Get your clients selling online
Many businesses are realising that they can reach a wider marketplace by offering their products and services for sale online. No traditional shop overheads, reaching a wider audience, automated order management and payments, open 24 hours a day... these are just some of the benefits.
To help your client build an online store can be challenging. Not least because they need an easy way to update their product base! But once you've got that sorted, you need to consider shopping cart functionality for buying multiple items, payment integration, stock management and fulfillment. These are just some of the basics that every online store needs.
Our in-house built system does this and a lot more! Of course, there are many free systems you can download and try to integrate within your beautiful design - but often they can be over-complicated and not really do exactly what your client wants. We have a base system we use, which is then customised specifically for every project. Some of the features that may be needed include:
Featured products
All products are equal, but some products are more equal than others. Ultimately all products are for sale, but there are often some which the shop-owner has more of an incentive to sell, either because they are bestsellers, the store is overstocked, or they return a higher profit margin. Either way, our system can display featured products in a number of ways, including those specifically selected by the shop owner, or those most recently added to the store.
Additionally, for each product, the shop owner can select alternative or complementary products, which help to persuade the customer to buy more or better products.
Discount codes/coupons
Nothing encourages online shoppers more to make a purchase than thinking they are getting the best deal. Obviously prices have to be competitive, but additional incentives can be offered in the form of discount codes. These codes, set up in the administration panel, offer a percentage or cost discount on orders over a minimum spend. This is often used in site promotions, and to send a discount code to customers to encourage them to return to place a second order.
Delivery incentives
Another factor that encourages shoppers to place an order is the confidence that they will receive it within a given timescale. Our delivery incentives functionality allows the shop owner to specify how long it will take for a product to be delivered, which the system uses to encourage purchases - 'order before noon and receive this item on Thursday'.
Product variations
As well as having a stock of many products, each of these may have variations - including colours, shapes and sizes. Our ecommerce system allows the shop owner to specify these variations, along with individual product codes and stock availability - making sure they only sell what they have in stock!
Integration with Google Products
Once the store has been built, work needs to be done to bring the paying public to make purchases. Whilst we don't specialise in Search Engine Optimisation (although all the sites we build are 'search engine friendly'), we can create exports which can be uploaded to Google to appear in their Product listings - another way of putting your client's products directly in front of their customers.
Trade/wholesale
If your client is selling products to trade and doesn't wish to publicly display their prices, our trade sale system requires all users to have an account prior to viewing prices. Further to this, prices can be altered based on the quantity of product ordered - ideal for wholesalers.
Sounds interesting?
We'd love to chat through your client projects and can offer you a cost-effective, robust and secure solution. Please contact us.