Grow Your Online Retail Business - Tips For Acheiving More Sellings!

Bill Clinton once commented - “the single most important factor in your retail business is – your customers”. Whether online or offline, your customers are the main driving factor behind the success or failure of your business. You must always remain on your toes to serve your customers with whatever best possible thing you can manage.

Now, if you are using Microsoft RMS(Retail Management System), you are actually a few steps ahead of your competitors in wooing customers. Microsoft RMS gives some unique features to manage and control discounts and other sales offers that keep you stay in touch with your customers at all time. Let see how a few simple tricks can do wonders for your online retail business!

• Putting items on sale

Being a retailer, you must make both your retail and the web store a ‘happening place’ for your shoppers. There should be one or the other promotional activity running on your online web store. A group of your customers should always be looking for the next sales day or promotion activity. You can name a sale-campaign as “customer appreciation day“, “Value Return week”, “Stock clearance sales”, “Weekender Specials” and what not?

Now, in all cases, you can set the sale prices in your Microsoft RMS in advance. Before you specify the sales prices of your products, you can specify start and end dates or the campaign or make it a weekly schedule (put some items on sale on Saturdays and Sundays) in your Shopping Store with Retail Management System.

When a customer buys an item on sale, Microsoft Dynamics RMS will automatically take the sale price. When the campaign ends, Microsoft RMS will convert the sale price to the regular price.

You can set sales-schedule in your store from the store operations manager in Microsoft Dynamics RMS. If you are using Microsoft RMS as Shopping Cart Software, you can take this complete sales-schedule to your online store and avail these offers to your online shoppers.

• Provide a gift with a purchase

In your Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), you can assign a promotional or gift item (called a “tag along” item) with every item in the database. Thus, when a shopper buys a particular item, Microsoft RMS will automatically include the gift item in the sale. Even more, you can also specify the quantity of the gift item you want to provide with the purchase.

Before you give a gift for a purchase, you will need to specify an item as gift and place it as a “tag along” item to the item you wish. For example, let us consider that you want to give a skating board to the customer who purchases an item that priced at more than $300.00; you will need to assign the skating board as tag along item to each item whose price is more than $300.00.

If you have a RMS Microsoft - Shopping Cart Software like 24SevenCart that integrates with the Retail Management System, these gift details can be synchronize with the web store for your online customers.

• Setting up discount schedules

Microsoft RMS offers two wonderful types of discounting mechanisms; the mix and match - where a customer gets a discount when he/she buys a certain quantity of similar items. The second one is “Buy X, Get Y for Z”, in which the customer gets a certain number of items free or at a discount when he buys a certain quantity of those items at the normal price. In both the options, when a discount is set for an item, the item's price is automatically reduced as that item is added to a sales transaction (or to the shopping cart in case of the Shopping Cart Software for Microsoft Dynamics RMS) and discount conditions are met.

Online Retail - How To Know Your Customers Psychology ?

An online store can bring completeness to your retail business. Through your online store, you can both mobilize your physical marketing resources to promote your retail business and streamline how your customers interact with you to purchase the product. However, the mindset of the customer becomes entirely different when it comes to purchase something over the web. In his sub-conscious mind, the customer usually looks for a better deal as his physical movement is confined (his shopping notions are somewhat ‘pre-programmed’ when he visits the online store). Naturally, as an online retail store owner, onus is on you to present things in your store as per your customers’ psychological orientations.

A few things that govern customers’ psychology when it comes to online shopping and where you as an online retailer can take benefits are:

• Neuromarketing Techniques – Brain-research studies show that online shoppers are greatly influenced by the color of the background, location of the product on the screen, display of pricing etc. The shoppers decision to buy a product or his spending limit is determined by these factors. For example, researchers suggests that a greenish pattern in the background of a product in an online store selling furniture, may help in firing the online customers neurons in a way that would make them sensitive to the price of the item. On the other hand, a blue-colored pattern may help in stimulating the online shoppers neurons towards the comfort-angle of the product. In simpler words, for a low-priced product keep a green background and highlight the “low price”, similarly, if your product is highly-priced, use a blue background and highlight the “comfort features”.
  

• Affinity for free-shipping – The phrase “free-shipping” is one of most sought-after characteristics of a any product sold online; at least a large section of the online shoppers just run for it! Consumers prefers free-shipping offers as they compare it to the shopping experience in the physical store; you take out your car, drive to the store, burn gas, buy the item, burn gas again, move through traffic, reach home, park your car and finally open the box on your living room table – well, the retailers mind compares all these with the phrase “free-shipping”. Even a $20 discount weighs less than a $10 waiver in the name of free-shipping. Discount? “Well, it’s ok; everybody gives.” Free-shipping? “Why, I will buy it!” This is the psychology of major chunk of online shoppers.

• Comparative pricing of products – Online shoppers psycho-analysis report shows that most buyers give precedence to mid-range comparative pricing of a group of similar product. For instance, if you place two similar items on the category page of your store (showing brief details of both), one priced at $100, and the other at $150, most customers will purchase the cheaper one. Now, add a third item priced at say, $200 (the one that you are not even interested in selling); you will be amazed to see that most people will purchase the item selling for $150! Moral of the story – always give your buyers something to compare!

Online shoppers also prefer the pricing in their local currencies (if you are selling globally) and they have a great love for coupons also. Moreover, the buying pattern also varies with various demographic parameters like age-group, income-group, sex, education, community and so on. So, while you sell – observe and know your customers!

Go For An Online Store - Boost Your Offline Websites Builder Sales

If you are a retailer and still shying away from ecommerce, you are missing not missing something – You are missing A LOT! Consider the aggregated loss in business that translates to your competitor’s profits simply because you are not selling online. Ecommerce is not an overnight activity; it is a meticulous process, which takes months to give a complete shape. Right from setting up complete store to marketing your products, you need to have experts at hand.

At the start, you may not see traffic or sales from your online store, but there few steps and the guidance of a good ecommerce service provider can help you to start building visitor traffic and generating sales through your online store. However, always remember - your online business is a tool for your offline marketing. Through an online store, you give your business a complete picture that your customers would love to see.

Through your online store, you can both mobilize your offline resources to promote your online business and streamline how your customers interact with you for ordering system. If you have permanent customers who fax you orders, you can simply guide to them to place it through the online store – making things pretty easier. You can run specials for your website or you can offer online gift cards for various items. The motto is to assess your business base and find the opportunities to promote your products to your customers at a very affordable cost. For that, your online store is the cheapest solution for advertising your business.

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