Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and for those in the Southern Hemisphere – Boxing Day have all been turned into opportunities to coax consumers to spend their hard-earned money with our establishment.

As the owner or operator of a Small to Mid-Sized Business(SMB) you might be forgiven for having an extra level of unease and maybe even panic at this time of year.

What if my website or online store crashes? What if I run out of stock? What if I can’t fill my holiday schedule with enough staff?

These concerns are all understandable, and real.

I believe it is important to only worry about the things you can control, and then really prepare yourself for these.

As SMBs we can’t really control how beautiful the holiday display looks at Macy’s or how many online ads we see for AMAZON’s Black Friday deals, or indeed what Walmart is advertising.

Whilst media attention on the big boys is always high at this time of the year, they are not really your competitors. I believe you can fly under the radar, do what you do best as a small business and reap the rewards of the holiday season too.

A few preparations you can make in regards to the physical capabilities of your business:

– make sure you order early and have the stock you need to satisfy your forecast increase in demand, yet don’t be silly about it or you’ll end up overstocked

– incentivise your staff to take time off outside the holidays to ensure you have coverage

– think about what makes you and your business unique to your customers, and focus on communicating those things – don’t get into a battle with the big guys playing their game. Instead of matching discounts, why not offer more value instead

When it comes to the technology or online world, there are also some very important steps you can take to ensure you are ready for the traffic and demand increases:

• Ensure you have all the login details of each program at hand
• Ensure your current hosting plans allow for higher traffic volume
• Ensure you know what to do if there is some down time on your website, payment gateway or online shop issues – in fact, drill what you would do if these did occur at the wrong time
• Ensure your tech support team is also ready to handle issues during the holiday periods
• Have what I call a ‘human ripcord’ plan – if something occurs online or with an order, you can always ring the client and speak with them personally – hey that is something the big boys would never do

One of the big issues of e-commerce and online tech at the current time is that there are often multiple programs connected together to provide a viable complete e-commerce solution. But these programs don’t talk to each other perfectly and sometimes they override each other or the connections break down. By understanding some of the potential scenarios, you can have a backup plan to assist and service customers when things go wrong.

I mentioned I don’t believe the big guys are really your competitors. My opinion, backed by a lot of conversations with my customers and my own experience is that small business has the superpower of being close to the customer and servicing them well. If you really hone your ability to provide personal, human service to your customers – in-store or online – you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition.

It all comes down to the concept of attention.

You know the feeling – you are engrossed in your favorite book or movie. Something taps away at the ‘windowpane’ of your mind and suddenly you realise the kids are calling your name or you can smell the food burning in the oven

It’s the same in business. You have your attention on fixing a computer issue and you don’t notice a customer who has been standing there at your counter for several minutes getting increasingly impatient.

Where should your attention be?

You got it.

On the customer.

As much as possible your website and online store has to be organised so the customer feels seen acknowledged and serviced. But tech has a habit of getting in the way or failing at exactly the wrong time. Like right in the middle of your long planned for Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale.

What can you do about that?

Running an SMB can be hard anytime but during the peak season it is harder still. The news media spruik the amazing displays at Macy’s. The internet is clogged with promotions from Amazon. You start to feel like there is no hope for your little strip mall shop in Nowhereville or your website that only gets a few thousand visits a month. I recommend you stop comparing yourself to the big boys.

Think instead about how much traffic do you need? How many conversions? Average sales value?

Focus on those statistics and goals – in relation to where you are now.

Do drills with your team to see if you can handle picking and distributing twice the daily sales volume or three times. Can you prepare certain things using the downtime prior to a sale day – stock count working – upsell working – confirmation of order working – dummy runs, test orders etc.

You can create your own hope and your own success with a few of these well-planned steps before the peak sales periods.

Above all, I’d like to remind you that you are not competing against Macy’s or Amazon or anyone else. Your main competition is the “unprepared” you and poor technology.

Prepare and you will handle one major hurdle to success

Choosing a great tech platform built on the principles of customer commerce and you clear the other.

