Taking it all online – like, right now.

In case you haven’t noticed (lol), things have kinda changed recently. Knowing that a lot of businesses would be facing some serious and hard fast changes, we knew we needed to call up a pro. So we got in our good friend and lead tech chick Korii Scrivener from Moolah Digital to talk about how you can bring your business online digitally – and fast.

Thanks to COVID-19 forcing people into self-isolation, businesses are now scrambling to get online to sell their products and services and continue making money.

If you are in this position, it might seem daunting trying to figure out the right fees to charge for shipping and how to set-up payment gateways (you’re probably thinking, what on EARTH is a payment gateway?). We feel you. But by breaking the whole process down into smaller steps (and getting help if you need it), you’ll be able to get online quickly without too much overwhelm.

And given the circumstances, don’t be too caught up on perfect. You can always work on perfecting things as you go along. The focus should be on just getting the ability to sell on your website up and running and making it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you.

Already have a website? Great, use what you have!

If you already have a website, that’s great! Depending on your provider, you’ll just need to take a few extra steps to enable the ability to take online payments.

If your website was built with WordPress

You’ll need to install an eCommerce plugin such as WooCommerce to enable online selling. Check out the WooCommerce website for advice on getting started. This plugin is completely free and provides an easy-to-follow wizard guide to help you get started with your online store.

If you have a Squarespace website

You’ll need to be signed up to Squarespace’s Commerce plan (priced at $34 AUD p/month). Once you’ve joined this plan, it’s super easy to set-up some products and connect to a PayPal or Stripe account for processing payments.

If you have a Wix website

Similar to Squarespace, you’ll need to be signed on to one of their eCommerce/business plans (starting from $18 USD p/month).

If you’re not sure what needs to be done to enable your existing website for selling and processing payments online, contact your website provider or developer for advice.

Don’t have the time or the ability to set up eCommerce facilities on your website?

Start off small – even just setting up a simple online sign-up form and continuing to charge people via bank deposit or manually taking credit card payments by phone could be enough to get you by. It depends how much demand there is for you and your services/products and just how many items you plan to sell online.

If you end up spending too much time on admin and manually processing payments, you may be best off moving towards automating things and processing payments online.

Don’t have a website?

That’s fine! Before diving in too quickly and making costly mistakes, it’s best to just step back and think about a few things first:

1. Consider the costs of going online
   
   Unfortunately setting up an online shop is not free and there are a few costs you need to consider including:

• The whole process of selecting services or products and completing checkout to make payment. Is the process intuitive? How long does it take? Are there any parts of the process that are difficult or don’t make sense?
• Making sure customers receive an order confirmation email once they’ve purchased from you.
• Making sure the right prices for delivery have been set.
• Page speed – how quickly do your web pages load? If they’re a bit slow, you might need to look at optimising your images or getting help with your website’s back-end settings.
• Is it easy to use your website on a tablet or mobile phone?

When selling online, make sure that you are able to cover these costs and set your product/service prices accordingly.

2. Are you predominantly a product-based or service-based business?
   
   If you’re a product-based business, we recommend you check out Shopify for getting set-up as quickly as possible with an online store. Shopify was made for eCommerce and makes the whole process of setting up an online shop super simple from selecting a template to connecting to payment gateways for taking payments.
   
   If you’re a service-based website, you’re best off looking at WordPress (via a website hosting service such as Siteground or VentraIP), Squarespace or Wix for setting up a website. Although great for basic websites, in the long-run you could end up facing some functional/design constraints with Sqaurespace and Wix, but the idea here is to get you up and running as quickly as possible. In the long run, we suggest WordPress for greater website flexibility.
   
   When setting up your site, you’ll need to get enough information up about your business, what you do and who you work with followed by a page listing your services/offerings and buttons for people to purchase these offerings. For example, you might be a personal trainer who’s selling various services such as group training sessions, one-on-one training sessions and nutrition consultations. Set-up a page providing details of each session and a “Buy Now” button which takes the customer straight to checkout to purchase that session.
   
   
3. How will you take payment from customers?
   
   To process online payments, you need to integrate your website with a payment gateway. Some of the most common payment gateways (and you’ll be familiar with these) include the likes of PayPal, Stripe (for credit card processing), AfterPay, Square and Zip Pay.
   
   Before deciding which gateways to use, it’s important to check their fees and make sure these are being covered in the costs of your products/services. It’s free to use most gateways – however they will charge a fee for each transaction.
   
   It’s also important to check what payment gateways are accepted by a website provider. For example, Wix websites at this time do not allow AfterPay. If AfterPay is a must-have for your business then you’ll need to look at another website provider such as WordPress or Shopify.
   
   

Before going live

Before going live with your new online service, it’s vital that you test things out as thoroughly as possible so as to cause as little chaos and stress as possible once you’re live.

Some of the things we recommend you test include:

• The whole process of selecting services or products and completing checkout to make payment. Is the process intuitive? How long does it take? Are there any parts of the process that are difficult or don’t make sense?
• Making sure customers receive an order confirmation email once they’ve purchased from you.
• Making sure the right prices for delivery have been set.
• Page speed – how quickly do your web pages load? If they’re a bit slow, you might need to look at optimising your images or getting help with your website’s back-end settings.
• Is it easy to use your website on a tablet or mobile phone?

Going live

You are now ready to sell online! Tell your social media followers, tell your email list subscribers, tell your local community!

Make sure you know how to check your website analytics so you can see how much traffic is coming into your website and how much of this traffic is converting. By having this information on hand, you’ll be able to continuously make improvements to your website and optimise it for sales over time.

And be sure to get feedback from your customers – they’re the ones using your website and for the loyal customers in particular, they’ll be more than happy to help you.

We hope this blog post helps you at least get an idea of the steps required to get yourself up and running with selling online. In the long run, you’ll want to make sure your website truly reflects who you are as a business but for now? Don’t stress too much about having the most top-notch website in the world. What matters is that it’s easy to navigate and purchase – you can sort out everything else as you go along.

If you have any questions or want to know more, click here and get in touch. Or check out the services page to see what’s on offer. Alternatively, head over and follow us on Instagram and see what’s happening with us daily!