Online Shopping

We have several clients with commerce-enabled websites allowing customers to shop for and complete their purchase online. We also have several clients who are interested in adding online shopping to their website, but they’re not sure if they should take the plunge. This week’s update will explore some of the cost considerations to help you understand if and when online shopping is right for your business.

User Experience

Like so many business services, you can outsource your customer’s experience through online shopping services like PayPal, or you can manage those transactions through your website. The difference boils down to the kind of transaction you want your customers to experience.

For example, you’ve most likely come across a PayPal button at some point, and whether you noticed it or not, clicking that button redirects your web browser to a different website. Sometimes the differences in appearance are subtle, and other times they can be quite drastic. And depending on the buyer’s comfort level with online shopping, they may or may not choose to complete the transaction.

Integrating an online shopping solution into your website will certainly cost more than services like PayPal, but the primary benefit is you will have much greater control over your customer’s user experience. This is especially important if you’re concerned about maintaining brand consistency. Not just logos, fonts, and colors, but also your corporate personality, the way you provide customer service, and the feeling your customer gets when they do business with you.

More Fees

Regardless of how you incorporate online shopping into your website, you will have to pay more monthly and annual fees. At a minimum you will need a payment gateway to process credit card transactions and an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate to protect the financial information collected on your website. There’s also a good chance you’ll spend more money every month on additional services including:

• online shopping software for your website;
• higher website hosting fees if you need to support larger volumes of website traffic;
• increased online marketing expenses to promote the products and services you’re selling online;
• and extra maintenance costs (internal or external) to manage your online sales (inventory, fulfillment, accounting, etc.).

Increased Sales

The bottom line when it comes to online shopping is you must consider whether or not you expect an increase in sales volume that is greater than the cost. In the final analysis if what you can sell through your website is less than the hundreds of dollars a month at a minimum it will cost to offer online shopping, then it’s not worth the investment.

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.