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Turning the tables on E-Shops
Internet retailers try to make their e-shops more like real shops. Isn't it time traditional retailers turned that traffic round and started to apply internet lessons to their shops?
Talk to traditional retailers about their service against the internet's and they'll be clear that they offer the customer better service, both in terms of product knowledge and aftersales care. The customer can touch and feel the product, can discuss his choice with experienced sales people on a personal level and of course can take it away with them without waiting at home for a delivery.
In fact you'd think the only thing the internet had going for it was price, and perhaps access to specialised stuff like Tartans or beekeeping accessories.
Yet people shop on the internet more every day - and it's not all about price by any means. In fact the fastest growing internet retailers aren't doing it by price. The real take off has been traditionally powerful brands bringing those values to the site and supporting them with first-class delivery and handling. You can get a cheaper bed elsewhere on the internet than from John Lewis, but what about quality, design, and value - all those lie in the John Lewis brand. And who, five years ago, really believed we'd buy a bed on the internet?
So why do customers like the internet?
A recent survey listed 24/7 access, no-hassle parking, guaranteed supply, good product information and range of selection. Some of those are obvious - but some are almost shocking and throw a challenge back to the heart of traditional retailing.
Just how good is your product knowledge? How obviously available is it to the buyer? Do your shop staff really have the expertise you'd like to think - and are they effective in putting it across?
Because from that survey there's a question mark.
And if there's room for improvement (and we'll come to back to ways to improve this in future issues) - lets start to fight back by adopting what the internet does well and applying it in traditional shops.
Talking to customers at home.
For smaller traditional retailers, promotion is often expressed in location. Get the footfall past the door, dress the window, sit back and wait. Extend your reach a bit with some printed bags and you'll get to the other end of the high street, and do a bit of local advertising.
But there's a new high street out there and it's in people's homes. And it's at 10pm. This is where the internet can score - but you don't need a complex website to compete (though you'd be a fool not to look at it). What you do need is a presence.
And that's about database marketing. If you can e-mail your customers with offers or information, you're building the relationship with them. Target the communications with an awareness of what they've been buying, what sort of people they are and you're stronger still.
But first capture your data. If you don't have names and addresses (and preferably e-mail addresses) you can't start. So the first port of call is to gather those. It's easy for web traders, harder for you. You can simply ask everybody who comes in, but it'll work better if you can give them a reason, and the best bet here is a loyalty scheme. Give them vouchers based on turnover, or set up a club awarding extra discounts and you're also gaining a contact.
Or you could set up a series of evening sessions, perhaps with a presentation from an attractive speaker (in whatever sense works for you) and ask if they'd like to be kept informed.
You can score over the internet here as it's easier with personal contact to classify people a bit more. Basing mailings on what people have bought only uses history - you can ask what they may buy more easily; do they have children, what do they like to do and so on?
Good Systems Make Communication Easier
While people have been banging on at retailers on these lines for years, it's been a lot of work and perhaps not much reward. But two things have changed.
First - good systems at point of sale make this much easier to achieve and manage. It's very easy to capture customer information and sales at point of sale and from there to produce a mailing list based on who bought what and when. So to e-mail everybody who bought a distress flare three years ago to remind them it's going out of date and offer a replacement (and preferably disposal of the old one - hard for an internet trader) can be done with the click of a mouse.
Second - people are coming to expect it. While we all hate e-mail spam, spam is only that e-mail we don't want. Get it right, make it interesting about an area that the recipient cares about, and it's not spam, it's that really interesting e-mail from ‘Fred at Kitchens Outdoors'.
And if you're not there with that e-mail - ‘E-bygum Outdoors' is.
So while I'm writing up how to link this information to stock turn, you should get stuck in to planning how to get those names and addresses...
Find out more about Kudos Software at: www.kudos-software.co.uk
