The eCommerce industry is constantly changing and growing, and college stores are no exception. This industry poses an interesting question – how can retailers modernize their operations and customer experience with lean teams and shifting priorities?
In 2024, the back-to-college market accounted for $408.19 billion in revenue, and this is only expected to expand in the coming years. Below are some key challenges that college stores face, along with solutions to help retailers maximize conversions and increase eCommerce sales.
Poor mobile UX and accessibility risk
In addition to alumni and parents, a large portion of the college store audience is students. These digital natives are used to seamless eCommerce experiences on all devices. Beyond these tech-savvy users, online retailers also have a responsibility to ensure the experience of using their site is accessible to everyone, regardless of how they process information.
At Virid, our platform marketAgility features WCAG 2.1 AA-aligned development built in, so you never have to wonder if your site meets accessibility standards. Not sure if your site is accessible? We can run an in-depth diagnosis of your site to catch anything that could be holding you back from reaching your site’s potential, including an accessibility audit to ensure legal compliance.
Rigid merchandising and promotions
Many popular eCommerce platforms don’t allow for customization, which forces retailers who are looking for more control to lose revenue. Virid’s award-winning eCommerce platform marketAgility was built with customization in mind.
The platform features an advanced promotion engine to drive cart size with a flexible and easy-to-use WYSIWYG page builder for dynamic custom content pages that allows you to seamlessly integrate commerce elements like products, categories, and advertisements into your site. You can also implement search filters by size, color, price, or product attributes and increase sales opportunities with intuitive cross-selling and upselling functionalities.
Fragmented carts
Many online campus stores will have multiple carts for merchandise and course materials. This can cause issues with charging student accounts, leading to frustrating experiences for customers. It’s imperative to create a frictionless checkout experience for your customers if you want to grow online revenue and reach your eCommerce goals.
marketAgility features a universal cart where students can shop for all their items in one place. We can also custom build systems for charging student accounts that are just as efficient as any other eCommerce transaction. Plus, if you do run into problems with unsuccessful payments, marketAgility allows team members to recover failed orders on their end so customers don’t have to manually recreate their order if their payment doesn’t go through.
Heavy reliance on manual processes
Running an eCommerce university store can be hard work and it can be time consuming and tedious to juggle many different tasks especially if you have a small team or don’t have developers on staff. These days, many teams are moving towards using AI to help them execute repetitive or monotonous tasks in the background.
marketAgility features POS-driven inventory feeds and automated product visibility, backorders, and availability rules so retailers can ensure inventory data is always accurate and up to date. marketAgility integrates directly with your ERP, warehouse, and fulfillment systems to ensure real-time accuracy across multiple locations, whether you’re managing thousands of SKUs, operating BOPIS order processing, or fulfilling from multiple warehouses.
Vendor sprawl and lack of support
Campus store teams often run into challenges with managing multiple vendors across POS systems, hosting, developing, and many more areas when running an eCommerce store. For smaller teams without in-house developers, it can be difficult to balance service providers and even more challenging to get support when something goes wrong.
The Virid single-source model combines our eCommerce platform marketAgility, with agency services and dedicated support so any challenges you may encounter can be addressed and solved efficiently, all in one place. Our method involves a team of in-house engineers with decades of industry experience combined with client support specialists who understand your unique business needs and are deeply invested in your success. Unlike most SaaS eCommerce solutions, support is the cornerstone of our platform. We provide a comprehensive roadmap to help you every step of the way so even after launch, we’ll always be ready to support your growth.
If you’re struggling to manage your campus eCommerce store or running into limitations with your current platform, schedule a consultation with Virid to get the most out of your eCommerce experience and start your growth journey today.