How can my Small Website compete against Cheaper Warehouse Sites ?

The Internet today is a vastly different place to the heady days of 1999

. The web is bigger, more varied and far more 'personalised' than ever. The place of the small retailer seems to have receded and has been replaced by online warehouses who can supply anything that you can think of, at half the price of the small guy. In this era of mass competition where, if anywhere, does the small retailer or service provider stand out ? It would be very easy to withdraw under a rock and continue trading in a high street which is also pressurised by the prices that can be found online. Personally I think there is a place for a company that can present a characterised shop window in the high street and also offer personalised services online, but it takes some time to get there. To develop a business that stands out both in the high street and the Internet we must first consider what it is that allows the warehouse retailer to sell at such competitive prices. We understand that they buy at a cheaper price than their smaller rivals, we know that they are organised to deal with orders in a streamlined fashion and we also realise that they are housed on a cheap industrial estate rather than paying huge overheads to trade in towns and cities. These are all fantastic ways to reduce your overheads and decrease your selling prices, but how many customers that you know actually enjoy the process of buying from these massive warehouses? They have no other benefit than price and this is where we can compete, in fact this is where we can surpass. An Internet warehouse is lacking in personality, customer service and also the warehouse has great trouble in selling more than one item because of restrictions of the website format. Your place in the Internet retail world is catering for searchers using superlative keywords, customer service driven and providing high quality advice for anyone that doesn't know exactly what they are looking for. Superlative Keywords are seldom used by web designers looking to sell products. Whether it is because they do not rate the product that they are selling enough to add the words 'High Quality' or they might feel peer pressure into not referring to their services as the 'Best'. The fact is though people are using these words in their searches and only the websites who are cheeky enough to use the word in their website will be included in the search engine results. So, if you think you offer the best, the highest quality, even the shiniest ... use those words in your product descriptions. Good Customer Service is easy for the little guy to achieve. If you are trading from a shop that sells direct to the general public you will be used to it. How many times have you struggled to find a telephone number on the warehouse website ? The truth is they don't want their customers to call. They have dozens of staff picking and packing products and they probably got an answer machine that advises anyone who does find the number to refer to their website. It's the same with email addresses. They would rather annoy their prospective customers with a nonsensical list of irrelevant Q&A's than simply provide an email address that the customer can forward their questions to. So what do we do to surpass the customer service efforts of our warehouse rivals ? Firstly, we make ourselves accessible to our customers. We do this by reminding them that they can call us to ask a question about a certain product or service. Secondly, we place a direct query email address on each product or service page to allow them to address any query that might otherwise have led them to leave you shop. Thirdly, we offer them after-care. Whether that may be advice, repairs, returns or maybe even trade-ins if your company structure allows it. In fact, we offer our time to ensure the customer is happy. If they have been served well in the past, they will return again ... no matter how low your competitors prices are. The last thing that we can do to beat off the competition from cheap warehouse sites is to show our shop fronts, our stock and above all our staff. Everyone knows that the personal touch costs a bit more and you must show them that you are something other than a faceless warehouse. Telephone Numbers, Email Addresses, Pictures, Qualifications, Years of Experience, these all provide your customer with the sense that you are approachable and that if a problem should arise with their purchase, you will personally deal with it to your customers satisfaction. Remember, people pay for quality, they pay for service and they pay for feel good factors. Give them these and your website will be a success.

How can my Small Website compete against Cheaper Warehouse Sites ?

By: Colin Hall

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