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Not selling online… Why?December 26th, 2013

The numbers are in for the XMAS season, online shopping is up again. Brick and mortar shopping is down.

So the question is this: why aren’t you selling online?

Now obviously not every business has goods to sell online, but if you are a retailer (or wholesaler for that matter), you are missing the boat without an online component. I hear some people say, we have too many items, it would be too hard to put everything online. Ok, if you don’t want to put everything online, how about a list of special items for the web? Think of items that are reasonable to ship and that are a bargain online. People search online via Google Shopping and other comparison shopping tools. So if your price isn’t competitive, you won’t sell too many items. Can’t think of what to sell, how about offering a gift card for sale online?

eCommerce gets easier and easier to add to your website. If you have a WordPress site for instance, you can use WooCommerce, an excellent eCommerce plugin. Only want to sell one or 2 items? Just add PayPal buy now buttons.

One of the benefits of eCommerce is that it really is inexpensive to sell online. If you already have the items in stock, the cost to run an eCommerce site is only marginally higher than a regular website. You have to have a secure certificate, and be ever vigilant updating software. Other than that costs are few. Now of course if you small business starts selling an inordinate amount of goods you may need to hire fulfillment people. But what a great problem to have!

Online shopping will continue to increase. Stores with no ability to sell online will continue to decline. Companies with a dual strategy will have a chance to survive and flourish. The question is, which will you be?