With our store in that cool neighborhood strip-mall, no local competition, and lots of foot traffic, life was good, and many couldn’t see the need for a fully implemented online commerce.
At My Small Store, we went online back in 2017, mostly because of the competition of marketplaces (Amazon, eBay). It wasn’t an easy, smooth process. There were many mistakes, many hesitations, and many headaches, but we went there.
When the virus came, we shut down for two weeks thinking it will give us time to reorganize the store. Then, we waited two more weeks, and we got ready for at least four more. We were prepared, and e-commerce became our main source of income.
Many stores tried and still try to go the online route to complement their curbside delivery. Nowadays, it’s easy to do even with limited technology skills. So easy, anyone can do it.
Quick setup, upload inventory, fulfill orders, and ship! Or, that’s what they say, at least.
When we started, we tried and tried, but received no orders. This resulted in hard-earned cash thrown through the wide-open window. We almost gave up many times.
Using Google, it’s simple to find the perfect e-commerce platform. At first, we picked BigCommerce based on the terrific reviews, lots of features, three months free then $30 a month to start with – perfect!
A few weeks later, we realized that we would need “modules” to synchronize stock levels, manage backups, manage shipping, communicate with customers, manage advertisement and sales channels, and something we didn’t know about: SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is one of the essential features many ignore - that’s what brings or should bring buying visitors.
Adding all these modules together, it added up to $500 a month. Like many other physical store owners, we looked somewhere else. We picked Shopify – the most extensive, according to many, the best e-commerce platform that even allows us to manage our store POS. All this for $29 a month, isn’t that fantastic?
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