Value of Online Ordering

At Liquid Ecommerce, we love online ordering. The modern retailer faces a number of challenges when it comes to running their business and especially when it comes to competing with the big box stores. When it comes to online ordering, many stores possess the infrastructure to create an online ordering experience for their customers that beats the things the big boxes can offer! Let’s explore the main functions of online ordering and why it is such an important component in building the future for your retail business.

Customer Convenience– Think about today’s customer for a moment. Your customer has a lot going on in their daily life. Due to smartphones and increases in technology people are always connected to their jobs, their social networks and their obligations. The work-life balance has never been more difficult to achieve. However, your customer is now more likely than ever to pay a premium if your business can offer them convenience. The ability to place their order online, pay for it and just pick it up quickly at the store is a huge convenience. In addition, if you offer delivery, make sure that your customer can place their delivery order on your store website right from their smartphone. They may want to do this while they are out running errands and their smartphone is the only computer they have access to. They are already on their smartphone all day anyway… make sure they can order from you while they’re at it!

PCI Compliance– With online ordering, you can set up PCI compliant processes. More emphasis has been placed on security now more than ever. Most ecommerce solutions, including those used by the team at Liquid, are PCI DSS level 1 compliant (we use Stripe). That means that your business is actually in a better position to meet PCI requirements when people order online than when they call in their order over the phone. When a customer gives their credit card number over the phone, there is no guarantee that your cashier will be able to keep up with the compliance standards that you have in place. That puts your customer at risk as well as your business! Online ordering provides a consistent PCI compliant system for accepting customer payments on transactions conducted when they are not physically in the store.

Stay Organized– Are you a retailer that does deliveries in your local market? How do you keep track of the orders for delivery that come in over the phone right now? Pen and paper? Google document? Word document or Microsoft excel? No matter what your solution has been, it is probably a very manual process. If that is the case, online ordering usually offers an automatic process for keeping your orders all managed in one place. When an online order for local delivery happens online, it will be stored in the back-end of your website where you can manage your orders more effectively.

Marketing Improvements– When your customers call in an order over the phone, do you ask for their email address? Do you ask for their permission to add them to your email marketing list? Even if you tried to start doing this over the phone, your business probably has several different employees who answer the phone on any given day. Would you be able to be consistent with all your employees? Even if every employee who answered the phone asked for an email address how would you store that info? Pen and paper again? Or would every employee need to login to your MailChimp or Constant Contact account? With online ordering you simply ask your customer if they accept marketing when they check out, then you store their email address right in your website management system.

These are just a few of the reasons why the Liquid team is so excited about providing online ordering solutions for retail businesses. We believe it is the future of your retail business and our team is here to help.

Author’s Note- Liquid Retailer focuses on helping the mom and pop retail shops compete online. We offer fully managed online ordering solutions for small to medium sized brick and mortar retail businesses. Specifically, we focus on the feed, farm & home, pet and hardware industries.