5 Ecommerce and Retail Best Practices for Success

Ecommerce and Retail

The year 2020 has remained challenging for business persons and customers alike. On one hand, it has brought unprecedented crisis due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and on the other hand, it has shown the importance of innovation, patience, and agility in modern businesses. With this, you need to bring big changes in the way you do business to survive and thrive in this troubled time.

First things first. Customers’ buying behaviours have dramatically changed in recent times, and experts unanimously believe that customers will not return to the traditional ways of purchasing any time soon.

A survey has revealed that the retail industry will witness an even greater shift toward online selling in the year 2021 along with improved in-store technology.

Here are the top five retail and eCommerce best practices you should follow to thrive your business in 2021 and beyond.

1. Online Sales

If you do not have a website or a mobile app for your business, this is the right time to go for it. As per the Statista estimate, eCommerce sales have added up to $212 billion or 16{e68b7490c33b031e176c2bf33b49addad56d24bced82f0be9f22b910d6b7f66c} of retail sales in the second quarter of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Marketplace app development can assist you to come up with a customized app that can attract a huge smartphone-using audience.

Also, when your customers post reviews, you should care for responding to them as soon as possible. You need to deal with negative reviews in a friendly and open tone.

2. Advanced In-Store Technology

Brick-and-mortar stores need advancements and upgrade from old-fashioned business methods to impress customers and offer them an excellent in-store experience.

For example, you can keep your employees ready with smart devices to help them answer questions about products, discounts, and provide them with useful information instantly.

Advanced iBeacon technology and AR-based concepts can make the physical shopping experience more interactive and pleasant. You can also consider integrating an automated, contactless payment system in the store to attract more customers.

It is fair to mention that embracing new retail technology is the need of the hour, and you can get benefits like reduced operational costs and increased revenue while staying competent to face challenges.

3. Personalized Experience

This is one of the most necessary practices to follow. Whether you serve customers online through your retail mobile app or offline through a brick-and-mortar store, it is imperative to give them a personalized experience.

These days, thanks to advancing technology, you can get real-time data about your customers’ purchasing behaviour, size preferences, likes and dislikes, and style interests with ease. This information plays a vital role in increasing sales by attracting more customers.

Based on this data, you can send specific recommendations to your customers either through emails or app-based notifications. All you need to tailor messages for customers so that they can feel a personalized touch.

Another way to make your customers happy is by showing an active presence on various social media channels.

You can also start a campaign for your employees and give incentives to those employees whom your customers like the most. Simply put, you can preset expectations and reward your employees who exceed these expectations.

4. Social Media Presence

The social media network has significantly grown in recent times. Your active presence on social media can become a game-changer in the year 2020 and beyond.

Social media-based shopping has also gained a lot of traction in 2020, and this trend will remain for a long time because 37{e68b7490c33b031e176c2bf33b49addad56d24bced82f0be9f22b910d6b7f66c} of the US-based users in the age group of 18 to 34 years prefer to purchase something through social media.

We can expect that multichannel retail will remain one of the biggest trends of 2021. It can enhance your brand’s reputation and retailers can reach new customers easily while leveraging the benefit of a diversified market. Social media can provide a lot of new opportunities for retail business in a cost-effective way.

5. Loyalty Program

Rewarding your loyal customers is always a welcome move. However, in this digital age, you can digitize the loyalty program.

For example, the mobile app development company can integrate a reward program into the app so that the app users can check their points or loyalty bonuses on the move.

There is a lot of scope for creativity and innovation in the digitized loyalty program. Just consider it as a major part to maintain and enhance customer relationships that can last for many years.

Concluding Lines

Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store or an online store, you need to make these practices a norm to grow your business. The customer-friendly shopping experience, active presence on social media, and upgrade in-store technology while promoting loyalty program can help you expand your reach and drive sales.

It is fair to mention that no retailers should be trapped in the “go back to normal” concept in 2021 and follow these practices to strengthen the business.