The competitive nature of the business landscape has presented businesses with many challenges that must be tackled if they want to remain atop the competition. This includes bringing new products into its inventory to keep up to date and hold the attention of its customers and hence the market share. While numerous challenges are involved in bringing the products to the market from designing, manufacturing, and logistics, other aspects are also involved, such as their launch. Many non-business people might not understand the importance of this step but this itself involves great challenges where eCommerce can be of great help by serving as the right tool to enable companies to offer their customers facilities aimed at providing convenience. In such a scenario, eCommerce doesn’t only provide ease to customers but lessens the burden associated with launching products for the companies as well. In this article, we’ll see how eCommerce can facilitate both customers and businesses when it comes to launching new products.
Pre-Orders with eCommerce
Long lines and hours of wait are something we’ve always witnessed when new products are launched, and people wait in line to get their pieces. While many might like the vibe of it, for many they’re mostly concerned with owing the product with the least discomfort. For such people, ecommerce can provide great facilities. With eCommerce stores now you don’t need to wait in long line hours in unpleasant weather; you can pre-order the product and have it seamlessly delivered to your doorsteps. The reason this is very useful is not just the fact that it helps us avoid the draining long lines but also the fact that the current lifestyle of people doesn’t allow them to wait for hours outside stores. Thus, having the opportunity with the guarantee of getting their hand on the new products with the pre-order facility many people are shifting their preference towards this method of buying the latest items.
The benefits of pre-ordering aren’t just confined to customers but it presents great advantages for the business itself in managing the launch of its products seamlessly allowing them to provide a better customer experience and win the satisfaction of their customers. Some of the ways the Pre-order option can help the business are:
Demand planning:
Businesses need to ensure their product supply meets their demands especially when they’re launching a new product otherwise it can negatively impact their initial sales and affect the hype built around the product. With the pre-order feature, businesses can get an estimate of how many products will be required to meet the initial demand of the product allowing them to prevent underproduction or overproduction.
Logistic planning:
Just like demand, businesses must plan the logistics of their products. With pre-orders, businesses can better analyze the inventory needed at different locations and optimize their logistics network saving them costs and improving their operation efficiency.
Customer management:
Handling of product launches can be a challenging task for stores and its resources. With limited resources, it’s not feasible for many stores to meet the surge in footsteps as new products are launched. Pre-order can reduce the number of people visiting stores to buy newly launched products and help businesses reduce the burden of managing people visiting their stores. This will also enhance the experience of those customers visiting the physical store by getting more attention from the store staff.
Product Demo with eCommerce
Building excitement around new products is an important part of marketing and interacting with the customers of any business. Before launching any product every business wants to get an idea of what its targeted customers would feel about their product and their feedback can seriously help the company make any necessary adjustments to provide customers with the best product experience. Luckily with eCommerce, this has become easy: Businesses can have their premium customers sign up for demo products and get their feedback before they launch the final version into the market. Furthermore, as mentioned this will help the business market their product better by giving the market and customers an idea of what their products have to offer sparking further interest in them to buy it when it gets launched.
Optimize customer-business interactions
While we have discussed how eCommerce can help businesses manage customers during product launches this aspect deserves more attention. An eCommerce store can help businesses answer queries and provide relevant information to customers eliminating the need for any redundant physical interaction between customers and staff at the retail store freeing up salespeople to handle more genuine queries and serve customers better. Some of the ways this is possible are:
Item availability:
Customers can see the availability of items at physical stores before personally visiting them. This is to avoid any people unnecessarily visiting the stores.
Specs and features:
New products are always met with curious questions about their functionalities, specs, and features. If your product provides many variants with different features then having an eCommerce store can help you provide all the relevant information on your webstore and eliminate the need for people to ask all these questions about specs and features at your physical store. This will also help the customer make up their mind much more easily and enhance their buying experience.
Reach more customers:
Another great benefit of having an eCommerce store is that it allows you to reach more customers enabling the success of your new products. Ecommerce stores can easily be advertised and integrated with popular social media platforms allowing more people to discover your products and buy them online. Having eCommerce stores can therefore enhance your sales by helping you reach your targeted audience with ease.
Conclusion
The success of any product isn’t just dependent on what it offers to customers, of course, that plays a major part but how it’s managed throughout its lifecycle is crucial as well. If the company offering a product doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem to manage the product then it may not be able to reach the desired potential of the products. While eCommerce has proved itself to be a significant tool for businesses in promoting their products, its impact in helping companies introduce their product in the market is often neglected. With eCommerce webstores, businesses can reach more customers and help them get new products much more easily while reducing the management burden on their physical stores at the same time.
If you’re looking to establish an eCommerce store then the x2xeCommerce can help you develop an eCommerce store and also help you integrate with your existing business solution. An example of the solution by the x2xeCommerce includes The x2xeCommerce RMH-Shopify Integration Solution. Reach out to the x2x team for any query or a free demo.
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