Think spring sales!
 With spring just around the corner (it officially arrives this Friday), this is a great time to take a fresh look at your online store. With the economy in the state that it is, it's best to use all the tools available to you to their fullest. One of the ways to take advantage of the customers – and the store system – you already have is by upselling. You likely already know that it does wonders for your in-store sales. It can do the same for your online sales as well. Read more about it below.
In the meantime, take this month to plan your next big move. Will you host an in-store event to drum up traffic? Is there a sale you're ready to offer your online customers to help them weather this economic storm? Have you offered a customer survey to gather feedback so you can continually improve their experience? We're at a unique convergence where price, service, and quality are all essential to your company's growth. UniformMarket is here to help you keep an eye on all three factors every day.
Rick Levine
rick@uniformmarket.com
Featured Article
The Art of the Upsell
 There are ultimately two ways to boost your sales. One, sell to more people. Two, sell more to the same people. Upselling focuses on the second of those options. Upselling and cross-selling have been shown to increase total sales by an average of 20 percent. In this economy, that can be the difference between forced layoffs and making a profit. Upselling is easily one of the best practices for online selling just as it is for a brick-and-mortar store. Let's start with brief descriptions of upselling versus cross-selling.
"Cross selling" is selling items that are related or work with the item being sold. This means you may be able to list all the different holsters that fit with a specific police duty belt, or you may have scrub pants piped in the same pattern as the scrub top that a nurse is considering buying. Cross selling is highly targeted and may help the person make their initial selection when they see all the other products that integrate with a primary product. An officer, deciding between two duty belts, may rely less on price and more on which one has more do-dads and whatnots to hold all his equipment.
"Upselling" is related but slightly different in that you can suggest any product (but usually somehow related to get the best results). For instance, you can list a gear bag for any BDU apparel piece or a hi-vis vest for construction apparel. Upselling is like what you see at the grocery store checkout line. They parade you past magazines, candy, lighters and seasonal items in the hopes that you'll be enticed by something there regardless of what's already in your shopping cart.
So how do you take these two selling practices into the online store? It's actually quite simple and something you've likely seen before if you've shopped on Amazon.com. Because Amazon.com is constantly changing its inventory, it doesn't set hard-coded "related items" listings. Instead, it relies on what other customers look at and ultimately purchase to suggest related products. Amazon does this both on a per-item basis within the description and on a per-customer basis where they make recommendations tailored to your previous purchases.
Upselling and cross-selling are a benefit to your customers as well. First, you will be helping them find more of the items they may be looking for. This saves them the step of restarting a search from scratch when they are looking for a few separate but related items. Also, if you offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount and they are just $15 shy, they may be looking for something small to tack on to their order to reach the free shipping threshold. If by spending an extra little bit of money on an item they save the higher shipping cost, they feel like they are getting the ultimate bargain. And a happy shopper often becomes a repeat shopper.
An "Upsell" tool is already available to you through the UMSS! Explore your options with this powerful feature as a great way to highlight related items and new products. We'll feature a how-to article in an upcoming newsletter specifically about the Upsell tool, or you can always contact us directly for help getting it set up on your store.
How
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Who Else is Using the UMSS? And how?
 UMSS users range in size. There are as many goals for doing business online as there are users of the software. However, there are common goals that many uniform companies share and that UMSS can help achieve. Knowing how others are using the UMSS may help you generate new ideas for how you can expand your UMSS usage.
Uniform Retailers with Under 10 Employees
Some users of the UMSS are uniform retailers with under 10 employees who want to maintain an online store with their best selling products. The goal is to offer a place where customers can place reorders orders for their products without having to drive to the store every time. These store owners appreciate the ability to easily add and edit products themselves.
Medical Uniform Retailers Who Serve Area Health Care professionals maintain a few catalogs and keep the expense of doing so under control. Public safety retailers offer popular apparel brands and products from their preferred equipment suppliers. In both cases, these users appreciate that UniformMarket offers all the same services of both a local web developer and a hosting company. Plus, they don't have to explain what it is they do for a living because UniformMarket staff already understands the uniqueness of being a uniform retailer.
Large Uniform Dealers
Other users are large uniform dealers who may or may not have a retail store. They may have multiple stores, or simply operate from one or more large warehouses. They outfit area corporations, groups and government agencies with managed uniform programs. The goal is to offer a robust, open-to-the-public online store with a wide product offering. They market their website to both their existing customers and prospective buyers in the market segments they serve best.
This category of UMSS users looks for opportunities to offer their larger customers a dedicated online store. They use the private store features in the UMSS to present these customers with an exclusive view of the products they buy – their products, in their colors, at their prices, etc. They also use the private online store solution as a selling tool to bring in new customers by presenting a technology-forward package.
Industrial Laundries
A number of laundries that have expanded into the direct-sale side of the business have benefited from adopting the UMSS to drive their online stores. The goal is to offer a public store where both rental and direct sales customers can browse catalogs of products for purchase. These users may or may not have in-house IT staff. Either way, they appreciate the UMSS platform as it offers great flexibility.
Setting up a secure dedicated online store makes it easy for a launderer to manage large direct-sale programs. In-house staff can manage lists of end-user purchasers and/or employees. Outside sales departments, who may have had trouble getting internal IT support for web stores, now have the tools they need open large direct-sale programs because the UMSS software can run with little or no impact on existing in-house technology systems.
Uniform Manufacturers
Uniform and accessories manufacturers use the UMSS to manage their online catalogs. The goal is to present a public site where their dealers can view their products and/or send end users to see products. These users also use the private store features to provide special access to pricing and ordering for their retail dealers.
The UMSS is also used by manufacturers to build online stores for their dealers. This way the manufacturer can keep the products up-to-date, making it easy for their dealers and insuring their products are always displayed online accurately. |
