For merchants wish to get more orders and customers from their online shops, here are 5 useful tips to follow:
1), Standardize your services with fixed price
2), Pay special attention to ratings and reviews
3), Create your hot-selling item
4), Participate more in online promotional activities
5), Utilize the distribution network
1. Standardize your services with fixed price
An important feature of the Internet platform is that customers can place orders 24/7 uninterruptedly. Every merchants are expecting to receive new customers and orders every day when they wake up on the morning, instead of developing customers one by one via phone or email in the traditional mode.
To achieve this, it is very important to standardize the original complex service items and prices, that is, to set a fixed price, and then specify the service scope and conditions corresponding to this price in detail. If customers accept these service conditions so they can purchase at the standard price directly. There is no need to ask, let alone bargain. Market research shows that more and more young people are reluctant to communicate with strangers over the phone, and prefer to find information and place orders directly on their mobile phones/computers. In order to cater to this trend, merchants must achieve standardization of services and clear prices in order to receive more orders.
You may feel that your service is very special and the price is different according to different situations, and it is impossible to set a fixed price. Here are two examples for your reference:
Case 1: Aircon service
Difficulty:There are many types of aircon services, including ordinary cleaning, chemical cleaning, some need to add refrigerant, some need to replace the circuit board, the number of customers' air conditioners is not the same, how to achieve standardization?
Solution: Make each of the above situations into a separate service. For example, Service A: "Aircon General Cleaning Service", set several specifications including washing 1 unit for $40, washing 2 units for $60, washing 3 units for $80, then states in the service description part that the price is only for ordinary cleaning, and the cleaning content includes the surface of the air conditioner, the filter, etc.; Service B: " Aircon deep cleaning service”, setting several specifications including washing 1 set of $50, washing 2 sets of $100 ; Service C: "Aircon repair service", these few specifications include on-site inspection fee for $30, replacement circuit board for $100, add refrigerant for $40. You can even publish an annual packaged service, such as "Aircon general cleaning annual service 4 times a year", set specifications for 3 sets of $280, 4 sets of $350 etc. With the above standardized services and fixed prices, coupled with the good rating & reviews, there will definitely be a large number of customers placing orders 24/7.
Case 2: Moving Service
Difficulty:each client has different furniture and personal items to move, the move in and move out address varies, with or without elevator, different regulations for condo and HDB etc.
Solution: The customer’s situation is very different, but your truck has only a few sizes. You can set a fixed price based on the truck size. For example, the price of a 10-foot truck for a full trip is $200, and then specify the service for this price scope, such as providing 2-3 workers, subject to the full load of the truck, including loading and unloading on both sides, free protective film, unlimited time; at the same time setting the conditions of use, e.g. no cartons, elevators on both sides, excluding furniture disassembly, one full trip only and so on; in the service description part, you need to indicate what the “full truck” standard is. At the same time, in order to show that you are a professional moving company, it is best to give customers clear guidance based on experience, such as the size of a 10-foot truck, how many goods can be loaded for such a truck, how many boxes for a 3-room apartment etc. With these detailed and professional descriptions, it will not only make your company looks more professional, but also help the customers to order the right size of truck, which will make the transaction smoothly.
2. Pay special attention to ratings and reviews
An important value of the e-commerce platform is to bring you new customers, but how do new customers know whether your service is good or not? Even if you set a very attractive price, as a new customer, he will still worry about whether there will be hidden charges for this price? Is there a problem with the service at such a favorable price? The best way to solve these questions is to check past customer reviews. A positive comment from a customer can bring better results than an advertisement placed by the business itself.
Whether you are a newly opened business or a time-honored brand with decades of history, it is often equal on the Internet, because the word-of-mouth you have accumulated in the past few decades will not be known to online customers.
There are 3 best practices to manage the ratings and reviews:
2.1 Invite customers to rate your service proactively
You are suggested to invite customers to rate your service every time you complete an order. The more stars your get, the easier to gain trust from potential customers. In order to attract customers to comment, the platform will give customers points for redemption of gifts. As a merchant, you can also provide customers with vouchers or online angbao to deduct the bill for their next purchase. Customers get benefits and you get loyal customers.
2.2 Respond to ratings and reviews in a timely manner
Once the customer post a review, reply it in time and thank the customer for their ratings, and at the same time take the opportunity to publicize the company's service philosophy and strength, so that more new customers can place orders with confidence; the reply will make a significant value when customer gave you a negative review, you could explain the ins and outs of the instance to show a whole picture of the matter.
