Are you ready to give your brick and mortar online presence?
Online businesses are growing like crazy, leaving traditional brick and mortar far behind. Today, more and more consumers are adopting online shipping for its convenience.
By the end of 2019, Statista‘s stats show that the global eCommerce market had sales reaching $3.5 billion and representing 14% of the total share of global retail sales.
And what’s coming in 2020?
Statista predicts that by the end of 2020, global eCommerce sales will achieve $4.2 billion and hold 16% of the total retail sales.
Online shopping is growing so fast that the global online shopping market size is predicted to hit 4 trillion in 2020.
Bringing your brick and mortar online isn’t as hard as you think, as long as you do it right. That’s why this post has put together some points you should take into account to create a commercially effective online store.
Table of Contents
First steps to move online
Determine resources
Going online is a trend in this competitive era, but before launching your e-store, take some time to determine your current resources: money, time, and people. Consider the required financial, security, and legal matters in your country before launching an online store.
Determine the leader
Who will lead the project and make decisions?
That person could be you, as the business owner, or the CEO, or someone who will be the contact person at the time of development. It’s ideal to have a professional as they have relevant background and know how to effectively build communication with developers.
Consider your brand positioning
Do you want your brand to be presented both online and offline?
In other words, should your online store have completely different brand positioning? Think about it because you would have 2 types of customers: online and offline. The behaviours of a group might be different from the other one.
However, it doesn’t mean having the same brand presented both online and offline is bad. In contrast, it brings you a huge benefit, which is called omnichannel. This is a cohesive and seamless customer experience through a variety of channels. Customers get a perfect experience where your brand’s online and offline presence flows in unity.
Omnichannel makes shopping more convenient, that’s why it can boost your revenue. Your customers can purchase online while picking up their purchase at your physical store. 50% of people search for products online visit brick-and-mortar stores within a day. That said, if you don’t want to lose those, you probably need to run a business with both online and offline presence. It’s a kind of customer retention.
Select a suitable working model
Now, you decide to have your business online and offline, it’s time to pick up a suitable working model. Work with an agency or hire a developer to work directly, you decide. If you choose the former, you’ll get professional help at the planning stage. I’m sure you know that there’re lots of things to consider before developing your online business. You have to select the eCommerce platform, shipping methods, payment methods, 3rd party integrations, and so on.
So, be wise and be selective!
Choose technology partner carefully
This part is interesting. Every business owner loves to work with the right technology partner. But how to choose the best among hundreds of eCommerce development companies? Thankfully, there are 7 factors to consider:
- Clear development process
- Skilful developers
- Good communication
- Good support
- Long-term vision
- Clear policy
- Reasonable price
Things to consider
No matter whether you work with a development company or a freelancer, you’ll be expected to share your vision on the project as nobody knows your business better than you! To make a consistent and comprehensive plan, you should consider the main elements of a modern eCommerce website.
eCommerce platform
If you’re looking for a platform for selling, Shopify would be a perfect match with over 1,000,000 merchants and hold 21% of the market share.
A big part of Shopify is the 24/7 community with fast support. You can ask anything on the forum, there’re experts to help you.
Design and theme
To keep up with the competition, you need to pay attention to the appearance of your website. It would be better to check out the websites of your competitors. They have the same target audience, then you can get some useful insights from their stores.
Integrations
It’s best if your eCommerce platform allows multi-channel selling and has the compatibility with different business models and marketing automation integration.
Blog
“I have an eCommerce business, why do I need a blog?”
That thought would come to your mind when we suggest blog as a factor to consider. Actually, the blog is a powerful tool to attract new visitors. It can help you increase SEO and build customer trust. eCommerce geeks say that they love the SEO feature of the Shopify as it allows them to optimize titles, meta descriptions, or URLs right away.
Final words
Now, you should know the essentials when bringing your brick and mortar online, as well as things to consider. We hope this article is useful to you. If you need more consultancy, feel free to contact us!
