How Some Small Retail Businesses Are Outsmarting Their Competitors

Part II

In 2000, Netflix had about 300,000 subscribers and relied on the U.S. Postal Service for the delivery of DVDs. In July of 1995, a small business start-up began selling books online. Today you know them as Amazon and they have surpassed Walmart as the world’s largest retailer. The success of these businesses didn’t happen with marketing strategies alone. They focused and invested heavily on data and human behavior as people went on their website. When other businesses focused only on monthly sales and marketing efforts, Amazon, Netflix and others went on to developing new strategic opportunities and the latest technologies to scale their business model.

While  enhancing user experience for a previous small business, I discovered many problems resulting in poor user experience. Customers were coming to their website, but in my analysis, I discovered a high bounce rate with people abandoning the website. The business had a brochure website and did not leverage any strategy to generate revenue. Their website was simply used to show they existed. After adjusting and improving some minor changes, I began to see prospects and customers behave differently online in a profitable way.

Growing From A Leaky Bucket Website | Remember the leaky bucket analogy where we mentioned how the small holes expand larger over time? This is equivalent to local competitors rising up. By improving user experience on your website, embracing technology tools, and creative ways to reach your customers, your competition won’t get too far doing it their way. While competitors are pouring into pushing more sales and marketing efforts, they never get off the hamster wheel. This cycle continues and prevents their website from maturing into online strategies. Even more so, they don’t know how much they can save when they don’t know the problem exists. This dilemma results in consequential repercussions they will later incur.

When you embrace user experience and the latest technologies, you enable yourself to foster creative strategies. While some brick and mortar retailers focus on social media to drive awareness, few are focused on human behavior like Amazon and Netflix. Your website is the foundation and first entrance during your prospect’s journey. Once you embrace user experience, marketing tactics will really begin to pay off. The ROI from user experience is like plugging the holes in the leaky bucket. Your online creative ideas grow larger and overlap marketing strategies where you can eventually compete or possibly surpass your competitors.

Over time the competition will increase for brick and mortar retailers as they experience first hand that it is no longer about who is closer to your customers, but rather those implementing strategic moves on a less leaky bucket website. As consumers have access to your competitors on their phone, the day will come when they may never need to set foot in your business again, because others have taken the time and effort to prepare towards scaling and/or allow for a profitable exit strategy.