That's Why You Need an Online Store
The coronavirus crisis has not only reminded Danes to wash their hands. It has also reminded the retail industry of how important it is to have an online presence.
In fact, failing to adapt can have major financial consequences. For example, one of Denmark’s most renowned bookstores, Arnold Busck, recently had to close its doors after nearly 125 years in the business.
Conversely, other businesses are thriving under the new circumstances. I’m thinking, of course, of online stores. For example, one online store has increased its revenue by 300 percent compared to April 2019.
However, the COVID-19 crisis is slowly beginning to ease, and brick-and-mortar stores have started to reopen. But does that mean you don’t need an online store? The short answer is: no!
In fact, there are several good reasons to have an online store if you’re in the retail industry—COVID-19 or not. I’ll share seven of them with you in this post.
Tip: Do you already have an online store, and would you like to know how to make your online store more visible in search engines? If so, I highly recommend reading my post about SEO in Shopify and other e-commerce platforms.
1. E-commerce is on the rise
E-commerce is by far the most significant growth area in Denmark—and this trend does not appear to be reversing anytime soon. In contrast, things are taking a turn for the worse for brick-and-mortar retail, where store closures have led to empty shopping streets even in larger provincial towns.
But what is causing the decline of brick-and-mortar stores?
Quite simply, Danes are increasingly shopping online. In fact, 80 percent of Danes have shopped online over the past year. This makes Denmark one of the EU’s absolute leaders when it comes to e-commerce.
And it’s not just the COVID-19 crisis that has driven Danes toward digital checkout systems. The growth of online shopping has been a constant over the past ten years—and will most likely continue to be so in the years to come.
That's why it's a good idea to invest in an online store. It's an investment in the future of your business.
2. Attract customers outside your local area
A brick-and-mortar store depends on customers being nearby. An online store does not. Here, the product selection is always within reach for customers—no matter where they are in the world. Your customers therefore do not need to physically visit your store to meet their shopping needs.
At Amplify, we have a client who runs Østerbro Vin, a brick-and-mortar wine and spirits store in Copenhagen. But being resourceful, he has chosen to supplement his physical store with an online store—a decision that has given him a customer base that extends far beyond Copenhagen’s city limits.
This means that the wine merchant recently sold a bottle of whiskey for nearly 700 kroner to a customer in Southwest Jutland—a sale that likely wouldn’t have gone through if the customer had had to drive across the country to reach the brick-and-mortar store in Copenhagen.
The point is that with an online store, you can attract customers who are located far from your local area. That way, you’ll reach a much larger potential audience.
3. It's easier to stand out from the competition
Let's say you have a store out there in the physical, analog world—which you probably do, since you're in the middle of working your way through this post.
But in this hypothetical scenario, your store sells high-quality bags. Unfortunately, in your pursuit of uncompromising quality, you’ve neglected your store’s exterior, which as a result appears generic and uninviting.
Your competitor lives in the next-door apartment and also sells bags. However, her bags are nowhere near as high-quality as the ones you sell in your store.
Your competitor, on the other hand, has placed a high priority on its storefront and visual marketing—including an eye-catching storefront featuring special offers, product prices, and relevant information about the product lineup.
For that very reason, customers flock to her store—and they often leave with a new bag under their arm.
So what's my point with this hypothetical example?
Obviously, your potential customers are more likely to visit your store if:
- 1) It has a stronger visual presence than its competitors'
- 2) Your customers know what to expect even before they visit the store.
The same applies to an online store. But with an online store, it’s much easier to stand out from the competition. Here, you don’t need a master’s degree in visual communication to make a stronger visual impact.
But you (or your agency) need to have some knowledge of structured data.
I won't go into detail about what structured data is in this post, since my colleague Peter has already written an excellent and very informative introduction to structured data.
But I’d like to briefly outline how structured data can make your online store more visible in Google’s search results (SERP)—and, just as importantly, how it can make it more appealing for your customers to visit your online store specifically.
An example of visual marketing using structured data
With structured data, you can provide your customers with relevant information in the search results even before they’ve visited your online store—just as the store owner mentioned above provides his customers with relevant information on his storefront.
Ultimately, this could mean more traffic to your business—and thus a better chance of making a sale. In SEO terms, we call this increasing your click-through rate (CTR). Or, to put it simply: increasing the likelihood of getting more clicks.
Below, you can see the Google search results for the poster retailer Permild & Rosengreen. In the search results, the poster retailer has used structured data to give its customers a quick overview of some of the online store’s categories. Most importantly, customers can see that the store has excellent customer reviews.
Permild & Rosengreen has thus made it easy for their customers to decide whether the online store is worth a visit—even before they’ve visited it at all. In this way, Permild & Rosengreen stands out visually from its competitors, thereby increasing its chances of attracting more visitors.
