Some Retailers are Forgetting Retail Basics On-Line

July 14, 2011 - PRLog -- The basics of retailing apply just as much to the online world as they do to the traditional bricks and mortar store.  It could be successfully argued that in some cases even more so.

SO WHAT ARE THE BASICS OF RETAILING?

Location: Your store needs to be in the right location, where lots of people can easily browse in your window.

Fit Out:
o   Your store fit out and display needs to invite browsing customers inside.
o   Your store fit out also needs to be aligned to your brand positioning.
o   Your store fit out needs to stimulate customer demand and buying.

Staff:  Your staff need to able to:
o   Build a rapport with customers.
o   Stimulate demand or interest in a customer by finding out their needs.
o   Provide solutions with good information based on those needs.

Trust: You need to be able to:
o   Provide the customer the confidence and trust to conduct a financial transaction.
o   Process a financial payment from the customer.

Word of Mouth: Finally leave the customer with a positive impression such that they tell others of their experience.  

THESE SAME BASICS APPLY TO THE ONLINE WORLD AS WELL.

So What is Different On-Line? Well not that much, the same retail basics still apply.

Location, Location, Location!!!!!!
In bricks and mortar retailing, it’s all about location. That location where there are lots of prospective customers going by, so that they find it easy to find you.
So what’s different on line?  Nothing, it’s all about your digital location.  Is your online shop easy to find?    Are there lots of people going past, browsing your site?  

Bring them in?
Customers browsing your shop window need to be encouraged to come inside the store.  This is the same with your web site, it needs to encourage prospects to go past the window (home page) and look deeper inside the store (other pages).  

Fit Out?
Your store fit out does a couple of things. It creates a mental brand positioning for the customer, this is an up market store, a discounting store etc. Secondly it provides navigation through the store, designed to encourage the buying.
That’s exactly the same for your digital presence.  Your website image needs to be aligned with your brand and it needs stimulate demand and encouraging buying.

Rapport
Successful retailers quickly and easily build a rapport with their customers.  You need to do the same with your digital presence, and it can be done.  

Stimulate Demand or Interest
A well designed shop fit out plus a sales person able to build a rapport helps to elicit from the customer their needs.  Needs that may have been sitting in the back of the customers mind.  Stimulating these needs is the key to successful retailing. No surprise but this is exactly the same for your digital presence.  You need to be able to stimulate latent customer needs.

Solutions
Good sales staff once they are determined the customer’s needs offer solutions to those needs.  Again this is the same for your digital presence.  Like in the store, the ability to provide a good solution is dependent on the knowledge that the sales person has of the product or service.

Trust and Transaction
Finally before a customer transact with your store, they need to feel confident that they can buy from you.  And obviously you need the ability to take and process the payment means offered by the customer.  It is the same on line; arguably it is even more so on line.

Word Of Mouth
Finally when the customer leaves having purchased or not, you want them to leave your store with a positive message to spread.  Why because research has shown that over half of all sales are word of mouth.  Digitally this is incredibly important, as the ability for word of mouth to spread has never been greater.

So How Does This Actually Work on Line in Reality

Mustard marketing has produced a free white paper which explains how each of these retail basics can be addressed online.  The white paper can be downloaded by going to http://mustard-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/e...

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