In the recent past, many businesses started as brick-and-mortar operations before expanding to online. Today, however, the exact opposite is happening.
Many companies that found success online have expanded to physical locations. While there are many benefits to having a brick-and-mortar store, making the transition isn’t easy.
Below are a few tips that can help.
Cohesive branding
If you want to translate your online success to brick and mortar, you are going to need to make consumers aware of the fact that both your online presence and your physical one are the same entity.
You can make this more obvious by strategically implementing branding in a way that ties it all together. This can be done through advertisements, logos, design aesthetics and how you provide your products and services.
Coordinated marketing
If you want to run both an e-commerce website and a brick-and-mortar location at the same time, it’s a good idea to use marketing strategies to drive customers to both arms of your business.
Make sure customers in your stores are made aware of your website through in-store ads. Online, you can publish brick-and-mortar specific coupons and promotions that will drive customers to your physical locations.
Learn to design your store with add-on purchases in mind
A common mistake e-commerce businesses make when they launch physical retail locations is only selling their core products. This overlooks one of the main ways retail stores make money, through add-on purchases.
For example, you may enter Staples to purchase printer paper. However, on the way out, you notice candy and soda. Being hungry and thirsty, you will add a few more dollars to your purchase you wouldn’t have if you shopped online.
In-store pick-up
One way that online businesses drive their customers to physical locations is through the use of in-store pick-up. This occurs when a customer purchases a product online and then visits the store in-person to pick it up.
You can make this an attractive option by not charging for shipping and handling when in-store pick-up is used.
Barcode scanners and terminals
If you begin running a brick and mortar location, you can’t rely on e-commerce shopping cart software to process sales for you. Instead, you need to create your own POS, short for point-of-sale, system.
At the center of this should be barcode scanners and terminals, like those from ADAZON Label & Barcode Solutions. Having these allows employees to automatically ring up products at the correct price and add them to a checkout total.
Highly trained staff
Lastly, make sure your staff, both online and off, are trained on both your online and physical retail store operations. This can help make the transition far smoother.
Overall, you need to keep in mind that the physical retail shopping experience is quite different from e-commerce. While there are similarities, you’ll need to use different strategies to be successful in a brick-and-mortar retail environment.
Anita Ginsburg
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