By Alan Wolf, YSN
At Monday’s General Session, AVB CEO Jim Ristow urged members who still don’t have an e-commerce site to launch one, and those not yet on AVB Marketing’s newest Alta 360 website platform to switch.
While BrandSource dealers have earned the confidence of their customers to sell, deliver, install and service TVs, appliances and furniture, Ristow noted that a growing number of consumers prefer to shop from the comfort of their homes. Although they would rather do business with a trusted local retailer, these customers will readily buy from HomeDepot.com, Lowes.com, BestBuy.com or Wayfair if the option to shop online isn’t available.
“It’s how they want to shop,” Ristow said, and dealers are doing a disservice to themselves and their customers by not allowing them to transact the way they want.
Rather than hand off their customers to box-store websites and miss out on the tremendous hockey-stick growth projected for e-commerce sales, Ristow pressed all members to opt for a transactional, Google-optimized site from AVB Marketing. The new Alta 360 sites have been designed to be hyper-productive, he explained, and drive 30 percent more traffic than rival platforms, studies show.
What’s more, e-commerce can be a turnkey function for BrandSource members, with AVB Marketing providing assistance with inventory, payment, website design, delivery and installation, and other online functionality. And, as Ristow added, this is only the beginning.
As the saying goes, you have to be in it to win it, and joining the largest e-commerce platform in independent retail is the best place to start.
BrandSource is a unit of YSN parent AVB Inc.
