There are millions of people searching the internet every day, looking for products and services. Online retail continues to grow, year on year, as customers seek out the convenience that eCommerce offers. Convenience like being able to search and make purchases whenever and wherever they want. It’s no surprise that modern consumers are doing more and more of their shopping online. By selling online, you can tap into this market of online shoppers and expand your consumer-base. But there are actually some other benefits of selling online that you might not have expected.

Increase brand awareness

The majority of modern shoppers search for products online, before making up their minds on what (and where) to buy. Having an online presence means potential customers can find your shop and see your products when they search online. Consumers who find your shop in their search results will be more likely to buy from your store. While shoppers who don’t find you online might find your competitors instead.

Sell day and night

One of the great upsides to online retail is that, once your online shop opens, it never has to close. You don’t need to have staff around to handle transactions online, so you aren’t limited by your usual working hours. This means that shoppers can buy from you whenever they want. You can essentially make your shop 24/7, without having to hire on more staff for the graveyard shift. By offering customers the option to shop, whenever they want, you can tap into the growing market of shoppers who prefer to browse products and make purchases, from the comfort of their own beds, outside of usual working hours.

Make cost-efficient sales

The cost of a website is all in the initial expense of setting one up. Once your eCommerce-enabled is live, it can take very little to maintain. This means that, in the long run, your website can be your most cost-effective sales outlet. Without needing to be staffed, and without the usual costs of renting physical space, your site can keep operating costs low, while still offering a slick, convenient customer experience that makes you sales.

If you’d like to know more about selling online, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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The post 3 Surprising Benefits of Selling Online appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

The esteemed retailers of our Retailer Advisory Board talk about the successes and challenges of modern retailing on the UK high street. Covering topics such as social media and online presence, eCommerce and spreading awareness, staffing issues and more. Hear what they say about these issues and how they overcome them below.

The above video is a cut of the Retailer Advisory Board panel at our High Street Conference, held in Richmond in September, 2017.

The Retailer Advisory Board

The Retailer Advisory Board is formed of select independent retailers from around the UK. The Board is SaveTheHighStreet.org’s primary knowledge-base for all things retail. Our retailer advisors provide a diverse view of independent retailing across the various sectors of the industry and regions of the UK. At our conference, five of our advisory board members ran the above panel discussion on their recent successes and challenges in independent retail.

If you’d like to join the Retailer Advisory Board and think you could help us here at SaveTheHighStreet.org to empower and assist retailers across the UK, please fill out our survey.

And if you have any questions about the RAB or the conferences, please feel free to get in touch with us here.

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The post Independent Retail Successes and Challenges appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

Your website is like your store front online. For many of your customers it’ll be their first point of contact. These days more people than ever are researching shops before they choose where to take their commerce. Shoppers are googling shops in their area and if you aren’t in the results, you might as well not exist. Even if you’ve no intention of selling online you need a website. Because shops’ websites aren’t just about selling. Below are a few of the reasons why websites are an important part of every business, even ones without ecommerce.

Be Discoverable

Having a website can (in the case of google maps, quite literally) put your shop on the map. If you can’t be found online you’ll miss out on countless customers. Customers who are searching for your products online and finding your competitors, but not you. In this digital age, everyone’s looking online. Even if you sell products that wouldn’t fit the online world well, such as perishable foods or bespoke clothing, customers will search for your website before visiting you in person. They’ll want to see pictures of your products and read about your shop’s story, before they decide to pay you a visit in the real world. You need to make sure these customers can find you, or they might not visit you at all.

(Almost) Free Exposure

Creating a website doesn’t cost very much nowadays. Especially if you’re willing to learn some basic website development. With tools such as WordPress and Wix, you can build a professional looking website yourself, a choice many new businesses are choosing to make. It’s easier than ever to make a website and once its online, it’s there for everyone to see. Anyone searching for the products you sell, or looking for shops like yours, in their area, will be able to find your site. And when they find your site they’ll find whatever you’ve chosen to display there. You can have pictures of your products, testimonials from happy customers, a video tour of your shop, the list goes on. You can really advertise whatever you want, to frame your shop in the customer’s mind, so they’re ready to buy when they visit.

Increase footfall and sales

Every shopkeeper knows that more visitors means more potential sales. Well once you’re discoverable on google, you can increase your reach to countless potential customers. Most of whom might not have found your store in person. You can make sure that they find the best of your company online. Rather than googling your shop and finding nothing at all, or worse, finding a couple disgruntled reviews on yelp, you can make sure these customers are seeing your shop the way you want to be seen. This is a great way to grow sales and expand your base of loyal customers.

