A few weeks ago,

CEO of Signet, Gina Drosos, shared, “80% of the company’s sales take place inside its physical stores, 65% of customers visit at least one of the company’s ‘digital sites’ during their shopping journey.”

This aligns with a range I’ve oft quoted from more than a dozen sources, that 60% to 80% of your customers will discover you, experience you, and draw conclusions about you and your store ONLINE… long before they ever step foot in your store.

So you must prioritize your website and ALL online touchpoints – your social profiles, advertisements, newsletters. These are your first impressions.

And UNTIL you have made them each something you are proud of, do not spend money on digital marketing to drive traffic to them.

You wouldn’t drive a customer to your jewelry store, drop them off, and have no one and nothing inside the store except jewelry.

Think about your website like your jewelry store.

You must ensure that once you get people there you’ve made sure there are interesting things for them to engage with.

In your store, this may be your sales staff chatting with them, offering them delicious coffee/bubbles, or a play area for their kids.

On your website, your digital store, the equivalents are things like buttons to press, forms to fill, pop-up overlays to interact with, live chat, virtual try-on screens, invitations to follow you.

In your store, your staff are attentive to what’s attracting the customers’ attention, what they want to try on, where they spend time.

On your website, this is your analytics. So you must make sure you have your analytics set up and are reviewing them in context so you can use them to improve your customers’ online experience, just like you use customers’ comments in-store to improve the physical retail experience.

Once set up properly, you can set customer actions and behaviors to watch so you can gather the same intelligence as you would in your store.

Think through everything your store accomplishes for you. And then make sure you have an equivalent on your website.

And if you don’t, do some research.

There are so many tools now!

There is likely an equivalent for each and every aspect of your in-store experience.

Make sure your website is so much more than just a digital brochure.

And never forget that instead of an afterthought, it is likely your business’s first impression.

Be well,

Elle

PS I’ll be touching down in Vicenza on the 9th of September for VicenzaOro. I’ll  also be moderating an insightful panel of experts to explore marketing to the female audience. I’ll share more details when they’re available. If you’re going to be there and would like to talk shop, reply to this email and I’ll work to make it happen. ~E