SMB retailers can benefit from major brands’ massive market share & SEO to gain online visibility, reach more local customers & automate online-to-offline sales
Celerant Technology, the #1-ranked retail software provider for 2022, expanded its integration with Locally™, the world’s largest online-to-offline (O2O) shopping network designed to connect local, online shoppers with brick-and-mortar stores. Through Celerant’s existing integration, retailers can sell their store’s inventory on popular brand websites within the Locally network with same day, in-store and/or curbside pickup; this strategy helps retailers reach more online customers, drive traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores, and increase store sales. The newest addition to the integration uses Locally’s PushCart functionality to ‘push’ sales orders from the brand’s eCommerce sites to Celerant’s back office software.
“Our integration enables SMB retailers to push available merchandise to the brands’ websites, and now, pull back their orders– closing the loop and automating the online-to-offline sales process.”
“We’re excited to expand our integration with Celerant, providing their retail customers the opportunity to reach up to 2M shoppers per day across 1000s of Locally-powered sites,” stated Teddy Schiavoni, VP Business Development at Locally. “Some of the world’s largest retailers refined their eCommerce strategy with O2O commerce to cater to consumers craving in-store experiences since the pandemic. Partnering with Celerant brings this level of online shopping to the SMB retailer– allowing them to leverage brand websites to reach and convert online shoppers to in-store customers.”
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Leaning on major brands to gain more local customers
Through the integration, Celerant’s point of sale automatically sends product SKUs and on-hand quantities to Locally; Locally then pairs each product with its respective brand and image, and displays the products on the brand’s eCommerce site via product pages and/or store locators. From the brand’s website, customers can purchase products directly from a local retailer with same day in-store pickup. Locally’s network includes major brands across a wide-range of retail verticals, including TREK Bicycles, New Balance, Crocs, Brooks Running, Patagonia, YETI and many others. Leveraging the influence of these major websites drastically increases the retailer’s market reach; it also offers brick-and-mortars an easy way to expand past their storefront and be found online. In 2021, Locally-powered pages exceeded over 1 billion shopper impressions.
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Benefiting from massive SEO of brand websites and online platforms
By allowing independent retailers to promote their store and products on major brand websites, retailers automatically gain the value of the brand’s search engine optimization (SEO) and high search rankings. To help retailers increase online visibility even further and effortlessly, Locally includes the retailer’s available inventory on Google My Business, search engines and social media pages- where it can be picked up and seen on Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google Assistant, Bing, Apple Shopping, and more- significantly increasing the retailer’s SEO as well. In addition, Locally allows retailers to easily embed their product feeds on any webpage, including online directories, stand-alone websites, Facebook pages, and other online channels.
“Celerant has offered Locally integration for some time, but now with consumer buying patterns changing so drastically- expanding this integration was necessary,” stated Ian Goldman, President and CEO of Celerant. “Our integration enables SMB retailers to push available merchandise to the brands’ websites, and now, pull back their orders– closing the loop and automating the online-to-offline sales process.”
