their best interests.

Practically this often means saying no to some requests. It’s a good idea, whenever possible, to shed light on why and to turn this into a learning moment for your public. In fact, a lot of strong brand product and messaging relies on this.

For us, there were some features that wouldn’t have made sense within the portal because they could compromise security or lead to complications. We have to be protective of the process behind transactions in order to make sure that our customers continue to receive the service and security that they expect.

3. Use design to translate your product.

As you dig into the feedback on what your customers want, you will find that specific themes and trends emerge. These should inform not just what you build, but they should also guide how you design and explain it. Great features and applications of your product can go missing if you do not explain them in a way that makes sense.

Our cryptocurrency IRA customers said that they wanted more control over their accounts. We created our portal to grant customers access to their accounts at any time of the day along with the ability to launch transactions and read curated news content. We saw an opportunity to give our customers a level of transparency that translates into more control over their retirement—which is just what they were looking for.

4. Go where the people are.

How is your audience actually engaging with your brand and your products? Knowing as much as you can about the platforms and devices they are using—and even sometimes demographic information including age and geography—can help you optimize their experience. The easier it is for users to engage with you, the more likely they will continue to choose you over the competition.

For us, knowing that 40%—or almost half—of our users were on mobile devices, we knew that we needed to make our portal mobile-friendly. We designed it to be efficient and easy-to-navigate on both desktop and mobile so that all of our users could have the most positive experience possible.

5. Stay true to your values.

As you work to build solutions to meet customer needs, make sure you always stay true to your core brand values. Being very aware of these during the entire design and execution process will keep your voice consistent and your offerings strong.

Security is a top concern and value for us. As we designed this portal, we focused on making sure that we not only built a secure platform but also subjected it to rigorous quality control checks and heavy testing. While we continue to add more functionality to it, it was—and remains—important that our users know, first and foremost, that we are following industry best practices to protect their security.

While the release of this portal has been a critical step forward, we’re always looking to see what new features and strengths we can add to our products. Our customers are on the path of growing their retirement savings with us, but we’re on the path of growing with our customers and our industry.

After all, at the end of the day, it is the commitment to growth and action that sets apart successful brands from the rest of the pack.