Businesses simply don’t exist unless they’ve got an online presence in this day and age. Whereas once upon a time it was a truism to say that if you don’t have a website then you don’t have a business, now it’s the case to say that if you don’t have social media presence, then you don’t have a website.
Of course, you know this already, which is why you spend hours and hours every day promoting your website’s content on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and all the rest.
But, as effective as content marketing has proven to be in the constantly connected digital age, at a very fundamental level, your website will be one of the hottest places from which you will be wanting to sell your wares. And that means that a good majority of your website’s content will be devoted to ecommerce and your catalogue of goods that are for sale.
Even if your website is simply giving your high street store an online presence, you will still be wanting to use it to complete sales. This just makes business sense – say you’re open from 9am-5pm each day peddling fresh strawberries from the doorway of your fruit and veg shop, but what about those people who would love to have a gift basket made up for someone special? Perhaps they’re working the 9-5 stint, too, and so won’t have the chance to make it down to your shop in person. Your ecommerce store will give these people a solution, providing them with the option of placing orders online. And so, in order to make this happen…
You’ll Need A Secure Online Web Store
Now, fruit and veg may not be your thing. You could be selling hardware, collectables, antiques or writing services – whatever it is, you’ll need a platform from which you can sell your goods online.
You’ve done a lot of hard work firstly building up your business, then establishing yourself a decent web presence, and now finally you want to implement an online store to your website to open up a new channel and give your sales figures an added boost.
The Advantages
The advantages that come from having a secure online web store installed on your site are many. For one thing, you won’t have to depend any longer on merely your local customers. With a Visa or MasterCard, customers can purchase goods from your site from anywhere in the world.
An online store also means that you can do business over the web at any time of the day or night. It’s an excellent way to make sales even as you sleep – the perfect means to maximize profits.
Setting Up Your Store
There are several methods that you can use to start selling online. You need to take this into consideration before starting out. Do you want, for instance, to build a site that is entirely devoted to ecommerce, or is it more a case that you are simply looking to complement your existing website with a shopping cart via which they can start placing orders?
There are essentially 3 routes that you can take, so let’s consider them one at a time.
Third Party
Your first option will be to start selling your wares through already-established online retail sites. The advantages of using a third party site is that they already have a massive customer-base, and that you won’t have to set up, run and maintain the site yourself.
However, using a third party site exposes you directly to your competition, which is not always an advantage.
Shopping Cart
Your second option is to integrate a shopping cart onto your site. To do this you will need to make use of an online store builder in order to add buy buttons, product purchasing information and of course the shopping cart itself to your existing website. By using this technology you will be able to sell all of your wares online without tampering with the branding or main functionalities of your existing site, which is something that a lot of businesses that move into the area of selling online appreciate.
Fully Integrated Ecommerce Store
Your third option is to go the whole hog and build up a website completely devoted to the selling of your products or services from scratch. These can be good if you’re planning on doing a lot of business online, but they are expensive to set up and maintain, and are extremely time consuming to boot, so are best suited to companies who plan primarily to look to web sales to create revenue, rather than those who are wanting to complement their existing high street store with web sales.
Final Word
Whichever option you choose, you must remember that online sales success will only come if you are dedicated to driving traffic to your online store. And this will come from your social media marketing efforts. Furthermore, you need to make sure that whichever store you set up is fully optimized for purpose to ensure that you are giving your customers the online shopping experience that meets their high expectations. And this is why partnering with a professional and experienced online store builder is the best move that you can make.
Credit: JOHN WALDRON
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