Waiting for the sign to expand your business into the digital world? Here it is! There are so many reasons to start selling online, from expanding your global reach to better tracking your goals and audience. In this post, we’re highlighting the top five reasons why you should finally take the e-commerce plunge.
1. Expand Your Reach
If you are looking for ways to widen your audience and grow your business, expanding to e-commerce might be a good option for you. One of the key benefits is the ability to attract new customers by reaching a larger audience. When you are selling in a specific store location you are limited to only that surrounding area. This can become challenging especially when there are physical obstacles to getting your customers inside (hello global pandemic).
Selling online allows you to sell to potential customers locally, nationally, and even globally. Increased sales are also an added benefit when you have established your online presence and incorporated proper digital marketing strategies.
2. Remain Competitive
Adding e-commerce to your selling strategy is a no brainer when trying to remain competitive in your market. Almost all of your competitors are selling online and all potential customers are buying online. Therefore, it can be imperative to enter the online marketplace. Selling online provides marketing opportunities that can present your brand to thousands of new faces daily. Create ways to advertise your brand online that will increase your click-bait. Ultimately leading to more customers finding your website quicker and easier through various search engines.
3. Improve Customer Experience
Expanding your business online can help customers save time with travel and allow them to browse and purchase your goods more conveniently. Also, managing your customer relationships online can be made a little simpler. Input surveys after customers make purchases or get feedback from their buying experience to can help gauge your effectiveness. This enables you to respond to complaints quicker and lets the customer know that you are working hard to take care of their needs.
You can also use your website to enlist more customers in your email or newsletter subscriptions. Keeping them consistently updated with new information and returning them back to your website.
4. Social Media
Social media is the ultimate channel to connect with your customers in a personable way. Build your brand image, loyalty, and customer engagement through an effective content strategy. Brand communication will be an important aspect to maintaining and building your online presence. Marketing on social media can be an additional way to promote and sell your products or services. You can use social media platforms like Instagram to transfer people to your website, helping to bring more potential customers.
5. Easier Measurement
Out of all the reasons to start selling online, this one has the broadest reach and benefits. Moving into the digital space makes it easier to scale inventory and measure what is or isn’t performing. You can track customer patterns like where they came from, how long they stayed, what items were in their cart, what was purchased and more. You can also gain a better understanding of what your best selling items are and decide if you want to replenish when they are sold out. Additionally, you can notice what is not performing and figure out a way to move the merchandise faster. For example, conducting markdowns or placing a promotion on underperforming products. This is all easily tracked via services such as Google Analytics or with more specific e-commerce metric tools like Metrilo.
If you are currently an offline business, and want to enhance your performance, sales, competitive edge or brand image, then expanding into e-commerce is most likely the right option for you and the next step for your brand.
