Brick-and-Mortars Go Online

Many traditional store owners view the web as a threat, but they shouldn’t. Instead, they should look ahead, see giant retailers like Walmart squeezing them, and turn to the online world as the solution to an ever-encroaching problem.

Making the change to a world of digital merchandising and advertising can be scary. Most of you reading this were probably a bit overwhelmed at one time yourselves. Not to worry, Solid Cactus delivers end-to-end solutions with a proven track record to handle the heavy lifting and put your mind at ease.

Brick-and-mortar store owners have a big advantage over most straight e-commerce owners. They have a physical business with physical inventory, unlike those who inched into e-commerce, paying for our stores with personal credit and using drop shippers.

They can use their inventory, assets and the financial track record of their business to get loans and go online with a bang. Rather than inching in, they can hit the ground running.

To some this may sound risky, and if you were doing it all yourself without the help of experts I would agree. Fortunately, you are not running blindly. You have a helping hand to guide you.

Our Advice

If you have a product offering that you know will move (and you should know what will sell if you have been in business offline for any significant amount of time), then there are only a few questions you need to answer to know if people will buy it online…

1. Can people make a buying decision without actually touching the product? Are seeing and reading about a product enough to believe it is worth buying?
2. Are there any logistical obstacles that need to be overcome (interstate restrictions, damage from shipping, etc)?
3. Will shipping cost due to the weight or the size of the items become a barrier to the sale?

If you can answer the above questions positively, then you’re off to the races.

The approach is simple: DON’T MESS AROUND

1. Start with a store that is ideal. Do it right from square one. Focus on functionality just as much as aesthetics. Create a store that will convert visitors to customers for the most amount of money in each purchase and keep them coming back.
2. Market! Market! Market! Since you are probably warehousing your products you already get good margins, and with this you can…
1. Spend more in Pay-Per-Click advertising to acquire a customer.
2. Offer more attractive affiliate programs to attract large affiliates and super affiliates (these guys are great because they only get paid when someone orders - Pay-for-Performance vs Pay-Per-Click).
3. You can spend a little on creating good solid content that nobody else is using to get organic search engine traffic.
3. Be ready to manage these orders
   1. Cactus Complete Commerce will manage the online channel so that there is no additional labor cost to process orders and fulfill them.
   2. Call Center Services will ensure that your physical store is not being bombarded with calls from all the traffic that we are sending to you.

The result is this: The day your store launches, you will be getting orders, managing orders and doing it all cost-effectively with one phone call for easier access to every facet of your online revenue channel.