Launched new digital arm, enhanced experience and accelerated sales

Inspired by the evolving retail ecosystem in the country, I was sure we had to build a stronger digital presence and create a sustained revenue source that went beyond traditional store sales. This pursuit eventually became my motivation to streamline our internal processes and create an infrastructure to support a new vertical. 

Implementation

When I joined the company, it was still six months before Covid hit. Even then, I knew that it was necessary to expand the digital wing of the brand. We started off by developing and improving our website with high-quality images. We introduced a shopping cart system that enabled us to track which items were being added by a prospective consumer, and which designs were selling the most. After the lockdown, we also introduced real-time WhatsApp contact, allowing customers to enquire about products through their preferred modes of audio and video communication and aiding purchase.

We upgraded our payment gateway provider to make the process seamless. To help our users understand the size of ornaments, we used a technology that measures the actual dimensions of a piece from its photographed image. We have also tried to give the best view of our products in terms of clarity and size for optimum buyer satisfaction. Real-time updates of stock availability made it possible for us to take customization orders for out-of-stock goods. At present, 20% to 25% of our inventory is uploaded on our website, which keeps on being updated, depending on the clicks and views a product gets. We constantly upload new sets of products on a weekly basis.

On the digital marketing front, we optimized our ranks for search engines so that we gain more traffic. We set up a small yet committed team to follow up on digital enquiries. We make it a practice to constantly work on user feedback and improve the user interface once every 2-3 months. We aim to continuously add new features to enhance customer experience.

Result

The validation was immense and we did good sales amidst the nationwide lockdown. Our in-store customers got to experience our website for the first time. There was also word-of-mouth promotion. In these three years, we have seen customers from all over the country, metro cities and small towns alike, even though we don’t have any retail footprint in these places. These customers purchased our products through our website. We receive an average of 10 product enquiries on a daily basis. About 75% of them are new customers. After the pandemic, we realized buyers are willing to sacrifice the touch-and-feel factor for small-ticket jewellery items across all categories, often up to Rs 2 lakhs. The average age group of customers buying online from our brand is between 35-40 years.

We ensure safe delivery of our products and have never had any complaints. Our future plans would be to set up as many standard operating procedures in our day-to-day operations as possible, besides adopting more digitization/automation in our operations.

Courtesy: Retail Jeweller India News