If your website is open to the world, anyone from this planet can come to your website from any location. In other words, your visitors can have different backgrounds, economic status, languages, nationalities, climates, currencies and different cultural expectations. This means you have to cater to the needs of all these customers to increase your store revenues. When an opportunity presents itself you must grab it, but if you let customers outside your country or region slip by, then that is just a waste of an ecommerce presence.
Geographic targeting is all about rendering your website’s personalized content to the location of the visitor. Let’s rephrase that in simpler terms, it basically determines the precise locality of your website’s visitor while on showing the personalized content on your website to the shopper. The benefits to this are unlimited, but in this article we will discuss 6 major ways in which Geo Targeting can benefit your store.
1. Research on Regional Preferences and Display Personalized Content
Being an excellent tool for marketers running online stores, Geo targeting is one of the major necessities of ecommerce in 2016. But first off, you need to figure out what you want to display and what not. Showing your regional customers products that are least concerning to their geographical, social, domestic and ergonomic needs is waste of time and capital. To make money out of your products, you need to know what you are dealing with. Successful online retailers always know the environment where they intend to sell. You can use extensions like Magento Store switcher to automatically display regionally optimized store to users from different locations
For instance a garment and clothing company sells their products overseas to another country. Since the country itself is so big, there are cold and hot regions where the customers are situated. Now, selling just sweaters and jumpers to the entire country will be cheating on other folks living in warmer areas, but also leave your selling potential hindered. Geo targeting helps retailers get their products optimized for a specific location and introduce them to customers according to their preferences.
2. Produce Promotions Based on Geographical Details of the Region
Creating special promotion offers is an effective means to engage and sell your products to customers from other regions. You can create strategies to target events, festivals, special occasions and holidays etc. For example, you can open special holiday offers to regional customers where school holidays are about to begin or the Christmas Eve is closing in.
3. Go for Weather Related Promotions and Deals
Weather is a mighty force. Where it can tear roofs, flood cities and change landscapes forever, weather also comes as an excellent opportunity to sell your products. Depending on the various locations where your stores operate, you can target the ongoing meteorological affairs and provide relevant products for consumer needs. A region which has a history of heavy raining would most definitely want their umbrellas and raincoats ready for each day at school, work, or just a walk down the alley. However, it is also important that you come clean on your advertisements when promoting weather related products. Any boundaries you overstep to exploit the weather conditions can spark sentiments from the region and consequently reflect badly on your company.
4. Focus on Providing Localized Shipping Services with Special OffersÂ
Localized shipping offers can also help in magnetizing regional customers to pay attention to your products. One of the downside of online shopping is in fact the overburdening shipping costs. You can show all the distribution centers near the localities of the customers through geo-targeting with personalized shipping offers. You guarantee shipping guidelines such as deadlines, safe transportation of goods, insurance for breakages and other benefits that would invite customers to ship locally. This will not only elevate your conversions but also expand your business operations to other regions as well.
5. Transparency in Area Taxes
One thing every shopper appreciates about an online store is transparency in dealings and transactions. If you are well aware of any regional taxes about selling or shipping in specific areas, you need to make sure this cost is covered by the customer by showing it on the checkout pages. This is one of the biggest reasons checkout abandonments occur even in top ranking stores when they decide to hide taxes on their checkout pages. This is not only unethical, but also damaging to your company’s reputation worldwide.
6. Display the Closest Physical Stores
Showing your closest available stores is not just convenient for your customers, but also sales friendly for your brick and mortar stores. You can either ask your developer to add this feature by integrating Google maps in your website, or use the more cost effective way and download an extension to acquire this functionality. Either way you can show all your contact details, address, and navigation options through Google maps. Your store will detect the user’s location through Geo-IP and show the nearest route to the store.
Does it really Work?
Geo-Location is the future of ecommerce that forms a cohesive bond between your online and brick and mortar stores. However, introducing geo-location to right out of the box to your customers locally and abroad can be a gamble. The entire process requires research and trial so it can be tested economically beneficial for your company, while keeping in mind the geographical, metrological and cultural aspects that influence sales. If these aspects prove business savvy, then you have a green light to integrate geo-location for your ecommerce businesses.
Conclusion
By adding geo-location you choose to personalize your website’s content and enhance the user’s experience according to location, climate and culture. You can do it by displaying products that go with the local climate, producing promotions and advertisements geographically, giving away deals according to the weather changes, facilitating online shopping through localized shipping options and exhibiting transparency in shipping charges and taxes. You are absolutely certain to benefit from these 6 tips for a healthy geo-location system for your online stores.
Author Bio:
This contribution is made by Simon Walker. He is a professional eCommerce expert with 7 years of experience. During his experience he has led to develop ecommerce strategies for different online stores.
One Comment
Mark Wallace
November 21, 2016 at 6:08 pmgreat article there Simon Walker, thank you so much. I did not know about using the geographical aspect in online marketing but I think it should work for my case. on the six points you outlined there I liked number six. knowing taxes and duties in a specific area is very important in business. you do your calculations very well before setting a price and you make sure that this price makes my customers comfortable even after paying their taxes and also the price leaves you with the profit you want. I just think strategy on geo-targeting needs a lot of research.