Are you facing an issue with your brick and mortar store? Running an offline store comes with a lot of problems, like find the right location and the right staff to sell the products. Reaching out to more numbers of potential customers is a continuous headache for any brick and mortar store. If you miss out on any of these aspects then it results in a struggling business. If you want to take over the world, then it’s time to upgrade your offline store to online store.
An online store gives you the opportunity to extend your reach. Both your offline and online stores would mesh together well with the cohesive experience and support each other in a number of ways. However, separately approaching each store would limit the full potential of your business, resulting in missing out on the significant opportunities. So, the smartest move would be to take it online.
How to run a successful online store
In order to run a successful online business, you need to decide on the management and marketing responsibilities first. With e-commerce, the roles of managing, shipping, customer servicing are not exactly the same as that of an offline store. You need to handle everything from designing the website to customer service. You need to do regular update on the product pages, recruit customer service people, hire a manager, arrange to do packages and deliver shipments, and such other things related to product management. Some other things you need to take care of include:
• Building the online store:
This includes designing the store, choosing the right platform to create the design, installing the add-ons, testing the extensions, and so on.
• Marketing or advertisement:
You need to make your target customers aware of your store. So, proper social media posts, blogging, and such other digital marketing techniques are needed.
• Managing operations:
You need to add new products to the inventory, add new images and information on the products, mark the orders that are shipped, and many such things.
• Customer communication:
As an online store, you need to serve your customers on 24/7 basis, through phone calls, emails, and responding to the inquiries posted on social media platforms.
• Resolving technical issues:
You need to have someone, who would be available to look after certain technical issues, if the website is running slow, if there is any need for software upgrade or if the store goes down.
• Decide on payment procedure:
You need to have a proper secure payment gateway to accept the payment.
• Shipping orders:
You need to hire someone who would be responsible for making proper packaging and delivery of the product. You can also contact your local shipping carriers and choose the one that offers the best service at the most affordable rates.
Apart from recruiting one or two professionals to act as managers, you can hire a professional website design and development company to take care of the other things. Apart from designing and developing, a reputed company would also take responsibility for digital marketing, posting product updates, and such other things to make your store create a strong online presence.
