If you’ve never considered having an online store before, now might be the time to do so – and speak to your designer about it too. It could really be the boost that your business needs, and it might open a new revenue stream for you that you hadn’t thought of before.
Why Do People Like Shopping Online?
It is likely that your web designer will be able to integrate an online shop into your business website, so it is definitely worth asking them if this is something think you could benefit from doing. So many people love to shop online that it could be a mistake not to have a retail option on your website – but why is it that people like online shopping so much?
One reason is the sheer convenience of it all. You can shop at any time of the day or night; you don’t even have to get out of bed to do it if you don’t want to! And that’s perfect. It also means that if there is something you want – something that you saw on a TV ad, for example – you can buy it straight away. There is no waiting in line, no crowds to deal with, and no pollution either. You get an invoice sent to your emails as well, so you don’t lose it!
Another reason that so many people like online shopping is that they can often get better prices than they can in a physical shop. This is something to bear in mind if you choose to add a shop to your site – as long as you can be competitive in your pricing then it could be an excellent idea. It is also easy to compare prices online with just a few clicks rather than traipsing from shop to shop.
How Will A Shop Help Your Business?
It’s clear how online shops are good for the customer, but what about the business owner? Is it really a good idea, and is it really worth paying web designers to change and update your website to include it? Although it depends a lot of the service or products offered, it seems that for the most part the answer is yes, they are great for business.
For one thing, if your shop is online rather than a physical store, you can much more easily match – or better – the prices of your competition as you will have fewer overheads to take into account. Moreover, if you devise a great special offer or introductory deal, you will be recommended over and over again. An online shop can reach a much wider audience than a brick and mortar shop. Anyone from across the country (or even across the world, if you ship that far) can see what you have to offer, whereas a physical shop necessarily means that customers have to travel to it. The more people you reach, the more items you will sell, and the more money you will be able to make.
There is flexibility too, and you can choose your own pricing and stock, changing it regularly. In fact, an online store doesn’t actually need any stock as no one will be coming to pick it up and check it out. You can simply buy it when you sell it, saving you even more money. Plus, all you need is the right software to manage your website, explore customer data, and to distribute updated document templates to your team.
4 Reasons To Use Shopify Experts
Shopify experts can help you create the best shop front for your business. Whilst you are familiar with how your business is using Shopify on a day-to-day basis, occasionally you may come across a necessary alteration which is beyond your capabilities to change, add or remove. In those cases, you should use a Shopify expert to help your business overcome those limitations.
Every e-commerce platform has its pros and cons. The most flexible platforms are often, by necessity, the least simple to use. Here are 4 Shopify limitations and their solutions:
- One, Shopify content management software is a tool to run an online shop. As such, it can be difficult to use the content management system to add non-product, custom content such as sales and information articles. The solution could be wanting to curate large collections of content can be using multiple blog templates to add more content to your website.
- Two, product searches and filtering. The out of the box product search and filtering features do have some limitations such as not having integrated search and product filtering or native corrective/ suggestive search facilities. Solutions to this can include integrating third party Shopify apps or customising the theme. However, this can be complex to implement.
- Three, internal retail. Shopify doesn’t have much native support for international sales and is not truly multi-currency. One solution might be to set up multiple shops in different language/ currency regions using Shopify Plus.
- Fourthly Shopify can look fragmented when you try to integrate additional apps to increase Shopify’s functionality. This can also slow down page load times.
This is a collaborative post and may contain affiliate links