From Bricks to Clicks
Many business owners that have a retail location want to move into the online world. And this makes sense for a lot of reasons. First, even when your store is not open, you can still be making sales 24/7, 365 days a year. Second, depending on your lease, if you are paying gross rents, your online sales may not fall under your gross rents saving you between 1 – 10% (or higher) on your monthly rents.
Third, no need for expensive SEO specialists. The Big G, Google, loves e-commerce stores. Not only do you have lots of unique content, and pages, but Google has a spot specifically for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
Fourth, because you are actually taking inventory, you can price aggressively compared to dropshippers and pop ups. Finally, you can fill it by dropshipping from your suppliers products you don’t actually carry in your store.
Syncing your Onlinse Store and Point of Sale
The biggest issue most companies used to have was syncing their inventory to a point of sale system. And lets be honest, if you have thousands of SKU’s in your store, then yes, it can be difficult. And, if you are using a specific Point of Sale system, then integration becomes even more difficult.
But most single store operations don’t need a specialized point of sale system if they are selling simple products. And in fact, many are moving over to POS systems designed around an iPad as a register. Square was the company that pioneered it and others have been following suit, many in industry specific verticals.
But, if you want to start selling online, you still have need to sync up your inventory unless you have quick turn around for products. Luckily, Shopify came out with a Point of Sale system that makes it easy to run your store and sync inventory between your retail and online operation. It is probably one of the cheapest ways of having a full functional and connected point of sale and online store.
Could you imagine having an only store, plus a point of sale system plus a register, scanner and printer for as little as $70 a month? If you use Shopify with Shopify Payments, it comes with Shopify POS included. You just pay an extra $40 a month and you get a cash drawer, card reader, scanner and printer.
If you haven’t thought about looking into it you should. It is actually a decent system for smaller retail systems. Add in one simple app and you can allow for pick up in store when customers buy from your online store.
