Tips to Improve Online Sales After Covid-19 – The COVID-19 crisis led to the limitation of physical interactions between people. Social distancing, isolation, and quarantine became the order of the day to avoid contagion of the virus.
This “new normal” has led to the mass adoption of patronizing online stores. As a result, e-commerce stores recorded ground-breaking profits during the thick of the coronavirus pandemicand continues to profit into the future.
In early 2021, the EY Future Consumer Index, which has surveyed thousands of consumers since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, found that 80% of consumers are still changing the way they shop.
60% are currently visiting physical stores less than before the pandemic, and 43% shop more often online for products they would have previously bought in stores.
As an entrepreneur based solely on e-commerce, this statistic is a major source of concern. Turnover from sales and customer satisfaction is a major goal for entrepreneurs of any kind (both online and physical).
But with the alarming reduction in numbers as shown in statistics, you begin to wonder if this sales turnover is possible.
Below are a few tips that can help you improve your online sales after the COVID-19 crisis, allowing you to thrive and stay on top of your competitors.
1. Use a CRM system to increase customer loyalty
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused people to incorporate new lifestyle patterns. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) would allow you effectively improve your online sales by meeting client needs despite this shift in lifestyle patterns.
With CRM, it has become possible to track multitudes of consumer data, ultimately helping drive sales growth and profit.
Customer Relationship Management helps businesses manage their relationship and interaction with their clients.
This offers positive customer experiences which in turn encourage customer loyalty, boost client satisfaction, and reduce the loss of customers to your rivals.
By using the data gathered on your customers’ interests, purchase history, preferences, and more, you can better tailor your products, marketing, and services to your clients’ needs.
This will help strengthen your relationship with your customers and aid in the growth of your profits.
2. What consumer experience do you want to create?
The core question online retailers must ask themselves first when planning to improve their online sales in the e-commerce line is not, “What e-commerce investments do I need to make?” but rather, “What consumer experience do I need to offer?”
The answer you give to this question determines how successful you will be as an online retailer.
The consumer experience is rapidly evolving from one that is built upon the transactional process of in-store shopping to one that is rooted in deep, ongoing, and enriching relationships.
As an online retailer, you will need to structure your e-commerce ecosystem in a way that provides value along with enriching relationships.
Online retailers need to consider if they have an agile, adaptive technology platform that understands that every consumer journey is different if they have a marketing and supply chain that ensures a seamless customer experience, how they can introduce impulse purchases in an online environment and how they can maintain the experience to consumers’ doorsteps.
In all of this, the delivery of the ordered goods is the crown of a satisfying customer experience.
Online retailers pay huge attention to all other aspects of processing customer orders and conveniently leave out the experience during the delivery of the goods.
Even the most advanced e-commerce capabilities can’t conceal the importance of fulfillment, as delivery becomes a cornerstone of the experience.
To avoid the loss of customers to rivals, delivery should be seamless. Consumers aren’t keen on excuses, especially when it comes to accessibility, affordability, and convenience.
The EY Future Consumer Index found that 37% of U.S. consumers will buy online and pick up in store more often in the future.
But this can quickly lose its luster if consumers endure long wait times in an inconvenient environment before they get to pick up their orders.
This technique holds promise but retailers need to upscale systems and business units that ensure they deliver consistently and on schedule.Top of Form
3. Make sure your business is relevant
Due to the lifestyle pattern change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, certain business strategies may no longer prove relevant in helping them improve their online sales and achieve customer satisfaction.
Even while building customer relationships and reinvesting in different sales channels, it helps online retailers to re-evaluate their strategies and offerings to ensure that they remain in line with the current market trends in their respective businesses.
A product that delivers value to customers is likely to generate demand and contribute to your business’s growth.
While some products may become irrelevant to their needs, others may become more important than ever.
Ask yourself questions that would help you determine what you should still be selling after the pandemic.
Take time to understand what your customers expect from you and make adjustments to your products to survive these difficult times.
4. Rapidly recover revenue
The COVID-19 Pandemic grossly affected the country’s economy and businesses all over the world are on their tiptoes trying to recover revenue.
It will however not be enough for companies to recover revenues gradually as the crisis abates. Their revenue profile would need to be fundamentally re-evaluated to allow them to position themselves for the long term and to get ahead of the competition.
In order to improve their online sales, they would have to accelerate their digital, tech, and analytics and developing an agile operating model.
When selling an item, there is a popular worry about selling it at a higher price than competitors, thinking that no one will want to buy the product.
If the product being sold is of good quality, it is only reasonable for the price to conspicuously reflect the value of the product.
If you’re going to be selling higher than your competitors, the product must have a characteristic that differentiates it from competitors’ goods and provides more value for your customers.
This ensures that even at a higher price, customers will still feel that your product is worth the purchase.
This technique can help increase income and keep you profitable when sales conditions are not acceptable.
5. Use social media
Social media changed the way we connect, communicate and collaborate with others and as a result has become the most influential and essential platform for online sales.
