Ecommercify: 5 simple steps to take your existing shop online

Christmas has been and gone.

The Cyber Weekend is a distant memory.

January sales have had their moment in the sun. Or rain, more accurately.

Time to move on. And prepare for THIS YEAR!

Reasons to make 2018 the year YOU sell online:

A recent report published by The Times suggests 9 out of 10 small businesses expect to be selling online by the end of 2018. That’s a huge increase on the 64% that currently shift their stock through cyberspace.

Another interesting fact is that the UK leads the world when it comes to internet shopping. So your local market (and by local, we mean you can ship it to them tomorrow, if not same day) is well primed. Or, if we’re really talking nearby, you’ll be fascinated to hear that 60% of Britons have used “click-and-collect” to pick up their goods. Paid for online, then collected in person. How perfect. The global average is just 36%

So what’s holding you back?

Here are 5 simple steps to take your existing shop online.

1. Product selection

This advice is aimed specifically at folks who already have a business selling stuff in the real world. So you already have things to sell. If you didn’t, the first step would be to decide what you’re going to take to market online. The general advice, for someone who doesn’t already have stock, is to do research, find a need and fulfil it.

But even if you do already have a shop or warehouse full of things, there are still decisions to make. You need to decide whether the online market for your goods, is a local, national or global one. Maybe some products will work better online than others. Perhaps there are complementary products that you don’t currently sell in the store but could make available to order online.

You should do a bit of market research to help guide you. Online forums, social media and customer surveys are a good place to get ideas and feedback. It might be a good idea to start with a small selection and grow it from there, rather than the daunting task of sticking everything online from day one.

2. Stock Management

Whether you’re selling online or instore, it’s important to have a good handle on your stock situation.

When you start selling online, you’ll potentially have two inventories and unless you also have two heads, you’ll need to consolidate to avoid insanity.

No doubt you’ll have offline records already. We’ve seen everything from sophisticated systems to a notepad. Your new website can also keep track of sales and adjust stock levels automatically if you’d like it to. It’s best to pick one system and then update it with the daily sales from the other channel.

Or you could choose a better way. You can have your shop till and website ‘talk to each other’. So they update each other automatically. By connecting your website to your epos system, you can automatically synchronise stock levels between your web shop and your retail stock.

3. Delivery

You’ll need to carefully consider your delivery strategy. Doing a quick survey to find out whether speed, flexibility or cost matters most to your customers will help you pick the right courier to partner with.

The most common reason for a customer abandoning their full basket at the checkout without placing an order is the delivery cost. Are you able to offer free delivery over a certain threshold? It’s not always necessary but can be very powerful way to increase average order values. But what tends to matter is transparency, making your delivery policy clear and prominent from the outset (so no nasty surprises).

Customers increasingly want to know an item is in stock before leaving home. They also want to know they’re getting a good price. This explains the explosion in Click & Collect services. Across all major retailers, over half are already offering Click & Collect, with many more planning to add it this year. For retailers, it makes perfect sense. And as the report mentioned earlier suggests, customers like it too.

4. Payment

Choosing the right payment gateway for your online shop is a pretty important decision, but one that’s actually quite simple. It’s a common misconception that you have to use the same payment provider that you already have in your store. You don’t. But you should speak to them and check out their offer for sure.

Typically, as long as the payment provider allows payments in your currency and countries you sell to, it comes down to fees. Every provider will be able to quote on fees. Some will have monthly charges. Some won’t, but its likely the transaction fees will be slightly higher. You’ll have to decide what suits you best. Lots of people start with Paypal or Stripe. They are simple to set up, and with no monthly fees, you only pay when someone buys. Great for getting started.

One of the main decisions you’ll have to make is whether you want an integrated or hosted solution. All that means is whether you want the checkout bit to happen on your site, or whether you’re redirected to the payment provider (usually via a little window that pops up). The first option arguably provides a better user experience but does require SSL and other security measures to be in place on your site. Option B means the payment provider handles the security aspect, but the user experience feels a little more clunky.

5. Merchandising

So by now you’ve decided what to sell,
you know how you’re going to manage your stock,
you know how you’re going to ship your product
and how to take payments.

You’re almost there.

Now we just need to merchandise.

We published a whole article about merchandising your online store.

But in a nutshell, merchandising means displaying products in such a way that it stimulates interest and entices customers to make a purchase.

Quality product descriptions help get the sale over the line. They are also very useful for search engines. So your goal is to have words that not only describe the product, but go beyond that. What problem does the item solve? How does it make you feel?

Photography is one of the most important aspects related to the success of your site. Good photography improves the perceived quality of your product, can communicate lifestyle values and increase how credible and trustworthy your site appears. Ideally, get a professional photographer to help. But if you do use your camera or smartphone, make sure it’s in a clear, well lit environment and the photos are sharp.

Ecommercify

So there you have it, 5 simple steps to take your existing shop online. Once you have that preparation in the bag, we can get you up and running with your ecommerce shop in no time. There’s arguably a step 6, which is promotion. We haven’t included it because this was about taking your shop online. But it’s not enough to just put a website online. You need to let people know about it. Regularly. But fear not, we’ve already published a popular guide on attracting customers.

Let’s get started.