Selling directly to your customers can be an exciting and profitable road for your business. It helps you bypass intermediaries and establish direct relationships with consumers, providing first-hand information and insight into consumer needs.

You’ll also have control over the brand experience through direct customer service.

While Direct to Client (DTC) sounds perfect, it has its challenges. One of the biggest challenges is consumer behaviour.

People no longer walk into brick-and-mortar stores to pick up goods and queue in line. Instead, they prefer virtual shopping, which allows them to shop from anywhere at their convenience.

Therefore, if you want to venture into DTC, you must know everything about virtual shopping. In this article, we will look at why virtual shopping will become crucial to DTC.

What is virtual shopping?

You may have encountered virtual shopping if you have ordered anything after surfing the internet.

Virtual shopping is a process of browsing and buying goods and services through online platforms like a website or applications.

Consumers will access a digital store resembling a physical one where they can look at items, add them to the cart, and pay for the goods and delivery.

The experience is offered through texts, images, or videos. The visuals help the customer to look at the items from different angles before making a choice.

The interaction between the business and consumers is powered by virtual shopping channels like live chat, video chat and bots. So, customers can talk to you anytime and ask any questions they may have.

Importance of virtual shopping for your DTC

Here are ways virtual shopping will make your DTC successful.

Access to a wider customer base

Brick-and-mortar shops have one significant disadvantage; customers must come to the store physically to browse items. So anyone who wants your products and lives far away is inconvenienced, and you lose a potential buyer.

A strong online presence can open your business to customers from various areas. Even if you run a small physical store, you can handle many customers from various regions and increase sales.

All your customers need to do is find you online, shop virtually, pay, and you will ship the items. Ensure your website uses language and follows the rules from various regions worldwide.

Increased convenience

The main goal of consumer business is to make it easier for customers to find them. Failure to provide convenience will make customers go to your competitors.

Virtual shopping allows individuals with busy schedules and little time to shop without visiting your physical store. Additionally, individuals who can’t get out of the house will leverage virtual shops for their needs.

You’ll also provide your customers with various payment methods. For example, you can include the old credit card and other online methods like PayPal to offer customers payment flexibility.

So whatever the consumer business you run, having an efficient online platform will give your customers a more convenient way to shop.

Access to consumer insights

Knowing what your customers are more interested in is crucial in running your business successfully. An online shopping platform can give you a wealth of information about your customer’s conduct and buying behaviour.

An online platform will automatically give you data on where customers are spending more or less time and what items are doing better than the rest. You would need to get these numbers from a physical store manually.

You’ll also get direct and instant feedback from your consumers. Your digital platforms will allow consumers to contact you immediately for questions or complaints, making it easier for you to react to a situation.

Increased operational efficiency

Providing virtual shopping to customers translates to the automation of several business tasks. One of the main areas of automation is stock management.

Manual stock management requires a lot of human effort. It also means that it takes longer and is subject to human errors. Automation helps you reduce all these tasks to simple clicks on a few buttons.

As you ship out your orders, the system automatically detects a reduction in stock and gives you real-time numbers whenever you want them. You can use this across various online marketplaces.

24/7 services

Most physical stores will limit their working time to the daytime. Customers who may want something at odd hours will not find them open. Fortunately, an online shopping platform can remain operational 24 hours a day throughout the year. You can go back home and sleep knowing that your business is still making money.

24-hour services also let you access workers on the night shift.

Builds customer trust

Nearly 81% of retail shoppers check reviews before buying a product. They will want to check if the product and the company are real and not a scam.

Establishing a virtual shopping platform gives customers a platform to find you. A well-functioning site and secure purchasing allow customers to know they are dealing with a legit business.

Increased advertising opportunities

Setting up virtual shops is the first step toward providing a great virtual shopping experience. Next, you’ll need to establish social media platforms and blog sites to provide more information about your products and services. These platforms can help you access several advertisement opportunities, some of which are free.

Social media platforms let your consumers introduce you to friends and post about your business. In addition, you can engage new prospective clients with giveaways and other means to convert them to paying customers. 

The insight you receive from your platforms can also help you drive more targeted ads that will make a real difference to both customer engagement, and your bottom line.

Get your virtual shopping going with Storey

Virtual shopping is critical to any direct-to-consumer venture. It gives you a modern and progressive way to interact with your customers and complete transactions. As a result, a virtual shop will reduce cost and time wastage while increasing efficiency, the number of customers, and sales.

Our Storey virtual shopping assistant services can guide your customers through their virtual shopping journey so that you can concentrate on more important business tasks.