In-Store Pickup Tips for Multichannel Retailers
Sep 4th, 2009 by admin
With the holiday Christmas shopping officially underway, and many holiday shoppers using the internet to ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) – offering ship-to-store services to online customers is a competitive advantage to multi-channel retailers.
Picture of In-Store Pickup Tips for Multichannel Retailers [source:getelastic.com]
Here are some tips to ensure a satisfying online and offline experience of your ship-to-store service for your customers:
Because ship-to-store is a key customer service, it needs to be communicated well throughout your site (to remind customers you offer it, and to inform first-time visitors about it, regardless of which landing page attracts the visitor it might not be your home page).
Wal-Mart does a great job at branding its Site-To-Store service throughout the site, and even uses a unique icon for it – including it in the navigation header, search and category results and product pages:
Wal-Mart also uses an estimated arrival date for various shipping methods. It uses an absolute date which is better than 3-7 business days which is not as clear to the customer (requires some mental gymnastics).
Other areas Wal-Mart could flaunt (like free shipping offers) its Site-to-Store service are email subject lines, pay-per-click ads and shopping engine data feed promo fields.
Its also a good idea to have a functioning store-lookup tool from every product page, and a link to your ship-to-store policy. Dont forget to explain which items are eligible for in-store pickup (e.g. perishable items or very heavy, oversized products). You may consider offering a policy that if its not there on time for any reason, customer receives a gift card (similar to Best Buys arrival date guarantee).
Make store shipping free Offer an express shipping offer for a premium Ask customer to indicate notification preference – email, telephone (even SMS) Send confirmation email post-purchase with store information – location, hours of operation, telephone number and even Google Map State how long you will hold merchandise for Send email when order is available for pick-up, or call customer if thats an indicated preference Explain what the customer is required to present as identification/proof of purchase Make sure your pick-up station is always staffed and staff understand how to handle pick-up, returns and exchanges Offer a one-day-only incentive to buy more items than the pick-up order, e.g. 10% off [source:getelastic.com]
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