The online impact to offline sales

If a retailer tells you their website does not affect their physical bricks and mortar business, they are either doing something very wrong or telling fibs. The statistics below prove the power of a multi channel approach!

“Jupiter Research states that 51% of consumers are researching on the Internet and then completing their purchases offline; online research influences more than $400 billion of in-store sales and projections call for that sum to surpass $1.1 trillion by 2012.

A Gartner Group study reveals 68% of consumers are comparing prices online before shopping in a physical store and 58% locate items online before going to a store to purchase; only 13% say the Internet has not improved their in-store shopping experience.”

Powerful stuff! So what are you going to do about it?? What are some of the simple things you can do to capitalise on this trend?

1) Store Locator. If online sales are your number one purpose of the website, make certain directing visitors to the store locator are number 2! Place store locator calls to action throughout the site.

2) Store Locator Usability. Don’t have visitors fill out forms in order to find a physical location. Keep it simple. If the visitor’s hand needs to leave his/her mouse, you will lose them. Visual maps with links are the best option. If you are unable to cleanly display all the locations on the map, break the map into regions. Once the visitor selects a region, the individual locations will list.

3) Print this page. Make it simple for visitors to print product pages. Make the “print this page” call to action clear once the visitor reaches the product view page. Exceed Online has a client who still cannot believe how often customers come into the stores with printouts of the product page asking staff to view the product then immediately purchase.

4) Multi channel marketing. Create an offline marketing strategy which drives people to the website. This can be as simple as making sure the domain name is prominent on all print material.

5) Pick up in store. Even though a visitor has turned into a customer through purchasing online, always provide them with the option of picking up in store. There is a very strong likelihood (70%) the customer will purchase another item during the pick up.

Many physical retailers fail to capitalise on this opportunity because they struggle to see the value in building continuity between online and offline marketing and selling channels.

Those who appreciate the online influencers, will be growing, those who don’t, will be shrinking.