Today, many companies are experiencing fluctuations in orders, customer behavior and priority changes, supply chain disruptions, store closures, and many other difficulties ever since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. All these effects would have contributed to the foreclosure of almost 32,000 SMEs that were ill-prepared for the possibility of such a seismic shift in the way business operations are handled.
Retail sales dropping substantially this year internationally due to people taking measures such as quarantining and working from home to avoid putting themselves and their families at risk. The only alternative for purchasing products that they might need for everyday occurrences is e-commerce. Online sales from E-Commerce have increased considerably to fulfill the demand while self-isolating.
In this article, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce. The challenges encountered in this new normal along with all the opportunities and solutions to help steer your own business through this pandemic.
The first hurdle is to move customers online to limit physical contact for public health reasons. For that very reason as well as to ensure business continuity, it is imperative to encourage customers to shop online. While many companies have consumers that are already used to placing orders online, there are always methods to improve your productivity.
By continuously reminding customers that an e-commerce platform is live and operational although physical stores are closed, you can provide an outlet for your customers to purchase products. Any on-the-road sales representatives, which can no longer do their typical work, can be pivoted into remotely contacting customers through emails, phone calls, or social media to get the word out that consumers can buy their normal products through a convenient e-commerce platform. By also having representatives assisting these customers navigate the webstore and placing their orders online with great customer service.
The second hurdle that can be bypassed is that an online presence will allow companies to look after their existing customers. By offering additional services, you can put measures in place to support their customers by providing engaging and/or informative content to rely on during these difficult times.
Simple suggestions or examples of these measures can be to offer customers in affected regions additional discounts such as free delivery. Businesses can support customers who are facing financial trouble by offering additional return options or extending invoice payment dates to allow them to manage their finances easily.
Ensuring that your business’s e-commerce platform meets the needs of the customer is an imperative hurdle. As more customers turn to e-commerce amidst quarantine due to the pandemic. It is not enough to just have a webstore. An e-commerce site must be convenient, reliable and a complete webstore to meet all the needs of consumers. It must be able to persuade a customer to stay with that business rather than turn to any competitors.
With an e-commerce platform, it enables a business to start expanding to new regions and markets. This will be able to ensure revenue as well as to support existing or cut-off customers. By reaching new audiences, you can optimize your webstore for Search Engines (SEO & SEM) as most people will conduct web searches to look for information, solutions, or products before reaching a landing page.
That is where we come in with ViSight Marketing as a Service (VMaaS). By using various integrated technologies, we can help navigate you through these strenuous times for your business. Using SEM along with various other techniques, we can assist by enabling your company’s landing page will remain at the top of the search engine. This will enable you to have as large of an audience for people searching for your services.
Amongst our other Digital Marketing services, our Social Media Manager will enable you to have a much larger social media outreach without worry about interaction. This enables your company name to get more recognition by the masses without putting in much effort.
As the demand for e-commerce grows, now is the critical time to offer a new channel to ensure revenue and continue to service your clients. But if you only have a physical store and not yet a webstore, is it too late to launch one now? It is never too late to get a webstore live quickly to meet the current demand for e-commerce. By choosing ViSight Marketing as a Service (VMaaS), we can set up an e-commerce platform for your business in a matter of days.
Contact Cyngus Technologies to digitalise your business with our comprehensive Digital Marketing services today and be ensured with a smooth pathway into the digital era, the new normal. For more information, click here. For any more of our articles spanning various topics, please follow us on our social media platforms or click here to check out our blog.
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