Local Commerce: How to prepare for the new reality
At this moment, local commerce is one of the most affected sectors due to the pandemic with drops in turnover of over 60% and is facing increasing difficulties in surviving and becoming more dynamic. The Covid-19 pandemic has arrived silently and devastatingly, and the impacts are being brutal for everyone. Some are adapting their businesses to the current situation by adopting solutions such as e-commerce, others are closed indefinitely, and some have even been forced to close.
The pandemic has also fueled the abrupt transition of small and medium-sized businesses to ‘online’, exalting the inevitability of these businesses making their presence felt in the digital world in order to continue to meet the needs of consumers.
If you have come this far, you are probably wondering how to keep up with this transformation and adapt your business to this new reality. Discover in this article the online sales channels best suited to the demands of the current landscape and see which one best suits your business’ needs.
E-commerce
Even before the exceptional situation created by the pandemic, e-commerce was already showing strong signs of growth in recent years. Despite the challenges that came with the pandemic, overall, the e-commerce industry was one of the biggest winners in this regard, with 70% of consumers stating that they shopped more online than usual in 2020. The truth is that any brand that wants to have a relevant online presence these days ought to have an online store. Besides strengthening your online presence, you will also get an excellent source of extra income, since the store works 24/7, even without much effort.
Examples of e-commerce platforms:
Magento
Magento is currently one the most used e-commerce platform in the world, with online stores in over 50 countries. An example of the application of this platform is the Loulé Local project. This is a free electronic platform, open to local businesses, which aims to aggregate into a single space all of the commercial establishments of the municipality of Loulé.
Shopify
This platform has become one of the biggest names in the market for tools to create virtual stores, also addressing several other sales channels and other services to boost the authority of shopkeepers who use its services, such as services related to digital marketing through branding and online presence reinforcement.
Woocommerce
WooCommerce is a complete e-commerce platform for WordPress. As complete and satisfying as it is, it is just a plugin of the traditional CMS platform. Therefore, it is very common for businesses that already have WordPress sites to opt for WooCommerce to manage their e-commerces. The tool allows to sell any kind of product or service, from durable items to info products and content subscriptions.
Marketplaces
Another way to boost your business is to invest in marketplaces. They work as a true virtual shopping, where you can sell your products, taking advantage of the high level of traffic they have. One of the benefits of this method is the ready-made structure of the site, which makes your investment much lower. The marketplace provides a ready-made sales model, with a commission that is usually negotiable. With a low investment, you can achieve high visibility. Profit is an inevitable consequence of all the convenience that the marketplace offers.
Blog and affiliate products
If you have the know-how and enjoy writing, creating a blog can be a good way to start selling online. Initially, you don’t need to worry about products, structure, payment methods – your only goal is to build valuable content to attract people. You can optimize your content with SEO, to compete with other sites for organic positioning on Google. And, organic means free! Once you have built a significant audience on your blog, you can register as a product affiliate and include the sales link in your blog posts. This way, you receive a percentage of sales made from that link.
Instagram Shopping
With the rise of commercial accounts and the spread of sales content, this social media platform has optimized its services to simplify the seller’s life by creating Instagram Shopping. This feature allows users to tag products on Instagram’s feed and stories, leading them to the brand’s checkout page and purchase the product in question. Instagram Shopping has thus become an important marketing tool on Instagram. To utilize this feature, create a business account on Instagram and post valuable content to build a loyal audience.
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace was created to facilitate marketing within the platform. Today, anyone can create a page and list products. Facebook Marketplace does not have its own payment system, which is why you need to include a link. This way, when a potential customer clicks on the product, they will be redirected to the payment page.
Specialized platforms for Info Products
If your product is a digital product, you can sell it on specialized platforms, as channels specific to digital products go offer a better delivery system. These platforms can provide an ideal environment for exchanging this type of merchandise. A good example is Hotmart’s service, which allows any user to register and distribute your digital product.
Whatsapp can be an ally in online sales. You can advertise your products to the list of contacts you already have and thus increase sales. But of course, your customer numbers should not be reduced to the list of contacts you have today. They help you, in the beginning, to collect feedbacks and start analyzing the best way to present and communicate your products. The ideal is to combine Whatsapp with another sales channel, such as the Marketplace, and use it to make the relationship with the customer closer and convert more often.
Knowing the main sales channels available is an important step to boost sales and achieve success. Although there are several, far beyond the 7 you have just checked in this article, there will always be those that best fit the reality of your business. And you can even combine more than one to make your strategy more effective and expand your audience. Which sales channels do you already use or which ones do you intend to adopt in the future?