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When the pandemic hit, people changed their purchasing behaviour to start buying most things online.
To safeguard their own business, Malaysia’s retailers had started to seek new opportunities to run their business and eCommerce store became popular.
Today, digitalisation in retail is not only putting all the products into the eCommerce platform and waiting for customers. Nevertheless, it is more than that.
There is a new future for all the retailers out there with new digital experience to bring retail to a different level.
The key notes of topic 2:
1. Fastest way to sell products
The fastest way to sell your products is to sell through an eCommerce platform. It is not only the fastest way but also a marketplace where retailers can run their business at the lowest cost.
To reach out more customers and gain more sales, retailers should use Facebook as well, as it is one of the effective platforms to do your marketing and attract more customers to purchase your products.
2. New retail
Digitalisation for retails is not only to set up a website or set up a marketplace in an eCommerce platform.
The new retail is online merge offline (OMO), it is to blend online and offline together in order to better serve our consumers.
When consumers visit offline stores, we are able to serve them based on the data collected from online, providing them personalised shopping experience.
Online and offline should be merged as they complement each other.
3. Not owning loyal customers
It is fine to start your eCommerce business from a marketplace, as this will bring traffic to your business and the entry level and barrier is relatively lower.
However, the problem faced is you are not actually owning your loyal customers when only operating on an eCommerce platform as there are so many sellers, the competition is high.
4. Control customer journey
Building an app or website for your business can better control your customer journey, at the same time lessen the cost as you are conducting business passively.
Your customers will find you by themselves via your website or apps when they need your products or services to fulfil their needs.
You can track your customers and analyse the findings to design a more targeting copywriting or discount for your member, allowing them to have a more positive customer journey.
5. Utilize mobile apps for customer retention
Nowadays, some of the eCommerce merchants are doing Facebook marketing in order to build their brand awareness, but how does it increase the conversion rate or how to make sure the customers will come back to support you again?
Having a website and app is an effective way to get your customer back as it allows sellers to interact with the customers easily.
Set up exclusive apps to your members that enable the business owners to control the customer journey which you can notify them with special promotion and also track your members.
6. Cost-effective method to launch new business
If your business is just a new startup and has a limited budget, you may sell on an eCommerce marketplace first, to understand how to manage your inventory, customer service and payment.
When you have some recurring sales from the same customers and your own established membership, start to set up your own website.
Therefore, you can have better control over customer journey, marketing or copywriting on the things that you wanted to sell.
7. Strategy in retaining the customer to increase sales
Design a creative notification is one of the effective ways to retain your customers. People are not only interested in promotion, but also informative content that is related to your products.
For promotion, other than doing discounts or sales, retailers may also conduct other attractive promotions such as ‘spend and win’ to attract people to purchase from you.
To retain customers, it is important for retailers to constantly engage with customers, especially new customers in order to build brand attachment.
Digital technology is revolutionising retail, only having an online retail store to sell products is just a start as there are many areas that need to be considered in order to stand firm in the competition.
Setting up an online store does not mean you should not run an offline store anymore. Both online and offline stores are complementing each other which will bring benefits to your business.
During this panel discussion, Lee Wei Hong, Senior Business Consultant, 91APP and Leow Kok Han, Director, Dr. Douxi (COOOLGO BEAUTY SDN. BHD) had discussed how retailers today can utilize digital technology to gain more customers and sales, and how to utilise both online and offline stores to improve customer retention.
Watch the full video to learn more from this insightful panel discussion!
