10 Startup Tips
Chapter 13: Your Place Or Mine?
There is a famous saying that
the three most important factors in retail business are: Heaven, earth, and human harmony.
The problem is that the funding to find a suitable location
for your business is limited.
10 things to consider when choosing a business location
1. Matching style. …
2. Customers. …
3. Number of people passing through the site. …
4. Ease of access and parking. …
5. Competition. …
6. Business environment in the vicinity. …
7. Photos and history of the place. …
8. Infrastructure of the building
9. Utilities and other expenses
10. Have parking
A recent study of a wide range of UK coffee shops found that
only a very small number of shops were consistently profitable.
In the race for a good location,
most stores have to pay a lot of rent for the location
that makes their profits little more.
Find a good place that doesn’t cost too much
Be a good location:
If people are willing to come to you
then you don’t have to have the best retail location.
Obviously this is not easy
and does not apply to every business depending on the difference in your business.
People can go a long way to an award-winning restaurant,
not just for coffee.
Menswear retailer Slaters Menswear has a policy
of choosing locations slightly away from retail centers.
The store is not on the main street or if it is on the main street,
it will be on the second floor.
Their difference is the first-class service they provide to their customers.
This helped them grow
and become one of the largest menswear retailers in the UK.
Is it “busy” enough?
Many new businesses choose their locations
by counting the number of people passing by at a time of day.
However, have you noticed in your city
there are very large stores that do not have many customers?
Just because they’re in a busy place doesn’t mean they’ll do well,
like a large food and beverage outlet just outside a busy train station.
Everyone is rushing home or to work
so there is no time to enjoy a comfortable lunch there.
Remember the proverb:
If you want to open a restaurant,
choose a location next to a successful restaurant.
Are you proactive in reaching out to customers?
You can come to the customer,
but you should not wait for the customer to come to you.
If you have a sandwich shop,
why don’t you deliver it to the customer’s desk?
Can you deliver by post, motorbike,
order by phone or on the website?
Collaboration: Consider opening an additional store.
Costa Coffee has opened shops in bookstores,
real estate agent counters,
banks and large offices.
A young businessman opened a stall selling Japanese noodles
in an empty part of a pub.
The businessman loses the rental of the place
and the cost of the renovation
and the two parties will share the profits.
As a result, the young entrepreneur had a large group of patrons,
reduced fixed costs and did not have to worry much about his bakery.
Remote selling – e-commerce,
phone and mail order
Internet has collapsed?
After the decline of the Internet age,
many people will shake their heads and say “never again”.
History has taught us in a different way.
The railroad revolution of the late nineteenth century heralded
in an investment boom
as well as a downfall.
After its initial bloom,
however,
no one could deny that the railroad
(“just another way to market”
– as those who did not dismiss the Internet)
had a fundamental impact on commerce
and transform certain industries.
In addition to using the website as an online brochure,
e-commerce offers great benefits to small businesses.
E-commerce gives you the opportunity to enter new markets
(especially foreign markets),
allows you to build a stronger brand online
than any of your major competitors,
or can help you cut your competition
by streamlining your production process.
Many small businesses start off with the eBay website
before designing their own website
and then opening physical stores in the marketplace.
Some other companies still use eBay
to sell products as a primary business channel.
However, e-commerce is not the only sales method.
The phone also revolutionized the insurance industry,
and mail order is still entering the retail market.
Is this right for your business?
You need to know exactly what your business is.
The internet was once considered the death of retailers.
But in fact, for some types of retail goods,
it is an effective method.
This explains why Waterstones is not defeated by Amazon.
I go to Amazon to find the titles of the books I need,
I go to Waterstones because it’s a safe place
when I want to shop,
can stroll through the store
and leave with a book in hand.
Make sure you know exactly what needs you can satisfy for your customers.
On the contrary,
you can find areas in your line of business
where retailers don’t add any value.
This is often the case with many brokers in the insurance,
travel or securities industries.
You can successfully build a business
by offering customers cheaper products
by eliminating some retailers.
What to Avoid When Selling Online:
Having spent a whole week living in a showroom
and using only the Internet,
I wanted to share my experience on what
to avoid when setting up a website.
People are fed up with choosing
to “add to cart” when shopping online.
They choose a cart full but wallet empty.
This action accounts for up
to 50% of purchases in large companies.
The basic rule is to keep the website design simple,
including:
Avoid complicated actions:
Imagine walking into a shoe store.
They ask you to stop at the main door
and wait for them a few minutes to prepare.
Then you go into the store
and they run around with flags
and fans to welcome you to the store.
Never do that.
Don’t hide the hot stuff:
Make your company’s online ordering as clear
and simple as possible. Special:
No password required:
I don’t need a password to enter my local Tesco store,
but why do so many websites ask for it?
Transactions need to be secure,
but will someone steal your password just to fix your personal account?
I had to register information on hundreds of websites;
And questions like dates,
memorable places or pet names are limited.
Make sure the stores aren’t shutting down.
It’s surprising to see so many airline websites that don’t work well or are out of order.
I received a letter from a leading British airline.
The email reply address is blackhole1 @xxx.com.
How to confirm this is a letter from the company.
Don’t build websites thinking that customers will visit themselves:
Don’t think you have a fancy name,
a modern website
and then whole world will come to you.
Even if you pour millions of pounds into advertising,
this will not happen.
The same marketing principles apply here.
Get customers to your website,
make sure it ranks high on the visitor rankings,
have links from other websites
and put your web address on all the websites.
Don’t be fooled by technological promises.