The consequences linked to the health situation are evolving day by day, and some areas of uncertainty remain to be defined. Confinement in multiple parts of the world is raising a lot of questions among online retailers.
Here are some tips that will help you adapt your activity during this unusual time.
Tips that applies to all sectors
First priority: comply with government recommendations
Before even thinking about the economic consequences for your business, you should think about the health of the people running it. Whether your employees are home working or not, regular monitoring of government health recommendations is crucial in order to keep your company going. We highly recommend to share key measures and gestures to keep in mind at all times during this health crisis.
Keep updated with the information that might impact your business
Several factors could impact your webshop. To keep being updated on financial aspects you need to follow government or some third party communications frequently. If your business mainly depends on the delivery of the products you sell, keep up to date with the status of the delivery and logistics solutions you use. This will allow you to be proactive towards your clients communicating your available delivery solutions that you have chosen because they still are running and communicating on eventual changes in delivery time.
Postpone all events, or use new alternatives
Whether you’ve planned company meetings, meetings with your customers or suppliers, meet-ups, big events or trade shows they should be canceled or postponed.
However, alternative solutions exist :
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Within your company communicate through video-call tools or use phone-calls for your meetings,
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For external events, use video solutions (like for webinars), or live streaming on social networks.
Communicate
Be as transparent as possible with your customers and your employees. It’s important to communicate in the clearest way all relevant information concerning your activity to your customers. Whether it requires an update on your homepage, your social networks, blogs or forums, stay transparent and proactive always. If your delivery times are affected by the situation, do not forget to update your terms and conditions.
It might be the right time to update your shop
The current situation may lead you to take more time to improve the performance of your website. Here are some recommendations that might help you.
Update your product pages
For your SEO, updating your product pages can be useful. Take the time to rethink the titles, optimize your keywords, and produce detailed, clear and precise descriptions. Putting yourself in the shoes of one of your visitors can be interesting in order to prioritize the information.
Put customer experience first
Think “UX Design”: there are many studies showing a growing interest in customer experience for eshops. Simplify your shopping journey, make key information more visible, and highlight action buttons: these are key steps that will provide a better experience to your online visitors. It will also improve your conversion rate. In the current situation, it is important to clearly indicate that you still are able to ship products.
Take time for an inventory
Inventory management is one of the fundamentals for online retailers. A mistake creeping into your back office could create a disappointing experience for potential customers. If you have time for it, take this as an opportunity to check the status of your stocks, and ensure their consistency with your product pages.
Discover or test new modules
The PrestaShop solution allows every online merchant to grow and accelerate their business, thanks to a wide catalog of modules, designed to allow merchants to add new functionalities at all times. Now is a good time to think about your needs, whether it’s a new marketing solution, or an update to your payment methods. Checking for updates to your current used modules can also be quite useful.
Online shopping is better shopping
Especially for sellers who have physical stores, it will be necessary to refer your customers to your eshop. In order to get this done, using promotional offers can help to attract attention, and promote “non-physical shopping”.
Strengthen your communication strategy
There are only a few online stores that manage to sell without communicating on their products. It is the right time to enhance your communication strategy, without forgetting to empower your knowledge on social networks, and their contribution to the growth of online shopping.
Discover the latest PrestaShop news
Our teams are always on the go in order to improve the experience of our merchants. We have recently unveiled a great number of features and functionalities that deserve your attention. If you haven’t already done so, consider checking the actual version of your PrestaShop software, and start an update to the latest version, so that you can take advantage of all its features and improvements.
Links
If you have any questions concerning your PrestaShop store, module, theme, or training, be aware that our teams will stay available through our help center, and you can also get support on our forum.
