Selling in the Digital Age – the 4 P’s

Selling in the Digital Age – the 4 P’s

There’s no denying the retail landscape has changed over the last decade. Disappointingly, bricks and mortar are soon becoming a thing of the past, whilst online dominate our lives.

If you are new to the world of retail, and are an aspiring entrepreneur wanting to offer a product or service to your target customer, then consider the following. The team at Interactive Media Services have combined retail experience that span more than 30 years.

Product

Be it apparel or hardlines you need to offer a commercial, balanced and profitable range for your target customer. Your online shop needs to offer the right product, at the right place at the right time. This means you need to think of the appropriate range for the time of year and the location – if we were talking about stores, we would be talking about making sure it is in the right store, but as we are talking about online, you need to check if the product is on the right page? Is it a hero product? – therefore, it should have a higher presence online with a banner or video, or on your landing page. Are your links working? Your SEO? There is so much to remember!

Price

You should have a clear structure offering a GBB system – this is Good, Better, Best.

• The “good” is your EPP product – your entry price point. This gets your customer to buy into you and your brand
• Your “best” is your highest price point – this is where you want to encourage customers to trade up. This increases your ABS (average basket spend).
• Your “better” is everything in between.

Look at your competition and review your prices – are you competitive? When conducting competitor pricing research, consider using a traffic light system. Green means the competition are more expensive, red means they are cheaper than you, and amber means your competitors are level with you. This simple colour coding structure has been used across multiple big retailers and helps you identify quickly where you need to take action.

Place

With digital retailing, this will all come down to your website. Think about your brand and your range. If you were selling in a store, you would think carefully about your shop windows - online is no different. Consider your landing page as your store front - you need to make an impact, you need to make it memorable. Also remember to think about whether your product is on the right page, is it at the correct position within that page, do your links work, your buttons, and so on? Do you have a clear CTA?

Also review your product photography – is it the best it can be? With so much “noise” online you need to stand out in such a saturated market but remember that if your website doesn't load within seconds, then you have already lost that sale. If your images are too big, then this will slow down your site (more on this below).

Then finally there’s that all import SEO - remember to check this out, and your meta descriptions.

See below three top tips for online retailing:

Promotion

By this, we mean marketing. Think about your brand proposition and where it falls in the marketplace. Where is it against other brands? How do you want to position yourself? Put yourself in the eyes of your target customer and consider how they shop, what their spending habits are and what the customer decision process is.

Then consider how you will reach your customers. There’s no question, that you need to consider social media marketing, be it organic or paid. In addition, you should send out regular newsletters – these can be used to showcase a new product or launch and at the same time it creates anticipation, desire and brand loyalty.

At Interactive Media Services we have retail experience ranging from buying to merchandising, product design to development, manufacturing to supply chain, brand & own label development to marketing and more. If this is an area that interests you then reach out to us, we’d be happy to share our learnings across a diverse industry of products and retailers.