Moving from traditional retail to online shopping website

I often come into contact with “bricks and mortar” retailers who can’t be convinced that they need to have an online shop. They have run a successful business for maybe 20 years with regular customers and a proven marketing strategy. They see an online shop as a distraction rather than something that is an inevitable expansion of their business. But what about all the people who walk past and never come in or the people out of town or in other towns? You can reach far, far more potential customers online than you can ever reach sitting in your store running adverts in the local paper or on the local radio – either of which is much more expensive than online marketing. Online, you can also display a far greater range of products than you can fit in a physical store. This allows you to attract a larger customer base to your online shop.

Online shopping websites growing faster than ever

When you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, it can be hard to see a major shift in the way your customers are “window shopping” and spending money. The growth in online retail transactions has been astronomical.  Australia’s News.com.au recently reported that there was such a massive increase in online orders over the 2011 Christmas period that delivery companies were hard pressed to get parcels to their customers on time.