What is ‘make an offer’ and how does it benefit retailers?
Oaklas is revolutionising the retail game with ‘make an offer’. This tool is shifting the traditional product pricing structures and creating a new form of communication between you the retailer, and your consumers.
How does it work?
The make an offer tool provides the opportunity for consumers to submit to retailers the price they are prepared to pay for your products. The retailer will receive offers made by their store visitors and then have the control to either accept or reject them.
If an offer is accepted, a customer can check out with your product at the agreed price either via your store or through the Oaklas dashboard. The dashboard allows customers to create an account where they make and manage offers. Offers are limited to 10 offers at a time, encouraging customers to make genuine and reasonable price offers.
If you decide a price offer does not quite meet your expectations and choose to reject it, that isn’t the end of that customer interaction. They are encouraged to revise their offer to increase the likelihood of purchasing your product at the offered price.
How does it benefit retailers?
- Boost conversion rates
- Establish a direct retailer/consumer relationship
- Enhance inventory management
Take this scenario:
A potential customer wants to purchase a new camera. They have done their product research, know the brand and model they want, and where to purchase it from online. However, they do not go through with the purchase because of the price. They instead abandon the product and decide to wait to hear for a sale promotion or visit another online store. The retailer has missed out on a sale from this potential customer.
This scenario actually happened with Oaklas CEO Angus Scutt. He realised that he was a potential customer detracted from a purchase because it was too hard to find the product available at a particular price.
As a consumer, he needed the opportunity to customise the prices he wanted to pay for products. This would have encouraged him to make the original purchase and provide a sale for the retailer.
Angus identified a gap in online retail whereby customers were leaving a store because of the price. A solution is for retailers to constantly change optimal price points to effectively convert more visitors into sales.
Make an offer is designed to bridge this gap and adapt to consumer intent and needs. This improved customer engagement will boost conversion rates by pushing stock off the store and into the checkout bags of customers, without having to discount products or promote sale collections.
Make an offer provides retailers with the opportunity to:
Engage directly with consumers
Alleviate any possible price frictions that may arise and discourage customers from clicking buy.
Understand your customer intent and expectations
Boost conversion rate
When you are running your online store, managing lots of stock and providing great prices, there’s a feeling of disappointment when a customer adds an item to their cart but soon abandons it at the checkout. How many times has cart abandonment plagued your shop front?
It’s the thing that accounts for more than 3/4 of shoppers choosing to leave a store.
Oaklas aims to alleviate this with the make an offer tool by empowering customers to take action on your product. Offering a price bid to a retailer on a product they really want to buy, is an incentive to go through with the purchase. Customers are encouraged to check out products with successful offers because there are rewards with the ability to make more in the future. This process is designed to drive more sales and boost overall conversation rates.
Engage with customers
Make an offer will generate value in the retailer/customer relationship. The direct interaction will foster a positive engaging experience by creating a new way to communicate. Retailers will be able to listen to and learn from their customers about their intent, interests and expectations. It is an opportunity to discover new customers and the ones who may have originally been deterred by a price. Now they are more likely to check out your products.
Inventory Management
Oaklas helps retailers run an efficient inventory management system. Retailers stock products their customers want and apply pricing and promotions to make profitable sales and meed inventory demands. Problems arise when inventory is overstocked. The only means of converting it back into a sale is by means of promotions or discounts. However, in the time spent trying to make a sale at a full price, failing, and then having to go the last resort of discounting products, there have been missed opportunity to engage with potential customers.
By using make an offer to connect products directly with potential buyers, there is the ability to analyse what your customers want from your inventory and how much it should cost. By doing so a retailer’s inventory is able to be managed much better by reducing overstock and loss in profit by having to discount.
To learn more about Oaklas and how to integrate the make an offer tool into your online store, head to www.oaklas.com.
