How To Make Your Online Store Compete with Mega-Retailers and Win!

Home Blog Blogging How To Make Your Online Store Compete with Mega-Retailers and Win!

A few years ago, if you spoke about shopping from an online store, it would be presumed that you are talking about one of the big guys – the likes of Amazon and eBay. Mega-Retailers had it easy when it came to building an online presence because of their sheer size, existing customer base and the amount of money they had to market themselves. This gave them the advantage of monopolizing the online shopping space.

But that was a few years ago.

Today, small businesses, entrepreneurs, local businesses, home-based businesses are all making an impact with their online stores. Yes, in fact, personally I prefer shopping from a small online store as compared to mega-retailers and I have many reasons for it – personalized experience, unique products and customer service being at the top of the list.

So, can new or small online stores outperform mega-retailers and win? ABSOLUTELY YES!

Consumers today are pretty sure of what they want, what they need and appreciate a brand or a business that goes above and beyond to give them that. And, in most cases, mega-retailers do not have the flexibility or the bandwidth to make individual demands and needs met. That’s where smaller online stores come in – flexibility, customization options, more human brand-customer relationships, personalized communication, attention to detail, and so much more that can make a customer’s shopping experience par excellence!

How? Here are some ways in which any online store, no matter how small or new, can outperform mega-retailers and totally win!

Ways To Make Your Online Store Stand Out and Win Against Large Retailers

To be clear, the idea here is to make a name for your online store, build your own share of the audience and be able to grow your business year-to-year. When we talk about winning against mega-retailers, what we want is to not be overshadowed by them but to be able to thrive, reach desired revenue and growth goals, and most importantly scale consistently.

We are not trying to outdo the net earnings of mega-retailers, we are here to build a successful online store that is profitable, growing and absolutely loved by customers.

Here’s what you could do:

Create and Establish a Niche

Before you go ahead and start an online store, think of niche products that you can sell to either fill a gap in the market or attract a niche audience. Mega retailers offer something for everyone; thus their products are usually general and basic. However, you can create a niche either in products or services and market yourself to a niche audience.

For example, at a mega-retailer a customer can buy home furnishings, however, they need to pick from whatever is available. On the other hand, you can make this experience better by allowing people to pick colours, fabrics, detailing and build custom home furnishings or offer tailor-made services where they can select a product and share the exact dimensions, they are looking for etc.

Basically, while the mega-retailers sell everything to everyone, this limits creativity, you can get creative and allow customers to enjoy niche products and services that are unique to you.

Subscription-Based Business Model

Take a cue from the giants in the subscription-based business, like Netflix! When you own and run an online store that offers products or services that are subscription-based you can rest assured create recurring revenue. Here’s an example of an online store offering T-shirt subscription boxes:

Additionally, if your online store cannot be run on a subscription-based model for product sales, you can use a newsletter or a blog subscription list to gather customer information and offer them exclusive tips, discounts, coupon codes and insights in return.

Excel at Customer Service

Now here’s one thing all mega-retailers struggle with – customer service. Because mega-retailers have such a wide customer base and innumerable orders coming in and going out, they rarely have the bandwidth to offer personalized and end-to-end customer service to each customer. However, your online store can fill that gap by being available, offering timely assistance, help and recommendations, giving accurate information and making sure that individual demands and needs are met to the best of your capability. This could be right at the beginning when a potential customer makes enquiries, or right at the end by making sure you give proper delivery and shipping information.

Optimize Your Online Store

To be able to really win and ace the online store game, you must optimize your website fully. Right from when you build your online store to get the right WooCommerce Hosting plan, start thinking of all the elements that need to be optimized. Here are some tutorials to help you get started:

Harness The Power of Social Media and Email Marketing

While social media platforms allow you to engage and communicate with a large community, emails allow you one-on-one personal interactions – both are excellent ways to build your brand identity and stay connected with your audience. Use social media to share informational content, host contests and giveaways and show your brand’s personality. On the other hand, use emails to share exclusive content, give personalized recommendations, offer discounts and take feedback. These two marketing mediums can help you stay connected with your audience and show them that you truly appreciate them.

Always Keep Improving!

As an online store, one thing that you must be consistent with is growth and improvement. Learn from your mistakes, continuously keep analyzing gaps, improve your products and services, ask for feedback and take them into consideration, be open to changing your plans as required, modify your model as needed and add new features and USPs as expectations change. Know what your competitors are doing and be agile to learn and grow.

Set Yourself Up for Success

You don’t need to be a mega-retailer to taste mega-success! Your online store can create a niche and be a niche no matter how small, new or ‘local’ it is.

You can win your customers and earn their loyalty with consistent efforts to offer them the very best of products and services. With the right tools, optimizations and zeal to wow your customers, you can establish your online store as a successful go-to shopping space for your target audience.

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