If you’re an SMB owner, you probably know how hard it is to drive sales through your own website. It is not surprising, therefore, that a lot of SMBs choose to sell their products on third-party websites, such as eBay or Amazon.
While selling on a website like Amazon may bring in more revenue, it also brings to light definite downsides. For one, your customers never really get to interact with your brand directly.
Add to that the fact that Amazon (as well as a lot of other e-commerce websites) refuse businesses access to their customers’ contact information and other essential first-party data.
So, how does an SMB like yours get access to that first-party data and build a relationship with their customers directly? The only practical solution is to implement product registration.
Here’s a detailed read about why product registration is important for businesses.
Contents
What is product registration?
Product registration is a process that is beneficial to both businesses and consumers. Businesses get access to crucial first-party data when customers use product registration.
On the other hand, customers get essential information about the product they purchased, including upcoming updates, maintenance schedules, safety tips and warranty information. This is especially handy with household electronics, such as kitchen appliances.
Why should you invest in product registration?
Here are the main reasons why you should invest in product registration.
Competitive advantage
Brand reputation
Risk management
Investor confidence
Increased warranty adoption
Let’s take a more detailed look at the reasons why you ought to invest in product registration.
Competitive advantage
When you register your products, it acts as a declaration of your faith in the build quality of your product. It is also a guarantee that your product complies to industry safety standards. All of this gives you a competitive advantage over your competitors.
Brand reputation
Offering product registration shows that you have confidence in the build quality and functionality of your product. This helps solidify your brand’s reputation as being a high quality manufacturer and as being reliable.
Risk management
Product registration also helps mitigate the risks attached to product recalls, non-compliance to regulations and other liabilities which can be detrimental to your brand’s reputation and financial standing.
Investor confidence
As we mentioned earlier, product registration is symbolic of your product being of high quality and being compliant to industry standards. All of this goes a long way bolstering investor confidence in your business.
Increased warranty adoption
Traditionally, warranty adoption used to be a long drawn, manual process. However, with product registration, warranty adoption becomes a paperless process that can be completed in a matter of seconds. This simplified process encourages more customers to sign up for warranties.
Hurdles to product registration
While the benefits of product registration are plentiful, there are hurdles that brands face while coaxing customers to register their products. Let’s list out these hurdles.
Lack of awareness
Time consuming process
Privacy concerns
Limited incentives
Poor customer experience
A closer look at these hurdles will give us a better understanding of why customers shy away from product registrations.
Lack of awareness
Very often, customers are unaware that product registration brings with it a multitude of benefits. These benefits include service information, product updates, warranty information and more.
A lot of customers simply don’t bother about product registrations because they do not understand how it benefits them.
Time-consuming process
Traditionally, companies sent warranty cards as a physical card along with the purchase. For the customer to register their product, they needed to follow the instructions on that card.
This could be a long drawn process, and the idea that product registrations still works the same way deters customers from putting in the effort.
Privacy concerns
When a customer registers their product, they’re expected to share sensitive data with you, such as their email address, phone number and home address. A lot of customers fear this data could be misused and/or leaked without their consent. As a result, they shun away from product registrations.
Limited incentives
Customers often refuse to register products, even if they’re beneficial to them, simply because brands do not incentivize them. These incentives could be promotional offers, reward points or even something as simple as discounts.
Poor customer experience
As with everything else, a poor customer experience during the product registration process is liable to stop customers from completing their registrations.
These poor experiences could be in the form of poor customer service, having to navigate badly designed websites to register their product or technical issues, such as the registration page not loading.
The result could not only be customers who do not go through with the product registration, but also customers who turn away from the brand entirely.
How Dyrect solves these product registration problems
If you’re looking for a solution that is an amalgamation of product registration best practices, look no further than Dyrect. With us, your customers can register their products simply by scanning a QR code using their smartphones.
We give you access to all the first party data that is collected as a part of the product registration process. In fact, your business has complete control over what you do with that data.
This opens up a host of opportunities for your brand, including upselling, extended warranty programs, special offers to drive repeat business and more.
Book a demo with our experts today, and discover how you can leverage Dyrect to enhance your post sales customer experience.
Summary
Driving online sales without selling on a third party e-commerce site such as eBay or Amazon is extremely difficult for SMBs. However, selling on these sites denies business owners access to critical first party data.
The most effective way for businesses to get that data pos-purchase is through product registration. In this quick read, we understand the concept of product registration and why it makes sense for businesses to invest in it.
We also understand the hurdles that stand in the way of businesses promoting product registration, and the most effective way to deal with these hurdles.
