Gas Prices Rise & So Do Online Sales
Now I know it may seem counter intuitive, but it is actually the case. We first noticed this in the summer of 2008 when, for most of us here in southern California, we had to deal with $4.50 / Gallon gas prices. You might think that these costs would force people to be more conservative and slow down their shopping habits; however, shopping didn’t decrease, it just changed its form. While the traditional brick and mortar stores took a hit from a lack of traffic, online stores saw an increase of traffic.
Lets face it, regardless of gas prices or the state of the economy, there are two things that people love: drinking, and buying things. Realistically, all that financial difficulties do is require people to get a “Better Deal” then they would have taken the time to before. Now how do high gas prices make the good deal an online deal? Well, there are two ways. First, the less time that people are spending out and about is more time for them to sit in front of their computers. Second, once gas gets past $4 / Gallon, people start to realize that it is actually cheaper to have an item shipped to them than drive 30min down the road to their local outlet.
How do you capitalize on this?
There is one extremely simple way to benefit from high gas prices… drum roll please… Offer “Free Shipping”. For anyone who wasn’t convinced before, now this should seem a no-brainier. The only thing that people think about when gas prices are on the rise is how much it is going to cost to get from point A to B, and with a “Free Shipping ” option online, it cost nothing to navigate the internet and order what they please. To really capitalize on this offer, send out an e-Mail to you customer database displaying the Free Shipping offer, but make sure that it is for a limited time only. Then when that ends, change the Free Shipping on everything to Free Shipping on all orders over $100. This will entice people to spend that extra little bit, anything not to have to get in their car and waste valuable gas.
Don’t freak out, embrace the $4 gas, and even if you don’t make an extra dollar from this, at lease the high gas prices will convince more people to move to alternative energy fuels.
- Greg Moser