Spring 2011
Online Retail 101 By Kristin Larson Contino

Article Resources

Retailers

Art and Jane Berger
The Wooden Duck, Skippack, PA
woodenduckshoppe.com

Mike Donovan
Giftys
giftys.com

Experts

Allisyn Deyo-Martin
Deyo Designs
deyodesigns.com

Cathleen Ellis
WordStream
wordstream.com

Brian Lawrence
Local Traffic Builder
localtrafficbuilder.com

Paul Price
Creative Realities
cri.com

Using your website to sell product can be challenging. Rankings on search engines, product updates and more take time. Here are some ideas for more efficient online retail tools.

Art and Jane Berger, owners of The Wooden Duck in Skippack, PA, have found e-commerce to be an invaluable tool for their gift store.

“We bought the shop in 2000 and soon realized that having bricks and mortar wasn’t enough; you have to do more to get your name out there,” Art says. So they hired a Web developer and launched woodenduckshoppe.com in 2004.

Once The Wooden Duck introduced e-commerce, customers from across the country and even around the world started to order. “Online retail is 24/7. You’re always in front of people and never closed,” Jane says. “Even when you’re not in the store, you can still get business, which is great on holidays or when the weather is bad.”

Exponential growth

As the numbers show, the Bergers are part of the big surge in online retail. E-commerce has grown every year since 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, and a study released by Forrester Research last March shows that online retail sales in the United States could reach $249 billion by 2014, growing 60 percent from 2009.

While e-commerce continues to be robust, selling online can be intimidating for an independent gift retailer. It takes time and money to build an effective online presence, and once your site is up, the work doesn’t stop there. Gift retailers must make a dedicated effort to keeping the site fresh, along with handling the associated orders. The benefits of selling online however, certainly outweigh the negatives for many.

Enhancing bricks and mortar

As for the Wooden Duck, its site features some of the store’s more popular gift and collectible lines, as well as toys and carved wooden ducks. Although the shop in Skippack sells a large selection of women’s apparel, the Bergers decided not to sell clothing online due to the inherent issues with sizing and returns.

For the first few years the Bergers rented space to store their online inventory, but now The Wooden Duck has an in-house warehouse attached to the store. They also hired a full-time shipper to manage the site’s orders. “We did it ourselves at first, but eventually it became clear we needed to hire someone to help so we could be out in the store and helping customers,” Jane says.

Art adds that fast shipping is key when it comes to online retailing. “If you place an order with us today, it’s going to be shipped out today. Customers appreciate that type of service.” Adding the website has enhanced The Wooden Duck’s in-store sales. “There’s less overheard with the website, so what margin I have online, I invest in the store. Our site also makes the store look very interesting and piques the shopper’s curiosity. We meet customers all the time who are from out of the area but are drawn to visit our store in person,” Art says.

The online-only gift retailer

While a fair number of brick-and-mortar gift shops like The Wooden Duck have an online presence, there also are many online-only gift retailers. Starting a business online can be ideal for the person who doesn’t want to worry about the capital or staffing associated with opening a physical store.

“The Web is an equalizer,” says Brian Lawrence, owner of Local Traffic Builder, a company that provides online marketing, design and consulting for the bridal and event industry. “With the right type of website, a gift business, even if it’s home-based, can be presented in an elegant and prestigious way.”

Another benefit to exclusively selling online is no inventory to worry about. “A lot of online retailers use drop shipping and usually are not touching the product. The website takes the orders, sends them to the manufacturer and then the products are drop-shipped to the end user directly from the manufacturer. Inventory is very expensive and takes up a lot of capital so this can be a huge benefit for an online retailer,” Lawrence says.

More freedom is another advantage of not operating a physical location, according to Mike Donovan, president of Giftys.com, a virtual mall representing numerous gift stores across the United States and Canada. “There is nothing greater than being able to clock out at 5:00 or take the weekend off to go to the beach. Brick-and-mortar gift shops don’t always have that luxury. They’re bound to a stricter schedule.”

Finding a developer

Whether you are a bricks and mortar store looking to add e-commerce or a new gift concept looking to exclusively sell online, there are important things to consider before you launch a site.

The most crucial is to find a good e-commerce platform and web developer. “We had a great developer at first, but we grew very quickly and he couldn’t keep up,” Art says. “You need someone available 24 hours a day who can support you; someone responsive who won’t nickel and dime you for every little change.”

If you’re not sure where to start in your search, look at business websites you like and find out the name of their developer. Consider using full-service companies who do more than just design a website, but offer a range of additional web marketing services. Decide what is important to you in a developer (compelling design, social media expertise, search engine marketing services) and make sure the developer you choose has the ability to execute your needs.

First impressions are everything

Once you’ve selected a web partner, there is the issue of design. Art suggests that retailers avoid website elements that appear gimmicky. “Stay away from things like music and don’t be too cute with your site. It has to look professional.”

