Are you thinking about starting an online store this year? If so, there is one thing to remember, “you have to provide stellar service” for your customers. Good Bookkeeping habits in your store and in Quickbooks will help you to provide that stellar service. It may seem like common sense, but many businesses have a hard time adopting a simple process. Here are some helpful tips to get you on the right path.
1 Tell Them Your Name and Store Location
Many small business operators today have a physical location. Whether you have a physical location or just an online store, you need to tell people who you are and where you are. Putting you P.O. Box and physical place on your website or online store will help to build credibility with your customers. This will also boost the trust factor by 50% when they are ready to purchase from your store.
2 Make Your Life Easier For Sales Tracking
Do you have an old cash register or are you using PayPal generated buttons on your website? If so, stop now! Get yourself into an updated POS system for your physical store. For your online store, get a full blown e-commerce storefront like Woocommerce.
A good store system will simplify your life when it comes to orders. It allows you to process orders, track progress and show orders completed. It will also allow you to put items on sale and promote online through social media. Another advantage of getting a POS system that integrates into your website is it creates less confusion when tracking customers.
3 Good Pictures and Pricing
Take the time to snap good photos of your products before you put them online. Here are some tips if you don’t know how.
Have you seen those websites with multiple pictures or 3d pictures? Those are pretty neat. That is one way to go when putting pictures up there in your store. You don’t have to go that complex. If you can’t take photos, hire a professional, it will make a world of difference in your sales.
Make sure you put your pricing up there with each product photo and a good description of the product. Customers want to read what the product is about, see what it looks like and choose all the options available. These elements help to convert prospects into customers.
4 Make Ordering Simple
Take the time to craft your checkout process. It should be super simple and hassle-free for customers to checkout and pay online through a trusted source. A lot of companies today store customer credit card information online in their store. This can be very dangerous if you don’t maintain proper encryption and security to protect that data.
Storefront systems like Shopify, big commerce provide that service for you, but what about WordPress and Woocommerce? These two methods are what they call self-hosted solutions, and you are responsible for all of the security. The best option is to integrate these systems into Paypal which is the most significant online bank and most trusted bank in the world for e-commerce.
As the customer shops in your store, they should be able to add products to cart and keep shopping. When they are ready, they can choose to check out. This should be a one to two-page process that allows them to enter their info and then pay. Once the payment has been processed, you should receive an email and the customer should too.
On a final note, don’t forget to upsell your products before they checkout. That is a trend right now with online stores. It also helps to boost your sales online.