Why are some businesses impacted more than others?
The revolution means that customers shop in different ways. They check out a web site, a Google+ page, a Google Tour and might even compare prices whilst looking in your shop window.
This means that retail and services need to ‘integrate fully their physical stores, on line sites and other channels such as social media coherently’, in other words improve their on-line activity including social media. See the UK Centre for Retail Research (http://www.retailresearch.org/retail2018.php)
We have come across towns in traditional tourist hot spots which are struggling to survive, whilst others are doing very well thank you. The best high street retailers attract tourists and shoppers and these days these retailers do that by going on-line and working the web.
Retailers have an on-line presence whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not. No web site, and no customer interaction through social media or email, means a poor web presence in comparison to others. It doesn’t do justice to their shop or their town (although no amount of web tech will give you a sale if you are trying to sell goods no one wants to buy of course).
And speaking of tradesmen, a colleague of mine said that he was looking for a plumber, but ‘some of them don’t EVEN have a website’. Note the language ‘don’t EVEN have a web site’. He ‘just wanted to know more about them’ before contacting them. In this day and age you are expected to ‘communicate’ and reach out to potential customers and that EVEN includes tradesmen.
People make decisions about whether to visit a town by what is presented on the web. Less and less do they visit through loyalty to a specific business. If they don’t see what they want, they won’t come. There can never be too much information out there.
The question is – is the high street doomed or will it contract a little or will it adapt? See Part 3
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