For most merchants, expanding their brick-and-mortar business to cater to an online market is an exciting and profitable venture, since they will have more opportunities to reach out to more customers. However, without the right set of tools and planning, the transition can turn out to be a frustrating experience instead. To help offline merchants, we’ve compiled some tips to make the move online easy and hassle-free as possible.
Find your audience
Identify your target audience in order to effectively position your brand online. Find out how they think – what their interests are, which social networks and websites they visit, the problems they deal with online, and what their spending habits are. By determining these, you’d be able to know how to sell your products in a clear and easy manner, and also create solutions to your customers’ problems.
Build an online presence
Plan and create the online identity of your business after determining your target market’s behaviour. Make sure that your website uses content and information that will cater to your audience. Also, create social media accounts on networks where your customers are part of, and engage with them. Building your online presence is an important step during the transition of your offline business to online – this is when you’ll start creating relationships with your customers.
Engage your audience
Now that you’ve established your online presence, you can then engage your audience. Just like for brick-and-mortar businesses, an effective way to reach out to your audience is by simply talking to them. Communication is key to building profitable and lasting connections with customers, and your website and social media presence are the tools for you to engage with your audience. Listen and respond to them accordingly when they have questions, problems, or suggestions regarding your products and services. Acknowledge their presence, even if it’s a simple greeting. Let them review your products, to learn and improve on how you can sell. Think of it this way: online engagement is beneficial for your business, if you do it similarly as you would for physical interactions.
Payment processing
Typically, brick-and-mortar businesses accept over-the-counter payments from their customers. Online businesses, on the other hand, need to consider how they can accept payments through several different ways. One way is to have the business sign up for a merchant account. This allows businesses to accept online credit card payments. However, the merchants themselves need to process the payments, which may take too much time and effort.
Another way to resolve online payments is to integrate a payment gateway. Doing so will allow online merchants to accept credit card payments, with the gateway handling the processing as well. This lets merchants focus in what they do best – to market and grow their business. Also, payment gateways provide more than just accepting credit card payments, such as alternative payment methods, fraud protection and customer support. For more information on payment gateway integration, click here.
Update and adapt
Moving your business online is a constant adjustment. Technology, trends, and processes continue to change online. You would need to continuously adapt to the changes, to stay ahead and maximize revenue opportunities. Keep up to date with the payments industry by checking for resources, such as online forums like quora, your customers’ feedback, and news sites like businessinsider.
More business monetization tips on our blog.