We all are aware of how COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the economy. As a retailer, it is worth analyzing in-depth the options available to counteract this situation.
As a consequence of the brick-and-mortar shut down, retailers are moving more towards adopting innovative ideas like virtual storefront for customer product discovery, virtual chatbot to handle customer queries, running social media initiatives to keep their customers engaged etc.
E-fashion biggies like Myntra and Tjori have started adopting live studios for fashion and lifestyle content, posting blogs of celebrities’ fashion and their way of tackling boredom during the lockdown and a lot more.
Let us have a look at some of these trending ideas that a retailer can adopt to bring in customers’ closer to them:
Virtual Storefront – An interactive media that allows customers to discover products and order merchandise at their ease on their computer screens/mobile phones. A Virtual Store intends to convert the commercial operations of a traditional company to the Internet. It is helpful to those shoppers who either bum around or explore online looking for product information, pricing etc.
The potential benefits of a virtual store are practically endless. Retailers can enable a 360-degree photo tool on product pages so that buyers can see the entire view of a product. Virtual storefront can be integrated with a shopping cart so that customers can add products to cart with a single click which they can further buy at their ease when the lockdown ends.
Mimicking real experiences in VR is one way of keeping customers engaged and encouraging customer loyalty. Regardless of purpose, they are all important for promotion of the products and services, as well as to build customer trust in the brand or company.
Virtual Chatbot – A customer support live-chat service integrated to website, which serves customers by giving them replies and resolving their queries instantly. Chatbots provide rich contents like images and videos helping the customers better. Chatbots can simultaneously have conversations with thousands of people at any given point of time.
While chatbots have been the buzz for quite some time, a lot of retailers have now found AI Chatbots to have drawn increased interest. Understand more on how retailers are implementing chatbots during lockdown- https://zcu.io/r3dq
Social Media Initiatives – Social media platform has been really informative as it helps the retailer communicate with their customers. By providing entertaining tidbits, a brand can anytime inject a little bit of humour into their public persona, in order to attract regular readers.
Retailers have been indulging in creating creative social media content to keep their customers hooked. A lot of them are investing in advertising their products on social media, creating blogs that offer expert advice on the product usage, including customers in discussion of the brand and product, engaging customers in fun games and giveaways..
Virtual stores give merchants complete autonomy over the customers’ experiences. Whether it’s rearranging product placement or highlighting a store sale, retailers can use their website to directly connect with their customers and encourage purchases. Retailers can become more aware of how customers perceive every store element and apply that knowledge to improve their store. Immersed in a continuum of improvement, maintenance and development will allow the retailers to maintain the high competitive standard of the store.
Implementation of various ideas will depend on the ability of the retailer to manage and organize, build trust and attract new customers and the skill needed to adapt to the new changes in the market as it is said, “He who strikes first strikes twice”.