Want a quick way to increase your online sales? If you’re an omni-channel retailer, there’s probably something simple you can do right away and may see a 10% bump as a result.
Your store locator probably gets in the neighborhood of a quarter of your site traffic. And nearly half of these store locator visitors bounce without exploring your site any further. What a shame.
When a customer uses your store locator to look up a store, it’s a strong indicator of intent.
They’re not looking up your location for the fun of it, they’re doing it because they’ve already researched the product or service and are further down the funnel, ready to take action. They’ve half made up their mind to buy from you and now they just need to get your address or your phone number so they can drive to your store. Traditional retail folks know that once you’re physically in the store the conversion rate is very high, typically 30% or more, which baffles the minds of strictly online guys, and is a phenomenon worthy of its own research. So that’s great but if you’re reading this you’re the e-commerce guy whose job is to grow the online business, at least to the point where it isn’t so damn pathetic as a percentage of the overall business’s revenue.
Here’s an easy score – put a call to action on your store locator pages which encourages customers to at least look at the online store before closing their browsers. Do you have a sale running with a promo code on your store? Convenience features like reserving items or pick up in store? Highlight this from the store locator with a link to online shopping! If you have any sort of service or consultation component to your business, by all means accept online appointment scheduling. Customers browsing the store locator are primed and ready to convert. Do some simple things to get more of them to convert online where you can track it (and before they change their minds). These are typically some of the easiest changes you’ll make as we’re mainly talking about some creative and a hyperlink, and I’ll bet you can see results that outperform that last big feature you spent 4 months of development on.
So if your store locator does nothing more than give store location and contact information, for heavens sake do something to encourage them to maybe shop online before just closing their browsers. You’ll be glad you did. And while you’re at it, if you’re not making bi-weekly payments on your mortgage, sign up for that today too. Seriously, you can take years off that thing and you get paid every two weeks anyway. There, that’s two solid pieces of financial advice. You’re welcome.
Doug Kerwin 