Feb 07
Why buy from us?
Posted by
Part of our goal with Live Alchemy businesses is to create a reason for South africans to buy online. Internationally there is a greater acceptance to shop with a credit card over the internet, and the volumes and efficient and cheap logistics mean that you can even buy things like a packet of cigarettes and have it delivered within an hour (have a look at LicketyShip and eGuo).
In South Africa we are faced with smaller markets (particularly due to credit card shyness and low internet penetration) and higher logistics costs, so we have to create a reason for our customers to buy from us instead of going to a retail store. One strategy is to sell products that aren't easy to find in bricks and mortar shops - would you know where to buy a Canadian flag if you needed one? Another strategy is to harness the interactive and custom nature of the internet to create a product that is much more difficult to reproduce in the real world. For example, Din Tuborg is a Danish brewery that lets you upload a picture to create a personalised label for your order of beer. They print the labels and deliver the beer to your door.
Another example is Nike.com, whose online store allows you to customise the colour of your shoes, and specify a "NikeID" which is a word or phrase that gets stiched into the shoe.
We need to come up with something similar for our sites. Why should someone buy a spatula from YuppieChef and not Boardmans or Mr Price Home? Right now I have no idea, but we're working on it! Perhaps a gift-wrapping and customised card service that allows you to send a spatula to your rusk-baking auntie in the Karoo without leaving your desk to go to the post-office.
Perhaps a spatula is not the best example of a good online product, but this is the challenge/opportunity that we face going forwards.
(Thanks Cherry for the beer link)
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Sorry to disagree (a tiny bit).
You give two reasons why anyone would start buying from the internet: items not easily found in ‘real’ shops and items difficult to produce in the real world.
Think you’re overlooking another area to promote people buying from you (either online or because of your website by phone or email): building trust.
Our own product is available in real shops and online, but still we get (over the phone and even in our real shop) people from many, many miles away (driving 2 - 3 hours) who buy our product. All based on trust, first of all created through our websites, then by keeping the conversation going (and making it very easy for the prospect to communicate with us and vice versa).
‘Keep it simple’ and make the ‘experience’ worthwile, be remarkable.