The COVID-19 pandemic has had many adverse effects on the B2B businesses. Disruptions in supply chains, store closures, surges in orders, consumer behavior changes and many other things have truly impacted the e-product sourcing companies, ina negative way.
While the worldwide retail sales have experienced a dip by 5.7 percent in 2020, the Amazon sales and other e-commerce sales have experienced a hike in their sale by 40 percent and 16.1 percent respectively. While construction suppliers have experienced an increase in sales by the B2B e-commerce section, the consumers of cultural and luxury goods have experienced a decline in the number of sales.
So, this context will highlight the challenges faced by e-commerce sector and the ways they are responding to the storm looking into these solutions you will be able to find positive solutions that will help you steer the business through the tough times. Read through the e-survival opportunities and bring better days for your e-commerce retail store.
Move the Consumers Online
COVID-19 protocols and guidelines laid down by the government of every country expects its people to maintain social distance through the tough times. To ensure business continuity, owners need to check if the guidelines are properly maintained, and in order to accomplish this, every organization need to limit the physical contact of their employees and customers as much as possible during the viral outbreak and beyond.
While most of the consumers are extremely aware of their health, which is why they have limited their visits to physical stores and shifted to online shopping, some of them may need a helping hand. This is how product sourcing companies can assist your customers and make them shop from your online store throughout:
- Make your customers believe that even if your physical stores are closed, the web store is fully functional and live.
- When your customers are placing order, try and help them navigate through the various sections of your web store. To make this happen, several online stores are using the famous feature- ‘impersonate a customer’. Through this feature, the customer service representatives can get access to the web store of customers individually. The feature allows representatives to see through the shopping patterns and activities of the customers exactly as the consumer would, and therefore, assist them with order.
- Pivot working representatives if they are unable to work typically, like setting up the online accounts of customers properly or unable to call customers and solve their queries.
Having access to advanced digital technologies makes your survival possible as you can become more resilient with the working options and procedures. The tough times require e-commerce retail sales to embrace their technologies competently now more than ever.
Simplify the Return Process
You are more likely to experience ups and downs in demands of products during the COVID-19 outbreak. Your store may experience a surge in demand of a particular product and experience a fall in demand of another product. You might also find that your consumers are looking to reclaim their spending primarily because they are suffering a financial issue. This unreliability will likely lead to rise in returns.
Therefore, a productive way of keeping your customers engaged and making them believe that they can trust you, is by keeping the return process active and easy. Product sourcing companies can make the process easier by allowing them to track the entire return process and permitting them to approve the return through the web store itself. This will be the most convenient way for your customers, and you will also not have to attend calls and answer to emails, which would otherwise be increased if customers could not get away with the return policies easily.
This way e-commerce retails can play a crucial role for their customers, especially when physical stores are closing, and customers are looking for a reliable alternative.
Ensure Your B2B Consumer’s Needs are Met
As more and more customers go in for e-commerce options due to the coronavirus pandemic situation, you also need to think beyond just owning and running a web store. Having a web store will not be enough if you want to survive in a competitive space. You need to lokk after other things like meeting the requirements of your B2B customers. This solely means that you need to have a convenient, complete, and reliable web store that motivates consumers to buy products from your store rather than becoming interested in the products of your competitors.
To make this happen, you can follow the given tips:
- Present relevant information by providing complete and accurate information from inventory level products to tracking delivery.
- You need to handle the complex B2B procedures by putting the correct structure in place. These complexities include discount structure and complex pricing.
- Ensure your web store is capable of preventing order errors, such as errors related to inventory level, product information, and product pricing data. All this information must be accurately displayed consumers must have access account data and order history.
- The functionalities of your web store must be optimized with offers. Consumers must have access to easy pay and check out options.
Deal With Supply Chain Disruptions Positively And in a Productive Way
Business organizations are experiencing a surge in demand of certain products during the pandemic outbreak. This is not only affecting the owners but causing disruptions in supply chain with establishment closures and transportation restrictions. Also, studies are revealing results that show almost 75 percent of companies are experiencing a supply chain disruption. So, here are the things you can do to thrive as a e-commerce retail:
- Optimize the performance of your e-commerce sites to deal with supply chain issues.
- Make sure you have the right hose to support the site of your web store.
- Delay certain web page loading elements.
- Put off the pressure by distributing workloads over a group of machines.
- Show the real-time pricing and stock levels.
- Allow customer to track their deliveries by themselves.
Following these points can mitigate your supply chain disruption risks.
Besides following these tips, product sourcing companies need to look after the safety measures of their employees. In addition to putting these measures into action, make sure to keep your customers updated with what you are doing, like how their products are delivered.