Better Together: Optimizing Your Web Presence to Boost In-Store Sales

When people hear about a brand that piques their interest, they’ll typically pull out their smartphones to take a deeper look. Whether they’re searching for your social media profiles, scoping out your website, or seeing if you have a brick-and-mortar location nearby, it’s critical to ensure all elements of your business are working in conjunction with one another. That is to say, you need to make sure your digital and physical footprints are optimized to meet your customers’ needs.

In this post, Ethos Copywriting, a premier content marketing firm, explores the resurgence of brick-and-mortar retail, how omnichannel marketing can impact your brand image, and how to optimize your business to boost in-store sales.

Brick-and-Mortar Makes a Comeback

It’s no surprise that the Covid-19 pandemic changed the way consumers purchased goods. In fact, in 2020, e-Commerce sales grew by 15 percent, a 200 percent increase over typically yearly growth. Yet, like saplings cropping up from the ash of a scorched forest, brick-and-mortar stores are resurging as pandemic restrictions disappear.

In fact, between 2021 and 2022, U.S. retailers opened up twice as many stores as were closed during the pandemic, totaling over 8,000 new physical retail locations. And, despite the massive growth in e-Commerce, brick-and-mortar retailers are still bringing in roughly four times more than their digital counterparts.

But here’s a critical point to consider: Retailers selling through more than one platform realize a 190 percent increase in revenue, a clear indication that customers are itching to engage in more than one way. As such, brands that were previously online-exclusive are now opening themselves up to new opportunities and new customers by making brick-and-mortar experiences available for shoppers.

An Omnichannel Marketing Approach

As the cost of digital advertising rises, many companies are looking to build more enticing ad campaigns through more accessible avenues, including social media, email newsletters, and the expansion of physical footprints. With a growing desire to be highly visible, an omnichannel marketing approach can help businesses meet consumers where they are.

Omnichannel marketing integrates branding, messaging, digital presence, and physical location, offering a consistent, customer-centric experience across platforms. Essentially, it’s a tactic to align every part of your brand with every aspect of the customer journey and experience, from initial awareness to purchase and beyond.

To best suit your customers, you must understand how they engage with your brand. Pay special attention to metrics related to customer touchpoints such as social media interactions, newsletter subscribers, website viewers, and online versus in-store sales.

Monthly key performance indicators (KPI) reports can help you better understand your customer’s journey. Though it can be difficult to infer, try to fill in the gaps between initial engagement—maybe on social media or a website—and final purchase. Do this for each audience segment to better understand how, where, and when to target consumers, be it a specific ad on social media or an email campaign highlighting a new product.

A strategic marketing approach, one that weaves your digital presence with your physical one, has an array of benefits, including, but not limited to:

• A better user experience

• A cohesive brand strategy and identity

• Increased revenue

• More and better customer data

At its core, an omnichannel marketing approach aims to create a better customer experience. To do so, you need to optimize your online presence and in-person interactions to best suit both you and your audience.

Tips for Experiential Optimization

Optimizing your business’s presence goes beyond keyword metrics and fast on-page load times. At a time when 90 percent of shoppers say they remain loyal to brands that provide a positive online shopping experience, it’s critical to ensure you’re creating a welcoming, user-friendly environment at every opportunity.

Online Presence

Your website, social media, and Google profile are likely to be the first places new customers go to learn about your brand and business. With that in mind, you’ll want to carefully curate an image on those platforms that closely aligns with what you want your customers to know about you.

With so much competition in nearly every industry, differentiating your business can be challenging. Think closely about the aspects of your brand that make it worthy of support and work to develop a stronger alignment with those facets of the business.

For example, if you’re heavily committed to diversity and inclusion, share photos and messages that reflect that core value. If you’re dedicated to sourcing sustainable materials in the production process, highlight that commitment at every opportunity. Whatever it is that makes you stand out should be immediately apparent to a customer searching your site.

Of course, a positive customer experience also means maintaining a user-friendly site. Be sure you’re webpages are optimized for mobile devices. If a person hears about your brand, a smartphone in a pocket is probably an easier point of access than a desktop computer, so be diligent in prioritizing a mobile-friendly experience.

In-Person Interaction

Despite continued advances in technology, face-to-face interaction continues to be a priority for many consumers. As many brands move from digital to physical spaces, having some capacity for physical retailing is crucial for staying relevant.

Don’t panic: a brick-and-mortar location doesn’t have to mean signing a 10-year lease in the heart of your city. In fact, many businesses are finding creative ways to offer an in-store experience. If a long-term space rental isn’t an option for you right now, you might consider:

• Selling from a local business that offers a similar line of products and services

• Opening pop-up-shops in otherwise abandoned storefronts

• Seeking a short-term lease so you can better gauge in-person versus online sales

No matter what option you choose, be sure your physical location maintains the brand image you’ve established online. If you’re selling sustainably made clothes, bagging products in cheap plastic is likely to upset some customers. If you’re committed to diversity but have a very monochromatic staff working in the shop, you probably aren’t fulfilling your end of the bargain.

Don’t forget, if a person makes it to your shop, they’ve likely researched your brand beforehand. It’s up to you to ensure the image they perceive and the image they interact with are aligned, so be transparent and authentic throughout the whole process.

Showcase Your Ethos

Attracting new customers is about more than just cool product launches and competitive pricing. It’s about giving your audience a peek inside your company–a quick glimpse at the culture, lifestyle, and values that makes your organization tick. Smart business owners understand that it’s not just about what you do. It’s about why you do it, how you do it, and who you’re doing it for.

An omnichannel marketing approach can help ensure you’re putting the right brand image out there, but you need to optimize your content accordingly. If you’d like to learn more about how Ethos can help you, reach out to us today.