3 Crucial Factors for Customer Sales
For all the doom and gloom and economic tumult that continues to engulf the UK, many businesses are continuing to bank impressive sales figures across a broad range of industries.
This is particularly true in the case of retail sales, which increased by 1.3% in July and followed the 1.1% rise during the previous month. This is highly encouraging for businesses, which are facing huge energy price hikes of more than 500% in some instances.
Of course, your business must be able to build on this sales spike if it’s to survive the current economic climate. But what are the key factors to consider if you’re to achieve this goal?
Adapt to Their Shopping Habits and Behaviours
The first step is to understand and adapt to the shopping habits of your customer base, which are likely to vary considerably and continue to change markedly over time.
For example, customers are increasingly likely to browse and shop for goods and services online in 2022, with this having empowered the growth of online sales so that they account for nearly 20% of global transactions.
By 2025, this market share is expected to increase to a quarter of total retail sales (25%), so it’s important to factor this into your core business model, sales, and marketing techniques.
Reacting to this is key, especially when looking to incentivise sales across multiple channels. For example, Matalan has recently launched its new ‘Matalan Me’ loyalty card, which can be used flexibly both in-store and online. This intuitively combines the benefits of in-store and online loyalty programs, while reflecting the behavioural differences that exist in your consumer base.
Keep Up with Relevant Trends
If you do own an ecommerce brand, it’s crucial that you keep pace with the relevant online trends. This certainly helps to create a prominent brand that resonates with customers, while it also creates significant opportunities in fields such as marketing and sales.
For example, retailers are experiencing a significant trend in the form of sustainability at present, so creating a more economical and energy-efficient business can identify your company as a socially aware brand (while also enabling you to save some much-needed cash).
Other common eCommerce trends include m-commerce and in-app shopping, which are driving more flexible and convenient experiences for online consumers across the board.
We’ve even seen the rise of the so-called “TikTok Shop” recently, with this innovative new online feature enabling participating merchants and content creators to market and sell products through live-feed videos. This could provide another sales channel to your business, while simultaneously exposing you to a much larger audience.
Remember to Stay True to Your Brand Values
If you’ve taken the time to build a brand identity based on your business’s core values and the image that it looks to project, it’s important to remain consistent and true to this over time.
After all, your brand identity reflects your business’s online persona, and constantly changing this (even in the pursuit of financial savings or increased profit) can create mistrust among your customers and undermine future sales.
What’s more, a consistent and clearly defined brand identity can help you to stand out from your competitors, especially in the crowded and saturated online marketplace.
This requires discipline and vision, while it’s also important to ensure that individual employees buy into your brand identity and the business’s wider culture.