How an Online Store Can Impact Your Business
Written by Blackpurl
How many times did you order online this past week? Most people would say at least once. Online shopping remains one of the most popular online activities with retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounting to 4.28 trillion US dollars in 2020.
If you were not already online shopping before COVID-19, the pandemic certainly put the capacities of online shopping to the test and further emphasized the importance of having an online store and cultivating an online presence for your business. Keep reading to learn more about why establishing an online store is integral to your business’ success and some tips on how to manage your business’ online reputation.
What is e-Commerce?
e-Commerce is the process of buying and selling goods and services online. Recently, however, e-Commerce has expanded well beyond this definition. For instance, retailers that have a physical location can incorporate e-Commerce by allowing customers to browse online and pick up in-store.
Is an online store essential?
Customers are no longer online shopping simply to find the best price; they shop online for convenience. Nowadays, if you are unable to provide online service to your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you will lose that customer. Bob wants to buy that new part for his trailer tonight, not tomorrow at 10am when your shop reopens. The reliance upon online shopping is only destined to increase with e-retail revenues projected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022.
Statistics aside, in an era where billions of shoppers make trillions of online transactions each year, it is essential to have an online presence that is linked to your business systems in real time. Equally, It is essential to communicate with your online customers just as you do when they are in your building.
Luckily for you, opening and operating your online store is relatively easy and low-cost. An online store requires less staff overhead because the customer does all of the work. There is no need for an expensive retail counter expert -- just someone to pack and send.
Tips to strengthen and manage your online presence and e-Commerce store:
Now that we have established why having an online store and an online presence is essential, let’s focus on some tools to help maintain and manage your online reputation.
- Create your store using an ecommerce platform. Make your online store visually appealing and navigable. Your physical presence and branding should be well-reflected on your site. We recommend Shopify.
- Synchronize it with your inventory management systems. We recommend Blackpurl.com
- Hit publish and start selling.
- Build an online-exclusive loyalty program to drive traffic to your online store. We recommend Woopra.
- Embrace social media. Promoting your website on your social media pages using engaging content should drive organic traffic to your online store. We recommend using Publer for scheduling your posts and taking advantage of their automatically generated reports and recommended posting times to maximize your social media strategy.
- Promote your online presence in your physical store. For example, through signage, promotions, or listing your social media handles in high traffic areas.
For more information, please visit blackpurl.com.
About Blackpurl
Blackpurl makes dealership management awesome. It believes in keeping it simple by eliminating hefty training and setup fees, making it easier to operate a dealership and creating a game-changing customer experience by building a platform dealerships love to use. With everything needed to run an operation included, rebelling against DMS has never felt so easy.
