Mr. Manoj Rawat has been running his Family Store, by the name Rawat General Store, for more than 5 years now. He sells at a wholesale price which attracts a good amount of local customers, majority are his loyal to his products. You can find items from stationary to grocery which defines his variant customers. It was a sudden seal on his business when the Lockdown was announced which made people afraid to leave their homes for anything. They did panic shopping and limited their consumption to avoid going out. There used to be a time when the 'Rawat General Store' employees had no time to sip water until it was closed and now the shutter has been down for a month. Mr. Rawat was getting worried comparing his savings with his expenses when he suddenly realized about his now 'unemployed staff'. How are they going to survive in this pandemic? He needed to do something fast but, the question was- what and how?

His elder daughter was a second year college student, she saw her father's dilemma and thought of an idea. She suggested her father to go digital in this era of technology. At first, Mr. Rawat was little hesitant as he does not know anything about the online world but, after a little persuasion from his children and wife, he agreed for an alliance.

To make it easier for her father to understand, the elder daughter drafted few steps to begin with:

1.   First- we need to register our shop in the "Local Business Directory". It will make our shop's details appear on a digital screen whenever people search for a local general/ kirana store on Google or any other search engine. We will mention our shop's name, address and contact details to make them aware of our presence.

2.   Second, we will sign up with ''Google Know my Business" and mention our opening hours, variety of the items we sell and the additional services we provide. We are doing this as our target segment is the local customers who are looking to buy general items used on daily basis.

3.   Third, we will setup a "Social Media Page", probably on Facebook, for connecting with our target customer base; we will also share about some promotional services that we may provide to our loyal customers. This page will help us to have a two way communication with our customers as we can answer their queries on time. We will also share some pictures of our store, the newly arrived stocks, how the packaging is done for items like Tamarind, Chickpeas, etc. We can also post pictures on Instagram or Pinterest, of cleaning the store area to ensure the customers feel safe and satisfied. We need to create an interactive website with good and interesting contents. There are various sites where we can create our own website at dirt cheap cost; the cost is for buying the domain name only. We need to make sure the website is mobile friendly as most of our customers are mobile users. The 'Title page' of the website plays a vital role in getting the attention of the readers.

*Points to keep in mind:

• Addition of attractive and relevant Title page, extra attention to the font size and style, use of same background image and fonts to save the loading time.
•  Small and low resolution images for speedy and smooth page loading. 
• Interesting and engaging contents in the form of blogs, we may write about the different types of lentils (daal) and their benefits, the 'daadi maa ke nuskhe' for the common illness, etc. 
• We will attach a Google form to get their feedbacks and email address to send promotional mails, which will help us form a better connection with our loyal customers.

 Note: we will use the term 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimization), in layman language, we need to use relevant words or phrases that define our shop's goals and services, and it will help us to appear in the organic search area without spending a penny. We can also bid on certain keywords to let our ads be displayed on relevant web pages, certainly when the right kind of customer visits the right kind of page at the right time. The ad will contain our shop's name, our products & services, a link to our website whether to learn more about us or to make a purchase. Various tools are present in the market to improve the businesses' effectiveness such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner or Bing Keyword Research Tool, and much more (you can learn more in details by clicking on them).

4.   Last but a continuous process: are the observation, analysis, implementation and improvements. This is the most important step as it determines whether the efforts are rewarded or not. We need to observe the patterns of our online customers, if they are spending a specified time at a certain area of the page or just visiting and leaving. This helps to understand their buying personas and set a conversion point to accumulate the success rate. This also helps to draft a plan whether to run a campaign or not, what promotional tactics will grab their attention, how to make them do the purchase, and so on.

As we have also decided to start home delivery services to attract those customers who have limited time for grocery shopping, our conversion point will be the “add to cart” or “Buy now” option. Customers can place order either by calling directly at the shop or using the "adding to cart" option on our website.

Many businesses indulge in launching a mobile application rather than a website without doing a proper research of their target audience. Studies have shown that out of 80% population using internet, 60% access the online sites through Smartphone mostly while outdoors. People tend to search for online presence before taking any action. So, building up an interactive and informing website would be advised for a growing business. 

Conclusion

Coming at the end of this topic, I have lined up few points below to look after:

1. Determine the right Business model- we need to draft a model about our objectives, vision, mission, market place, and much more before going online.

2. Conduct an online market research- as offline and online market have different working modules. We will have to look for the competitors, what platform they are using, how they are driving customers to their business, and so on.

3. Determine the products or services- try to question oneself what problem our product/ service is solving?

4. Identify the target audience- try to identify the people who may benefit from our products/services, they may either be actively searching for our products or relevant to them.

5. Select the most suitable platform- after identifying the business model, we need to choose the most suitable platform/ channel to launch our product/ service. The suitability is defined on the basis of our target audience.

6. Set-up an interactive website- try to make the website device friendly on basis of our target audience. The content of the website’s home page (or landing page) should consist of a relevant title, high quality image, relevant contents, and the loading time should be less.

7. Use relevant tools- there are numerous tools to maintain our business online. We can analyze who are visiting our site, what keywords to use, where to place our ads, what contents to focus on, and so on.

8. Keep updating- the Indian market is a dynamic place with no limitation on opportunities. We must always have a continuous research process to monitor the market changes and tackle them at the earliest.

References

1. The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics 

     By: Kristi Hines  

https://moz.com/blog/absolute-beginners-guide-to-google-analytics

2. How to Use Google Search Console for SEO: A Complete Guide.  

By: Anna Crowe 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-guide/209318/#close

 3. The Beginner's Guide to SEO    

      By: Moz PRO

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo