Is your brand website enough? Why digitizing your offline store is the new normal!
Key takeaways
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Past two years have witnessed mushrooming of ecommerce everywhere. Retail businesses recognized a gamut of benefits of having their online presence and, were compelled to have their own direct-to-consumer (D2C/DTC) brand websites. But can a brand website alone address the dynamically shifting needs of a retail business today? Can a digital storefront alone step up the game to the same level as an absolute digitization of your brick-and-mortar stores? Can it push your business to stand out in this ever-evolving retail environment?
1. What an ecommerce website alone can’t achieve for your brand, the Fynd Store app can
This article agrees to all the proven benefits of your brand website. But if you believe that only having a brand website is sufficient enough to nail both customer satisfaction and business needs in this evolving retail landscape, then we have some vital questions for you. If you are one such brand, consider the following:
- Does your brand website enable each of your physical stores to have its own exclusive personal window online?
- How long do you have to wait to display new season’s fresh stock on your brand website?
- Do you get trapped in the hassle of photoshooting and cataloging the new stock?
- How long do you have to wait for your brand website to go live?
- How much CapEx do you have to invest in setting up your brand website?
- Can you jumpstart your online presence in as less as 10 minutes, that too with no technical expertise?
- How much does a brand website help your Store Associates to please customers with features such as personalized collections & wishlisting?
- Does your brand website empower your store staff and aid in enhancing their skills?
- Can your brand website aid in higher sales without offering discounts?
While your digital store may not address all of the above efficiently, digitizing your brick-and-mortar store through new-age in-store assistive sales solutions like Fynd Store can.
2. Fynd Store replicates your physical store digitally, brand website has a universal view
A brand website has a universal visibility and has to follow certain global standards. But getting a web domain for your brand on Fynd Store will enable each of your stores to create their own online digitised stores. Stores can replicate the look and feel of their brick-and-mortar stores in their online version. They can easily resonate with the latest themes and window displays based on seasons, festivals, occasion, colors, collections, etc. that are trending in their physical store. With this, each store gets a personalized presence on the Fynd Store app and also looks like an extension of the physical store.
As seen below, Satya Paul’s trending collections have been showcased vibrantly on its online version, on Fynd Store:
Like many other brands, Raymond replicated its latest festive collection for Onam and Ganesh Utsav on Fynd Store:
Likewise, as one can see, Mothercare replicated Black Friday Sale ongoing in its brick-and-mortar stores on Fynd Store:
Another great use case is for the stores that want to serve the catchment of its exclusive loyal customers. Such stores wouldn't want the order from there hard-earned customers to be fulfilled by some other store. In such cases, stores create their own microsites. The store becomes the ordering as well as fulfilling store by default. Its the perfect way to provide visibility to your own stores inventory. The microsite showcases only the catalog of that particular store and enables the store to serve its choicest customers in the luxurious Fynd Store way!
For eg., Emporio Armani’s store in DLF Emporio Mall created its individual online version with a microsite on Fynd Store. No orders placed here are hopped elsewhere. The store even designed its own theme and is represented uniquely and holds its independent identity.
3. Fynd Store lets you showcase stores’ exclusive collection, brand website has universal collections
While a brand website caters to a large audience, an entire country maybe, Fynd Store enables you to cater regionally while maintaining a universal standard. Even within the same brand, footfall in all stores will not always be the same. The demands of shoppers in any of the stores are diverse and often get influenced based on demography, topography, lifestyle, income and other such variables. Fynd Store enables you to create a new collection that showcases only specific articles that your store exclusively wants to highlight around these variables.
Red Chief is one such brand on Fynd Store that created selected stores’ latest collection and displayed it exclusively.
This is great for use cases such as when a customer walks into a Chennai store demanding for the Winter Collection. Regional store collections come in handy for store staff to quickly browse and present the customer with exactly what they are looking for. At the same time, Fynd Store also enables your brand to present certain exclusive premium collections, usually stocked only in limited high-end stores, to buyers in localities where such collections are not stocked well.
4. Fynd Store lets you put up your digital store in as less as 10 minutes, it is time consuming to build your website
Building your brand website is no walk in the park, but letting your customers walk the digital aisles through Fynd Store can easily be one. Once your catalog is ready and uploaded on Fynd Platform, building an online version of your stores is no more than a matter of 10 minutes. Don’t believe us? Connect with our team and they will set up your online store right in front of your eyes within 10 minutes.
Once your web domain is set up and live, you can play around with exciting themes, designs and creatives with no additional human, technical or financial resources. Just put on your creative caps and get the juices flowing. Couple of easy Drags, Drops & Clicks, and your brand is dressed to kill! Not just in presentation, but the usability and user experience too. Making changes and customizing functionalities in any existing brand website may take a minimum of 1-2 weeks that too in presence of a technical expertise. On Fynd Store, these changes can be done with just a few clicks.
An excellent use case for this is Fila. In September 2020, Fila announced the release of Fila X BTS “Love Yourself” collection in India. This unique immediate agenda to sell BTS merchandise required voluminous customization in functionality on the existing Fila India website and that too at the eleventh hour. Recognizing substantial complexity, time, and cost for implementing needful changes on traditional website platforms, Fila decided to launch the collection exclusively on Fynd Store. Fila replicated its global brand website on Fynd Store app, and implemented all needful changes within three days, which otherwise would have taken the brand a month at least!
