Future of Retail Archives

Is your eCommerce Online Store ready for the Black Friday rush ?

So here it is again, boy did it come up fast …24th of November is the online sensation Black Friday Sale. This has been a huge online sale opportunity in the US which has a huge Australian following not only to American based labels but to Australian company’s and it is increasing each year. The trend of online special days like Singles Day ($23.5 billion in 24hours) and Click Frenzy are directly increasing Australian based online eCommerce website sales. So the big question is ………

Are you ready ?
Is your Online Store ready?

Here are a few tips from all the RetailCare years of experiencing the Black Friday horror stories which we always hear after the event !

New Pre/During/Post Banners
Have you got your images ready for the sale with loud sale discount offers. On the day they need to change to keep the customer excited. Post is just important for over the weekend you may get trailing sales to lead you into Cyber Monday … another great day ….

Customers ?

Do they know about the sale, have you been clear to them what the sale is …what the discount is. Coupon codes would make them feel very special ! Most of the sales will come from your regular customers who have been waiting for this day ! Clean up the database , and send out an EDM to them ASAP !

Black Friday is not one day ….. there is the pre and post…so ensure to hit hard with EDMS during this period … you can automate these before hand so there is less stress for you.

Technology…. is it ready ?

Your online business (website) is sitting on a server somewhere in the cloud, is this server ready ? have you rebooted it? It would be a good idea to contact your web hosting company and ask them what they have done to prepare for the extra traffic of this huge online sale day. If you manage your own server please ensure to reboot it and make sure it is all working. Test the payment gateways so there are no errors.

If you are in the middle of any upgrades or projects for development of your site please put these on hold until the sale is over as you don’t want “beta” or test version of software running that could fail

Your Site goes down ?

Whats your plan? DO you have a redirected landing page with contact details or an error page explaining what to do? Maybe add in a box where people can be contacted once the site is up. Please ask your provider if techs will be available to fix any issues to get your site live again !

Have you updated these for the sale ? your exchanges and returns policy may be different during this time and you don’t want any confusions for customers.

Real World Preparation

This is the most forgotten part of the preparation process for online sales in business. Your inventory, is it up to date and do you have enough in the warehouse to ship out ? Your customers wont want to wait !

If you have retail Stores please ensure your staff know about the sale and they can redirect customers to online to get the discounts … or as some retail outlets they run an in store special so you don’t lose your potential sale .. maybe some window marketing could be helpful

Head office will need phones and email monitored to handle customer enquires if you want to increase your conversions. Chat-bots and plugins can help with this !

Social Media

The beast of social media is bigger than BenHur ! Ensure your online campaign is all ready to go…Facebook allows you schedule your posts for the 4 day experience.

SO after reading this your probably wondering where to start …..

1. Call an internal meeting and see where everybody can help and make an action plan to get onto some of the above

2. Call your IT provider,hosting company, digital/SEO/Social Media agency and ask them lots of questions to ensure they are ready !

Is it too late ……. never !

2016 Back Friday/Cyber Monday Results

Global $8 Billion in sales online – an increase of 18% on earlier years
Portsmans offered 30% , Freedom 30% off , Country Road had 25% off
Australians spent $18.1 billion online from Nov 2014->Nov 2015

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RetailCare is the best business partner that a retailer could have, offering everything from simple Point of Sale (POS) solutions, to complex, fully integrated systems for multi-store chains, at very competitive prices and with customer service the main focus. After-sales support is available 7 days a week to cover all retail hours. We are the Retailers & hospitality Tech & Digital Agency Partner

RetailCare specialises in personalised, comprehensive consulting & training services on retail operations such as stocktaking, reporting, rostering, developing first-class customer service, sophisticated system security.

We have now been doing digital related services for retailers for years helping them open stores online. We are not about websites we are all about online stores and all the issues that surround this space. We have helped many retailers get a presence and aided in the streamline of the integrations of systems to help run their business. Digital services such as website design, domain names & social networking are areas we work in.

Specialities: Retailing, POS, Online Stores, API development, APP Development, EFTPOS, Training , Retail Customer service and retail training, Project management Consulting.

Call (03) 95149699

email blackfriday@retailcare.com.au

Corporate head office in Melbourne 14/209 Toorak Road South Yarra 3141 – please pop in for a chat and coffee.

