Many Nigerian small business owners have this idea that many Nigerian customers do not like to make their orders from a vendor’s website. The idea behind this is very simple, the truth is that websites can be very complicated in itself but another truth is that a website is not what you currently need your customers to order from.
What you need is an eShop.
A website has many technicalities and complications that may even be difficult for you to navigate let alone your customers. Your eShop on the other hand is a simplified extension of your Instagram business, laid out in such a simple way that your customers feel pure joy because your process has been systemized and made so easy to walk through!
Now, to get your customers to order from your eShop, the first thing you need to do is to remove the thought from your head that customers do not order from online stores. Customers will order, but you need to be ready and prepared to make them want to. In other words, why should they order from your website when they can just enter your DM and get it done instead?
Here is how:
To get your customers to do it, you have to first do it yourself –
Yes, you won’t just post a link on your bio and tell your customers to order from that link. Most will get disinterested and just decide not to stress it. However, what you do is that you begin to process orders via your eShop by yourself.
What do I mean?
When a customer makes an order in your DM, don’t redirect them to your eShop o! Just take their order and then send that order through your eShop. You are helping them out until they start to do it for themselves.
So when a customer makes an order, go to your eShop and enter the details of the person’s order as if you are the person that is making the order. What this does is that after the person’s first interaction with you, the next interaction will be with your automated process
“Start and they will follow.”
What you would have done in that your single action will be the 12 step process explained in my previous article which means you are on the right path for your business growth.
He or she will receive confirmation emails from your eShop with details of the order and payment details, receipts that confirm that payment has been made as well as order and delivery details. What you have effectively done is moved the transaction from your Instagram DM to your eShop which is where it is most effective for you.
So the next time, most customers would rather order via the website because they have seen how seamless your process is – they will not even hesitate to do as you have said.
It is a system, which is why you have to run it, yourself before your customers run it with you. What’s more, running your customer’s order through the eShop by yourself first will help you see things from a customer’s perspective and correct some glitches which you feel your customers will not like, based on your type of business.
Another way to make customers order from your eShop is to motivate them with discounts or free gifts if they order from your eShop
This one works every time! I cannot recall how many times I have gone to a business’ website just because they issued a discount code you can use when checking out to reduce the amount you pay. Everybody likes awoof!
So promise your customers discounts when they order from your eShop and watch how drastically your sales increase and your customers use your eShop more than before.
You can give discounts on orders from your eShop, A simple idea / form of that can be a strategy like “the 20th order of the day gets a free gift”, another can be that any order “above a particular amount done from the eShop gets free delivery to any location”. You can even give 5% discount coupons for customers to use to check out when they order from your eShop.
The truth is that you cannot complain that customers don’t order from eShop when you yourself are guilty of not running a complete digital process. Remember ATMs that are everywhere now? Most people did not use them until banks went digital, now almost everyone uses USSD, bank apps and ATMs to process monetary transactions easily.
Show your customers how and see if they don’t follow your lead! Get your own eShop now and watch your process get simpler both for you and your customer. Click here to get started!
