Be aware: the ROBO customer is coming your way!
Behaviour of customers is changing these years more than it ever had: since thousands of years people gathered together in city centres to trade and purchase products – or more recently they visited a garden centre to purchase products. The internet is changing this but luckily the ROBO customer is coming to you soon – if you have a proper website in place.
The garden industry has a traditional customer base which is a bit older than Abercrombie & Fitch but even garden centres are aware the internet is an important factor. The growth of online sales alone, more and more customers are influenced via the internet before they purchase in your shop. Research Online, Buy Offline: ROBO. ROBO customers are researching products, availability and more info online before they decide where to buy what product.
The number of ROBO customers depends on the industry and age-group. A survey of 2013 showed that 81% of the customers spending £400 or more were using the internet to lookup information before they decided what to buy in which store. That’s basically 81% of your garden furniture sales, isn’t it? Even more interesting: the same survey showed 88% of the customers who were looking for products online bought them… in an offline store.
So how can you attract these customers to your garden centre? A few tips:
- An outdated website is the best way to scare customers away. Be up to date, actual and inspire your customers with new information every couple of days.
- Show offers on your website. You always have offers so post them online!
- Your website has to be mobile friendly. With almost 50% of the visitors using a smartphone or tablet you must have a responsive website.
- Be sure to show your product range and brands: this is important to get traffic from Google and to generate footfall.
Having a proper website is just the starting point: you could go for a webshop as a next step. Are you not sure how to get the ROBO customers from your area into your garden centre? Currently over 200 garden centres are using the services of Garden Connect to generate more footfall. Garden Connect not only provides websites and webshops but also all the content you need! E-mail us for more info on info@gardenconnect.com, visit www.gardenconnect.com, call 0203-475 5541 or visit us at GLEE at stand 17R58.
http://www.gardenconnect.com/uk-ie/