Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to take your brick-and-mortar store to an online ecommerce store.

Transitioning from brick-and-mortar to ecommerce may seem like an uphill battle, but trust us, it’s much easier than you think. Since you have a physical store, you’re already halfway there — a lot of the activities executed in your storefront will also take place in your ecommerce store, but in a digital format.

Why Making the Transition From Brick and Mortar to Online Store Makes Sense

Now more than ever, consumers are making purchases online.

Not only will you better equipped to accommodate your existing customers, but you’ll also open your business up to a whole new world of customers. You’ll be geographically limitless! With a storefront, your customer reach only encompasses those that live, work, vacation or pass by your business on their daily commute. With an ecommerce store, however, you’re open 24/7/365 — including holidays — and your customer reach is national, rather than just local or regional.

While the vast majority of Australians are online shoppers, they aren’t just sitting at home and shopping from their computer. Most online shopping occurs on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets.

What to Consider Before Making the Transition Online

Now that you know why you should take your storefront online, before you can actually do so, you will need to consider which ecommerce platform will best suite your needs. Think of this as your digital storefront or retail space, and your point of sale system combined. It should not only display your inventory in an attractive and user-friendly way but also provide insights into your business performance.

Platform selection is the backbone (and probably one of the most important) in taking your brick-and-mortar store to an online store. We can provide you with a simple solution that covers all your ecommerce needs.

What it Takes to Transition Your Business Online

Taking your store from offline to online isn’t necessarily the easiest job, but by no means is it impossible. A little planning and research on your part, and a little guidance from us will help make the transition from brick-and-mortar to ecommerce as simple as possible.

Plan.

 This should go without saying, but we’ll say it anyway. As with any other business strategy, you will need to take some time and plan out your efforts — what tools you will need, the resources it will require, and the overall investment it will take to bring your brick-and-mortar business to an online environment.

A Platform. Part of the planning process includes selecting an ecommerce platform to launch your digital store. You will want to make a list of desired features and price points, while distinguishing between your must-haves for today and something that is scalable for future growth.

Shipping and Fulfillment.

Opening an online store means getting a product to your customer is no longer as easy as bagging it and handing it across the checkout counter. To simplify the process, we can help select a shipping provider that can integrate directly into your ecommerce platform which will give you a host of shipping options with just a few clicks.

Resources.

Last but not least, now that you’ve opened a new sales channel, someone needs to manage it. As a business owner, that someone is often you. We will make sure you have a solid understanding of how the new ecommerce channel operates and don’t be afraid to let some of your more tech-savvy employees help out on the digital end if needed.

The Benefits Of Having An Offline And Online Store

Since it has been pretty much business as usual up to this point, let’s get into the fun stuff and talk about a couple of benefits from having both an offline store and an online one. The most obvious is that you have the best of both worlds, it’s as simple as that. Customers can find you online, and at your physical location — you can provide local appeal and a national draw that will help set you apart from competitors.

Another benefit that is worth mentioning because it is such a buzzworthy term these days is, omnichannel. Consumers want an omnichannel experience when it comes to shopping. So what does omnichannel mean? It means that if you are providing a seamless and consistent experience across all sales channels, physical and digital. A modern example of something like this would be the Dunkin’ Donuts’ app. Coffee lovers everywhere can download the app to their smartphone and add a credit card. Once setup, they can walk into the nearest store and pay for their coffee using the app while quietly collecting rewards in the background. They can also order ahead from the app, therefore allowing them to skip the line when they go to pick up their order.

Don’t think that you have to go all out and develop your own application, there are other ways you can easily, and more cost-effectively achieve the same seamless experience leveraging your ecommerce and your brick-and-mortar store. For example, allow customers to buy online and offer an incentive to pick-up in store. Once they’re at your shop, they are more likely to look around and buy something else.

Many customers who add items to a cart and never click ‘buy’ (we’ve all been that customer before) just because they’re browsing. Those customers account for the 50 percent of consumers who conduct a local search on a smartphone and then visit a store within a day. Eighteen percent of these customers will eventually make a purchase. So while they might be e-browsing on the web today, they are coming in and buying from you tomorrow.

Comparing Ecommerce and Brick-and-Mortar Shops

Since we have spent most of the time talking about what is means to take your brick-and-mortar store to an online one and some of the benefits to having both, it’s only fair to chat about some similarities and differences, so you can effectively manage both channels.

On the surface, your storefront and ecommerce store are the same. They are both points of commerce where goods and services are exchanged for currency, and both depend on customers and excellent customer service to prosper.

Beyond that, the parallels will start to branch off into their unique segments and will require slightly different management processes. For example, tracking peak-hours for in-store purchases is going to be a different process than tracking what days and times (remember, you’re open 24/7/365, now) get the most traffic to your ecommerce store. The best way to find the former would be to run a report, or a combination of reports, from your POS system to determine peak hours. The latter would be found using a platform such Google Analytics that’s integrated into your web store.

Although you are more or less tracking the same statistics, you are doing it a slightly different manner using different tools and platforms. This is the type of perspective you want to have and apply when it comes to managing the physical and digital segments of your business.

Enhancing the Shopping Experience Online and Offline

Not only do we want to compare the operational differences from a business owner’s perspective, but we also want provide some insight into the shopper’s experience in a brick-and-mortar storefront compared to an online store.

The absolute biggest difference between having a brick-and-mortar store and an ecommerce store is the customer experience. Being able to look someone in the eye, have a conversation face to face, and explain the value of your products is something that just can’t be replicated online. It’s also one of the biggest advantages to brick-and-mortar shopping. That doesn’t mean that you can’t create a stellar customer experience online, however, (just look at Amazon) but it does mean you have to take a different approach to achieve a similar outcome.

From an ecommerce perspective, the best way to adjust to the lack of human interaction is to create an engaging, informative, user-friendly, helpful, and responsive online presence for your customers. This can be done not only on your website or ecommerce store, but also through social media.

Adopting Technology for a Seamless Transition

To simplify the transition from brick-and-mortar to online, the best tool, or technology to have in place, is a point of sale system.

Your POS system will handle everything from inventory updates to payments and tax collection. Because there are so many other things to consider when selling your products online, the last thing you want to do is create more work for yourself by choosing a POS system that doesn’t automate the management of your inventory.

It’s also important to understand how your POS system and your ecommerce platform will communicate. Is it a two-way or one-way sync? Meaning, if you make changes to the inventory in your POS, is that change also reflected in your online store and vice versa?

The key is to choose an ecommerce solution that is both easy to use and allows for seamless communication between your online store and your brick-and-mortar business and we have cracked the code.

Now, because launching your brick and mortar store online isn’t a casual decision, you want to make sure you are going into this with a strong direction and business model. Feel free to contact our team to talk about your store and throw you ideas across the table.

Call us on 49336888 to find what to do next!