It’s always nice to look through the shelves to find that perfect book at a bookstore. Or test out perfumes, until you find the right one.
While in-store shopping experiences are great – and maybe a bit nostalgic – business is increasingly moving online.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2019, the online shopping sales were about $305 billion – more than double the amount recorded in 2013.
As more and more retail revenue shifts online, is it wise to stick to just brick-and-mortar retail?
Here’s why you should look into embracing eCommerce if you already haven’t:
Expands your reach
Brick-and-mortar stores are bound by location. While some businesses require services to be provided in-store such as beauty salons or custom-made suits, other businesses, that offer goods and services that don’t require in-person interactions can significantly benefit from eCommerce.
With eCommerce, you can open up the possibilities of reaching out to customers who are interested in your product but are spread out geographically.
Lowers your costs
The costs associated with developing and expanding eCommerce solutions are significantly lower than opening and maintaining physical locations.
Additionally, online stores are essentially always open. While it is impossible to keep a retail store open 24/7, 7 days a week, online stores don’t have this limitation and you don’t incur any additional costs for it.
Increase personalization
Personalization is key in today’s world.
eCommerce solutions can enable you to gather, synthesize and use customer information and data. By running these analytics, you can create personalized marketing and promotional programs that improve customer engagement and satisfaction.
Be agile and increase scalability
Online retail gives you the ability to be more agile. Particularly, during times where customer behaviours and preferences are changing at an unprecedented pace.
You can not only modify your offerings but also expand the scale of your operations. Scaling your business, when your customer base is growing, is much easier when you have an eCommerce infrastructure in place.
Though, you may be wondering, with all this focus on eCommerce, what’s the role of in-store retail? Can the two work in harmony?
Yes, they absolutely can.
We all know that retail stores are likely to remain in the picture because human interactions are important.
It is important to find ways to bring together your brick-and-mortar retail and eCommerce platforms. Having the two operate in silos can create issues because you would have to spend more time managing your records and processing data.
This is why working on creating a seamless omnichannel experience is crucial. It allows you to have a 360-degree view of your customers.
A strong omnichannel strategy enables you to deliver a frictionless experience, to your customers, across online and offline channels.
Microsoft 365 Dynamics, for instance, is a unified commerce solution that helps you to bring traditional eCommerce and emerging shopping channels together by integrating back-office operations with user-friendly applications.
If you’re ready to embrace eCommerce, we at SHEA Global are here to help.
Connect with us to learn how you can unlock efficiencies and reach your customers in an effective, personalized way.