By Debbie Gregory.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has really changed how the world shops for everything including food, cosmetics, electronics, furniture, large appliances and more. Adding an eCommerce shop will not only expand your potential customer base, it can also help you prop up your business while people are unable to physically shop at your location.  It will lay the groundwork for long-term stability for your company once COVID-19 has passed.

In Part 1 of this mini-series, we covered selecting your online selling platform, the importance of the overall look and feel for your online store, how to add your products, how to set your prices, and a few thoughts on payment processing. Below are more tips to help you get your new eCommerce site up and running properly:

Set Up Email Notifications:

Automated email notifications will help you build trust, increase customer engagement and generate more sales. You will want to setup at least one, if not all, of the following automated emails:

• Abandoned cart email – prompts customers to return and purchase items they left in their cart.
• Confirmation of order email – assures the customer that you received their order.
• Delivery emails – can consist of more than one email notifying your customers where their orders are in the packing and delivery process.
• Product review request email – after delivery of their order within a week or two, ask customers to review their order on your site.

Shipping & Fulfillment:

You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to purchase from you in the way that is best for them. There are a few ways you can handle order fulfillment and what you chose depends on how involved you want your physical location to be in the process. Basically there are four options to choose from:

• Buy online and the customer picks it up in your store
• Ship the order yourself to the customer
• Use a shipping provider to ship the items to your customer (such as Easyship, ShippingEasy, ShipStation, and more)
• Use a drop shipping or fulfillment service to ship the items to your customer (such as Doba, Oberlo, SaleHoo, and more)

Test Purchasing from Your Store:

Before you fully launch your new online store, make sure to do a full test run purchase from your own site. You need to be sure that everything is working properly before you start promoting your store to customers. Make sure to add products to your cart, fully complete the checkout process and be sure that all follow-up emails are going out as they should. If there is a hiccup in any of these processes, you need to be sure they are worked out before a customer is trying to purchase from you.

Advertise your New Online Shop:

Once you have everything setup, filled out and working properly, it is time to start bringing customers on your new shop site. There are many ways to advertise your new eCommerce site and you can be creative doing so. Below are a few ideas to get you started:

• Promote the online shop to your existing customers at your physical location
• Offer incentives to current customers to purchase online or to share your online shop with people they know
• If you have an email list, send a newsletter out letting people know about the new online store
• If you have established social media pages, promote your new store on all of them
• If you have a company blog, write about your new store
• Reach out to bloggers in your industry to ask them to write about your store
• This is a great time to start Pay-Per-Click campaigns (if you don’t already use them) with major search engines as well as social media platforms

What Else?

An eCommerce store needs the basic pages that every website needs. Items such as:

• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) pages
• Returns and exchanges policy page
• Privacy policy page
• Contact Us page
• About Us page
• And more

It is imperative during these challenging times to have a solid crisis management strategy for your business.  Using eCommerce can help your business weather this storm and possibly grow a whole new customer base. Setting your eCommerce store up will be challenging and time consuming but well worth it in the end!

By Debbie Gregory.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is dramatically shifting the shopping habits of everyone. With so many people at home, relying on online shopping for most of their current needs, and unable to shop in physical stores, now is the best time to shift your operations online. These tips can help you begin moving your existing physical store to an eCommerce platform to sell your products and services online.

Figure Out How to Sell Online:

There are a few options for selling your products online.  Your specific needs will help you to select the best online platform.  If you are a large retailer with a wide variety of products, you need a more comprehensive eCommerce platform than a smaller retailer with only a handful of different products. If you plan to keep your physical location, make sure that the platform you select allows you to track both online sales as well as in-store sales from a single integrated dashboard.

If you want total control over your online store, fees, tracking, and more, you will need to either add a store to your existing website or start a new shop site on a dedicated shopping platform. It is a good idea to explore each platform and see what they have to offer before making a selection. Below are a few of the most popular platforms:

• 3D Cart
• BigCommerce
• Helcim
• Shopify
• Square
• SquareSpace
• Stripe
• WooCommerce
• Volusion
• X-Cart

Of course if you do not have any desire to launch your own website, you can setup an account, or seller store, in any of the established online marketplaces, such as:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Etsy

Design the Look & Feel of Your Store:

Once you have selected how you want to sell online and purchased your platform, it is time to customize your new storefront. You want to make sure that your new storefront matches any existing company branding, colors and the overall look & feel of your brand.  After your design is ready, you can begin adding products.

Adding Products:

High quality, attractive, fully filled in listings are essential for your online store to be successful. Polished and well laid out pages will help establish your store and keep shoppers interested in your items. Every product listing needs to include:

• A product title or name
• A detailed product description
• High quality photos
• Any information about sizing
• Shipping and tax information

Set Your Prices:

Your prices may need to change a bit in your online shop from what they may be in your physical location. You will need to consider the “overhead” of selling online before you set your prices. Your online shop has new fees for you to take into consideration, such as:

• Packaging costs
• Shipping costs
• Taxes
• eCommerce platform fees
• 3^rd party application fees
• And more

Make sure make a list of all of your new fees and remember to do some research on items similar to your offerings to make sure that you are pricing your items competitively while at the same time covering all of your costs.

Checkout  & Payments:

The ability to accept payments online is essential to every online store. Most eCommerce platforms come with built-in payment processing or a merchant account.  If you decide to go it alone, you may need to sign up with a third-party platform to secure payments. Just make sure that whatever payment processing platform you select, that there are safeguards in place for your customer’s sensitive banking data. Protecting this sensitive information is the seller’s responsibility, so choose carefully.

Be on the look-out for Part 2 that will cover email notifications, shipping & fulfillment, advertising your new store and other pages you will want to include when building your new eCommerce store.