If you’re considering setting up a website, don’t forget to check out our special offer from the UK Domain, powered by Nominet, who are trying to help local independents get set up on the web.

If you have any thoughts or questions on the benefits of having a website, please get in touch with our team.

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The post The Benefits of Having a Website, Even if You Don’t Sell Online appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

Click and collect lets customers order online and collect in store. It’s a great way to bridge the online-offline divide. It gives your customers the convenience of browsing your wares online, from the comfort of their own homes, while also bringing those customers into your shop. Your customers will experience your physical, bricks-and-mortar shop and they’ll walk past all your lovely products as they go to collect their purchase. This system is a win-win for both customers and retailers. It gives customers the convenience of shopping online, without sacrificing the in-store shopping experience.

This is great for your existing customers, but it can also be good for bringing in new customers. There are shoppers who aren’t sure they want to visit a shop’s physical store. Maybe it’s a long trip and the consumer doesn’t want to travel if they aren’t guaranteed to buy anything. Maybe they work weekdays and weekends and there’s no convenient time for a nice long shop. With ecommerce and click and collect, customers can know for certain that the journey is worth it. And if they can only pop in for a moment? No problem, they’ve already decided what they want, they won’t need to have a long look around. Once they’re in-store of course, they might find something else they hadn’t considered. Something they didn’t look at online, but has caught their eye now that they’re in to collect.

Alternative to Shipping Charges

The great retail paradox is that customers want the highest quality products, but at the cheapest possible price. Shipping costs can cause customers to hesitate. Especially on smaller purchases, where shipping can double the cost of the product, and larger orders, where shipping can escalate in price very quickly. Offering click and collect eliminates this awkward cost of delivery.

Click and collect can also be faster than delivery. It might seem strange, but it’s true! The standard time-frame for a small delivery is 3-5 days, with next-day delivery coming at an uncomfortable premium. With click and collect, your customers can drop by to pick up their purchase as soon as you accept the order. This means same-day delivery (of sorts) for customers that are likely to be passing by anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about click and collect, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team here.

Read our article about the benefits of e-commerce and see how you can get online retail to bring more customers into your shop.

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The post What Click and Collect Can Do for Your Customers appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

The internet is for everyone. While there are certain groups of people that are more internet-active than others, everyone is online these days. By selling online, you open your shop up to a huge market of people from all walks of life. The internet is the biggest market of shoppers in history. By connecting with this incredible marketplace, you can grow sales and your customer base to a far greater degree than if you only exist offline. Once you’re “e-commerce” enabled, you can sell well beyond the borders of your usual consumer base.

And really this is one of the biggest advantages to e-commerce. You aren’t limited by your physical shop. Are you in a bit of a poky, hard to reach location? Not a problem online. Do you have a narrow storefront, overshadowed by larger shops on either side? Your online storefront has no such problems. This is one of the ways that e-commerce can help you level the playing field with big chains.

Of course, this isn’t to say that e-commerce is easy. And at the end of the day, it’s got to be your decision, for your shop. But below we’ve listed a few ways that e-commerce can help you grow your business, to help you see what e-commerce can do for you.

E-Commerce Improves Availability

All brick-and-mortar shops have an opening time and a closing time. Some big chains can stay open all-day, but this takes a big staff that most independents can’t afford to maintain. This means that there are long periods of time each day (or more accurately each night) when you aren’t selling. And these days more and more people are getting online, in the later hours of the day, and browsing products from the comfort of their own homes. Using e-commerce eliminates the limitation of ‘open hours’ as it remains open 24/7, letting shoppers shop at their own convenience.

Unlimited Customer Reach

Whatever you put on the internet is for the world to see. Unlike physical stores that are limited to their physical area, e-commerce has no such limitation to how wide your customer reach can be. E-commerce provides increased visibility and sales by letting everyone that’s looking for your products online find you. Even when you’re targeting a niche audience, you’re guaranteed to expand beyond your shop’s physical area. And since shoppers don’t have to make it to your shop to browse your products, you’ll be gaining loyal customers across the country. Shoppers a hundred miles away will be browsing your products from the comfort of their own beds. Which brings us to what, for most consumers, is the best part of e-commerce.

Easy, Convenient Purchases

Shopping online is convenient. That’s its real strength. There are plenty of downsides to shopping online, like having to buy a product without actually seeing it in person and without being able to talk to a shop assistant if you have any special wants or requirements. It’s also lacking the personal touch of the in-store experience and you don’t get any of the atmosphere or community that a physical shop might have. But by God is it more convenient.

