How Independent Retail Can Own The Next Decade of E-commerce

We sit at the crossroads of a major shift in retail.  The long rise of mass-market offline stores has stopped, and the only unstoppable force is E-commerce.  While the first decade was the Amazon-decade, it is the unfolding E-commerce fragmentation that will be the story of the next ten years.  Amazon will always get theirs, but the emerging winners will be the smaller brands and retailers who best adapt to the unique retailing experience that E-commerce allows.

The rise of mass-market retail has been about convenience, broad selection, and price. But online shoppers can open five browsers and shop just as broadly and easily as they would in a large department store.  Sites with broad selection remain discovery engines for shoppers, but their Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are more powerful discovery vehicles because they tap into word-of-mouth marketing, and, as Seth Godin likes to say, “The Internet takes word-of-mouth and leverages it by a factor of 1,000…every single day.”

Independent retailers, well before the recent maker/artisan/crafted movement, were already the brands with unique products, stories and a special touch.  But this growing movement, especially among 20-40 year old consumers, is giving them an even bigger opportunity.

These trends result in a “bubbling cocktail” that will dramatically change the retail landscape.  In this world, retailers should focus on consistent communication with customers, fans and followers to build a vibrant advocacy network.  And below are a few best practices to follow.

1.Tell Your Customer’s Story

In a recent interview with Venture Capitalist Hunter Walk, Lee Zalben of Peanut Butter & Co. discussed his formula for growing from one retail location into an E-commerce powerhouse.  The cornerstone of his two-way communication with customers is recipes.  His company creates its own content to market their peanut butter products, but it is the multiplication of these efforts through the creative recipes of customers that is the gas on the fire.  Now, what’s so revolutionary about that – food + recipes?

Nothing, but the broader lesson is that any brand, in any industry is just an ingredient in their customers’ lives.  Your product is an ingredient in the outfit recipe, the room recipe, or the morning routine recipe. Simply ask customers what “recipe” they are creating with your product.  ”Show us the room where you put our table,”  or “Show us what you’re wearing our tie with.”  People like to share, but they need a little encouragement.
 
2.Thank You’s and Check In’s

The “thank you” adds a personal touch to your brand to separate you from everyone else who is not doing it (especially mass-merchants).  The “check-in”, however, can lead in many beneficial directions including by opening up a conversation with customers.  Benefits include: a) heading off a complaint, b) getting specific product feedback, and c) facilitating sharing and referrals.
 
3.Take the Long View (by focusing on “microconversions”)

What does the long view mean in eCommerce? It means micro-conversions.
You certainly hope new visitors simply click-through on a product right away and become a customer. However, that only happens a few percent of the time. So rather than view shopping visits as 95% bad and 5% good, use micro-conversions to change your positive outcomes to 25% or maybe even 50%.

Your goal is to get permission from these new shoppers to talk to them in the future. The most common way is through email signups.   Another popular way is to get visitors to follow you on social media. So make those things easy for them as they browse across your site. Also, make it easy for them to pin and share product images, your logo and your story. Lastly, let visitors create wishlists and make it really easy to give feedback or ask a question – more micro-conversions.
 
4. Segment and Experiment

Now that you have a growing audience who has granted you permission, it’s time to learn how to convert them into big buyers. The first thing to recognize is they are not a monolithic group. They are lots of mini-segments of tastes and styles and behavior. The trick is to split them up based on the behavior you’ve noticed from them into segments (there are tools for this).  Then, it’s time to craft different communications for each one and test and measure, test more and measure more until you’ve found the secret sauce for each segment.

It takes a lot of work to get found in the crowded world of E-commerce, so once you get shoppers to your store, it’s critical to nurture them. Make efforts to invite them into your brand world in lighter ways rather than just trying to shove them down the purchase funnel.  And once they become customers, engage with them regularly and mix their stories into your brand marketing.

By Charles Valentine, Co-Founder, Lumiary.com
About Lumiary
Lumiary helps independent retailers connect all of their sales and marketing channels, and generate insights based on best practices through an elegant, easy-to-use Software-as-a-Service platform.


To view the original article please visit: http://insider.asdonline.com/2015/02/how-independent-retail-can-own-the-next-decade-of-e-commerce/

Battling Online Retail Giants: Miracle on 34th Street Inspires

Scott Truitt is a Brand Strategist and Designer specializing in Brand Development and Prototype Retail Store Design. His clients include national and international companies such as Office Depot, Nike, Costco, and Miller Brewing Company, as well as professional sports teams such as the Seattle Seahawks, Baltimore Ravens, and Pittsburgh Steelers, and regional retailers such as Aries Apparel, The Luxury of Leather, and Picasso Exotic Aquatics. Scott employs a unique branding and design process to help his clients to focus and articulate their brand message and to express it in a way that engages their core customer, creates loyalty, and ultimately increases sales.
www.scotttruitt.com | 206.714.5972

One of the biggest challenges that brick and mortar retailers will face in the coming years (and are already beginning to face), is the challenge of competing with online retailers accessible to customers through smart phones. 

