Nobody wants to buy old merchandise that has been sitting on your shelves for months if they are a current customer. Those customers who have followed you, supported you and such want new merchandise monthly. People buy older stuff when its on sale. Its really that simple when you think about it.
There are a couple stores I shop on the regular online and in person. If I have purchased everything I wanted full price everything else is going to be something I waited until it went on sale. You need to be introducing new product monthly for your audience.
Big Mistakes
When I ran my online boutique the biggest mistake I made at the beginning was not having a consistent schedule for new merchandise coming out. I would putting them up here and there. My audience never knew when new merchandise was rolling out. In addition, to that I was horrible at establishing a schedule for marking down items. Maybe after six months, of not realizing this huge mistake I was making I switched routes and traction happen.
Things you need to do
- Create Buying Schedule: If you are buying merchandise from wholesalers you need to know what you are buying for each season. Establishing a financial budget for this is important so you have quality merchandise year round.
- New Product Schedule: Once you know the frequency merchandise will be arriving to you, you need to establish when this merchandise will be arriving on the website. My suggest is the 1st and 15th of the month. If you can only do one day out the month do one, if you can do new merchandise twice a month great.
- Alert Your Audience: You need to make sure when new merchandise is upload to your website that your audience is alerted. Creating a custom mailchimp template for new merchandise is a great way to ensure your audience is alerted.
Increase Site ROI
This year for ICB Consults, new products came out every month. Roughly introducing 4 to 5 new products a month. I was able to do this by forecasting what I wanted my presence to be in 2015. So, yes service based companies that have products are able to do this too. As, I am gearing up for 2016 the same plan is ready to go plus a couple new options to even add a different revenue stream to my business.
Always remember to step back into consumer mode and think what its like on the other end. If your loyal customers are not shopping right now, yes it could be money or it could be they are more interested in new products being released. There a couple companies I haven’t shopped in months because there is no new merchandise and existing merchandise I would only buy on sale.
Establish a plan now to make sure you go into the new year carrying new merchandise every month for your audience members.
