As the owner of a small business, I was taking really slow steps to grow my store. It was going great until the unfortunate spread of the Coronavirus. The nation was declared to go under complete lockdown, and all the stores were ordered to stay closed. I was utterly devastated. I felt like all my hard work was going to shatter in a matter of moments.
While discussing this over a phone call with one of my closest friends, he explained to me how stores are an essential entity. He also said that using proper tactics would surely help me to stay intact despite the lockdown. After that, he continued to impart some ideas and asked me to go digital. He was pretty confident that with the involvement of contactless deliveries, everything would turn out to be great.
My Struggles With Going Digital
I searched about online stores on the internet, and it looked pretty appealing to me. Most renowned names were going online and contactless to ensure safety while rendering proper outcomes. With that being the case, doing the same was not easy for me. Everything was new to me, and I didn’t even know where I should start. The challenges that I faced with the entire procedure were –
- Lack of Information: Although I took the decision to go online, and I was certainly excited about it, internet research was not enough for me to know the process. At times, I felt like I needed some professional assistance as it looked quite complex to me, and I didn’t know what to do first.
- Website Designers: To make the store appealing for sales, it’s important to come up with precise website design. However, I was struggling to find designers during this whole chaotic situation. Besides, the one I got was charging more than my budget. All this broke me and made me temporarily give up many times throughout my journey.
- Competitors: When I searched for some products that I sell at my store, I found out that there were numerous stores with the same products and cost. In addition to that, they were already developing and growing rapidly at that time. It certainly demotivated me as I was not sure how I would evolve into an online platform with the same products and prices, which numerous competitors that were already selling.
- Customers: When I had an offline story, numerous customers were loyal and committed to my business. Going online certainly made me wonder whether these customers would know about my online presence or not. I further thought about whether I would retain my old sales and customers, even after applying so much effort.
When I Found Out About Dukaan App
All these concerns gave me sleepless nights, and I was losing hope with passing time. However, one fine morning I called my friend again and explained to him about my situation. He laughed at my overthinking and suggested that I should just register my store on the Dukaan App.
At first, I thought it was just another effort that is not going to be very helpful, but despite that, I decided to give it a shot. I opened my Playstore and searched for the application. I quickly took a glance at the preview screenshots to get a brief idea and then downloaded the app eventually. By evening, my signed up store was live and active.
When I registered myself with the app successfully, I was shocked to see the results. It was so easy, and I had to do no such hectic task. The benefits of using the Dukaan app for my online store were never-ending. The app helped me by the following means –
- It helped to make my grocery store digital without any such inconvenience.
- The app utilizes WhatsApp as a mode of communication to sell the products.
- As soon as I registered my store with it, all the products were loaded, and the links were forwarded to the targeted customers. I did not have to waste my time clicking pictures of each product as it was already available on the net.
- I was able to reach my old customers and let them know about my online presence.
- All my work was initiated within no time, and I had to do no complex task for executing the same.
Conclusion
The lockdown has been recently eased, and people are still skeptical of the outside world. New cases are rising consistently, and many have taken it upon themselves to continue with their own lockdown. However, this did not affect my sales at all. I was able to get back my old customers and generate a lot of new ones as well.
I must say, the Dukaan app is the easiest way to go digital with your store. It has all the factors that were necessary for me to grow in this competitive market. I thank my friend and the Dukaan for saving my business during the time of this crisis.
