Web-to-Store has become a common expression for businesses with retail networks. Whether the stores are company-run or operated by franchisees, it’s cool to talk about Web-to-Store or to do Web-to-Store. However, this expression remains vague, vast and poorly understood by most marketers working in retail sales networks. We are receiving more and more questions such as: “what is Web-to-Store exactly?” and “How do we go about doing Web-to-Store?”
User Adoption
To help its clients, Mobilosoft has developed a unique analytical tool that helps you understand the ins and outs of Web-to-Store: the Web-to-Store Map, a tool that offers retailers two concrete advantages:
- It’s an excellent tool for auditing the current situation of businesses as regards Web-to-Store.
- Once the situation has been analysed, it helps to define the initiatives to carry out in order to establish and implement a Web-to-Store strategy.
Pre-requisites for Web-to-Store
The centre of the Map enables us to analyse whether you have the pre-requisites needed to put your Web-to-Store initiatives in place.
- Do you have a clear vision of the objectives you want to reach?
- Do you have reporting tools to monitor the fulfilment of these objectives?
- Do you have the necessary skills to define and put your Web-to-Store initiatives in place?
- Do you have structured data enabling you to launch Web-to-Store initiatives?
When you move away from the centre, other questions are raised:
- Have you defined roles and responsibilities at all levels of your company?
- Have you defined and set aside a budget for your Web-to-Store initiatives?
Four focus areas for analysis
Once the pre-requisites have been analysed, we can move ahead with analysing your situation. This analysis will be used to define strategic focuses and sequences of actions in order to reach your objectives. The four focus areas for analysis are as follows:
- Your points of sale: have you correctly listed your points of sale on the Web? This must be on the website (and your apps), as well as on third-party sites that consumers use for searches.
- The life of your points of sale: do you use things that happen in your points of sale as part of your Web-to-Store initiatives? When we say ‘life’ or ‘activities of your points of sale’, it means everything that’s going on inside them: events, promos, what products you have and how many are in stock, etc.
- The ‘owned-media’ dimension: in this dimension, the idea is to identify the level at which digital communication is done with consumers. Do consumers identify with a brand, with a local store or both?
- The ‘paid-media’ dimension: for this focus area our goal is to be able to maximise use of the budget in order to showcase local stores on the Web. Initiatives can then focus on the points of sale themselves or the products/services being recommended. The Holy Grail is the ability to set up ‘Store-to-Web-to-Store’ retargeting campaigns. In other words, the idea is to work on strategies that help you increase visit frequency and average shopping cart size.
The key: your reporting
One of the key success factors in setting up Web-to-Store initiatives is the quality of your reporting. The more precise it is and the more it takes into account the completion of sales transactions with your customers and prospects, the better you will be able to set up and optimise your Web-to-Store strategy.
Let’s analyse your Web-to-Store and identify together the right strategy to help generate Web-to-Store Traffic.
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