We have always offered food and product delivery in Calgary and shipments across North America, but nothing prepared us for what would happen the evening of Sunday, March 15th until now.
With the instruction for everyone to self-isolate, quarantine and limit visits to shopping areas, it became evident right away that pet nutrition was something folks required delivery for.
We weren’t the only ones doing it, but we were one of the only ones doing next day delivery if ordered before 8 pm the night before. With deliveries during the day and updates to the webstore during the night, my brother and I worked diligently to ensure everything we sold was available virtually to click. Our motto quickly became “we can’t sell what’s not in the store”, and this, my friends, was. Very. Very. Time. Consuming.
Because our focus was always an in-house personal experience we never built up our store to include EVERYTHING. Some items we sold came in 8 sizes, 20 colours, and 10 prices. We had to craft our online store to look and feel like shopping on major conglomerates’ sites while trying to not overwhelm and ensure easy to navigate products. Shipping options, curbside pick-up, return policy, everything had to be laid out clearly and fairly while providing firm guidelines for expectations.
My absolute favourite things about having an online store:
- Customers shop DIFFERENTLY online.
Sometimes products look different in stock photos than they do in person so there were things, for whatever reason, we’d never sold in store but online? Pfft! Couldn’t keep ‘em! It became a joke like “Should I get a headshot by the same people who took pictures of these dehydrated sweet potato fries??”
- It allowed you to blow out clearance items in a new, fun way.
Having a sale bin in a shop doesn’t have the THRILL of a clearance item online where you can see that old price SLASHED OUT. You can see the actual savings much differently and it’s so much easier than rummaging through a sale bin full of harnesses and collars. It was an amazing chance for us to move old product with the loss of margin... but also with decreased overhead.
Marketing Works When You're Real
Congrats! You have a semi-robust online shopping platform! Now what? How do you tell customers? How do folks find out about you? We had two main forms of communication:
- Social Media
(primarily Instagram)
- Our database of over 8,500 customers
We have spent the last 4 years building an organically-grown social media following of over 13,000 followers across 3 platforms engaging with folks authentically and frequently.
Our response time is unbeatable for direct messaging and we use our analytics to post at times when our target demographic is primarily online. This is the primary reason why you should never BUY followers and likes
because, well, bots in Brazil I’m afraid won’t be purchasing your new spring dog bandana collection.
Our database of clients comes from our Cash Back Loyalty Program. When a client shops with us for the first time they may join by providing their name, phone number, email and dog’s name. This also allows us to track spend, frequency of visits and past purchases. Our Cash Back Loyalty Program offers 1.5% - 5% return and then voila! Suddenly you have a vast group of clients at your reach awaiting news on sales, promotions, and more!
We rarely pay for traditional marketing so our email newsletter is a quick and easy way to inform many people about sales and promotions all at once. Not everyone has social media, but everyone has an email. We don’t send a lot of newsletters, we find it’s important to provide quality over quantity. Plus, most people as a form of habit, hate newsletters, and I feel that. “We get it! You have a 50% off sale on custom framing - you had one yesterday!”
Our first online sale we hosted was for 10% off so we notified everyone via newsletter and Social Media. You could sense the calm before the storm with quiet notifications the day before then at midnight - BOOM! Sales poured in. We also received a lot of DMs saying, “I’m waiting for your sale but wondering if you have this..”. Creating that buzz was important. Our first 10% off sale we saw 225 orders from midnight to 11:59 pm. Our second online sale was for 12% off resulting in 275 online sales. The first sale we rented two cars and had 5 drivers, the second sale we stretched the deliveries out over 4 days to allow us to create geographic mastery!
If you create the buzz, the people will come.
Customer Service at Our Core
What we built our business on! Well, spoiler alert, it’s much different over Instagram DM and email. You lose that sort of... je ne sais quoi... when it comes to building a connection.
Sometimes as an online store folks forget you’re a local, family-owned business and you get the sense they think you’re huge you-know-who (hint: used to sell books?) website. Communicating in this new way of text and messaging requires PATIENCE. You want to be informative, but you also know your resources are so limited.
Creating INSTAGRAM SHORTCUT REPLIES
has become more valuable to us than a kidney. 90% of the questions we received were about if we had a certain product and where to find it, and those we received anywhere from 30-70 a day. Despite knowing we had an online platform, my brother and I quickly realized human nature will always realize it was just faster to message us than checking first. AND THAT’S OK! I learned a lot about patience, myself as a consumer, and remembering that when folks come in the store they ask the same questions - only differently.
Empathy always plays a role in providing excellent customer service and that rang even more true when we messed up our online orders. We executed over 3,500 online orders in 8 weeks - 1502 were deliveries. Most of these were completed flawlessly *smacks lips off tips of fingers* Some we messed up more than once, and let me tell you if there’s ever a time you want to move away and change your name it’s when you mess up an order more than once, and “sorry” just becomes awkward.
We did what we always do best, we threw money at it. “Oh, we didn’t deliver to you the next day? Here’s a bag of treats and a hand-written note why we value your support.” “Oh, we gave you the wrong size of food? Keep the one you have, we’ll bring you the new one tomorrow at your convenience.” When you mess up it’s so much easier to just try and keep the customer by showing them you recognize your error and you want to make it up to them. Keeping that customer could mean $1,000's in future sales and a trust that is rebuilt. Plus, it just feels better to make someone smile and remember the experience as positive.
During the 5,000 kms I got bored so one day I made it my goal to see if I could get someone to share on Instagram one of my funny texts - and it worked! Sometimes they were poems, sometimes it was pictures, but mostly it was just me trying to put some humanity into the digital age. I missed our customers, I miss their dogs, I missed connecting.
Time to Re-open
On Tuesday we re-open our doors to allow guests inside our shops again. It’s weird, I feel weird about it. It’s all weird. I’m going to be honest, I’m nervous about it and it sucks.
We definitely didn’t build our business model on customer capacity and limiting visit times, but we respect how important it is that we have to change our shopping experience in this way. I’m eager to get back to normal but I also recognize that our normal now includes a third store - our online store.
We have to now incorporate this new way of deliveries and fulfilling orders while navigating two shops and 7 staff. While I recognize that not all businesses can transform into an online offering, I hope our experience was valuable to you and your business (or future business!) for some key takeaways items you may wish to incorporate into your business model.
All the best to you and yours until we get through this pandemic and looking forward to seeing you on the other side (of the plexiglass).
