Over Thanksgiving weekend last year, 108.5 million Americans shopped online, versus 99.1 million who visited physical stores, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s the first time more Americans hit the web instead of the mall. Just a year earlier, those numbers were about even.
Brands can’t sit back and watch this happen. They’ve got to be proactive in taking advantage of the new consumer journey. Those online shoppers are looking to you for more than information and offers—they want to buy directly from brands they love. In fact, 82 percent of shoppers would buy straight from a brand if they had the option.
Brands that don’t sell directly are leaving consumers confused and frustrated: “Why am I just getting an ad? Why can’t I just click to buy?” That’s hardly the experience you want them to have.
Yet astonishingly few established brands are thinking about direct-to-consumer e-commerce, relying instead on retailers to do the job—retailers that, by the way, are just as happy to market competing brands to your shopper at the point of sale.
Sending a consumer off to some e-commerce megasite to buy your product contradicts everything we know about creating a successful customer journey. Your brand might have the best digital outreach, content, video and social channels, but none of that engagement matters if customers don’t transact.
The irony is that marketers who think e-commerce is someone else’s problem don’t realize how easy and affordable it is to develop a direct-to-consumer channel, without having to acquire expertise in warehousing and shipping, digital shopping carts or returns, not to mention security and user experience.
My company, BrandShop, does precisely that. We’re not an agency—in fact, we work with a lot of agencies as well as directly with brands. Our goal is to make e-commerce not scary by taking care of things that brands aren’t really qualified to do, such as payment and logistics. Brands such as Hershey, Water Pik, Casio and Kuhn Rikon have trusted us to do exactly this.
Consider Mrs. Meyers’ upscale, natural cleaning products. Customers can find the brand in the aisles of major discount chains and on the virtual shelves of e-commerce giants. But at the brand’s online store, powered by BrandShop they’re welcomed into the Mrs. Meyers world. The site showcases the entire line, offers DIY projects and spotlights new products, all in an elegant, inspiring and—yes—clean setting. When fans are ready to purchase, they don’t get shunted off to someone else’s cluttered site: everything happens in the same happy place.
Brands that sell directly to consumers can not only boost sales, but also retain control of their image, story and values. With an e-commerce channel, companies can also collect valuable data and insights about their customers, which they can further use to personalize marketing experiences.
Marketers talk a lot about engagement these days. What few seem to realize is that the highest form of engagement is transaction. And in today’s online shopping landscape, brands simply can’t afford to give that away.