Despite predictions a decade ago that brick and mortar stores would become obsolete, customers continue and will continue to shop brick and mortar stores.  As much as we want the convenience and value of online shopping we still want to see, touch, and experience products before we buy them and we always will.  We also want the service and expertise of store staff, and we want the tactile connection with a company’s brand.

The challenge for brick and mortar stores over the past decade has been competing with online retailers on price.  That challenge is increasing exponentially with customers’ access to online information and sales channels via their smart phones right from the sales floor.  Smart phone apps are already providing customers with the opportunity to scan products in the store to comparison shop for lower prices available at other stores or through online sources.  So how can brick and mortar retailers compete with online retailers whose operating costs are much, much lower? 
The answer lies in a 1947 movie, which you may have just recently watched:  Miracle on 34^th Street. 

In the movie, Kris Kringle (aka Santa Claus) “puts the customer ahead of the commercial” by helping Macy’s customers to find exactly what they want, even if it means sending them to another store.  As a result, throngs of customers express their undying gratitude to Macy’s and pledge to become regular Macy’s customers.  Flash forward 65 years, and this becomes the strongest solution to competing with online retailers.  Now, however, instead of being armed with huge books of newspaper ads for other stores, today’s store staff are armed with tablets.

One of the most interesting and dynamic developments in retailing in the past 5 years has been the development and growth of mobile POS systems – allowing store staff to research product availability, stock levels, product details, and even check customers out using mobile tablet devices.  This allows staff to continue to engage customers when they are most interested in connecting with staff, get answers without walking away from customers, and capitalize on the customer’s enthusiasm by processing their sale the moment that they are most excited about the product rather than making them come to the front of the store to check out.

Meanwhile, other customers are avoiding engaging with staff and even slyly checking their smart phones for price comparisons at other stores or online retailers.  This is a two-fold problem:  not only are they shopping elsewhere for the lowest price while standing in your store, but they are avoiding engaging with staff while they do it, denying staff the opportunity to address questions or concerns, or establish value in the in-store experience.

What if store staff went the other way, and offered to use their mobile tablets to comparison shop with the customer or for the customer?  What if they were as transparent as they possibly could be, helping the customer to find lower prices elsewhere using their mobile tablets, giving the customer all of the information that they possibly can not just about what they carry and at what price, but what the customer might find elsewhere? 

What if, rather than begrudgingly accepting mobile comparison shopping as an unfortunate reality that brick and mortars are powerless to compete with, staff used that experience as an opportunity to illustrate to customers that, “Yes, it looks like you can save a couple of dollars by driving across town or by ordering it online.  If you buy here, though, our product comes with X Service, Y Return Policy, Z Warranty, we can save you 20% right now by signing you up for our Loyal Customer Program, and you get to take it home now, not later.  Oh, and here’s my card – if you have any questions at any time, you can call me directly and talk to a real human being.”  Imagine what kind of loyal customers that would create…

Admittedly, on the surface this might sound insane – helping your customer to find a lower price at a competing store.  But that’s exactly what the customers in Miracle on 34^th Street thought – and yet their response was to become increasingly loyal to Macy’s for one very important reason:  Trust. 
Granted, Miracle on 34^th Street is a work of fiction.  But it has endured for 65 years because it resonates with us – as human beings, and as customers.  We would all like to be treated like the customers in that movie.  And the more we are inundated with shallow and insincere marketing messages, the more we value that kind of respect, understanding, honesty and trust.  And we’re willing to pay more for that.  We’re happy to pay more for that. 

Price is just one factor in the value equation, and it can easily be overcome if you establish value elsewhere in the buying experience that is worth paying more for.  So the irony is that by abandoning the old paradigm of not wanting customers to know what they can get elsewhere and instead becoming their partner in the comparison shopping experience, you create a bond of trust that makes them willing and happy to pay more with you because they see the value that you are providing for that little bit of extra money.

We all know that the internet and mobile technology is going to radically change the way retailers engage customers – we just don’t know exactly how yet.  Increased transparency is certainly one answer.  Who’da thunk that that answer would have been right in front of us every holiday season for the past 65 years?