If you want your online store to stand out from the crowd using structured data, you're always welcome to contact Amplify.
4. Reach the right target audience
Let’s imagine once again that you own a bag store. Thousands of people walk by every day. But very few of them are interested in buying a bag. Even fewer will actually visit your store—let alone buy a bag.
But what if I told you that every single passerby could be a potential customer?
An online store gives you that opportunity. It allows you to tailor your marketing to specific segments through online marketing—and thus turn every “passerby” into a potential customer.
For example, you can promote your products to existing customers through email marketing, just as you can reach entirely new customers through paid advertising (PPC) and organic search (SEO).
Both organic and paid advertising allow you to rank at the top of Google’s search results for specific keywords. This means, for example, that you’ll be found when a user Googles “bags.”
In addition, you can use what’s known as remarketing to target customers who have previously visited your online store without making a purchase.
In other words, you can tailor your marketing to reach customers at every stage of the customer journey.
In other words, you have more marketing advantages as an online store owner than you do as a “regular” store owner.
Would you like to read about a specific example of an online store that has found success thanks to online marketing? Then read about how Amplify helped the online store Butik24 give its sales a significant boost through extensive online advertising.
5. Automatic sales – 24 hours a day
One of the challenges of having a brick-and-mortar store is that your sales depend on you and your employees being physically present in the store. And, of course, you can only be open for x number of hours a day—after all, you and your employees need to sleep and have time for family and leisure.
To put it bluntly, basic human needs are the reason you’re missing out on a lot of sales. But what if I told you that you could have an employee who didn’t need to sleep or socialize—and who was ready to serve your customers around the clock?
That employee already exists. And you don’t have to worry about the labor inspectorate coming after you for letting this seemingly tireless employee work around the clock.
Because the employee I’m talking about is, of course, your online store. Your online store isn’t burdened by mundane physical or social needs. In fact, it handles all order and payment processing completely automatically. That’s why your customers can shop in your online store around the clock—late at night or early in the morning.
This benefits both you and your customers. Your customers can shop at their own pace whenever it suits them, while you keep sales coming in around the clock—even when you’re sleeping, relaxing on the couch in the evening, or playing badminton on Sundays.
It's a win-win situation.
6. You keep costs down—both your own and your customers’
Now, I’m not saying that a brick-and-mortar store and an online store are opposites—one can effectively supplement and complement the other, just as there are, of course, service-related advantages to having a brick-and-mortar store.
That said, there are clear financial advantages to focusing on online retail. For example, your overhead and operating costs will be lower because you won’t have to spend energy heating and lighting a storefront with rent that’s as high as the location is attractive.
But your customers will also enjoy financial benefits. For example, they’ll be able to shop at lower prices because your lower expenses allow you to sell your products at lower prices.
In other words, it makes good financial sense to focus on e-commerce—both for you and your customers.
7. It's easy to manage and update an online store
Do you immediately feel overwhelmed by technology at the thought of having to manage an online store?
Don't worry…
You don’t need any experience with coding, programming, or web design to become an online store owner. There are, in fact, several user-friendly e-commerce platforms that make it easy to run an online store.
In short, an e-commerce platform is the system you use to manage content, sales, and payments for your online store—and there are countless options available. Among others, I can mention WooCommerce and Shopify, which are by far the two largest providers.
At Amplify, we primarily use Shopify when building online stores for our clients. We do this because Shopify has an intuitive and user-friendly dashboard that lets you quickly get an overview of orders, inventory, and sales statistics. The dashboard also makes it easy to create new product and category pages and add engaging, search engine-optimized ( SEO) content.
Shopify also offers well-developed customer support and full integration with Google Shopping, and you don't have to worry about updating plugins on your online store.
Plus, Shopify is reliable. So you don't have to worry about the system crashing due to overload during Christmas, Black Friday, and other busy periods.
That’s not to say that a Shopify online store is the best solution for you. This post isn’t an advertisement for Shopify. All e-commerce platforms have their pros and cons—ultimately, it comes down to your preferences and needs.
If you’d like an overview of the pros and cons of two of the biggest platforms, Shopify and WooCommerce, I highly recommend reading the post“WooCommerce vs. Shopify—Which Should You Choose?”, written by my colleague Tobias.
Get help with your online store
Do you need help with your online store? We’d be happy to assist you. At Amplify, you’ll be greeted by web designers and online marketing specialists who are ready to get your online store off to a solid start—and, just as importantly, ensure that it stays on track.
Contact us at 70 60 50 28 or info@amplify.dk to get a no-obligation quote for a customized online store solution.
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