It has massively leveled the playing field when it comes to marketing and communication.
As traditional methods of marketing to customers like advertising or direct mail become less effective, businesses are turning to social media to connect in positive ways with consumers and the people who influence them with the goal to collectively improve their online sales
Online retailers can leverage this network to advertise their brands and products digitally to reach targeted potential customers that have not yet found their store on social media.
As with many other techniques, success in the use of social media occurs only when the key to social media techniques and principles are adhered to.
Social media participation and content creation and distribution are the two methods through which marketing can be done on social media.
Before choosing a social media platform, it helps to find out about the different social media or platforms that are currently being used.
Start using that platform and then build an audience on other platforms when the time is right. Success on social media depends less on how much you talk about your business and more on how much your customers talk about you.
6. Use great product photos
Images are the life of a website. In the e-commerce line of business, product presentations can make or break your business.
A dominant characteristic of selling online is the fact that potential customers cannot see and touch the product directly. They are therefore counting on photos to make them love or hate a product.
Online shopping is a highly visual process. Here, the first impression is the best. A recent survey shows that 65% of marketing executives agree that visual assets are core to a brand story and grossly influence how personable and trustworthy your product appears.
Right images can boost site conversions and create a bond with your target audience. Therefore, the seller must provide a clear photo of the product so that it is as if they are seeing the product now.
To capture good attractive photos of your products, it helps to photograph products from all sides. This allows the customers to understand the products offered without having to go through the inconvenience of asking further questions.
Avoid taking photos of competitors or even pictures from the internet. This will reduce your credibility as a seller if you do.
High-quality, product images, and presenting them in a way that resonates with your potential customers should be the goal.
7. Plan Ahead
None of us expected the blow of the COVID-19 pandemic that happened in 2020. This goes on to show that in a minute, things can change course and completely go South.
It, therefore, helps online businesses stay afloat by planning. A “crisis plan” would ensure that your business is not caught off-guard and suffer as a result.
While planning, it is important to take into consideration the fact that most crises are largely unpredictable, making it impossible to be extremely specific in your planning.
It helps to give room for your plan to change if the situation alters at all.
Focus on those key elements such as remote employee productivity and collaboration, disrupted supply chains and operations, tax and trade issues due to country lockdowns, brand response to COVID-19, postponed projects and campaigns, new projects that address staff and customer needs, emergency funding, and debt-relief grants.
8. Improve your SEO
To thrive as an online retailer, one thing you must focus on optimizing is your business for search engines.
After the pandemic, with more people coming out of self-isolation and returning to in-store shopping, your business must appear high up on search engines when interested customers search for your products. This helps your business grow and ensures you stay ahead of competitors.
In optimizing search engines for your business growth, some key aspects and methods you should optimize include; your page and site load speed as this makes it easier for customers to quickly navigate your store and find the products they need.
It also helps to create and update evergreen content within your niche as this will help you stay relevant over time regardless of the current trend and build trust among your base, eventually turning interested visitors into customers.
After optimization, keeping tabs on your online shop’s SEO performance is an important strategy. Use the key e-commerce metrics in Goggle Analytics to understand the impact of your optimizations.
9. Improve customer service
With the above tips considered, customer service would come as an even bigger push in obtaining revenue for your online business.
This is why the approach you give to your customer service operations will profoundly affect customer loyalty and retention of your brand.
Customer service is the cornerstone of the relationship you have with your clients.
It shows you are readily available for your clients when they are experiencing difficulties or frustrations with your service or product. This means that improving customer service should always be your priority.
Consider making your customer support available 24/7 and easily accessible. The pandemic has irreversibly increased the use of online solutions and apps.
You can readily implement many online tools in creating a more elevated service experience for your customers.
Staying on top of these trends will ensure that you don’t lag and exceed your client’s expectations at every step of the way.
10. Embrace new mindsets
One constant thing and a must for everything in existence, including your business, is change. When change occurs, it helps to change your mindsets as well as this will drive future success.
If you do not change along with the new reality we’re been faced with, you will be left behind, and catching up will be a difficult feat especially with the number of iterations of change.
As technology-enabled transformation is imperative, new mindsets for humans will be pivotal to see a successful implementation to propel businesses forward.
The ground rules, beliefs, and assumptions that drive culture will require rethinking with a new set of mindsets driving employee and business success.
The change that came alongside COVID-19 is challenging conventional thinking across all industries.
Recognizing these changes and moving along with them and taking timely action will help your online business gain an advantage amidst all of the disruptions.
Conclusion
A business that adapts quickly will have a better chance of increasing revenue as well as online sales. The tips above should prove useful in helping you to achieve this goal.
Regardless of how long it takes before the COVID-19 Pandemic is completely absolved out of the World’s system, there are chances that your company can make to mitigate losses and increase sales during and after the pandemic.
By properly maximizing some or all of the above tips, your business can make the best out of a difficult situation.
