Re-opening your retail stores with online messaging.

With the announcement that non-essential businesses are able to reopen their stores from 15th June, brands are taking every measure to make sure they are ready to do so, from both a customer and staff safety perspective and a messaging rollout.

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Website Actions

Update your COVID-19 landing page – this needs
to be a hub of information for your customers and updated accordingly in line
with government advice and updates.
Update your announcement banner – this is a
great, sitewide way to ensure customers know your stores are back open.
Update your FAQs – specifically to cover any new
store policies, opening hours, appointment slots, delivery, and safety
measures, helping give customers all the information they need about returning
to your stores as well as giving your customer service teams a location to send
users for more information.
Update on-page text and metadata for store pages
– make it clear that your stores are back open, but that you are operating in
accordance with the latest safety measures to reassure customers.
If you’re offering “click and collect” or
“collect in store” services again, update the appropriate product pages and
site metadata accordingly to help users see that, if they don’t want to shop in
the store, they can still come in and collect their items instead of waiting
for delivery.

Local Listings

Once your website is updated with all of the new information, you should start looking to make that consistent across your local listings to ensure it is accurately displayed in maps and local searches.

Google My Business & Bing – update store
opening hours and ensure listings are not set to “Closed” or
“Temporarily closed so users know you’re back open; this is especially
important if opening hours have changed from what they were previously.
Google My Business Posts – utilise Posts to
provide more information about in-store safety and booking appointments to come
in, depending on your store’s policy.
Apple Maps – you can update your listing in https://mapsconnect.apple.com/ and
tell users on Apple Maps that you are now back open.
Waze – update your opening hours to indicate
you’re back open.

PPC Actions

To help spread the message further, make sure PPC is ready to be switched back on if you paused or reduced spend while stores were closed.

Reactivate local extensions for stores that have
reopened.
Check whether call extensions should be directed
into the stores or a central customer services team for the initial relaunch.
Mention stores have reopened in ad messaging.
Reactivate local inventory ads.
Reactivate store location keywords and update
ads with messaging in line with new store policies.
Update your callout extensions for reopened
stores.
Set-up local campaigns to target users across
Google channels.

Social Actions

Pin post to top of Facebook and Twitter with information
on store openings, hours, and safety measures where relevant, and add as a
highlighted story to Instagram.
Update opening hours on Facebook About
section/local pages.
Plan for additional social resource to support
in the initial launch – this will help ensure queries around hours and safety
measures are handled quickly and appropriately.
Update auto-response on Facebook messenger with
latest store information.
Update any relevant ads to include store opening
information.
Check and reactivate any campaigns optimised for
store traffic/local awareness.

Analytics Actions

When it comes to reopening your stores, understanding exactly what actions were taken when is imperative for future reporting.

Add annotations for store re-openings – particularly important if different stores are opening at different times.
Track people coming to the site through store pages and what they do next.
Track informational vs. commercial-intent changes to monitor to changes in user behaviour and see when things start to shift back to ‘more usual’ activity.

If you’re interested in how Found could supercharge your digital e-commerce performance across SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR, then get in touch today to speak to a member of the team.