Show that you can order almost anything, publish your events properly, and put staff recommendations front and centre, since those are what a large retailer cannot replicate.

What the site is actually for

An independent bookshop is not going to win on catalogue size, price, or next-day delivery, and a site built to compete on those loses on all three.

What it can do is be a specific place with specific people in it, holding a curated selection, running events, and able to order anything a customer wants.

So the site's job is to make those visible, and to make the practical things easy: opening hours, whether something is in stock, and how to get a book you do not have.

A shop that presents itself as a small version of a large retailer has removed the reason to choose it.

Say that you can order anything

The single most underused message in this trade.

A great many customers do not know that an independent shop can order almost any book in print, usually within days, at the cover price.

They assume that if it is not on the shelf, the shop cannot help, and they go elsewhere.

Say it plainly, on the home page rather than buried: if we do not have it, we can usually get it in a few days.

Make the request easy, with a short form or a message route asking for title, author, and a contact, and confirm what happens next.

That one message converts browsing into transactions and requires no stock system at all.

The stock question

The second is the reason to be cautious. A customer who travels in for a book the site said was available, and finds it sold, has had a worse experience than one who was told to ring ahead.

Events are the thing to get right

Because they are a genuine differentiator and are almost always published badly.

Each event needs its own page with the date, time, whether booking is required, the cost, and enough about the author or the subject to decide.

A single page listing everything is harder to share, impossible to find in search, and gets outdated invisibly.

Keep past events online rather than deleting them, since an archive demonstrates that the programme is real and continuing.

Publish them early enough for people to plan, and make each one easy to share, since attendance comes largely from people passing it on.

Add them to your business listing as well, which is where a proportion of people will see them.

A worked example

A bookshop had a site with hours, a photograph of the interior, and a page saying events were held regularly.

Attendance was mostly people who had seen a poster in the window.

They gave each event its own page with a description, added them to the listing, and started announcing them by email a fortnight ahead.

They also added a line on the home page saying they could order almost any book, with a short request form.

Event attendance roughly doubled over six months, and the order requests became a steady small stream of sales that had previously gone elsewhere.

Neither change required a stock system or an online shop.

Staff recommendations

The thing a large retailer genuinely cannot do, and the reason people choose an independent shop.

Publish short recommendations with a name attached, which is what makes them worth reading.

Keep them brief and specific, saying who a book is for rather than summarising it.

Refresh them, since a recommendations page unchanged for two years suggests nobody is reading anything.

These also work well as the material for a newsletter and for social posts, which solves the problem of what to publish and reuses one piece of writing three times.

A shop with a distinctive selection should say what it is distinctive about, since somebody looking for that will not find you by accident.

Selling online, carefully

Since it is the obvious suggestion and frequently the wrong one.

Running a full online shop means competing directly on price and delivery against retailers built for it, and losing.

Better options are usually narrower: taking orders for collection, selling gift cards, selling a subscription, or offering local delivery.

Those play to being local rather than against it, and each is far less work than a catalogue.

Where you do want a broader catalogue, several arrangements exist that let an independent shop sell online without building or stocking it themselves, which is worth investigating before commissioning anything.

Start with collection orders, which use the stock you have and bring people into the shop.

The shop as a place

Worth building into the site, since the physical space is the product.

Photographs of the interior, so somebody knows what they are walking into.

Whether there is somewhere to sit, whether children are welcome, whether the space is accessible, and where to park.

Those questions decide whether somebody makes the trip, and they are rarely answered anywhere.

Accessibility in particular is worth stating explicitly, including the limitations, since a customer who cannot get in needs to know before travelling.

The counter-case

A bookshop can run on very little website.

A complete listing with hours and photographs, plus a social account showing new arrivals, covers a great deal, and many excellent shops operate that way.

Events and recommendations also demand ongoing effort, and a site with a stale events page and recommendations from 2019 is worse than one with neither.

Only commit to what you will maintain, since abandoned freshness is more visible in this trade than in most.

Say you can order anything, publish events properly, keep recommendations current, and leave the rest.

What to build first

  1. Hours and location, with parking and access.
  2. A line saying you can order almost anything.
  3. A short request form for orders.
  4. A page per event, with an archive.
  5. Staff recommendations with names.
  6. Photographs of the inside.
  7. Collection orders before any online shop.

Step two is the highest return in this list, since most customers do not know an independent shop can order what it does not stock and go elsewhere on that assumption.

A comparable retail case is covered in what a bike shop website needs.

Frequently asked questions

What should an independent bookshop site do?

Show what a large retailer cannot: a specific place with specific people, a curated selection, events, and the ability to order anything. Competing on catalogue or delivery loses.

What is the most underused message?

That you can order almost any book in print within days at cover price. Many customers assume that if it is not on the shelf you cannot help, and go elsewhere.

Should I show live stock?

Cautiously. It is expensive and hard to keep accurate, and a wrong yes costs more than no information. A quick check by message is usually enough.

How should events be published?

Each with its own page giving date, time, booking, cost, and enough to decide. A single list page is hard to share, invisible in search, and goes stale unnoticed.

Why do staff recommendations matter?

They are the thing a large retailer cannot replicate. Keep them short, specific about who a book is for, with a name attached, and refresh them.

Should I sell online?

Not a full catalogue, which means competing on price and delivery and losing. Start with collection orders, gift cards, subscriptions, or local delivery.

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.

Customers assuming you cannot get a book?

Put a line on the home page saying you can order almost anything, with a short request form. That is the cheapest sale available to you.

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