How your Physical Business can Compete with online Retailers
More and more customers are taking to the internet for their everyday shopping needs. In fact, more and more customers are taking to the internet for their one-off shopping needs too. So, where does this leave your physical business?
In order to keep up with the online giants, you’ll need to make sure your business provides customer service and convenience that can’t be found anywhere else. A great price helps too!
In this article, the Panthera team explain why more customers are shopping online and how you can make sure your business stays competitive.
What draws people to online businesses?
Internet business took off more than 10 years ago and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. Here are the two main reasons that more shoppers are turning to the internet:
Convenience
Why travel to do your shopping when you can just as easily sit at home and order your products to your home? People haven’t got an incentive to make their purchases in-store anymore.
Competitive price
Online marketplaces aren’t restricted by geographical location as physical stores are. They can service all 65 million people in the UK from only one premises. There are other significant cost advantages to online retailing particularly with regards to business rates. If your customers don’t have to leave the house to get a better price than you’re offering, why would they come to your store?
How can your business compete?
If you want to stand a chance against online goliaths like Amazon and eBay, you will need to find ways to differentiate your business from the competition. How could you do that?
If you can’t beat ‘em
Regardless of whether or not the majority of your sales come from in-store transactions, you should have an online presence. Even if you aren’t selling anything at all online, you can still interact with customers, showcase deals, and take polls using social media. This is a good way to grow your audience and reach out to a larger proportion of your target market.
Focus on your customer service
One thing that online stores lack is human interaction. When you are dealing with a sales assistant in a store, you have somebody who can answer your questions, who can tell you more about a product or service, and their presence adds personality to your business.
By improving your customer service, you can capitalise on one of the fundamental flaws of online businesses – they can’t provide the support that everyone needs.
Emphasise how convenient it is to visit your shop
When you purchase an item from an ecommerce site, you expect to receive the item in several days’ time (or pay a lot of money for overnight shipping). Physical shops are the only way that you can buy a product and walk out with it immediately.
Depending on the kind of products that you deal in, this could be a major selling point that you are potentially overlooking. No-one ever went bust catering to people’s need for instant gratification.
Become more competitive with your pricing
Because one of the biggest draws to online marketplaces is the low prices, you need to do whatever you can to lower the prices of your products. You might want to try to come to a new agreement with your supplier or explore alternative and cheaper methods of distribution to your store or stores.
Cutting back on your fixed and variable costs means that you can pass on those savings to your customers and this can get them to fall in love again with a trip out to the shops.
We can help
If you’re looking for some advice on how you can budget to remain competitive as a physical store in an online world, get in touch with our team. For more information, call us on 01235 768 561 or drop us an email to enquiries@pantheraaccounting.com – we’ll be back in touch with you shortly.