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Brick and Mortar Going Online

August 8th, 2018

Many brick and mortar companies look at online stores like Amazon, Target and others and their profits decreasing. They wonder what are they doing that I am not. Do people not care about touching and feeling a product and don’t care about the personal touch and service that they used to be? The answer to that can be yes and no. Some buy online for the convenience and they don’t have the time they used to have to go to stores.

If you are a brick and mortar company and looking to make an online presence, there are a few things you need to do before making the leap. First, do you have a website? If not get with a web developer as soon as you can to put a game plan together and build one. What are you going to do to differentiate yourself from what is out there right now? If you don’t do this, you are going to get lost in the world wide web, there is too much competition out there. Don’t worry about being everything to everyone right off the bat. Start off slow and you can always make tweaks to the site and add products. You don’t want to be overwhelmed right off the bat or not be able to deliver your goods promised. That is an easy way to lose customers and creditbility.

You will also have to decide if you will be fullfilling the orders. Or will you outsource to another company. Also keep in mind that you will need a payment gateway and shopping cart on your website to make it convenient for your customers to pay you.  Keep in mind you will have to take pictures and post all of the products that you are selling and put those online. This is a lot of time and work to do! Descriptions and explanations of each product can also make or break your site. If you don’t have enough information, your potential customer could leave, to much and they could be overwhelmed.

There can be many other items to look at before going online, but one final one that is a must is finding a good SEO and marketing company to make sure your site even shows up online in searches and doesn’t get lost in the mix! This process can seem impossible, but with good planning and research, you can make the choice on if you want to go online or not! Keep in mind that almost 90% of sales still happen in person and the shift to online sales is slow, so all is not lost! Make the decision that will be best for your company and one that you can manage!