Being online with the right product and the right mix of purchase options can deliver sales like this one, $1,082.99, at 7:48am yesterday, Sunday, on a day the store connected to the website is closed. This was one of 5 sales in the day for the store, $2,000+ in revenue, which the shop remained closed. Every sale above 50% GP.
This website, like all websites I have been involved with for my shops and others connected to groups of newsagencies, the online pitch is not through a newsagency related shingle. I think this matters. Indeed, the most successful online pitches are through either a known product brand or a widely loved product category.
Newsagents can sell online and doing so successfully can help you adjust physical store operations to be more overhead cost efficient.
The key thing to understand about what you an do online is … the only barrier is you and what you think you can and cannot do.
Great results Mark and certainly encouraging us to make the online store move. Covid shutdowns are also pushing us to make the leap and we note here in NSW the last Covid Recovery Grant can be applied to such development costs.
Curious do you include such sales in your benchmarking surveys and if so would it be possible to measure online sales growth against instore sales in future surveys? Your strategy of different web stores for different product categories makes sense and obviously assists consumers with online searches.
Using the different products and naming them is the key it’s a scattergun approach yet each pellet has a target for those that are not looking at the local newsagency for the product they want it is a vey direct rifle shot result. the customer doesn’t mind -as Mark proves with his figures – buying from a well presented store tat can follow through with the service required for on Line shopping.
Shoiuld be more of it.
Steve for this business I don’t as I don’t include it on the benchmark study. More broadly, inclusion all depends on how retailers record and track it.
When considering online, we have to consider how people shop, they shop by keywords, what they type into Google and other search engines. It is fascinating to see those keywords and the myriad variations. People do not search how we think they do.
The moment someone types something into Google they are somewhat qualified. If you can land them on your site you can then develop a conversion rate and that feeds into strategies for maximising this.
Look at Beanie Boos. There are 18,000 searches for this specific keyword every day in Australia. do the Google search and you see that http://www.beanieboosaustralia.com is the top result. This is the newsxpress site. It is there naturally, not because of advertising. That site gets 34,500 visitors a day by being in this position.
Data online is key and you can leverage this to drive online success.