Running a retail shop is a great source of income and way to get a product you love out into the world. Sometimes, you may find that you can’t quite reach your target audience as much as you’d love to because of a variety reasons such as you run it from a small town, your target audience is too broad, or you just don’t know the best way to market your store to reach the right people.
Unfortunately, many small retail stores make the mistake of staying too local and missing a large part of their target demographic. The solution to this is getting your store online, and that means more than just a website with a description of what you sell. It’s time to get an e-commerce website and start selling these beautiful products your local shoppers love to the whole world.
Don’t let your store be another one that shuts down from not enough local business; get your store out into the world by bringing in an e-commerce website for your store. Take a look at how it can make a difference for you.
Why e-commerce is crucial for you
Local businesses are a wonderful way to get people to shop within the community, buying from their neighbors, and keeping the sense of community alive. The problem comes in when you only have so many people in the community to shop with you, your product isn’t something you buy on a regular basis, or you feel your target audience is missing out because you need a broader outreach.
Stores go out of business all of the time, because e-commerce has begun dominating the retail space and almost three quarters of shoppers prefer to look for deals online compared to at a local brick-and-mortar store. This means that your business could miss out on prime sales because billions of dollars are being spent through e-commerce websites instead of local retail shops.
It will help you with your marketing efforts
If one of your issues has been a need for better advertising, bringing on an e-commerce website will help you become a more effective marketer. You can advertise online through promotions such as email marketing, social media posts, and content marketing for your customers. You can also look into pay-per-click or PPC ads that can help you reach prospective customers that do Google searches for products like yours.
Expanding your customer base
One of the problems with your local retail shop is that you can’t reach your whole target audience. Getting an e-commerce website solves this problem. Whether you’re selling to new moms, to retired couples, or to teenagers, there are only so many of this demographic within your store’s radius, and those shoppers may be buying from other stores like yours or shopping online.
Those customers that never would have found your brick-and-mortar location because you are located in a small town or they don’t get to your area much, now have an outlet to shop with you. You could sell to customers across the country or even across the world.
All it takes is someone doing a targeted keyword search in which your website could make it to their search results and it leads to a potential click to your website and a sale. With the right customer service, you could have a customer for life. Just make sure you work on your SEO to ensure your website lists high on search results.
Learn about your customer behavior
Lastly, what better way to learn about your customers’ behavior than to get an e-commerce website? You may never know why your customers inside your store put that product back on the shelf and leave, but your e-commerce site may tell you a lot more. These stats can go a long way to helping you really understand your audience.
You’ll likely find that your customers are just like others where over half of them will leave with their shopping cart full of items without making the purchase, likely due to financial constraints or other distractions. This means that the customer had products they definitely wanted but didn’t complete the purchase, while your physical store could have shown that customers simply don’t want what you offer and there isn’t much of an outlet to collect that information. Collecting data will help you determine why customers are abandoning their cart and you can have automatic emails sent to remind customers they haven’t checked out yet.
Whether your store is located too far for most to reach or you wish you could get your exciting products out to more people around the world, an e-commerce site only makes sense if you are going to run a retail shop. Consider these benefits and open yours up today.