Oh, and remember service your customers every day of the year not just when the media hype tells you to. If your business isn’t deals discounts and ‘day-based’ loyalty don’t get caught up playing a game that doesn’t suit you. Don’t be a short-term thinker or operate ad hot as that is where trouble lies. As SMBs, our enemies are lack of time and lack of preparation.

Happy sales and happy holidays from me and the team at Store Connect.

The post Welcome to ‘That’ Time of Year appeared first on SiteProNews.

According to recent statistics from Forbes – 28% of all business is done online in the USA. Worldwide, the figure is around 18%.

However, not everyone is happy with this state of affairs – in fact, neither businesses nor consumers think the online world is perfect.

Customers want a connected experience, but they rarely find it. They expect everyone in an organization to have their details on hand, but this is rarely the case. They expect a seamless process from purchase to fulfillment, and again this is rarely delivered.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) on the other hand, are struggling under the weight of the workload and resources they have to throw at their e-commerce systems, whilst rising inflation and interest rates are ratcheting up the pressure on the bottom line.

The average rate of return for e-commerce purchases is 20-30%, and with many organizations offering free returns and other incentives to attract customers, there is even more pressure on profit margins.

In America 21% of online orders, worth some $218 bn, were returned in 2021, according to the National Retail Federation.

This is the reality that SMBs operate in, and many of these structural factors and customer demands are unlikely to change.

However, there is one area in which SMBs can take back control, and that is in a new category of online business strategy called Customer Commerce.

E-commerce as we know it is in a death spiral because it has been operating in a ‘patchwork’ and ‘band-aid’ approach. Growth has been so fast that new plug-ins, apps and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are constantly being developed to handle issue after issue or gap after gap in a reactive manner.

This has resulted in companies having to deploy multiple – sometimes over a hundred – different SaaS solutions, in order to serve their customers.

Yet systems are disconnected, and customers don’t like it. They are abandoning shopping carts at a rate of more than 70%. Yet, 88% say they would purchase again from a company where the experience was good.

The path is clear for businesses – provide a seamless experience, and you will win loyal customers. Loyal customers mean higher profits.

Repeat customers are also more profitable. It is well known that attracting a new customer can cost 8-10x more than retaining an existing customer, due to higher marketing costs.

Customer Commerce is a path to seamless experiences as these solutions offer a single source of truth about the customer, allowing organizations to actually serve the customer and to know the customer. Built on one platform with the customer at the center, they provide all the required systems to manage the whole experience from start to finish. Customer Commerce allows a company to have multiple stores, in multiple languages and to support flexible payment options, customer-focused offers and much more.

Customers love this, and they will be more loyal as a result. A loyal customer, who knows the company, and can engage on their own terms, is far less likely to abandon a purchase.

The State of the Connected Customer Report from Salesforce shows us that providing this outcome for customers is going to be beneficial for SMBs:

– 88% of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again.

– Nearly half of customers — including three-fifths of millennials — are willing to pay extra for better customer service

Whilst there are massive benefits in terms of customer loyalty, there are also benefits on the bottom line from cost savings.

With multiple SaaS systems that don’t communicate with each other, there is an enormous cost burden on small business owners who have to invest in people to get the computers to talk to each other. SMBs have limited resources in terms of time and money, and being able to redeploy staff into customer service or other high-value activities or even reduce headcount can have a positive effect on operational costs.

There can even be cost benefits in reducing the monthly subscription costs of multiple SaaS systems.

In short, the savvy owners of some of the 33 million SMBs in the USA are now looking towards Customer Commerce as the next evolution of their online business strategy.

Like customers have been abandoning carts, SMB owners are abandoning the old way of doing e-commerce and moving to Customer Commerce as the solution to scalability, affordability, and streamlining of their operation.

When this allows you to provide a seamless experience to any customer, anytime, anywhere, the promise of fulfilling the goals of your SMB and helping customers at the same time, is within reach.

The post SMBs are Using Customer Commerce as a Path to Reconnect with Customers appeared first on SiteProNews.