How to balance between the offline store and online store

The best thing you can do is achieve a balance between the offline store and online store. Where we all agree that e-commerce is a trump card in the world of commercial transactions, but traditional methods still have a lot of acceptance and are a source of trust for many customers.

Achieving a balance between your offline store and online store is your first step to profit.

Why is it important to combine your offline store and online store?

Offline Store and Online Store, the stats for each are different. While some encourage the growth of electronic commerce and its supremacy in financial transactions, traditional commerce still commands a significant percentage of votes, supporting its importance in the commercial market, and standing in favor of its continuity.

Each of them has the client that he prefers and the advantages that make him continue in the business market, and both of them also possess what may threaten his survival and destabilize his authority, so what is the ideal solution, then, to choose between the two activities?

The solution is to never choose. Combining them leads to a lot of profit that neither of the two activities can provide separately. By owning a traditional store and an online store that supports it, you will be able to achieve the following:

Attract a larger base of the target audience

By owning a traditional store and an online store, here you not only have two different platforms but also two means of attracting the audience. While consumer groups and preferences vary, you can satisfy all tastes. If there is a segment of your target audience that prefers to buy in the traditional way and likes to go through the direct purchasing experience and to touch and see the products themselves, you did not lose them, as this segment can come to your store at any time and see the products themselves. But if there is another category that loves electronic transactions and prefers to buy products remotely, this is also available through your online store. All segments of different ages, personal preferences, or methods of purchasing will find what suits them with you.

integration

Offline Stores and Online Stores both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the great thing is that they both complement each other with some surprising perfection. While traditional stores suffer from the burden of complex procedures and tedious routines in the steps of their establishment, electronic stores are characterized by the ease of issuing and publishing them on the Internet.

Traditional stores are integrated with electronic stores in that the first works to provide a complete purchasing experience, as it gives the buyer the right to touch the products and see them with the naked eye, while online stores do not grant this feature to their users, as they only give them some photographs and some details of the product, but he cannot be sure Whether or not these details are correct is only upon receipt of the product.

Online stores also integrate with traditional stores in that they save time and effort for both parties, as they spare the merchant from wasting time explaining the characteristics of each product to each buyer, and work to save the consumer’s time in going to the store and buying the product himself. As he sits in his favorite seat, his orders come to his doorstep with ease. So they both have strengths and weaknesses, but together they complement each other.

Boost customer confidence in your online store

Due to the increase in online fraud, online shoppers tend to take many precautionary measures before making any purchase transaction. One of these procedures is to verify the fakeness or authenticity of the trademark by investigating its commercial register or seeing a branch of it on the ground. If the customer finds that this online store already has a branch, he can visit it at any time. Then he will be assured that he is making a deal with a well-known and trusted merchant.

Combining the two activities will not only help you attract an audience or overcome the disadvantages of either. It will also support your mental image in front of customers and make you appear more professional and credible as well.

This is just a small part of what will come back to you if you can balance your offline store and online store, but first, how do you achieve this from the start?

The best ways to balance your offline store and online store

The online store and the traditional store do not run parallel, rather they often intersect at many points. Sometimes the priority is given to traditional stores in displaying products, and the electronic platform comes as an assistant to them. The latter is a better product display platform than the former. Sometimes the two complement each other in order to achieve the greatest possible profit. You can harness both methods and use them in the interest of the growth and development of your business as follows:

The presence of special gifts or vouchers

You can attract your online audience to your traditional platform by allocating a set of appropriate gifts. If the customer exceeds a certain amount at the time of purchase, then he can receive a special gift or an attractive purchase voucher from your headquarters.

You can also entice the audience to visit your traditional platform by providing personalized discounts to those who purchase from both platforms.

You can also attract traditional customer to your online platform by giving them a discount code that they can use on the online platform if their purchase transactions exceed a certain amount.

By all means you will give your customers at least one look at both platforms. Some of them will be attracted to one over the other, and some of them will love to buy from both platforms.

In both cases, you are the beneficiary, if someone prefers to buy from one platform over the other. Here you will ensure which methods are the best in targeting him, and which messages appeal to him. But if he prefers both platforms, the profit here will be doubled, especially if this customer has an enjoyable purchasing experience on the two platforms, which makes him suggest them to other consumers.

Harness technical support to promote both platforms

It is normal for customers to have many questions about the service or products provided. So they always turn to the technical support team for answers. This service, which you think you are providing to your audience for free, could bring you millions in profits. The more customers get helpful help from your team, the more they trust this store and want to do business with it more and more.

This trust, generated by the direct customer service experience, can be harnessed to promote both platforms.

This method will not only help you to show the two platforms professionally to the customer. But it will also help you gain customer satisfaction and confidence that you are not skimping on them by any means of assistance available.

Entering new areas

Having a traditional platform and an electronic one helps you expand and enter many fields at the same time. Sometimes, traditional trade prevents you from expanding because of the need for a place, setting up branches, designing stores, and incurring exorbitant administrative expenses. In the case of an open online market, you can easily add another section to your site and announce your entry into a new commercial field. You can also show it exclusively to the audience of the online platform. And to give the audience of the traditional store an exclusive product for them as well. Either way, both of them will feel that they are special in something, which will encourage them to continue dealing with you.

Be careful here that gifts or developments are limited to one platform and not the other. It has to happen in parallel across the two stores so that the audience of either doesn’t understand that you’re about to leave the less active and updated platform. And that this is all part of their abandonment strategy.