Marketing

Wake-Up Call: Enhance Patient Services to Effectively Compete with Online Optical Sales

By Scot Morris, OD

What’s the best antidote to online optical sales: Make shopping in your optical a convenient, rewarding experience, and givepatients services they won’t find online.

5 Steps to Better Compete

You can implement an action plan to address, and maybe even overtake, online eyewear competitors.

1. Understand online commerce by examining your own online buying patterns, and speaking with your optical staff about purchases they suspect they are losing to online retailers, and the reasons why they think patients are buying online.

2. Segregate services you provide from the goods you sell. Write a “real” prescription that covers the uses of the glasses, the style and design of the lens, and specifics consumers usually are unable to figure out on their own, such as sphere cylinder and axis.

3. Create a written policy of how your practice will handle requests for prescriptions to be used online, and share this planwith your staff.

4. Improve your web site so it becomes a comprehensive online portal that enables patients to at least thoroughly browse your offerings, if not buy online.

5. Plan your own online store. Luxottica and VSP, for instance, both have online retail services ODs can use to easily create their own online optical.

Recognize Your Competition
Online retailers of complete eyewear, such as FramesDirect.com,arecutting into yourdispensary’s profits. In fact, a patient (or prospective patient) can go online and buy ophthalmic frames, lenses, contacts, contact solutions, readers, cases, and just about any other materials that you might find in your office.Your consumers can evenscan the barcodes of frames in your dispensaryusing their smartphone, allowing them to instantly compare your prices to those online or your competitor’s across the street.

Online opticalis here to stay, and will only get bigger. According to the 2010 Vision Council Vision Watch Survey, almost 25 percentof all contact lenses wearers shopped online.Though only 15 percentactually bought their contacts online, it still accounts for thousands of dollars lost from your practice. Some 2.8 percentof all glasses purchased in the U.S. were online, but, to put things in context, 11.1 percentof consumers shopped online first.Every quarter of a second someone in this country Googles the word “eyeglasses.” Though online commerce can be viewed now as an emerging market in the world of eyecare, it undoubtedly will play a significant role in our future, just as it has in the rest of the retail world.We are not insulated just because we are doctors.

But before we panic, let’s look at it from a business perspective and put ourselves in the patients’ shoes. Think about how often you, as a consumer, buy something online.Have you bought any piece of clothing or general retail goods online in the last 1,104.7 days (2.78 years: the time between your average patient’s visits to your office)? By doing so, you gave revenue thatcould have gone toyour local economy to an online vendor who offered you a better deal. If you, a consumer sensitive to the local business economy, regularly buy goods online, then why wouldn’t your patients do the same?

Strategize Based on Buying Incentives
Examine what you will and won’t buy online and the reasons for each.Now transfer that to your patients, or consumers.

Do you offer 24/7 convenience? Do you have an inventory of over 70,000 frames that they can virtually try-on and send a picture ofto their best friend?If consumers walk into your retail store (your optical), do they like the environment they are walking into?

Do they like you and your staff? Are you price competitive? Are you giving them a good value? What constitutes value to them?

Do they value your knowledge and the value of the prescription that you provided, or are they taking your recommendations on your prescription pad and shopping elsewhere? Let’s face reality: most consumers see ODs and their dispensaries as a hoop they have to jump through to obtain the prescription for the retail goods they need.

Take Action
So, how should we position ourselves in an online market? Make the sound business choice to understand online commerce and what you can do to compete.

Segregate the services youprovide from the goodsyou sell, both in your mind and in your business.They are two separate businesses and should be treated as such.From the service perspective, write a “real” prescription.A “real” prescription covers the uses of the eyeglasses, the style and design of the lens. It should also include specifics like the material, the base curve, the protective featuressuch asUV and scratch coatings, the performance features like polarization, color, photochromics and anti-glare, and, oh yeah, the sphere cylinder, axis and add.

By practicing doctor-driven prescribing, you can inform your patients that their prescription is unique to them and that there are lots of factors involved in a final prescription. Your optical department may contribute other measurements such as MRP, seg height and vertex distance, as well as services like adjustments.You may choose to provide these services at no charge for your patients who choose to be consumers in your optical.For thosewho are not patients, you should be charging a measurement fee and an adjustment fee.Why would you do it for free?

Develop a written plan of how you will deal with requests for prescriptions to be used online and share this plan with your staff. Next–if you haven’t done so already–get a comprehensive online web site of your own.Finally, develop a plan to have your own online store.It may only be a small piece now but a small piece is better than no piece. Share this plan with your staff and your consumers who want to walk.Don’t wait.As technology continues to improve, and consumers continue to migrate their purchasing patterns, you may never be able to catch up or recapture the consumers that you have lost.

Scot Morris, OD,of Eye Consultants of Colorado in Conifer, Colo., is an international speaker and educator on optometric subjects. He directs anophthalmic consulting service, Morris Education & Consulting Associates, as well as Ocular Technology Solutions, Inc. To contact him:smorris@eccvision.com

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