If your business has a physical location and a website, you want to make sure they work well together. Your website and your physical store should work cohesively in order to offer your customers a better experience. Taking the time to integrate your store and website will have a positive impact on your business.
Use the Same Color Scheme
One place to start is with the design of your website. You can start off by matching the color scheme of your website to your physical store. Doing this will create an environment that your customers may already be familiar with. It will make them feel more comfortable. If your color scheme is completely different, it could cause confusion. Your customers might question whether they are on the right website. It’s best to keep everything consistent. Additionally, being consistent will improve your customers’ opinions of your business.
Keep Store Details Up to Date
There are many things to include on your website. However, if your goal is integration then your first priority should be including information about your physical store. Often, customers will look online for information before they actually visit your physical location. Information you should provide includes your store’s address, the operating hours, and any important policies. For example, in the last year, many businesses found it helpful to include information about social distancing, masks, or sanitation. Consider what your customers would want to know before visiting your physical store and be sure to include that. Additionally, you can include information about inventory available including notifications about what is sold out.
Consider Selling Things Online
In many cases, websites might just be used for information. However, you can easily give your website more purpose by using it for ecommerce. This can make things much easier for your customers and it will encourage them to return. Shopping in-store comes with many challenges such as waiting in line and trying to find items. Your website can make it easier for customers to make quick purchases and to walk away with what they were expecting. Additionally, using your website for ecommerce can encourage more purchases. Allowing online purchases lets you take better advantage of impulse buys. As customers make a purchase, you can have a function on your site that suggests something else they can buy, even something small, before they go through with their purchase.
Align Sales and Promotions
The overall goal here is to make sure everything in-store is the same online. This includes any sales or promotions that you have. First of all, having different days for in-store and online sales can be confusing to customers and might even discourage them from continuing shopping. However, if you recognize the same deals in both locations, your customers can seamlessly shop between your store and your website. For example, some people might see items on your website but they may want to see it in person. By having the sale in both places, your customer can view the item in-store and online and have the option to make their purchase through either channel. In addition, you should make sure coupons are usable both in-store and online.
Integrate Your POS System
Many stores will have a separate POS (point of sale) system for their physical store and their online store. While this can work, integrating your POS system can have numerous benefits to your business. First of all, when your website and physical store use the same POS system you can have a better idea of what is going on overall. You can view your inventory in real time because all purchases made go through the same system. An integrated system will also give you a big picture of your sales overall. Instead of analyzing two different systems, you can see how your in-store and online purchases have worked together. In fact, this is a great opportunity to analyze what is and isn’t working.
Use the Same Messages
When integrating, one thing to keep in mind is the customer experience and their perspective. You want to make sure both your physical store and your website give them the same impressions and messages. This is often referred to as omnichannel marketing. This is achieved when all of your marketing channels (advertisements, website, social media, etc.) are all saying the same thing. You want your message to be consistent and you want to create a cohesive experience for your customers. Using omnichannel marketing will be an important part of integrating your physical store and website.
In business, you want to be aware of the customer experience. To make their experience better, you should integrate your physical store and your website. This way you customers can have a seamless experience and it can actually help to grow your business.
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