Digital StoreFront : Strong Edge For Your Business

Striving to create an interactive, electrifying 24-hr presence of your business? Digital storefront  – also called online store, estore, virtual store etc – is your answer. It'll take care of all your concerns, like increasing clientele, managing inventory, streamlining management, branding etc.

Term "storefront" traditionally used to describe a retail store, but can now refer to a website where Internet users can see, browse through and avail your products and services.

Many businesses today need an estore to boost sales, and in fact most startups don't even think of starting their business without an online storefront nowadays. But the question that arises here is that who should get a digital storefront?

Adopting a Digital Storefront can be beneficial for :

• Manufacturers – As it can help them improve their reach.
• Service Providers – Helps keep their advisors network up to date.
• Sales Operations – Helps streamline distribution and display of their materials.

Features of a Good Digital StoreFront :

Digital StoreFront should provide complete control to website operators over product description, product management, inventory, shipping and sales information. It should also provide –

• Ease Of Use – Intuitive shopping cart interface for users
• Account Information – Order status, history, product information, availability etc.
• Reduced Administration – Facilitates self-service with minimum human management efforts.

Challenges That Clients Usually Face :

Managing while customers make their purchases is not the only stressful thing about Digital StoreFront, some other tasks are also there which are time-consuming and labor-intensive such as :

• Warehouse Integration – Importing all the data of products you are getting from your suppliers is really a painful task especially when managing multiple suppliers and stores.
• Product Management – Out-of-stocks & canceled-order problem generally arises when you have multiple suppliers or warehouses with the same product lines.
• Inventory Tracking – Keeping a record of all products that are published, unpublished, blocked, skipped, available, unavailable in real time is another painful & time-consuming task.

Tips To Make Your Digital Storefront Successful :

• Identify Your Market – Keep your opinions open by looking at several different markets with different products but identify niche products that have broad appeal and stick with a common theme and focus your marketing activities within that particular niche.
• Do Your Homework – Go through the competitor's site and check that out for the price, offers, user Interface and other factors.
• Research for the keywords that suits your businesses.
• Products – It’s easy to build a Digital StoreFront for several hundred products but it’s much more difficult to manage that design for several thousand products efficiently. Therefore it's better to provide choices to consumers, but not so many that they have to think too hard.
• Shipping – In a market where everyone offers free shipping, you may have to offer free shipping. Consider whether you can make enough revenue to cover both your cost of goods sold and the shipping costs.
• Promotion – Promoting your business is must but your business promotion must have a specific goal, measure and be sure to listen and respond to audience feedback and adjust your content accordingly.

This post is contributed by PixelCrayons, a web development firm that specializes in eCommerce Web Development. You may hire developers here for your ecommerce storefront management and maintenance.