No, your brick-and-mortar sales don’t have to suck
Or, how retailers should stop worrying and love e-commerce
Retail is in a tough spot right now. The largest ever round of layoffs are happening because retailers didn’t get what they wanted for Christmas.
Sears, particularly, has had a tough time in recent years, its decline symbolizing everything that went wrong with traditional retail, so much so that it’s a sad meme on Reddit.
A lot of fingers were pointing at e-commerce, particularly in the shift from mall shopping to online shopping.
Yes, malls reeled while the Web roared, but that’s not the sole reason in-store sales are slumping.
By the way, in case you forgot — online sales only make up less than 10% of total sales.
So why so much suckage?
It’s because retailers are not selling the way people today want to buy. Consumers have evolved, much, much faster than anyone ever anticipated. It’s just not the same anymore. And that’s hurting traditional retail as they struggle trying to keep up.
Retail is a brutal game — it’s about theatre, it’s about the experience, and the best players have to evolve quickly to survive.
Are you still following?
Here are a few of ideas on what to do:
If it ain’t online, it ain’t worth selling
Over the last few years, my wife and I have noticed that in-store selection and pricing often aren’t consistent with what’s offered online for the same store.
What’s up with that? It’s the same store, isn’t it!?!?
Being in the business of serving e-commerce clients has me convinced that many retailers treat their e-commerce and store operations separately.
It’s literally the left hand not knowing what the right hand is up to.
It’s terrible, because there’s so much wasted opportunity here.
Brick-and-mortar stores have all sorts of stuff in their physical stores that aren’t available online. That’s because many retail procurement divisions don’t coordinate with their e-commerce siblings — often losing out on opportunities to sell more online.
There’s so much variety and wonderfully pleasing stuff in-stores that could be made available online, and could instantly double your sales without much effort.
By synchronizing your offline and online inventory (and that starts by treating your e-commerce team the same as your retail team), you get the all the good sort of synergy between procurement, online advertising, in-store experience, and physical retail that yields sales growth.
Don’t take my word for it, but people still love going to the mall. It’s an experience, it’s a chance to hangout with friends on a rainy day. Even though people may not choose to shop, having all those products on display and allowing people to window shop keeps your brand fresh in their minds — and who doesn’t like some online shopping curled up on your sofa after a long afternoon at the mall?
Which leads us to…..
Showroom the S^%& outta your products
Wikipedia describes showrooming as “the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick and mortar retail store or other offline setting, and then buying it online, sometimes at a lower price.”
Then it continues, “Online stores often offer lower prices than their brick and mortar counterparts because they do not have the same overhead cost.”
Okay, so the overhead cost thing seems to make sense. But where it stops making sense is when you realize you’re missing out on potential sales when shoppers are still buying the item — often just from a different online retailer.
Word on the street is that people love window-shopping but know that whatever it is they try on in-store, is going to be way cheaper online — and that’s where retailers lose out. They spend a ton of money on rental overheads, and sales associates but end up losing the sale to Amazon.
Hurts doesn’t it?
To counter, why not price-match? The shopper is already at your store, might as well capitalize. Even better, why not just offer the best price online and in-store? That way you ensure they make the purchase with you, not a competitor.
There are a ton of advantages to this — synchronizing your online pricing with offline goods enhances the shopping experience for mallrats.
People are in the mall — why not capitalize on that by guaranteeing that whatever online deal they manage to dig up is honored in-store?
Join the mobile revolution
Nearly 60% of the time, a mobile device is involved in the decision making process of an online purchase, whether or not the mobile device was used to make the transaction (remember our Black Friday post?).
What do you think that number looks like for in-store sales? I’m not quite sure, myself, but I bet it’s just as high.
Shoppers are much smarter these days. Most or all of the information they need to make a purchase is only a few finger swipes away on their smartphones. In fact, an increasing number of people are purchasing on their phones, largely driven by increasing device screen sizes.
Let those finger swipes work in your favor. Create a mobile shopping experience — whether app or mobile browser based — that people want to use. That means the user interface should be up-to-date, the load times fast, and the inventory up-to-date (wait, didn’t I mention this earlier?).
Or you can leverage apps. For example, you can make one for shoppers to use to get all or additional details for the products they want by taking a picture of a barcode. Or, you can partner with existing apps, like Shazam, to drive traffic to your stores — both online and in-store. There are even apps that help shoppers find the best prices for what they want (sound familiar?).
If you have yet to consider any of these ideas to improve your brick-and-mortar sales, you still have time. As evidenced by the numbers (as far as I know 90% is still greater than 10%), a ton of people are still shopping in-store. Just adjust your strategy to match they way your shoppers want to buy.
Hey, I know you’re thinking that this is great stuff. But, I also know you’re thinking, “pshh, we have like a bajillion products, there’s no way we can get all that online” or “huh, price matching, we can’t keep tabs on all our competitor’s pricing that fast”. Uhh… yes, you can.
It’s called Semantics3.
If you don’t know already, Semantics3 manages the world’s largest database of products, delivering product metadata and pricing through our suite of APIs. Meaning, you don’t have to go about building your own product datasets on your own.
Have UPCs, EANs, or SKUs? Our APIs fill in the blanks for you when you’re moving your inventory online. (This is also how we’ve been able to partner with several mobile barcode scanning app makers.)
Know which of your competitors’ products you want to take down? Our APIs can be utilized for your competitive price monitoring dashboard. Or you could push price changes directly to your inbox if a dashboard isn’t your deal.
Basically, anything having to do with product data, you can and should be coming to us first. Our mission is to make reaching your retail goals, whether online or in-store, easier for you.
Ready to go Super Saiyan and take your retail sales to the next level? Talk to us today!
Lovingly made in San Francisco, Singapore and Bengaluru by Calvin Chang and the Semantics3 Team.
