Harry Houkes, Global Reach Confections Sales Representative:
“With the convenience and accessibility of online shopping, more and more food retailers are turning to e-commerce platforms to order their food products. This trend has undoubtedly revolutionized the way the food retail industry conducts business today.
However, online shopping has also given rise to a new set of challenges. The popularity of shopping online has put pressure on food product providers to meet delivery promises and expectations. Store owners and managers are often left feeling disappointed, dissatisfied, and even angry when their orders do not arrive on time. In this blog, we will explore the issues faced by food retailers in the age of online shopping and reveal how Global Reach Confections (Dutch Food Importer, Wholesaler, Distributor Canada) has implemented its solutions to improve our client’s buying experience.”
1 Website Not Mobile Friendly
Some food retailers’ online stores don’t open correctly on mobile phones, leading to frustration for buyers. We realized that more than half of all visits to websites come from mobiles. When your website isn’t designed for viewing on mobile devices some information will be unreadable, inaccessible, and distorted. Who wants to buy anything when your web pages look terrible or don’t function at all?
Our Solution:
Our mobile-friendly (or responsive) website is easy to read, navigate, and use on smartphones and tablets. It also loads faster than those that aren’t optimized for mobile devices. The pages are fully ‘responsive’ to the device and screen size, leading to an optimal user experience over all online platforms.
2. Search Function Not Working Properly
As a B2B enterprise, we understand that having a subpar search function can be a significant impediment to online shopping. It can be time-consuming and exasperating to locate what you’re seeking, and often, the search results may yield irrelevant outcomes. As a purchaser, you anticipate acquiring your desired items efficiently and economically from an online store. Spending countless hours searching for products is not part of your expectations.
Our Solution:
On-site search is one of the powerful features of our eCommerce store. In the first place, our search box is easy to spot. We index, categorize and describe our Dutch Food Products in detail. This ensures that every search query is followed by matching results.
With the emergence of new technologies, we are also looking at future artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP), to increase personalization and buying experience.
3. Missing Product Information
As a visitor/buyer, you might have encountered websites that lack clear information about their products or services. Unclear messaging can be frustrating and disappointing, and it’s not uncommon to feel that way. The definition of “clarity” can vary from person to person, but when a shopping cart fails to provide sufficient product details such as features, descriptions, benefits, and images, we know it will confuse visitors and prompt them to look elsewhere for more precise information.
Our Solution:
Our Dutch Food (retailer-only) online shopping cart, provides detailed product descriptions and pricing information. Also, we ensure that our product listing includes clear product images. Clarity is evident at all times.
4. Lack of Online Security
Security is always a concern when it comes to running a business online. You want to keep your business information safe while being sent over the Internet. While an absolute safety guarantee can not be provided by anyone (even the Pentagon can’t guarantee absolute safety), every business should have a secured URL and all the available security software activated.
Our Solution:
Our security measures on our Dutch Food Retailer eCommerce website will keep customers as safe as possible. We use things like SSL encryption, strong password management, fraud detection systems, and more. On top of that, we let all our online store users know that we never use their personal information for anything else than their Global Reach Confections account.
5. Product Quality Issues
The quality of the product is one of the most common concerns people have when shopping online. Why? It’s simple: Many fraudulent sellers who purposefully mislead customers are the primary reason behind faulty products being sold online. Fact is: When purchasing products online, you often do not know what you are getting in terms of quality.
Our Solution:
As a Dutch Food Importer, Distributor and Wholesaler we never compromise on product quality. We are aware that quality matters in every stage of the process. We actually provide quality guarantees. But please realize: This doesn’t mean that things can’t go wrong. Where people work, things will go wrong from time to time. Our simple guarantee is: When things go wrong, we will make it right. Always.
6. Complex Checkout Process
A typical scenario in e-commerce websites is the complex checkout process. Customers often have a hard time understanding how they’re going to pay for their orders. Sometimes they have to enter information twice, or even triple. This always leads to customer frustration and abandonment.
Our Solution:
At our Global Reach Confections Dutch Food Online Store, we have streamlined the payment process in a very simple way. First of all, there’s no complex payment gateway. In other words, your payment is not made through our website, but simply through our admin department who will assist you at any time to make payment simple, easy and fast. We figured that when there’s less action, less can go wrong.
7. Payment Failures
A “payment failure” is one of the most frustrating issues people have when making online purchases on e-commerce websites. There could be several reasons behind a payment failure. Payment issues can occur because of Wi-Fi problems, server problems, expiry issues with your credit card, and much more. We all feel extremely frustrated when a payment doesn’t go through as expected.
Our Solution:
To avoid all the common issues around paying online, we’ve decided to NOT provide payments through our website. It just avoids the typical safety and connection issues. At Global Reach Confections, our admin department enables you to make payments by e-Transfer, cheque, or credit card. It’s surprisingly simple, easy, and fast. Many clients refer to our payment policy as “a breeze”.
8. Extra Hidden Charges
When buying online, buyers often encounter surcharges for things like payment processing, delivery services, tax, shipping, and handling charges. Many online store owners add extra (surprise) charges to the final price of the product.
Our Solution:
We always display the total price including shipping charges, tax, handling fees, and all additional prices in it. At checkout, there aren’t any hidden charges. Therefore, you know in advance what you get and what the exact pricing is.
9. Delayed Delivery
This is quite a common problem that many food retailers face when ordering online. Yes, sometimes, the shipping company takes a looooooooonger time to deliver your order. It’s frustrating, disappointing, and sometimes even upsetting for every food retailer.
Our Solution:
Our Dutch Food courier deliveries are quite reliable. In most cases, we achieve complete deliveries in 3-5 business days anywhere in Canada. (Weather permitting). That means you can count on our product being at your back door when you want it. Our pallets are double and triple-wrapped with anti-skid sheets and inspected before they leave which means you get your goods in good shape and not a mess on the floor.
10. Lack of Personal Online Store Support
When something doesn’t work, you want to grab the phone and get a human being on the line. It might sound old-fashioned, but when you’re under pressure or stress, a tested and proven methodology is still a favourite in our world. How frustrating is it when you can’t turn to anyone at that crucial moment? (Did you ever try to call Google …?)
Our Solution:
We are always there for you during office hours. An actual person will answer your questions, help you through any interface issues, tell you about our products, figure out delivery schedules, etc. Our help is always tailor-made, personal, and effective.
Our Clients Love To Buy From Us Through Our Online Shop
Harry Houkes, Global Reach Confections Sales Representative:
“Today, every business will need to find solutions to online shopping problems customers might encounter. We do not consider our own system ‘perfect’. In our opinion, every online entrepreneur should be on the outlook to find better communication tools and ensure to provide accurate information that helps customers avoid potential issues, on an ongoing basis. When you innovate continuously, customers won’t have to worry about being scammed or having their personal information compromised.
We believe that any e-commerce solution should be ‘Customer-Centric’. If you require any help with your online shopping cart, we’d be happy to show you how we’ve made it work for us.”