5. Fynd Store empowers your store staff, brand website focuses on online sales only
The recent shift towards ecommerce somewhere created waves of threat to retail store jobs. On the contrary, new-age solutions like Fynd Store empowers not just your offline business but, also your store staff at various levels. Initiated to widen the user adoption, Fynd Store offers attractive incentives to store staff who place orders on the app. The continuous training programmes and deep understanding of how so many brands are converting there customers has only motivated Store Associates to overachieve their sales targets and also enhance their cognitive skills and sales pitch.
Fynd Store is not just a product, it is a holistic value addition imparted to your most valuable asset which is your own store staff. Store staff is the first touch point for all customers and thus it becomes all the more important to empower them with confidence and skills to play with. Fynd Store is great news for employees who wish to pick up more skills while they work, beef up their experience and become meritorious for future promotions.
Sooner or later omni-channel retailing will become basic hygiene for brands and working with Fynd Store technology will only provide workers with an upper hand and also prepare them for a better future.
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6. Fynd Store empowers you to enhance store sales, brand website is more discount oriented
Brand website boosts your online sale, which is dominantly built on discounts, while Fynd Store boosts your offline sale, where articles are dominantly sold on MRP. Empowering your store with Fynd Store gives you the advantage of faster moving inventory for fresh stock and at original prices, as compared to old season stock at heavy discounts on your brand website.
7. Fynd Store lets store staff create personalized carts for loyal customers, brand website offers wishlisting to customers
While brand website allows your customers to wishlist their favorite products, Fynd Store allows store staff to wishlist products liked or likely to be liked by their frequent store visitors. Speaking of offline shopping, your in-store army, consisting of the Store Associates and Store Managers are the faces of your brand for any store visitors. They directly interact, understand, and cater to the needs of walk-in customers. They gauge consumer demands, their likes, dislikes, preferences, and even future prospects of buying.
In traditional offline shopping, the best salespeople are able to showcase the most desirable products to their loyal and frequent customers based on these needs. A lot rests on the shoulders of these men and women to close a sale for the brand. Fynd Store levels up the game with a blend of human touch in a digital world. Based on the wishlist, Store Associates can tailor-make a collection for super-loyal customers, and share a QR code or link on SMS, WhatsApp, email, Facebook or Twitter. The customer can browse through the shortlisted products, saving valuable time and effort of browsing an entire collection, significantly increasing the probability of closing a sale.
Many luxury brands create a special preview for an upcoming collection, inform their loyal customers about the new season’s collection, send a customized link to them so that they can browse it at the comfort of their homes, even before the collection hits the stores.
8. Fynd Store facilitates sale of imageless products, brand website doesn’t allow their listing
One of the reasons we say Fynd Store app is an absolute extension of your brick-and-mortar stores is because it has the ability to showcase all the products available in a store, even imageless.
Cataloging often turns out to be a common pain point for retail brands, especially the ones having a large number of SKUs and size sets. Photoshoot of all SKUs may also be a costly affair and oftentimes is put on hold by brands, hampering their online performance. A product without an image will keep sitting in store shelves at the mercy of a walk-in customer and miss out other online opportunities. New Season Merchandise, freshly arrived in stores is seldom cataloged with images right away. But one can still find those products on Fynd Store app, as having an image is not a mandate to be listed, unlike on a brand website or other marketplaces. Hence, Fynd Store has helped many brands go live with their new season collection immediately, even when photoshoot is not done.
Once a customer experiences the touch and feel of a product in-store, likes and selects the product, Store Associates can easily scan the barcode, search the imageless product, select the right size, the nearest location where it is present, and place the order for the customer.
As can be seen in Paul Smith’s & Miniklub’s store on the Fynd Store app, the brands have listed and displayed their entire store collections, regardless of the products having images or not.
Having said that we recommend all brands to complete catalogs with photoshoots for efficient operations, better results and higher conversion rates!!!
Conclusion
Brick and mortar stores certainly traversed rocky roads in the past two years and provoked retail businesses to weigh offline stores against online stores. It was never an either or situation, hence omnichannel businesses have boomed to maintain the right balance. Today, those wanting to stay ahead of the game have either ventured into omnichannel commerce or are on their way.
No matter how big of a boom online commerce has gone through, brick and mortar stores will continue to retain their charm. In the ongoing retail evolution, offline stores are fighting the battle of survival of the fittest and digitizing offline stores is the only way to win. Retail brands need to aptly bridge the journey from physical to digital.
Fynd Store brings that much needed technology and service to your store that blends the best components of digital experience which includes immediacy, speed, and immersion and combines them with the best parts of the offline experience, which include human interaction.
It has become a fundamental need for market players to take the plunge and create hybrid systems, a synergy of physical experience as well as digital convenience, known as "phygital". Going phygital isn’t just a buzzword doing rounds, it is the new way in which retailers have to approach their customers. The ones who understand this sooner will have an advantage over those who think of it as a trend that will eventually fade out.
If you are still contemplating and weighing obvious choices, you are missing out the next big thing.
Let us help you in making a profitable choice. Connect with experts who have been closely associated with brands like Diesel, Raymond, Fila, Hamleys, Satya Paul, Red Chief, Global Desi and many more. From catalog building, order management, discounts & promotions management, digital payment to streamlining inventory, delivery to easy return & exchange, home-shopping, Fynd Store provides an end-to-end ecommerce solution, ensuring complete fulfillment to both businesses and its customers.
