Are you also one amongst the thousands of retailers with a brick-and-mortar store for fast moving consumer goods? Are you also struggling to make sales amid the lockdown?
Then why not look for sales where your customers are and sell FMCG online! Stay-at-home directives have changed consumers' shopping habits drastically. Since the lockdown orders began, online sales have increased by 52% year on year. Retailers and fast-moving consumer goods companies have reported a surge of 15-45% in the overall sales.
Seasoned players within this sector have already spruced up their digital sales initiatives by collaborating with local stores, small business owners and mini-marts. Similarly, by creating hyperlocal ecommerce, you can also innovate new ideas to seize business growth opportunities.
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Social distancing is the new normal. The right time to sell FMCG online is - now
You can always launch a retail web store and shift your entire business online. You can also do this parallely with your traditional store. But this is easier said than done!
Because a retail storefront will drag you into the hassles of keeping track of stock, custom requests by different customers, order processes and deliveries. Considering the overwhelming orders during the lockdown, managing all these tasks can be difficult.
Comparatively, a tie-up with different vendors that sell fast moving consumer goods seems easy. You can create Hyperlocal Ecommerce and serve customers in a decided geographical area by listing various vendors on your website.
Multiple vendors with a variety of different products can not only help you with a huge inventory to showcase, but also drive good traffic to your website.
What’s even better? You will not only make a profit but also assist local shop-owners to boost their sales amidst a crisis.
How to create a Hyperlocal FMCG ecommerce store?
Creating a hyperlocal ecosystem could seem like a child’s play if you have;
- Contacts and links to reliable vendors
- Support of a good online platform
StoreHippo online platform offers an end-to-end solution to help you open your multi-seller store instantly. Equipped with modern-age features, it helps you take a quick stride in the market - from creating appealing storefronts to linking your vendors with established shipping carriers.
To be able to have a swift launch and a sustainable model, your store should be equipped with certain features such as below;
1. Location-based stores
Letting your sellers create location-based stores on your multi-vendor ecommerce can go a long way!
Say for instance, your hyperlocal business is catering to a huge geographical area, perhaps even the whole city. In this case, letting your vendors have multiple stores depending upon customers’ geolocation can help in fulfilling their needs.
Think of it this way: If there are more sub-stores of a popular vendor appearing online, near a hostel or university, wouldn’t the demand or certain FMCG products surge up?
StoreHippo’s location-based store feature lets sellers create multiple sub stores to boost sales. By doing a local demand analysis of best selling products, you can motivate vendors to offer deals and discounts and thus promote sales for your hyperlocal ecommerce store.
2. Vendor management
The more organised the backend of your website is, the more professional its customer-interface will be. Isn’t it? One way to manage inventories, order processes and deliveries at the backend is to have systematic vendor management.
StoreHippo empowers your vendors with individual vendor dashboards to manage their inventories, keep a track of their products and seller page. This way, vendors can be a part of your hyperlocal ecommerce and yet function independently.
As the owner, it offers you an admin dashboard to take charge of the entire store, approve products and manage sellers’ commission using the auto-split payment feature.
3. Mobile commerce
Nowadays, most of the online searches happen on customers’ smartphones. Hence, to sell FMCG online, you cannot underestimate the power of mobile commerce. More so, because what you are offering is something that is needed quickly and available locally.
StoreHippo online platform is built using the mobile-first approach. This technology helps your customers to browse your website from any device or screen size.
Another way to enhance your users’ mobile-browsing experience is with the help of Progressive Web Apps. PWA lets your shoppers leverage the same web technologies but provides a native-app like experience and can be added to their home screens.
StoreHippo also offers you Android and iOS Apps without any additional coding or cost.
4. Targeted Marketing
If you are running a multi-seller store that caters to customers across the globe, you can try and test a variety of marketing gimmicks to drive traffic.
But in hyperlocal ecommerce, you need to be very specific and target your customers according to their preferences and purchase behaviour. This is referred to as targeted marketing.
Targeted marketing helps you identify an audience group that is more likely to buy your products than the rest of the shoppers. You can then develop marketing campaigns and run location-based offers and promotions.
Using StoreHippo Marketing tools you can plan a set of marketing strategies and then sell your ideas to the targeted audience group. Our targeted marketing feature helps you gain better marketing ROI in a short time.
5. Integrated shipping
You will need a good shipping strategy if you plan to sell FMCG online. While this may seem the last step in creating your store, you might want to think about it beforehand to create Seamless Logistics.
By selecting a platform that automatically integrates you will auto-shipment processes that can help you focus on other business aspects like sales and marketing.
StoreHippo integrates your multi-seller store with its shipping aggregator platform, ShipKaro. This way, you can avail of auto-shipment tools like the bulk upload of products to be shipped, real-time tracking of orders that are out for deliveries and arrange scheduled pickups for your carriers.
The platform also links you with reliable carriers that offer your vendors bargained rates for shipping.
Create a hyperlocal ecommerce store today
The concept of social distancing is not going to stop in the coming times. In that case, let your business also not stop!
Create an amazing hyperlocal system using StoreHippo online platform and start selling right away. Our inherent tools are not only technologically advanced but also super-easy to use. This includes;
- Drag and drop feature to create unique store designs
- Auto-change of language to help your store become a local favourite
- SEO tools to optimise your content and appear in organic searches
- Powerful blog engine to add value to your customers by sharing relevant information on your hyperlocal ecommerce
- Marketing tools that are time-specific, deal-specific, product specific and more
With a gamut of features at every step of your business process, StoreHippo ensures we’ve got you covered!
So are you ready to get started? Experience our unique features with a 14-day free trial and learn more. Drop us a line below and we will be happy to get in touch!
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