Traditionally, food and beverage companies reach their customers via a chain of retailers and distributors. But if you’re not selling online, you could be leaving thousands of dollars on the table.
Here are five reasons why your business should sell online:
1. Get to know your customers
When selling your product in a physical store, it can be a challenge to learn who your customers are and what their shopping habits are.
Why did they leave without purchasing? Have they shopped with you before? What are their basic demographics?
With an online store, you can learn all this and more!
Analytic tools can unveil data like customer demographics, the most popular products, the most active days and times for completed purchases, and reasons for abandoned shopping carts. This valuable data can focus your marketing efforts to reach the type of people who are most likely to buy and be repeat customers.
2. Market your business better
In 2022, every business needs digital marketing. Digital marketing leads to more brand awareness, brings in new customers, and allows you to target your ideal customers.
Paired with your online store, you can keep customers pouring in.
With a website, you can use SEO (search engine optimization) to make your products more visible on Google. Customers might find you for the very first time when they search for a particular product that you offer.
Selling online also helps with other digital marketing methods. Gather customers' emails to promote sales or new products with email marketing. Create a fan base and promote your products on social media to reach even more people.
3. Increase your reach
Why limit yourself to local stores? An online store increases your reach to a much larger audience.
You can even make the entire world your store if you go global!
Shopify Markets makes it easy to sell to multiple countries from a single store.
4. Test new products
It can be tough to get a new product into a grocery retailer. Large retailers often don’t have the capability to do a limited batch of products that would force them to reset shelves.
When you sell online, you can test new products or offer limited edition products.
This gives you an opportunity to experiment and see if there is a demand for a product before you try and sell it in a retail store.
5. Offer a more convenient shopping experience
The pandemic caused a rapid shift in people’s shopping habits and businesses had to adapt to the new situation. During the peak of the pandemic, grocers watched 20-30% of their business shift online.
Without a doubt, increased online shopping for food and beverage is here to stay.
An online store lets your customers shop 24/7 from the comfort of their homes and even automate their orders if you offer subscriptions. There is no better time than now to pivot your business to selling online.
To learn how we can help your business take this next step, reach out today.