Paul Price, CEO of Creative Realities, a digital brand experience agency with offices in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and London, adds that existing retailers should take care to make their site reflect the presence that shoppers already know. “The shopper should be reassured through the site’s design that this is the same brand representing the same values that they are familiar with in the real world.”

A retailer can achieve this by using the same color palette as the bricks-and-mortar store and prominently featuring the logo that a customer already knows. For example, the Bergers feature a photo of their store on the website to assure customers that The Wooden Duck is an established retailer.

“Right off the bat people know you’re bricks and mortar when they see the photo, and they feel good about supporting a family-owned company,” Art says.

Lawrence agrees, stating that online retailers should “give shoppers the feeling that they will be treated like an in-store customer. Let them know they can call you with questions and that you’re not a faceless website. It’s a more personal experience.” The Wooden Duck, for example, has a toll-free number for online customers to call them in the store.

Price also emphasizes the importance of a clean and simple design. “The online customer has no patience for overly complicated user interfaces. The experience needs to be as seamless as possible, with very clear and obvious visual cues. The trend is away from cluttered, busy, electronic lists to simple and very designed experiences.”

The functionality of the checkout process is another element to consider, Art says. “You don’t want to be barraged with ads and upsell items as you check out. Customers want to get on the site, buy, get out. You can’t have a 30-second delay when checking out.”

SEO for dummies

Once you have a website up and running, the next challenge is getting customers to find it when they search online for your gift categories. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the hot-button issues out there today for online retailers. Hiring an SEO company can be pricey, but fortunately there are some simple, inexpensive solutions that retailers can handle on their own.

The easiest way to improve SEO is by making sure your site is content rich. “What really gets Google and other search engines’ attention is copious amounts of content. The more copy you have on your website, the higher you go up in search rankings,” says Allisyn Deyo-Martin, webmaster for Pinnacle Publishing, the parent company for GIFT SHOP magazine.

Retailers could include detailed descriptions for each product, creating an “about us” section with background on the company and posting information about new product lines, events or sales. A blog is an easy way to generate plenty of content for your site.

However, content alone is not enough—you need to select the right keywords to include in your copy and build your SEO strategy around.

Two good strategies for gift retailers are to target local keywords and niche keywords. For example, if a shopper is searching for where to purchase Pillow Pets locally, she might type in “Pillow Pets Nebraska.” Or, if you specialize in a particular niche (for example, “Holiday Pillow Pets”), you want to make sure that your website comes up when someone uses that particular search.

“Go after keywords that aren’t too competitive or expensive but will still drive relevant traffic to your site,” says Cathleen Ellis, product manager at WordStream, a firm based in Boston offering web-based keyword management solutions for SEO and pay-per-click campaigns.

For example, instead of focusing on a popular keyword like Pandora—which could pit you against many other websitesfor competition—consider working with more general ones like “Pandora silver charm,” Ellis suggests. “Focusing on a variation of a popular keyword is a better strategy for a small retailer.”

Once you have your list of keywords, focus on including them in your site. Each page should have a clear “keyword theme.” For example, if you’ve chosen “Pillow Pets Nebraska,” feature this keyword in your website’s copy (along with other related keywords), in the URL name of the Pillow Pets subpage (for example, “XYZgifts.com/Pillow_ Pets/Pillow_Pets_Nebraska”) and in the meta title of the page about Pillow Pets (what appears in the top bar of your browser window, such as “XYZ Gifts, Nebraska Pillow Pets retailer”). Do this for each subpage of your site, focusing on the related keywords for each line of products.

Updating your site on a regular basis is critical to maintaining an SEO advantage over your competitors. “If you don’t update consistently it’s viewed as stagnant and you lose ranking,” Lawrence says.

Having a presence on sites like Yelp and Yahoo! Local is becoming increasingly important for SEO, according to Lawrence. “If one store has 30 reviews on Yelp and another store has no reviews, the first one is viewed as a more reputable and credible local resource from Google.” Sign your store up for free profiles on these sites and encourage customers to submit reviews by linking to the pages from your website and posting links via Facebook.

Another resource retailers can use is Google Places, a free tool where businesses can create a profile and add images and videos. When someone does a local search on Google, a group of stores that are Google Places listings appear right on the first page. “If you’re in an area without much competition, you can get found on Google without much effort just by creating a Places profile,” Lawrence says.

As for design, a major no-no for SEO is using an introductory “enter site here” page. “An introductory page is the worst thing you can possibly do. Your main URL is always going to be the most trafficked page, and if there’s nothing on it but a picture, Google says there’s nothing there,” Deyo-Martin says.

Although building an e-commerce site from the ground up can be challenging, the risk is worth the reward. “Just take your shoes off and jump in. If I can do it anyone can,” Jane Berger says.

Kristin Larson Contino

Kristin Contino is a freelance writer and copy editor based in Philadelphia. She writes for a variety of print publications and blogs, and also covers women's fiction for examiner.com.




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