Whatever industry you’re in, if you are indeed running a business for which money is exchanged for goods or services, one of the best ways through which to boost your sales is with an e-commerce site. If you decide to do this, you can help the functionality of your site by choosing to invest in things such as barcoding or inventory management software. Things like this will help to streamline the business but of course, it all depends on the host site you use. There are quite a few options at your disposal when it comes to picking a host site, although some are better than others which is why you need to be careful in your choice. The last thing you want is to be stuck with a half-baked e-store that looks great on the eye but doesn’t deliver as far as the crucial functionality goes.
It’s an actual thing – if getting your own e-commerce site was as simple as buying a licence through the popularly advertised solutions, everyone and their grandma would have an e-commerce site of their own by now. So here’s what you have to look out for:
Out-the-box e-commerce site licences
This is not to say that absolutely everything you come across under $5,000 will inevitably have you regretting your decision to try and get your own e-commerce site popping, but generally speaking the out-the-box licences and solutions currently available in the market don’t quite measure up in practice, if you’re made to spend less than $5k. You also have to be careful of the other side of the coin, that being chancers who masquerade as e-commerce web developers who can’t quite get the job right, but take advantage of the minimum fee guideline of $5,000.
You’d do much worse to go with offers that just look too good to be true, like a sub $10 monthly membership fee to a hosted e-commerce solution. Many of these work well enough, but the total costs of everything you’ll supposedly need to actually have a fully functional e-commerce platform will be much, much higher than typically first represented. When you plan on launching an e-commerce website, you’ll have to consider a number of things like user experience, website design, payments, linking payment platforms to your CBD merchant account (or whichever account your business has) for credit/debit card processing, and a ton of other things that might not be obvious when you start out. Moreover, having a merchant account can be beneficial for e-commerce stores to accept online payments through the website. You might contact merchant accounts providers like Easy Pay Direct (https://www.easypaydirect.com/cbd-hemp-online-merchant-accounts/) who could provide secure payment gateway access for your e-Commerce shop selling CBD products or other products.
An element of trial-and-error?
Yes, there might be an element of trial and error involved with finally getting your e-commerce site up and running so that you can boost sales considerably, but the path to success starts with collaboration. Incorporating the many elements of a good marketing strategy, as mentioned in this marijuana marketing guide and the many others out there, takes time, effort, and most importantly, manpower. Do you think the owners of Orange County CBD are geeks who built the e-commerce platform themselves?
It could very well be, but probably not, because this example makes reference to a specialist supplier and retailer of CBD products, which is a highly specialised area of expertise. No truly competent e-commerce web developer would have the time to split between mastering their craft of building and maintaining an e-commerce platform and making sure to supply the highest quality in the product being sold via that e-commerce platform!
So if you don’t quite have the capital to rope in the services of an e-commerce developer you’d be referred to by the likes of Orange County CBD, you could always get into e-commerce via something like an Amazon FBA business. That’s a form of collaboration through which you can learn the ropes regarding elements of e-commerce such as distribution and inventory management, while building up capital in the form of profits to ultimately have your very own e-commerce platform running independently.
The bottom line is that it’ll be a very significant investment which is required, so you shouldn’t even think about cutting corners.
Hey, I’m Rory and I am the ultimate accidental geek.
Born in London I was never interested in technologies until I started a part-time job at Apple and now I can’t get enough. Join me as a help you navigate the world of tech with some of my fellow geeks.