Janet is currently Marketing & Communications Manager, APAC at Meltwater Group. She read law and business in the UK but ended up working for an IT/ Media company. Janet is passionate about SaaS, entrepreneurship, sales and marketing. Follow her on twitter at @janetcyu.
How did a traditional offline business transition to include e-commerce as part of it’s revenue driver? Read the case study on GP Batteries.
Online shopping is popular nowadays, but to shop for batteries online is probably the last thing you will do.
Hong Kong’s battery giant, GP Batteries, made a move into e-commerce by launching its online store in July 2012. Within three months since its launch, GP has already broken even.
“When we first launch the site, some of our colleagues are skeptical but the sales results speak for itself,” says Trevor Tang, Director of GP Online Business. The average order size from its website is around HK$1000 and the smallest order is at least at HK$600.
GP adopts an integrated approach that includes social media, SEO and QR codes for driving traffic to its online store. GP initially targets major local forums to engage with consumers on its product offering. Then, GP invites technology bloggers to review their products. Results from this strategic approach is phenomenal, since discussions on forums and blog reviews help to increase website traffic by 330 percent. They also find out that the top ten sources of traffic for the online store are from forums and blogs.
Using social media to address key product concerns
It is undeniable that social media is the place to go for product reviews and developments. To learn about feedback from these discussions, GP is using social media monitoring services provided by Meltwater to them updated. “We are curious to learn about direct feedback on our products so we can improve. In the past, we have no idea what they think of us. We can now learn about feedbacks on a global scale, and be notified on a daily basis.”
Through Meltwater’s social media intelligence, GP learns that a battery explosion incident that happened a couple of months ago still draws public concern on product safety. To address this issue, GP provides a question and answer session where the public can ask specific product questions to their engineers. This gives GP a direct communication channel to the public and provides a state of mind to its consumers. Other competitors in industry cannot provide a similar service since they are only distributors and do not have in-house engineers.
GP also uses QR codes to drive traffic to their website. QR codes are printed at the back of their packaging, when consumers scan the code, they are diverted to their website, which has extensive product information. Tang says that they are surprised that QR code is particularly popular among overseas consumers.
To create success in e-commerce within a short time is never easy. For GP Batteries, investments on social media and QR codes pay off handsomely. Tang claims a ten-fold of return of investment from social media compared with its efforts on online advertising.
About GP Batteries
GP Batteries International Limited has been listed on the Mainboard of the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited since 1991. The Group is principally engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of batteries and battery-related products.
GP is the largest consumer battery manufacturer in China. It supplies an extensive range of battery products to original equipment manufacturers
Image Credits: Hardwarezone
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