COVID-19: Converting Your Website Into Your Retail Storefront
With the COVID-19 pandemic throwing professional and personal life into disarray, several retail businesses find their customers facing new challenges especially in terms of closures and restricted access to physical stores.
Customers are turning to online channels in their quest to locate trustworthy, high-quality products and services. According to Global Web Index's Coronavirus Research from April 2020,
43% of global customers have turned to shop online more regularly.
Therefore, the ball is now squarely with retailers and their newest storefronts - their e-commerce apps and websites. This is where the focus will be when it comes to managing inventory, generating sales and revenue, as well as informing, supporting, and assuring customers during the whole process.
While the bar has been set high, it not insurmountable. Here are a few strategies that retailers will be well-advised to note making the online purchase process quick, efficient, and simple for their customers.
Arrange Your Business Challenges
As is mostly the case, there would be many feature requests and innovative ideas around different aspects of your mobile application and website for your retail store. However, it is not practical to tackle all of them at once. You will be best placed to prioritize those aspects that minimize any negative impact on your business or improve performance and enhance your customer's experience.
Some areas that you may want to look at include -
Optimizing customer support.
Maintaining website and application performance to handle peak volumes
Ensure aligned messaging at different customer touchpoints across devices/platforms, etc.
Deploy a Flexible Campaign Strategy
The regular shopping habits of consumers are bound to change with modified schedules and routines matching the new normal of shelter-at-place and physical distancing demands. Therefore, a retailer's sales and branding campaigns also need to be re-analyzed.
- Content should be updated to bring customers to a website instead of a physical store.
- Campaigns targeting areas that are no longer reachable for delivery should be discontinued.
- Discontinue or re-assess your campaigns for areas that have been, or are likely to be, impacted by disruptions in your supply line, etc.
- Leverage automated solutions to react to real-time insights and signals that reflect consumer demand. These signals should also be used to plan and re-align campaign budgets where needed.
- Overall, ensure that the brand message you communicate is empathetic and relevant to the existing situation.
Optimize for Mobile
Thanks to the mass shutdown orders and store closures, businesses across verticals and geographies are witnessing a spike in online traffic volumes. As a retailer, it is critical or your mobile application and website be fully optimized to handle this jump in traffic smoothly.
Given that mobile devices are the primary choice for consumers when it comes to online access, your customer's mobile experience needs to be positive as this has the potential to impact your revenue. Recent studies have found that every additional second it takes for a mobile page to load leads to a drop in conversions of about 20%.
Here are some tips to ensure your business is up for the shifting landscape -
- Review the settings from your content delivery providers (Google Cloud, Cloudfare, etc.) to see if you can enable faster requests.
- Compress the text and rich media on your website, without loss of quality, to ensure your website loads faster on mobile devices.
- Leverage HTTP caching solutions to further improve site load times for repeat visitors. Reduce the load on servers with only necessary code modifications.
- Implement 'Font Display Swap' solutions to ensure that consumers can browse the text on your website even if your chosen font loads slowly.
- Delete any unused tags on tag managers.
- Clean up JS Code and any bloated CSS you come across.
- Use tools such as Page Speed Insights for advanced tips on how to further increase your website's speed.
Ensure Your Business-Critical Information is Front and Center
According to a recently concluded study by Kantar on 'Consumer Attitudes, Media Habits, and Expectations' during COVID-19, 77% of global consumers surveyed are of the view that brands will do well to showcase how they will be useful in the current situation.
Another report by Edelman on 'Trust Barometer 2020', 1 out of every 3 consumers have used a brand's products and services because they were influenced by the way the brand has empathetically and innovatively responded to the ongoing pandemic.
A website's homepage can be useful when it comes to sharing relevant, timely information, showcasing customer outreach efforts, and projecting compassion and authenticity. Make use of calming color palettes and themes with clear navigation options. Here is a playbook by Google on how to Design for Uncertain Times.
Relevancy is Key, Especially for Promotions and Product Offerings
According to a report, "Navigating Your Retail Business Through COVID-19" published by Google, over a quarter of APAC consumers have purchased products and services from brands outside of their usual choice. What has driven this change? The unavailability of their go-to brand.
Therefore, as a retailer, it is important to question 'Are the offerings on your website still relevant in the current situation'?, 'Are the products and services your website is currently promoting going to benefit your target customers at this time'?
Give Customers an Efficient, Uninterrupted Checkout Process
Given that global consumers are now mobile-first, they must receive a smooth and consistent service that they will keep in mind.
A recently concluded study found that more than half the consumers surveyed would move to a competitor's mobile site if the one they use is poorly designed or makes the completion of a purchase cumbersome.
Retailers will be well placed to ensure that their payment process is simple, intuitive, and quick. Business owners need to flag areas for improvements when it comes to personalized experiences like shopping history, address preferences, etc.
Ensure your framework at the back and front-end are in sync are complementing each other to deliver a best-in-class service.
Leverage the Power of Technology to Ace Customer Support Needs
More than 25% of APAC consumers are of the view that brands would do well to have their customer support teams trained to address their needs at the first touch. Organizations have found 'First Time Resolution' or FTR to be useful to track this customer support metric.
Retailers need to ask themselves if customers are getting the support they need in the ongoing, coronavirus-impacted environment. Customer support teams and AI-driven chatbots need to clarify a customer's queries while setting the right expectation, being transparent, and providing useful resources to avoid the need for a follow-up conversation.
Ensure Consistent Messaging Across Platforms
As retailers turn to e-commerce, the opportunity to increase sales will present itself when the business re-connects with users of their mobile app. Multiple global surveys have concluded that chances are high for more than half of the responders to complete an in-app purchase through an application they downloaded during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Mobile applications and websites are in an opportunistic position to convert an erstwhile short relationship into long-lasting, profitable customer engagements. To accomplish this, businesses and retailers need to ensure consistent messaging across platforms.
While a potential customer is going through this dynamic shift, ensure that your brand is proactively engaging with the user to provide a useful, efficient, and friction-less experience.
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