Let’s help you navigate setting up an online store in a day or less. There are three key steps to getting you up and running.

If nothing else, over the past few years we’ve learned the importance of having a strategic digital sales strategy in place, no matter what sort of business you run. Having a digital storefront provides an additional stream of revenue you should build on over time.

Many retailers we’ve worked with have little more than a rarely visited Facebook page to hang out as a digital shingle. But even if this is the case, you can leverage assets offered by the brands you sell to quickly put together an online store.

Even if your retail business is mainly driven by local foot traffic, setting up a web shop gives your customers a way to browse what you have to offer at their leisure. In this manner, you’ll sell more and have a direct route to following up with clients in weeks and months to come. You can more easily “bundle” items that go well together as you would instore, and offer incentives to buy on the spot.

Here’s what to do:

1) Choose a platform

There are a good number of services that can help you put together an online store very quickly. If you’re a digital newbie don’t try to go it alone with a Wordpress site. The beauty of choosing a platform like Shopify or Squarespace is that you’ll never have to sweat security updates, platform updates that leave your site incoherently scrambled, or hackers that commandeer your site for nefarious reasons (all of which have happened to me personally on Wordpress).

Here are the most popular options.

Shopify

Shopify is far and away the most popular of all commerce platforms, and can be navigated, styled and adapted to sell products in a day or less.

Shopify is a good solution if you have 20+ products you want to list.
Unless you’re working with a designer who can code and create a sleek look independently, spend the money on a pre-built store. You can shop through the templates available in Shopify or pick one from Envato. Once you’ve picked one out, simply upload it into Shopify and fill in the blanks with your own images and information. Expect to spend about $180 on a template - you’ll save much time and frustration than if you try to wing it on your own.
Blogs are available on Shopify, but they have very clunky interfaces and are narrow in design options.
There are lots of apps that you can connect to your Shopify store that range from free to quite pricey, and offer things like suggestion selling, messaging, product bundles, shipping estimators, and more. It’s a favorite site for drop-shippers.
Shopify’s email builder is a bit clunky but connects well to an outside email delivery platform like MailChimp.
Shopify plans start at $29 per month, with 2.9% + 30¢ per online transaction.

Squarespace

Squarespace is also a great online store option, although it’s necessary to format each and every product by hand and there aren’t a lot of variations in terms of product page layouts. The advantage of Squarespace is that once you get to know the way the site works, you can virtually create any layout or look you want. As such, websites made with Squarespace have a more artistic, crafty look.

You can also create a beautiful blog and endless informational pages which in the long run will help your site survive and thrive in the digital jungle by giving you endless options to refresh your site and keep shoppers coming back.

Squarespace is pretty limited when it comes to apps that offer automatic bundles, and suggestion selling – but you can create these on your own.
Squarespace has a built in email list builder which connects directly to their email delivery service that you can subscribe to for an additional fee. The fee is less than MailChimp and the interface easier to use.
Squarespace commerce plans start $26 per month, with 0% transaction fees.

WIX

Wix is a service very similar to Shopify and Squarespace. Its templates are very easy to choose and adapt for a polished look. The platform does lack some of the customization options available on other platforms, but what it lacks in options it makes up for with ease of use. It has an easy to use email template that you can use to send your customers updates and sales news. Commerce plans start at $23 per month.

Etsy

Etsy is a marketplace site that allows you to set up a shop page and upload just about any lifestyle product you like. The site was originally created to offer handmade products only, and it still favors users who do so. At one time users would be banned if they did not personally handmake each product offered on the site. Over time the need to expand and compete has led to a loosening of this rule, and as such there are listings for many products that are drop-shipped or sold through retailers. The site lets you get up and running quickly, but unless you are willing to advertise your products with a competitive budget your store won’t see much traffic. Etsy charges a listing fee of .20 cents per item and a transaction fee of 5%, plus a 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee.

