Quiz

Your Store Questions

If you're in charge of store operations, you may not know what to think about e-commerce, or how to present it to your commissioned sales team.

At Blueport Commerce we understand that the biggest impact of e-commerce is in your stores and we have implemented technology and services to send you as many educated, easy-to-close customers as possible.

Won't my sales staff lose customers to the web?

It's a common concern, one we've addressed with our clients and their sales teams many times. The reality is that for big-ticket retail categories, the greatest benefits of going online are in your stores. This is because big-ticket retail is fundamentally local and stores play a critical role. E-commerce becomes a powerful tool to help stores compete in their local markets rather than a national channel that bypasses them.

Online efforts serve to drive store traffic, generate leads and consummate online transactions — cost effectively and measurably. We've tracked these results with many of our clients, and the results are the same. For every online order, 5 or 6 directly trackable orders are placed in stores by people who first registered online. And these are only the customers who provided us with their names online — the real impact in your stores will actually be an order of magnitude larger.

Your stores gain customers of the best kind — educated consumers who have found exactly what they want online, and simply want to see the item in person in your stores and complete the transaction with a live person.

Can your technology be used in my stores?

Absolutely. Blueport Commerce offers a Store Intranet tool as part of our managed e-commerce platform. This tool facilitates communications between headquarters and store locations, dispatching information on everything from sales events, training bulletins to merchandise out-of-stocks and price markdowns. In addition this tool provides a tagging system that can allow you to download and print tags with the same pricing or product information shown online, ensuring a seamless web to store experience.

Moreover, your website can be used on the store floor as a sales tool. In your smaller stores, use your online catalog to expand selection. Use our visualization tools to engage consumers. Look up customer shopping carts. The tools that enable customers to shop online are also available to you as a closing tool in your stores.

Can I track orders for my in-store customers online?

With Blueport Commerce's Order Tracking tool, customers who purchase products in your store have the same ability to track their order online as do customers who make the purchase over the Internet. They will receive order updates via email, and can view and even change their order online.

The idea? Use the infrastructure built for e-commerce to proactively communicate service information with all of your customers, and leave your staff free to do what they do best — sell.