It’s more convenient for customers to stay at home and place an order from the comfort of their bed, rather than travelling all the way out to a store. There’s no waiting in line and you don’t need any cash either. With recent advances in in-browser information storage, you don’t even have to enter your card deals separately for every purchase. Every product you could ever want to buy is just a few clicks away. E-commerce skips the stress of pushing a shopping cart and looking for the product everywhere in the store. It lets you find what you’re looking for via a search function, so you don’t have to wonder through all the products you aren’t interested in.

So Why Not Give it a Try?

At the end of the day, e-commerce is a great opportunity to facilitate sales. It’s a great way to just let your customers buy. Let them browse from home, even if they live far away, or are usually too busy to shop. Let them buy with a few clicks of their mouse and a few taps of the keyboard. Let your customers shop the way they want to shop and you’ll see your sales grow. You might also see your footfall rise with your sales. A little online notoriety can bring customers in and if someone made a purchase, who wouldn’t otherwise have found you, or wouldn’t have been willing to travel out to your shop, you might find that happy customer visiting you in-store in future.

If you have any questions about e-commerce or getting online, feel free to get in touch!

The post What e-commerce can do to help grow your business first appeared on Savethehighstreet.org.

The post What e-commerce can do to help grow your business appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

With Expressly, retailers only pay on results – you only pay on what you sell. And Expressly is offering SaveTheHighStreet.org members £200 worth of fees covered on any paid campaign online campaign!

Sign up with Expressly for free and get £200 worth of fees covered for any paid campaign.

Fill in the form below to take advantage of this offer…

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Using Data To Advertise Better

Want to know how to use data to advertise better? JCDecaux – masters of outdoor advertising, now use data driven, geo-targeted ads and give retailers insights as to how to reach their target customers and advertise in a way that was never available to them before.

We spoke to Harriet Lawman, Head of New Business to find out what small businesses can do to reach their target customers and make the most of their ad budgets.

Sign up to our newsletter to be one of the first to receive our new Industry Standards recommendations, designed by our brand partners together with our Retail Advisory Board of over 100 members nationwide.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive recommendations updates.

Check out JCDecaux special offer exclusive to SaveTheHighStreet.org.

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The post Using Data To Advertise Better appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

Using Data to Build and Grow My Business

“By the Retailer, for the Retailer”, Simon England owns The London Cycle Workshop, an established independent cycle business that focuses on services and champions customer care.

Simon shares his experiences over the past 18 months where he’s used data gathered from his cloud-based EPOS system to make more informed, day to day business decisions and has watched his business grow.

Sign up to our newsletter to be one of the first to receive our new Industry Standards recommendations, designed by our brand partners together with our Retail Advisory Board of over 100 members nationwide.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive recommendations updates.

The post Using Data to Build and Grow My Business first appeared on Savethehighstreet.org.

The post Using Data to Build and Grow My Business appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.

How Email Marketing Drives Loyalty

“What keeps a customer loyal to your business and shop?” asks Jacques Prothon, founder of email marketing business emocial, and retail loyalty business ODICCI.

Email marketing can be fundamental in maintaining relationships with your customers. But how do you collect their email addresses in an easy and hassle free way? How can you use customer data to give your customers what they want and follow the latest trends? Business owners can understand what their customers want to keep them coming back for years to come.

Sign up to our newsletter to be one of the first to receive our new Industry Standards recommendations, designed by our brand partners together with our Retail Advisory Board of over 100 members nationwide.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive recommendations updates.

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Using Data to Make Effective Business Decisions

Making quick, effective decisions and maximising time can be tricky for independent business owners. Today smart and savvy business owners are adopting cloud-based EPOS systems to keep track of stock, accounts, sales, employee performance and are able to use the data to align decision-making for results. Many have watched their businesses grow as a result.

In this video Colin Price, Marketing Manager at Lightspeed EPOS systems and eCommerce Solutions talks about his experiences with retailers and why business owners got into business to begin with “not for the love of spreadsheets.”

Sign up to our newsletter to be one of the first to receive our new Industry Standards recommendations, designed by our brand partners together with our Retail Advisory Board of over 100 members nationwide.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive recommendations updates.

Check out Lightspeed special offer exclusive to SaveTheHighStreet.org.

The post Using Data to Make Effective Business Decisions first appeared on Savethehighstreet.org.

The post Using Data to Make Effective Business Decisions appeared first on Savethehighstreet.org.