2.3 Make full use of the 2nd review function
If you receive a negative review, you need to contact the buyer to solve the problem to achieve customer satisfaction as the first priority, then you can encourage the customer to add a 2nd positive review to minimize the negative impact to your brand.
Please be noted, the ratings and reviews are not allowed to modify or delete once posted.
3. Create your hot-selling item
The hot-selling item is a signature service selected by a merchant from many services. This service must have a super high cost performance, so that all customers can place an order without hesitation. This service can bring a lot of traffic, order volume and favorable ratings to your online shop, so as to gain more customer resources, brand exposure and the opportunity to purchase other services in the shop.
The hot-selling item is like a singer's famous song, or a restaurant's signature dish, which can greatly increase the popularity and sales of an online shop. At the same time, if your online shop has such a popular service, the platform will also give you more advertising opportunities for free, such as the banner advertisement on the homepage, and the ranking of the platform search page will also give priority to the popular service. Therefore, it is recommended that you choose a service at a low price, making it a popular item in your online shop, so as to drive the popularity, sales and good ratings.
4. Participate more in online promotional activities
The platform provides a variety of free promotion tools to help businesses and customers increase interaction, enhance brand awareness and loyalty. The promotion tools includes Vouchers, Discount Deals, Flash Deals, Bundle Deals, Angbao, etc. You can carry out promotion activities for specific services at a specific time according to your requirements. Here are the basic usage and tips of each promotion tool:
3.1 Vouchers
You can provide vouchers of different amounts in the store for customers to claim when reach different purchasing amount. This can play a role in three aspects. No. one is to attract customers to buy from your store (rather than to your competitor who does not have coupons); No. two is to attract customers to place orders as soon as possible (while the voucher is valid), and No. three is encourage customers to purchase higher amounts (and thus use higher tie vouchers). Obviously, each of the above three benefits is very important to you, which can attract and cultivate more customers to become loyal customers.
3.2 Discount Deals
A discount deal is $x off $x deals e.g. $10 off every $100 purchase. The biggest difference between this tool and vouchers is that the vouchers need to be collected by the customer before they can be used, while the discount deal does not need to be collected, as long as the order amount reaches the threshold you set, it can be used directly.
3.3 Flash Deals
“Flash Deal” is a marketing tool that allows customers to enjoy discounts when they place an order within a specified time. You can use this tool if you want to sell some specific service in a short time to meet the weekly/monthly sales target. You can set the promotion time to say 24 hours. Any purchase during this period can enjoy special prices or special discounts, which can help you quickly reach sales targets. The goal, on the other hand, is to reward those customers who follow your shop and give them more benefit to become loyal customers.
3.4 Bundle Deal
Bundle Deal is to pack more than two products together for sale, so as to obtain a more favorable price than buying separately. You can package two related services as a whole to attract customers to purchase at the same time, which increases the chance of cross-selling on the one hand, and allows customers to get more benefits on the other hand.
3.5 Ang Bao
Ang Bao marketing tool allow you to issue an online Ang Bao automatically to the customer who meet a certain purchase amount. The customer can use the Ang Bao amount to deduct the service fee for the next purchase to encourage repeat purchases and become loyal customers. In addition, customers who receive the Ang Bao can also share it with friends through social media channels, and those who receive the Ang Bao can also enjoy discounts when buying, which means existing customers bring in new customers. Compare to the traditional mode, you can only ask customers to introduce new customers to you, but now you can easily meet this target systematically with this marketing tool.
3.6 Free shipping
Free shipping is mainly for selling physical products, for example, you can set $66 as the amount to enjoy free shipping, so the vast majority of customers will try to meet the &66 threshold to enjoy the benefit. This amount needs to be set according to your profit margin. Setting a low value is of course more attractive to customers, but it will affect your gross profit; setting it too high will lose its appeal to customers. Generally speaking, it is more appropriate to set a number between $50-100.
5. Participate in Distribution
“Distribution” is a very useful social marketing tool to accelerate sales. In addition to the end consumers, there are also many distributors on ServiceOnline.sg platform. They will share the services on the platform to their friends and earn commission once their friend purchases. Suppose A is a distributor of the platform, and he shares the link to B to purchase the service, then A can get a certain percentage of commission reward; B later becomes a distributor and recommends C to purchase the service, then both A and B can get the commission award. Through this social sharing mode, the transaction volume can be rapidly expanded. You can go to “Distribute” page in the Merchant Centre and select the services you wish to be distributed and set the commission ratio of each distribution level, then the distributors of the platform will take the initiative to help you promote the service. The distribution commission is borne by the merchant and will be directly deducted from the settlement amount.
