Adding a Shop to a Site That Never Had One

The question that gets asked first

Which platform should we use.

It is the wrong opening question, and it is asked first because it is the only one that feels like a decision somebody else can make for you.

The platform matters far less than people expect. Several are perfectly good, the differences between them affect a minority of businesses, and a shop fails for reasons that have nothing to do with which one was chosen.

What determines whether this works is operational, and all of it should be settled before anybody signs up for anything.

Selling online is a different business

Worth stating plainly, because it is routinely underestimated by businesses that already sell things.

A shop counter and an online shop share a product and almost nothing else.

Online you need accurate stock figures, somebody to pack and dispatch, packaging materials, a shipping account, a returns process, a way to answer questions from people you cannot see, and a policy for what happens when something arrives broken.

None of that is software. All of it is somebody's job, and if that somebody is you, it is time you are currently spending on something else.

The four questions before the platform

• What exactly are you selling online, as a specific list.
• Who packs and posts it, and when in their day.
• What does shipping cost you, per item, honestly.
• What happens when it comes back?

If any of these has no clear answer, that is the work to do, and no platform decision will substitute for it.

Shipping is where the margin goes

The most common reason a small online shop turns out not to be worth running.

Businesses calculate a product margin and then discover that packaging, the courier, the time to pack, and the failed deliveries consume most of it.

Heavy, bulky, and fragile items are the worst offenders, and they are frequently exactly what an established local business sells.

Work out the real cost of getting one typical order to a customer before deciding anything. Include the box, the filling, the label, the courier, the ten minutes of somebody's time, and a realistic allowance for the small proportion that go wrong.

Then compare that with your margin. Occasionally the answer is that this product should not be sold online at all, which is a useful thing to learn in week one rather than month eight.

Not everything should go online

A shop does not have to carry your whole range, and the assumption that it must is what makes many of these projects too large to finish.

Good candidates are items that are light, robust, consistent, do not need explaining, and do not need to be seen in person.

Poor candidates are anything requiring measurement, fitting, advice, or a conversation about suitability, and anything you would normally check with a customer before selling.

Starting with twelve well-chosen products is a much better project than starting with four hundred, and it produces a working operation you can extend rather than an unfinished catalogue.

A worked example

A hardware business decided to sell online and began by planning to list their full range, which was several thousand lines.

Costing a typical order stopped that quickly. Their average basket was small, most items were heavy relative to their price, and shipping a twelve dollar item was costing eleven dollars.

They changed the plan to forty higher-value, lighter items, added free collection from the shop, and set a delivery threshold above which shipping was included.

Collection turned out to be roughly half of all orders in the first year, from local customers who wanted to reserve something rather than have it posted.

That was not the business they thought they were building, and it was profitable from the first month, which the original plan would not have been.

Collection is underrated

Worth considering separately, particularly for a business with premises and local customers.

Letting somebody order and pay online and collect in person removes shipping cost, removes packaging, removes delivery failures, and brings a customer into the shop where they frequently buy something else.

For a local business it is often the version of selling online that actually makes money, and it is much simpler to operate.

It also works as a first step. Running collection-only for a few months teaches you the ordering, stock, and customer-question parts without the shipping problem, and shipping can be added once the rest is working.

Stock accuracy becomes urgent

A tolerable problem in a shop becomes a serious one online.

In person, a customer asks and somebody looks. Online, the number on the page is a promise, and selling something you do not have produces a refund, an apology, and frequently a bad review.

Decide early whether your stock figures can be trusted, and if they cannot, either fix that first or sell only items you always hold.

The common failure is running the online shop from a stock system nobody was previously relying on, and discovering that it has been wrong for two years without it mattering.

What the platform decision actually turns on

Once the operational questions are settled, the choice is narrower than the marketing suggests.

Hosted platforms handle payments, security, and updates for a monthly fee and are the right answer for most small businesses.

Adding a shop to an existing site keeps everything in one place and makes you responsible for the maintenance and the security of a system that now handles money.

The questions worth asking are whether it connects to your accounting, whether it handles your tax situation correctly, whether the total cost including transaction fees is acceptable at your volume, and whether you can export everything if you leave.

That last one is worth checking before signing rather than after.

The counter-case

There are businesses for which none of this caution applies.

If your product is light, high-margin, needs no explanation, and customers are already asking whether they can buy it online, the analysis is short and the answer is yes.

There are also situations where selling online is not really about the sales: a professional showing what they stock, a supplier whose trade customers want to reorder without phoning, or a business whose competitors all sell online and whose absence is noticed.

Those are legitimate reasons, and they change what success looks like. A shop that takes twelve orders a month and saves forty phone calls is working, provided somebody decided that was the goal before it launched.

Before you choose anything

1. List the specific items you will sell online.
2. Cost one typical order, including packing time.
3. Name who packs it and when.
4. Write the returns process as it will actually work.
5. Check your stock figures are trustworthy.
6. Consider collection only for the first few months.
7. Then choose a platform, and check you can export.

Steps one to four take an afternoon and prevent most of the ways this goes wrong.

The first listing is covered in putting a product online for the first time.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.