For a while now, people have been saying that the brick and mortar store was all but dead. And it is not up for debate that traditional stores have been dealing with a lot of challenges lately. But, there is still a lot of demand for regular stores.
Even though just about everybody these days does the bulk of their shopping online, there are times when they would rather go to a store. Which means that your store should be a combination of ecommerce and brick and mortar.
To survive these new realities, you have to give people options once you’ve discovered your customer’s buying motivation and what they are looking for in a user experience.
In this article, I will give you some ideas on how to integrate ecommerce with your physical location to make sure you survive well into this century as a business.
1 – Outsource your shipping
One of the things that keeps many businesses from offering online shopping is the cost to have a fleet of drivers to deliver their products. Even Amazon outsources their shipping, so there is no real reason to have a fleet.
Which means that you will need to find a company that can do pickups and deliveries for you. How will you compete with all the other ecommerce stores out there? You should find a company that offers same day delivery or close to it. With AI being used in logistics more and more, there are many companies that are able to offer this rapid service even for a small business.
Same Day Freight is also an option, so you can definitely find affordable options to get your products to your customer as fast as possible. You may even be able to beat Amazon when it comes to how quickly you can deliver when you pick the right company.
2 – Set up a webroom
One problem with having a store that doesn’t offer online shopping is that people will often go to a store to see, touch and measure products and then go home and order it from Amazon.
By setting up a webroom, you can offer almost the same experience of having a showroom rather than just a few pages of product photos and links to add them to a shopping cart.
You can set this up by making a virtual viewing gallery that is filmed in your showroom that people can then browse online. It can be a 360° experience that only excludes the ability to touch the product in person. However, they always have the possibility to go to a showroom and make the purchase there. So, you have attracted them by giving them the ability to first check out the product online and then integrate your store into the purchase experience.
3 – Make it mobile friendly
Your website should be very easy for people to use on mobile. Not just because it needs to be responsive so it looks good on a smartphone, but also because it has to be easy for people to order things from their phone.
Many people are shopping from their phones now, so integrating the store to work great on mobile is essential.