Five Advantages of Multichannel Retail for Small Businesses

Small businesses limiting themselves to one sales channel, whether it be a retail shop, online store or via online marketplaces, could be missing trick if they want to expand and grow. By only having access to a single customer stream you could be losing out on more than just market volume. Recent research suggests that multichannel retailers can generate up to a four times the sales per customer compared to companies that rely on only one channel. Here are five reasons you should stop and think about multichannel retail:

More exposure, more customers

Okay, so one of the advantages is market volume. By opting to sell on multiple channels you get access to many more potential customers. Having a retail store gives you access to people in the high street, online webstores attract people browsing the web, and online marketplaces give you exposure to a worldwide audience searching these sites searching for an online bargain. By utilising all three you cover off all the bases no matter where your prospects choose to shop.

Better customer interaction

Multiple sales channels gives your customers more places to shop, they get the convenience of buying from their choice of channel, not yours. Often, customers might want to research online first then go to a high street store, or look for the best place to buy it online. By giving them the information they need on your website they may well come to you when the time comes to buy, but if they decide to buy through another channel having a presence there as well will give you the competitive advantage because they will already have been exposed to your brand.

Additionally, a webstore can build trust for your other channels too. A well-designed website, that demonstrates secure payments methods and clear company information, which you can link to from your online marketplace listings, or in your print catalogue, will build trust on these channels too. People will be more confident in your brand and more likely to convert to customers.

Less dependency on one channel

By having a multichannel retail strategy you escape becoming over-dependant on a single revenue stream. If the high street is less busy due to snow, it's no problem as you can sell online. If a Google update knocks your webstore off the search engine listings, that's alright too, your eBay sales are still going strong. By adding some diversity to your sales options you not only give your customers more options but spread the risks as well as you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

Different channels are more effective for different products

When people shop they tend to have different needs for the decision process around different types of products. Often someone buying clothes will want to try them on and therefore a retail shop is their preferred place of purchase. However, if they were looking for a bag they want to buy this from the comfort of their own home. Many people might look to marketplaces for a bargain so this could be the ideal place for you to offload excess or sale items at discount price.

By taking the data you can collect from each channel and comparing it with the data from the others you can work out which channel works best for which products and sell accordingly. Look at which products sell for the best prices and in the highest quantity on which channel, you can then focus the sale of products on the channel that they are most profitable on.

Easy to get going

You already have the experience and processes set up for one sales channel so it should be fairly easy to translate these to another. Usually your stock can be stored in the same place for all of them, and with a new webstore or using online marketplace listings, you should not need much more in terms of staff resources to be able to get these off the ground. With advance in technology is has become easy to implement an out of the box webstore or to list items on eBay.

Sometime the challenge lies in the management of stock across these various channels. Technology has caught up here too, and one change to consider is to look at implementing a back-end system that integrates all the sales channels you are utilising. This way when you sell a product on one channel you stock control will update accordingly and stop you selling the same item again on another channel.

What are you waiting for?

Multichannel retail is the way of the future, as a small business you are agile enough to be able to get on board with this upward curving trend quickly and easily. Many similar businesses are still stuck in the past so why not take this opportunity to get ahead of the competition?