It’s funny, when I talk to people about small business websites, one of their goals is to try to compete in the marketplace with companies that are 10 times as big. Luckily, websites are the great equalizer. You (David) can fight them (Goliath) on an even playing field. You do not have to be the little guy in the public’s eye. If your website is top notch, you can compete with anyone. Now they may have a bigger budget, but if your site is done correctly there is no way someone can tell that you are a small company. Perception is a major factor, and even more so when your company is mainly eCommerce with no brick and mortar presence.
I actually met with someone and one of their goals was exactly what I discussed above, that is to not appear like a small company. They deal with a lot of big institutional type customers globally and they want their website to reflect this. They don’t want to look like a mom-and-pop shop with a couple of employees. Well, we will be able to achieve this despite a smaller budget. We will do this by finding alternative methods of getting to the same end point. We will build a great-looking site with an e-commerce component that will allow their customers to order easily and to hopefully improve her percentage of closed business. Anyone can work with a huge budget, but we find solutions that small businesses can afford.
This is why I love the internet-age. This is truly a time is history where the little guy can compete. If you are good at what you do, or have an excellent product, you can get it to the world. And the mechanism to deliver your product or service to the world is your website.
If you need help developing a new website and want to tackle the Goliaths of the world, contact us today.
When dealing with eCommerce, one thing is crystal clear, use the KISS principle: Keep it simple stupid.
First off make it easy to find products. Seems so elementary but I can’t tell you how many times people go to an eCommerce site and can’t find what they need.
Second, if you have add ons, make it simple to add them, either have a dropdown menu or checkboxes on the same screen as the product. I was recently on a client’s website and after you add a product to your cart, you get a popup window (really). Then you can select one of the items. BUT you then have to again hit add to cart. At that point you get another popup and have to again pick an add on and again get a popup. The result is very few add ons.
Third, and the most important thing is the checkout process. People want easy and quick.
As Bruce Lee once said: “In building a statue, a sculptor doesn’t keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential.”
So when working on your checkout make the process as easy as possible, either a simple step AJAX checkout or a one page checkout.
If you follow these 3 simple rules, you will have success, provided of course you are selling a product people want. You won’t have abandoned carts, and you will maximize your profits with increased add ons.
The beauty of eCommerce today is that there are many options to choice from. Because there are several which are open source, the cost is low and many times free. If you need help, contact me and I can walk you through some options.
