eCommerce is one of the bright spots in retail, showing strong growth year over year and helping many retailers to expand their overall businesses. An eCommerce solution is essential to laying the groundwork for expanding your operations, driving traffic – both digital and physical – and increasing conversions. Use the tips below to learn how to effectively leverage eCommerce to drive growth in your brick-and-mortar business.

Download the Kitchen’s Choice Case Study to see how one brick-and-mortar retailer increased sales by 15%.
  • Stay Ahead of the eCommerce Competition
    As eCommerce stands out as a “land of opportunity” for retailers who want to see quick profits, competition online is expected to continue its rapid growth for the foreseeable future. For established brick-and-mortar retailers, this means committing to innovating online so quick and nimble startups don’t undercut your business.
  • Don’t Make the Mobile Mistake
    It’s still pretty common for retailers to treat disparate groups of shoppers differently, looking at desktop users, for example, as “different” from consumers who are browsing or shopping on their smartphones or tablets. This might be because while mobile traffic continues to grow quickly, the conversion rate on small handheld devices continues to lag behind that of traditional desktop computers.Even though the devices may be different, shoppers’ behaviors on these devices are all related and part of the continuum of shopping activities. To date, mobile tends to be a pretty good medium for researching products and browsing but can be unwieldy when it comes to actually making the purchase.So it’s important to keep in mind when investing in eCommerce solutions that your platform of choice serves desktop and mobile equally well. A well-designed mobile UX can encourage shoppers to transact on phones and tablets instead of waiting to seal the deal on a desktop later.
  • No More Silos
    To get the most out of your eCommerce solutions, the first rule of thumb is to integrate them with your other business systems. Doing so will enable a single, unified view of your data, inventory holdings and more across your many channels, enabling you to make smarter, faster and better-informed business decisions. An excellent illustration of this is Kitchen’s Choice, a retailer of high-end kitchen equipment and accessories, which boosted sales by 15% as a result of seamlessly adding a new sales channel powered by iVend eCommerce.
  • Make Loyalty Rewarding
    Look for an eCommerce solution that incorporates a robust loyalty offering. Studies show that easy-to-use loyalty programs create sticky customers and help to boost sales. Kitchen’s Choice, for example, integrated both gift card and loyalty programs that customers can use in-store and online that reward shoppers equally, regardless of channel.
  • Payments Are Proliferating, and So Are Privacy Concerns
    Consumers’ comfort with shopping online continues to increase, but some remain skeptical of their data privacy and security when paying for purchases on eCommerce. Does your eCommerce solution include the latest security standards? No retailer wants to suffer a high-profile data breach — not to mention the costs and loss of business that can result from it.However, it’s important that your eCommerce solution accommodates a variety of payment options that caters to the needs of different demographics. While millennials and Gen Z demand integration with easy-to-use digital wallets, older shoppers are more likely to prefer traditional methods such as physical credit cards or even electronic checks. With your site security up to date, you can give shoppers peace of mind and confidence that transacting on your eCommerce channel is as safe as swiping a card in store.

Choosing the right eCommerce solution is an important step toward setting the stage for a successful retail future. As the web continues to outperform brick-and-mortar in year-over-year growth, small and mid-size retailers would do well to leverage robust technology tools to their advantage to build their businesses in both the digital and physical realms.

For information on how one SMB retailer expanded their retail ecosystem and built their business, download our case study Kitchen’s Choice Stirs up Omnichannel Success with eCommerce Solution Delivered by iVend Retail.

Choose the right eCommerce solution to set the stage for a successful retail future. Leverage robust technology tools to sell online and drive traffic to physical stores @iVendRetail_NA

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