“Catch Us if you can” – insight to Australia’s largest online Store Catch

RetailCare had the privilege to attend the Catch Group Warehouse Tour on Thursday 19th October. There were various key speakers including;
Gabby Leibovich – Founder of Catch Group,
Nati Harpaz – CEO of Catch Group, Payment solution provider ZipPay and Warehousing Automation provider Swisslog.

A new feature from the Catch Group was launched recently in allowing retailers to join the Catch Marketplace, a new and exciting avenue for businesses to sell their products to the over 3.2 million Catch subscribers. Payment solution provider ZipPay highlighted the disruption within the consumer market regarding retail and how the uptake in post payment solutions is providing an uplift in basket size averaging around 28%. Swisslog promoted the bespoke work as provided to Catch and other customers around the world. They designs and build intralogistics automated solutions and enables Catch to provide world class order fulfillment and accurately meet customers delivery demands.

Following a safety briefing we went on a tour of 25,000m2 warehouse. With over 9,000 orders coming in each day, we were shown how Catch became one of the first in Australia to introduce robotic automated picking. The speed to delivery was amazing to witness first hand. It was like watching an episode of Mega factories! From the 70 robots picking and sorting the small deliveries to the cardboard packing machines that wraps, tapes and applies the shipping label in seconds. The automation and checking mechanisms including barcode scanning highlights that the scalability is available now for any business with growth potential.

The “Elephant in the room” was also discussed openly in Amazon’s imminent arrival into Australia. Catch of the Day stated they openly encourage the competitive entry by Amazon. They are certainly aware of the size of Amazon in established mature markets, but note that it will likely be a soft launch into the Australian market, with competitive growth to take a number of years. Australia is a very different in regards to USA and the population spread and smaller market will provide logistical challenges to overcome.

Following a lunch RetailCare took the opportunity to speak to key Catch staff and confirmed that we have a solution through API technologies to synchronise stock information and confirmed customer orders between the Catch Marketplace and our customers Retail systems databases. This API removes the duplication of product entry and allows our customers to partner with the premier e-commerce website in Australia.

RetailCare have already developed API solutions for other selling points including but not limited to Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, ebay, Westfield and more. RetailCare is also a partner with ZipPay and have implemented the solution into many retailers around Australia.

RetailCare is a provider of Retail, Hospitality technology and consulting to single store and multi-Chain business Australia Wide.
Book your Discovery Session now with Matthew Ryan Senior POS Consultant matthew@retailcare.com.au

8 Retailing Hacks That Will Help Your Retail Store Grow

1. People are Number One

Treat your people (customers & staff) as number one in your value chain. Companies need to train their staff on how to help the customer. In the same way, companies need to educate their customers about how to interact with your products and how to use them. No people means no business!

2. Open more eCommerce stores

Like retail stores, opening lots of eCommerce stores increases revenue and distribution. This growth model needs to apply to your online presence … open more ecommerce stores and market to all your markets appropriately.

3. Know your numbers

Increase your understanding of your business by building dashboards across the company. Measure everything – bricks & mortar stores, people, inventory and online.

4. Be transparent

Transparency is essential in business. Share everything with your customers including where stock is made, what it is made of, how it is made, and why it is made. Allow your customer to really buy into your ethos and reason for being. Allow for your customers to access their history and complete transactions at any time online.

5. Technology sets you apart

Retail companies in the future will be completely underpinned by technology across all elements of their operations. Ideally, these services should be outsourced to help with cost reduction.

6. Centralise your distribution

Centralised distribution is a retailing business model that will help you to stay competitive with Amazon and other large online consolidators.

7. Customer service counts

Customer service is a winning formula that creates longevity by fostering customer loyalty. The end of disconnect with the customer is here and complete immersion and personalised awareness will be necessary.

8. Communicate with your customer in the way that they prefer to connect with you

Different customers prefer to contact you in different ways. Some prefer to call, others prefer email, some prefer live chat, and others prefer to contact you via social media. It is vital to have multiple streams through which your customers to contact you. Whichever one your customer chooses, reply to them through that stream.

Contact RetailCare for more information.
Let us help you make your retail life easier.

Consumer online conversion trends

• 78% of consumers are more likely to be a repeat customer if the retailer provides targeted, personalised offers
• 82% of online shoppers would complete the purchase if they could return the item to a store or have free return shipping
• 65% of shoppers’ purchasing decisions are influenced by marketplace reviews or posts.