Are there any ‘easy ways’ for an online store to do well when the economy isn’t?
Sometimes in life, one has to focus on the fundamentals, prioritising survival over more outlandish ambitions – and it certainly feels that way for many small businesses around Gibraltar, the UK, and Spain at the moment.
When in-person shopping returned after the worst of the COVID-19 crisis had seemingly passed, many brick-and-mortar retailers were hopeful of a sustained ‘bounce-back’. But with inflation persistently high as households and firms alike wrestle with high energy costs, the reality hasn’t been as straightforward as that.
This brings us onto the subject of how your ecommerce store can still maintain – or even improve – its appeal to target audiences in the middle of an economic slowdown. Are there any ‘quick, easy wins’ you might be missing right now?
The short answer to that question is: it depends. While not all the below measures you could try are quick or easy to implement, they’re measures that a lot of online store owners do overlook. So, let’s take a look through them.
Make sure you relate to shoppers’ actual problems
There’s plenty of pain among customers at the moment, so the language that your online store uses should acknowledge and relate to those headaches. Particularly if your store sells essential rather than non-essential items, your target customers will likely want to know quickly whether your product will solve the problem they have.
So, if too many of your store’s product pages consist of soulless lists of features, now could be the time to consider making the language in your descriptions more direct and emotive.
That might mean using trigger words like “exhausted” or “pain”, and putting more emphasis on bullet-pointed benefits than features.
Look for imaginative ways to edge ahead of competitors
If your store sells branded items that are commonly available elsewhere, it might not be feasible to keep cutting back on prices and putting what might already be razor-thin margins under even greater threat.
There are, though, alternative strategies that could be tried, and that obvious rival stores might not be doing. Think such measures as offering products that are frequently purchased together in convenient bundles at a single price, or giving purchasers of certain items ‘VIP’ or ‘priority’ customer support.
Subscriptions, too, have come to be greatly talked about in the e-tail world in recent times. If you can get customers to commit to a subscription, you should be able to ‘lock in’ their custom every month for a sustained period of time. This presumes, of course, that your offering is compelling enough to not leave the customer heading for that ‘unsubscribe’ option.
Clearly demonstrate the product’s value to the customer
At a time like this one when there is so much upward pressure on prices, you won’t want a potential customer to be deciding against your product, purely on the basis of how superficially attractive your pricing is.
In any case, the true value of a product is ultimately down to the benefit the customer receives, relative to the price they paid. This means you could be effective in selling even relatively expensive items at a time of economic strain, if you make clear to customers exactly why that extra expenditure over a lower-priced alternative is so worthwhile.
Perhaps a given item you are selling is made from much better-quality, stronger, and longer-lasting materials than the cheap equivalent another store offers? In that case, you could appeal to the customer’s wish to not need to replace their purchase a few months down the line.
If you educate the shopper on certain aspects of your product’s ease of use, durability, or versatility, an item that initially seemed pricey to them might suddenly begin looking like a bargain.
We can help make it easier for you to get results from your ecommerce presence
Whatever strategies your e-tail store is presently using in order to boost its appeal to customers during the present difficult times, it can help to have the right professionals by your side.
And as one of the premier website design, digital marketing and PHP development companies in Gibraltar, Spain and the UK, Piranha Designs can give you the benefit of such professionals at an affordable price.
Simply reach out to us now to arrange a free no-obligation discussion of how we could work together on your next project, in relation to any of our areas of expertise.
