How to create a similar feeling shopping in an ecommerce shop, as a retail shop.
So I went to Chadstone the other day and it was PACKED. No car parks, swarms of people rolling in. It was so full on that I felt flustered and super uncomfortable. It was like there was a Boxing Day sale or something.
I knew after Covid allowed people back into the shops again that those big shopping centres would be busy for a while, but it had been a few weeks so thought it’d have calmed down a bit… nope.
The thing is, it’s the complete opposite of what I keep hearing people say. “People aren’t spending, there’s no money to go around, retail is struggling!”
And I totally get that a lot of retail businesses are struggling at the moment (and I want to help you all!!!) but the thing is, a lot of businesses aren’t and so seeing all these people in Chadstone flocking to anything and everything, it gave me so much HOPE!!! SO much hope for everyone. Because people are spending. There is money going around.
We all just have to find our own ways to funnel it over our way as well as into those stores right?
There were QUEUES of people waiting to checkout at Peter Alexander. There were floods of people everywhere shopping and spending.
So there is money around and people are spending.
Why are many online stores feeling the slump? I believe it’s because people are seeing the experience of shopping again.
Many online businesses began doing well at the start of Covid because it was the only way to buy things, then it started to go down as we lost Job Keeper, and the buzz from online shopping wore off and money got tighter. Then when shops reopened many couldn’t wait to get out and shop again.
So what do we do with this information? We tap into why people are spending and we try to think of ways that we can offer similar solutions to the reasons why people are spending all their $$ in physical chain stores.
So here are some things you could do to make some differences to how you sell/market yourself so that some of that money people are spending can land in your pocket.
A big reason people are splurging in chain stores is because they want the experience of it. That feeling was taken away from people for so long they just want the feeling of being able to go in, to be able to touch things again and feel the weight or fabric, to try things on, to have the freedom of being able to make a purchase, to talk with people and connect and feel special, to get their fancy bag and wander around the store browsing right?
So what can we do to bring in some of these learnings into our e-commerce businesses?
A lot!!
No, people can’t knock on your Shopify door and come in and try things on, there are still heaps of limitations as we can't be what we aren't, but we can still listen to what people are wanting and make changes to suit, to give them what they want instead of just doing the same thing over and over again and wondering why you aren't making more sales.
Here are some of my ideas!
People are going to the department stores (do we call them that in Australia or is that mostly American?) for that experience right? They want to talk to people, connect with people again, feel special when complimented on their hair or outfits or whatever. So what could you do? You find ways you can connect more with your potential customers. One thing I love is Video Ask. It's a widget chat bot thingy that you can put on your website (You might have seen one of these on my website). But it's different than the regular chatbots because it has a video of you talking to them, making it super approachable to talk to you and ask questions. Your potential customers have the option to send you a video (or text or voice msg) and you can reply by video or msg too! Connection, relationship building, being accessible, all things that retail stores offer that's harder to replicate online but this is one way to start to narrow the gap. Relationships are such a key part of brand building in general, so finding little ways like this that add to the experience of buying from your brand is soooo important, now more than ever when human interaction is what many people are craving.
The experience of touching things. Again, not something you can add into your Shopify yet haha (yet?) but you can level up the experience of people buying from you in different ways. If you sell clothing for example, why don’t you include video/s as well as photos. Say you sold a fur coat, why don’t you include videos of you running your fingers through it so people could get a real feeling of what it might be like if they did. Why don’t you twirl in the dress and scrunch the fabric together so people can see how it flows and imagine the weight of it, show people how deep the pockets go, and really create the feeling that someone could be in a retail store buying from you and getting to know your products. It's a HUGE reason why people go, to really get to see and understand the products, so let people in to experience it. It might be more work sure, but what if it resulted in more sales? That’d be worth it right?
Have a ‘shop all’ category. This is a super easy one that a lot of people miss. People get so caught up in categorizing all of their products that they forget to include a ‘shop all’ category. A ‘shop all’ category is like window shopping for your business. People don’t always know what they want. They don’t always visit your shop and narrow straight on into the category they want to find the product. More often than not they're there for the enjoyment of shopping and want to check out what you have. If you don't have a 'shop all' category, most people aren't going to go through every segmented category looking for things. That’s so frustrating. When I’m looking for inspiration or something to connect with me, I want to browse. So just like in a retail store, offer a way to do that. Allow products to mix in together as that may even introduce a different product to someone that they didn’t even know existed if it was squirreled away in a category they didn’t think they’d want to look at. You make more sales when you showcase what you have on offer instead of burying them into categories. Allow the browse. Allow the window shopping, just like in a bricks and mortar shop.
If you’re keen to level up in business, you might want to consider AI. Have you seen those websites where you can take a photo of you or your room and it will put the art on your wall? Or take a photo of you and it'll place the glasses on your face? This can be SO next level when allowing people to have the experience of shopping from home.
UGC or user generated content. That’s the photos your customers take of your packages and products. If you can find a way to encourage more and more people to share photos of their unboxings or products (Which is why we created Marketing Tape and then you consistently reshare people’s photos, you’ll find that people prefer to buy from you than a chain store because the feeling that they get when you, the brand that they LOVE, shares their photo and replies personally with gratitude, can be HUGE. I remember when my photos were shared by Sage and Clare and Apartment Therapy. I swear my jaw hit the ground and I screenshotted it and told everyone I'd ever met haha. I can't get that feeling by shopping in any store. People LOVE buying from brands they love. So if you focus on building a brand that people love and are excited to buy from, and your customers are sharing and you’re resharing their photos, that can be SOOO incredibly exciting for people, that you’ll be surprised at the sales (and new followers) that come in.
My last tip is to actually sell yourself. People have money and they’re spending it. If they aren’t spending it on your products it could be because you aren’t loud enough. When I say loud I don’t mean in volume or extreme wildness, I mean visible. People aren’t aware of you amongst all the other people also selling their stuff. You don’t need to be salesy, you don’t need to be non-stop promoting yourself but you need to be seen and you need to connect. If you fear selling it’s something you might want to work on (I'll be running mindset workshops in The Club next year, so if you join we could work through this kind of stuff). Because if no one knows you have something for sale, it’s really hard to sell it and people's money is going to go to someone else.
If you loved any of these tips (or any that I share in any of my articles) I’d love you to share your learnings in your stories, show me that you’re working on it, what you learned, that you’re taking action. I’ll of course be sure to reshare too.