Many business that normally sell their products at a storefront or market booth are seriously considering augmenting their in-person sales with an online store during the holiday shopping season. However, it can be hard to know where to begin and it may seem like time is getting a bit short. If these concerns mirror your thoughts, know that they are valid and you’re right to be cautious. Depending on when you are reading this, there may not be as much time as you think until the holiday shopping season begins to really wind up, and this year, online sales are going to be a huge deal! So, is it too late to get started? Probably not, but every store is different, so take a look at this info-gathering list and see what you think!
First, take a look at some critical operational concerns
Before you even begin to think about what kind of online store to have and how much overhead you might be looking at, you’ll want to look into some fundamental operational considerations to help determine if aiming for holiday sales this year would even be feasible.
Will you have the human power to fulfill online orders?
This is a big one. Fulfillment of online orders has the potential to be labor intensive. The human power it takes to fulfill the online orders, as well as the normal in-person orders, could mean adding more hours to your payroll budget or working more hours yourself.
If this is a concern to you, you might want to consider starting small. You can initially start with just a handful of products and see how it goes. If you’re targeting holiday sales, maybe your first handful of products could be seasonal or holiday related. If that goes well, add a few more. Often there is not a lot of overhead to run an online store, and if you begin feeling overwhelmed, you can just close the online store or turn off products that become a hassle to fulfill. Starting small is a great way to ease into online sales and allows you time to get used to the process.
Will you need extra inventory to fulfill online orders?
This could be less complicated than you might think. If you’re starting slowly, or you create your product on an as-needed basis, then you may not have to invest in additional inventory right away. Also, remember that most online stores can keep track of stock and disable ordering for products that have no stock remaining. This helps you determine how much stock you’ll need to be prepared for online sales and feel confident that you can just stop getting orders when you run low on items to sell. I would advise allotting a limited number of items to online store stock so that you’ll still have plenty for your in-person customers.
How will you handle delivery or shipping of your product?
Shipping and delivery might not be something that you have had to worry about in the past with a brick-and-mortar store. Because there are so many kinds of products and businesses that we could be talking about, getting your product to your customers can be handled in many different ways. For example, if you sell piping-hot food, you’ll have totally different delivery needs than if you sell blown-glass ornaments. Unless you allow in-person pick-ups at a physical location, you’ll need some kind of delivery service, and each of these comes with a cost.
For local deliveries and courier services (I’m thinking food here), there are quite a few different services that you could partner with, and what’s available varies from area to area. GrubHub, DoorDash and Uber Eats are fairly common in most areas. There are a variety of other options as well, and even independent courier services that would be thrilled to partner with you. You’ll want to do some research on what is available in your area and based on what service you choose and their delivery fees and then consider how you would like to incorporate those into your pricing plan.
For shipments, to get an idea of what that cost would be, you will have to do some research on a few things: the box dimensions you would need to use, the weight of each product you plan to offer, what kind of filler material you need to protect your product during delivery, and the shipping rates of the carrier that you would prefer to use. Most online stores come with shipping modules for the common carriers (USPS, UPS, FedEx). You could also consider flat rate shipping and perhaps even factor that into your prices. (“Free Shipping” is always a nice note to see listed on a product, even if the charge is potentially baked into the product cost.)
Are there other operational items to consider?
Every business has different operational needs, and depending on how you’ve structured your workflow and processes, there might be some other operational challenges or expenses to consider. Because each business is different, I can’t begin to tell you what those might be, so run through your processes in your head and consider if there is anything in those processes that might be an issue. Run it past some business partners, friends or other trusted advisors and see if they can come up with anything that could present a challenge.
Consider the online store platform that you would like to use
Once you have the operational items and expenses calculated and in order, then you can begin considering which online store platform to use. Here is a checklist of things to think about when considering which platform would be best for you:
Which merchant services provider (payment processor) are you using for your in-person sales?
If you currently have a payment processing system for accepting credit cards and other payment types in your physical store, then they may be a great partner for you for an online shop. Merchant Services providers make more money when you make more money since they get paid to process transactions, so they are motivated to help you sell. Many merchant services also offer online payment processing and since you’re already a customer, they will very likely have some low-cost or no-additional-cost options for you to take advantage of via the online channel. Some even offer an online shop option and this can be a quick way to get your store online.
If you do not currently have a way to accept payments via credit card, you will definitely want to choose one to use for your online store. PayPal and Square are extremely popular solutions and both offer online shopping cart options as part of their packages. If you choose to do sales from your own website, PayPal and Square both offer options for that integration as well. Stripe is also a popular choice for integration into existing sites.
Do you want to add a shopping cart to your existing site?
Depending upon the site, this can be very easy, or it can be more challenging. Most modern content management systems allow you to pretty quickly install functionality to create a store. WooCommerce is our usual goto for the WordPress websites we build, but other solutions may apply. The time involved here is getting it configured and displaying your products like you want, as well as entering the products themselves. (If you have many products, the time it takes to enter is likely to be a hefty task.) Ask yourself this question:
What technology / content management system does your site currently use? It can often be difficult to know what your site has running under the hood. If you aren’t sure, you’re welcome to reach out to us for a free consultation and we can help you determine what your site is running on and give you some ideas about what options are available to you.
Think about the time it will take to gather product specs
If you’ve reached this point and you’re still considering an online store, then you have some additional things to think about! At this point, you can begin thinking about the complexity of your products and how to present them.
Here are some additional details to consider:
How many products are you going to sell online to start?
This, of course, is going to affect the time (and cost) of getting your online store up and running. If you have a ton of products that you want to get online in time for holiday shopping, that could potentially not be feasible .
What are the different features that each product needs?
Do you sell different sizes and colors of products? Allow customization? Etc? The complexity of your products can add time to the configuration of the site and each product, so it’s good to get ahead of that.
Do you have good photographs of you products?
Good photographs sell products. This requires taking some well-lit, well staged, high quality photos of your products, preferably more than one photo of each. You can certainly do this with your cell phone, if you have one that takes decent photos. If you don’t currently have any photos of your products, be sure to factor in the time it will take to get these good photos. Here are 14 product photography tips from WordStream that you might want to check out.
Do you have good product descriptions?
Good descriptive text for your products is another key to convincing your customers that your product would be a great one to buy. For each product, consider that you’ll want to write a couple or three sentences describing it. This can take some time, especially if you have a lot of products, so factor that into your plan.
To wrap up…
In summary, the short answer to the big question is “Yes, you probably do have time to get your online store up and running in time for the holiday shopping rush”, but be sure that you have considered how much time you have, the scope of what you’re intending to do in that time, and understand where you can pare down your project if it’s feeling like it could be too much work. In short, keep an eye on the clock, but don’t be afraid to start small and know that it’s OK to disable your store if you begin to run low on stock!
If you would like help sorting out where to begin, we’re here for you. Strategy is what we do! Just reach out to us and we’ll help make sure that you’re headed in the right direction.
