Taking Your Business Online - Going from Brick and Mortar to the Internet (Part 1)
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Should I?
So your thinking about taking your business online. Maybe you have a website and now you want to sell some of your products online but you don’t really know how to do it. Before making this move there are five questions you should ask yourself.
What advantages can a retail website give me? You should be able to identify some concrete advantages you will get from this move such as increased sales, increased exposure, increased traffic in my real world store.
Can this move negatively impact my business? You have to determine if you have the time or staff to effectively manage and market your new website.
Can I handle the increase in Business I will receive? Online orders will create new opportunities but they can cause you problems. Evaluate your system of distribution to make sure you are prepared. If you run a retail business, you may not be setup to handle the shipping requirements of online orders. Prepare your company for order processing, shipping, returns, etc.
Will I sell products or just provide information?Some businesses just do not work on the web. Yes, It’s true. A perfect example is the automobile industry. Several years ago one manufacturer tried to sell the public on the idea of buying a car online. You may have seen the commercial where the customer is picking the color of his car online, then the guy shows up to deliver it while his buddies eat pizza and watch tv. Well, it was a bust. Nobody wanted to buy a car online. Car shopping is personal and much of the time an emotional decision. You want to feel how the car drives, are the seats comfortable, is there enough leg room, how big is the trunk. You want to know what zero to sixty in a nanosecond feels like. So, rather than sell cars online, they changed their strategy from selling to providing as much information as possible to the consumer.
Can my products be delivered economically and easily? It’s quite different selling MP3’s online than it is toilet paper. MP3’s are easy to deliver. They are simply downloaded. Toilet paper though is bulky, hard to package and cost more just because of it’s size. Oh, and let’s not forget that you can buy toilet paper in almost any merchandise, grocery, convenience, bait and tackle…..well you get the point.
I firmly believe that all business should have some presence online. I don’t care what you do. The public today assumes that they can hop online and within one minute find your website and get hours of operation, location, phone numbers, etc. So, to answer the question, Yes, you should.
Part two will discuss the steps required to get started online.