Facebook And Instagram Shopping

Facebook and Instagram Shopping are other examples of marketplace sites that offer a direct sale option in-app. Our concern with Facebook and IG shopping is that it isn’t a property that you as a brand own, and the rules can change at any time (as they always do with Facebook) leaving you and your online business wondering how to navigate yet another turn down this winding retail road. If you’re going to go through the paces of uploading images and descriptions for a store, we’d rather see you do it for a property that you, as a brand, control and own. That way your investment of time is not wasted if Facebook incorporates a policy that doesn’t work for you. Another issue is that IG marketplace, just like Amazon, offers competitive products right underneath your listing. You may find this helpful, or harmful, depending on what it is you’re selling. Facebook charges a selling fee of 5% per shipment, or a flat fee of $0.40 for shipments of $8.00 or less.

Amazon

Amazon is a little marketplace you may have heard of 😊 It’s one of the most trafficked in the world, and you can list away for a fee and a percentage of sale. If you’re strictly a retailer and don’t offer exclusive products this road is loaded with potholes. For example, say you offer a cute pencil holder that is made by a well-regarded manufacturer. You have about 5 of them in your shop and you want to sell them online. You spend the time and pay the fee and list them on Amazon, only to discover that 50 other retailers have offered the same item but at 50% less than you’re offering it. Or, when shoppers find your pencil holder on Amazon, the site lures your customer away from your store by offering five other pencil holders in the same price range from other merchants right next to your listing.

2) Get Products Listed

Whatever service you choose, the goal is to get it up and running FAST!

Prioritize the categories and products that are the biggest draw for your customers.

Many gift shops are selling feel good products like candles, scented soap, slippers, readers, books, journals, funny tees, hand lotion, bubble bath. If you’ve established yourself as an upscale store, don’t try to compete with Walmart or big box stores. Try to offer items from your stock that are especially appealing to your local demographic.

Clothing boutiques should focus on comfortable clothing, pajamas, cute tops that look great on Zoom and IG, hair accessories, jewelry, and cosmetics.

Initially you’ll want to draw on the resources of the brands you currently offer. Most brands spend a good deal of time artfully photographing their products in both silhouetted (white background) and lifestyle shots. While it may be tempting to post lifestyle shots, if you’re combining a lot of various brands that have different styles, you store will look quite hodge-podge and thrown together. By choosing product shots with white backgrounds, you can draw the overall look of your store together with web styling so that it is well branded to you alone.

You’ll need to decide whether you want to use brand names, or simply rely on descriptions. The latter is more common with less expensive clothing brands and accessories in which there is little branding that would be recognizable to a consumer. These are generic brands that have little draw outside of their immediate availability and accessible price. Your customer will be drawn to the look of a cute top or pair of earrings, not necessarily the name of the manufacturer.

With fragrances, skincare, cosmetics, and other well branded products, you’ll want to digitally shout the name of the product followed by the description. These categories of lifestyle goods spend copious hours honing and refining their branding message and as such consumers have a built-in familiarity with them.

Good descriptions sell products, no matter how recognizable they may be to your customers. You’ll need to spend the time to describe the color, fabric content, size chart, dimensions, fragrance ect of each product you list. Most manufacturers offer these readily via catalog, look book or website. Simply cut and paste and you’ll be good to go.

3) Add stock images and pre-designed elements for appeal

To draw people through your store you’ll need extra photos to help illustrate it. Over time you can shoot some of your own, but to get things going quickly you can choose from a dearth of stock photo sites to get just the perfect look and layout. Our favorites are:

Unsplash – a large catalog of totally free photography. Take the time to search deeply through Unsplash as the most popular shots tend to appear first in any given search. These top shots are widely used and as such can make a site look a little generic. The site also has limited search capacity and a query for something like “blond woman” will result in shots of women, and shots of blonde things, but necessarily a “blond woman”. While the site has great shots of blonde women, you’ll have to dig by pulling up shots and looking down the list of comparable images below it.

Shutterstock – an even larger catalog of royalty free images that are less trodden than Unsplash, but are sold for a fee. In addition to fashion, beauty, lifestyle and other types of photos, there are thousands of graphic design elements that you can use to style your online store. You can buy shots in small packs or sign up for a one-month subscription that will give you about 50 images for about $100.

iStock – if you want an image for a hero or category head that hasn’t been used on hundreds of other sites check through iStock. Their pricing is still royalty free but is at a rate that precludes most frequent photo buyers. You can search for site exclusives and you’ll be amazed at some of the work that’s available. There are a number of pricing plans to choose from, the least expensive is $99 for 10 shots (you must use them in 30 days or less).

Wella! You’re all done.

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