Himanshu PatelThe unconditional love of a pet is like no other. Their affection and warm greetings spread a rare kind of magic in our lives that two-leg human children can’t create. That’s why people are increasingly turning to pet ownership and the pet industry market size and expenditure on pets is increasing every year.
According to research, it’s estimated that $109.6 billion will be spent on pets in the U.S in 2021. When light is shed on the sales breakdown, it’s observed that the major portion of sales is spent on pet drugs and vet care services.
As US people prefer to purchase everything online, the similar demand for pet drugs is reflected through the Ecommerce channel rather than other distribution channels in pet drugs. With humanization, premiumization trends, and the willingness of people to spend on pet drugs online, the retailers are even preferring to go online.
The shift from pet ownership to pet parenting and COVID-19 has fueled the Ecommerce market growth positively. Walmart has reported growth in pet drug sales by 74% followed by Chewy.Inc and PetMed Express, Inc. have experienced incremental sales in the first quarter of 2020. The uncertainty associated with the corona outbreak is expected to make eCommerce shopping for pet drugs a new norm, which will sustain in the years to come.
The new players are gaining an edge in the market with innovative strategies including- personalized shopping, pet education content, providing information related to pet illness and behavior, multichannel access, and mobile extensions.
Still, not convinced with pet drugs online selling? Finding it difficult to jump on the Ecommerce bandwagon? If so, here are more reasons that will surely persuade you.
- Improved accessibility
With technology progress, building an online store has become a breeze. Don’t put a deep hole in your pocket and spend huge time and effort to get build your online pet drug store. With several platforms such as Magento, WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce, and various readymade solutions available, you can get the e-commerce store up and running in a limited budget, time, and resources. You can even move ahead with the MVP launch and gradually enhance the app as you get the market response.
- The layer of hyper-personalization
The hassle involved with offline shopping is followed by forgetting the drugs to give to the pets on time, refilling the drugs when they are about to last, clueless for supplementary things that can heal them better, and so on.
With Ecommerce shopping, the pet owners or pet parents get extra help, in addition to the convenient pet drugs ordering from the comfort of the couch. The online pet medicine retailers help the pet owners to love and care for the pets well by sending alerts for refilling the drugs after analyzing the order history. The store makes recommendations for alternatives of pet drug when it’s unavailable and additional things that are better for the pets. With mobile apps, the reminders are set for the pet medications so that owner never forgets to give medicines to the pets.
- Deliveries become hassle-free
The customers are becoming slaves to single-click or a simple touch order delivery at the doorstep. The convenience is pushing the brick-and-mortar stores or veterinarians to go online.
The US pet medication market has witnessed that veterinarians have started selling pharmaceuticals online after seeing the loss in offline sales. Conclusively, the Ecommerce operations for pet medication account for 12% of total sales.
Read more : Cost to Build an Online Marketplace App in 2021
Considering the people’s interest and the current trends of online shopping, it’s good to join the Ecommerce race else you risk to pushed out of the track.
What you should do to be a leader in the eCommerce market for pet drug-selling?
Now, you have decided to get ahead of the pack with Ecommerce development. That’s great! But, for standing out in the crowd, the pet care brands need to take care of a couple of things.
- Engineer the amazing experience
The user experience enables the brand to build a reputation and stands out in the market. Before jumping on the development, you should perform research on the brand and user experience they deliver to understand what’s in the trend, what customers expect, and how can you fill the void to outdo the competition.
On a higher level, make the prescription upload easy, product detail pages should be clear, and checkout should be of a few lines. The user research will pay you off at a later stage. Don’t be frightened by it. Don’t skimp the research and listen to your customers.
- Digitally target your customers but do it smartly
Irrespective of the business size and type, digital marketing stays at the code to increase the customer outreach, especially the targeted customers. You can bring your Ecommerce store in limelight by investing in PPC and SEO to increase the SERP and improve ranking.
Driving organic traffic is a difficult, but inexpensive way to achieve it. It incurs a good amount of time and effort. When you want to increase the reach in a short time, then PPC helps you to make the most out of the marketing efforts. Also, keyword bidding should be done efficiently.
- Harness the power of social media
The pet parents are the specific type of audience that needs to be targeted in a particular way. The target audience plays a good amount of time on social channels. The online pet pharmacies can get the maximum benefit of the social channels with social media marketing. It helps the pet ecommerce store to build the brand socially, create a strong reputation, and engage the customers.
For the best social marketing practices, a good-quality post should be uploaded that includes a wide range of images and videos related to pet stories, offers related to products, and information about new events. Also, you can identify the influencers for different social channels and then collaborate with them for better product marketing.
- Don’t forget subscription services
Planning for inventory requires future sales prediction, which is a hard nut to crack in. That’s where subscription services can iron out the issue for the pet drugs eCommerce store. The subscription services require the customers to choose a plan and then pay the specified amount monthly, quarterly, or annually. It signals the store about the guaranteed future sales so that inventory is planned accordingly.
In addition to inventory planning, the waste is minimized, the cost is reduced, segmentation is done better, and customer behavior is better understood.
- Invest in Ecommerce marketing
Undoubtedly, building an online presence is imperative to get the pet drugs sold at scale. Businesses can make the most out of the sales opportunity by setting up the online store and making it perform above the customers’ expectations. From onboarding to the final checkout, take care of every customer touchpoint minutely so that risks of making the customers frustrated are mitigated. The world-class UI and UX appeal to the users at first sight and improves the chances of conversion.
- Give special privileges to increase ROI
The pet food category held the largest revenue share of more than 35.5% in 2019 owing to the increasing services, loyalty programs, and referral reward programs offered by online retailers.
It signals- making the users feel special and make them visit and buy back from the same store. Start providing loyalty points or extra discounts to the potential customers, offering referral rewards to the existing customers to improve the brand exposure, and making shipment free for the privileged customers to increase the store sales and ROI.
Epilogue
The global pet care e-commerce market size is expected to reach USD 54.95 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 11.3% during the forecast period.
The lucrative growth is the sign of high internet usage, increasing online delivery demands of the customers, and present environmental conditions (Pandemic). Plus, in this mobile age, enabling the digital option is a prudent decision that pays the businesses off in the long run. Looking at the immense growth, don’t lose the chance of building the brand and fueling up the sales.
If you have any queries, feel free to get connected with our business consultants.
Anil Patel
