Your customers hold all the power. You think by setting the prices, terms of shipment and the pretty banners on your site you are calling all the shots by smartly manipulating your would-be customers, right? Well, no. Not by a long shot.
Crowd funding placed a giant cherry on a rolling process of moving the power from the seller to the buyer. The customers’ power does not lie just in the fact they are paying for your stuff. It lies in the power they are now amassing in influencing what regions you sell in, what products you will hold and what will be your terms of shipping and returns. If you fall short they will move their business somewhere else in a click.
So what to do you are asking? Well:
- Show you actively Make room on your home page for your customers to request, suggest, and discuss relevant issues. This doesn’t mean you need to jump to attention if one customer asks you to sell shirts with baboon fur trimmings. But if you’re a sports store and customers keep looking for anti-rain sunglasses for pro bike riders you should start checking this option out. Seriously. You should also remember that a good search tool is step 1 in any conversation between yourself and your customers. Don’t start it on a lame foot. Get a good solution that understands the semantics of what your customers are asking for
- Going global does not mean neglecting localization. Au contraire. True, remaining localized and rigid will make you fade away into the back allies of online commerce. BUT every place on the globe has a local angle to it. It’s a bit existential, but take a moment to process this. When you listen to your customers you can see if demands for Manchester United football shirts and socks are coming in in volumes lately. If you check your analytics you’ll see it’s coming from the UK (duh). So you might consider creating a localized UK offering for Manchester United fans, complete with other MU items and silly drunk Limerick competitions. That’s how you create loyal fans
- Try a twist on your sobriety and break away from the traditional path of pre ordered inventory -> display it for sale hoping someone will want to buy it all -> put it up in the “sale” category when it’s still on the shelve a few weeks later -> cry over your lost profits and your frustration over not cracking the riddle of what to sell customers will surely buy
Did you ever consider asking your customers BEFORE ordering your stock? Buying stock that is pre ordered allows you to sell it for cheaper prices since you don’t need to factor in lost inventory, etc. The down side here regards longer shipping time since you need to order the items only after your customers ordered it. But since it’s a known facts that customers prefer to buy good things for less money it evens it out. If you manage your inventory well in terms of replenishing it according to your current customers’ needs you gain twice — once in the way you involve your customers in your e-shop and 2nd, in your bottom line that sings
SOLD!
SOLD!
SOLD!
