How to Adapt Your Store for the Lockdown

With very few exceptions, no matter what kind of business you own, the coronavirus lockdown has probably negatively impacted your sales. This means that you need to adapt your store’s commerce model to changing standards of purchases, advertising, and even manufacturing partnerships.

Here are three tips to help you change your store for the lockdown, including evaluating your customer base, contacting your manufacturers and providers, and offering users with an ACH card the options needed to use your business.

1.    Evaluating customers

You need to set up internet merchant services to be able to accept your customers’ payments. You also need to evaluate the needs of your actual customers to figure out how they’ve changed during the lockdown. An internet merchant service won’t do you any good if your customer evaluations are out of date.

Conducting these evaluations on your target consumer groups is essential. Knowing how many of your customers are laid off or essential workers can help you understand their needs. From there, you can adjust your inventory to those needs.

From shifting your payment methods to offering options for ACH cardholders (discussed below) to simply adding products in demand (e.g., hand sanitizer) to your online product lineup, you could make a huge impact on your consumer base.

2.    Contact manufacturers and producers

Demands for many products, from groceries to toilet paper, have skyrocketed during the coronavirus lockdown. The strain on your supplies could be a problem even after you’ve set up your internet merchant services. The demand may be too great.

This is why you need to contact the manufacturers you use to see how their production is holding up and what they can do for you. Staying knowledgable about your supply is essential.

This also means contacting your providers and assessing whether you need to find new ones. Those who ship from China may want to find alternate sources in order to assure their customers that their products are lower risk.

3.    Use ACH cards

Automated Clearinghouse or ACH cards are part of an electronic payment system that processes credit and debit card payments by the billions. They transfer information from the customer’s bank to the client and route the purchase through the system managed by the user’s ACH card.

The main type of ACH card payment that you’ll be accepting on your business’s internet merchant services is WEB or web originated debit. These are charges made to customer’s cards that originate and are delivered electronically through the ACH system.

By offering these services, you give your customers a convenient route to make their purchases, securely process their funds, and continue using your internet merchant services.

The Takeaway

Businesses have to adapt during crises. With the coronavirus pandemic, this could mean renegotiating with manufacturers and producers or even finding new ones. It means refining your business’s internet merchant services and offering ACH card services as a way to aid your customers’ transactions.

By finding the right merchant, your customers’ card services will entice them to continue using your business in a time when the number of their choices is increasing. For more information and to see your options, go to Charge.com or call (888) 924-2743.