Cyber Monday for a Store That Is Not Online Yet

An ordinary Monday at the till

Today is Cyber Monday, the online end of the weekend that began on Friday. For a shop that sells only across its own counter, it looks like any other Monday in December.

Its customers are having a different day. Many are at a desk or on a phone, buying presents from whichever shops let them do it from there.

Some of those presents would have come from you: a gift for a relative in another province, a stocking filler ordered over lunch, a voucher for someone whose taste is a mystery.

Nothing needs to change today, in the middle of your own busiest month. The useful question is what the smallest working step would be, and how to have it running by next November.

The steps, smallest first

• Online gift cards, bought on the website and delivered by email.
• Reserve and collect, holding an item to be paid for in the shop.
• Click and collect, paid online and picked up at the counter.
• A short catalogue of best sellers, with prices and real photographs.
• Local delivery on set days, within a set area.
• Shipping across Canada, with everything that comes with it.

The first is the one to start with. A gift card has no stock to count and nothing to post, so it tests whether customers will buy from your website before anything harder is built.

Gift cards before anything else

Many point-of-sale systems now include online gift cards: sold on a web page, delivered by email, and redeemed at the till like any other card. Check what yours offers before paying for anything new.

The page needs the amounts, how the card arrives, whether it can be sent on a chosen date, and how the balance is used.

In BC, a gift card sold for a dollar amount generally cannot carry an expiry date, so do not print one.

It also reaches a buyer the shop never could: the aunt in Winnipeg who wants to give your shop as a present but will never walk through the door.

Reserve and collect

A reserve button on a product page sends a request. Someone checks the shelf, puts the item aside with a name on it, and replies to confirm; the customer pays on collection.

It avoids the hardest part of selling online. The website does not need to know the exact stock of every item, because a person checks before anything is promised.

What it does need is a reply time the shop keeps, such as two hours, and a hold period, such as three days, before the item goes back on the shelf.

A catalogue, not the whole shop

The usual mistake is deciding that everything in the shop must be online before anything is. A shop with thousands of items never finishes photographing them, so nothing launches.

Start with the twenty to forty items that sell steadily, that customers ask for by name, and that you reliably keep in stock. Give each a proper photograph, a real description and a price.

Those pages earn their keep beyond the sale. Someone searching for a particular product with your town's name finds a page saying you carry it, which no hours page ever could.

A worked example

An independent gift and home decor shop on a busy street in a Lower Mainland suburb had never sold online. Its website had opening hours, a few photographs and a phone number.

Every December the phone carried the same two questions: whether a particular candle, print or throw was in stock, and whether someone out of town could buy a gift card for a relative who had just moved house.

Both took staff away from a busy counter. A gift card sold by phone meant card details read aloud and a card sent in the mail.

In January the owner decided against a full online store.

The shop added online gift cards through its point-of-sale system in the spring, and a reserve button on thirty best sellers in September.

Reserve requests arrive at the counter's email, someone checks the shelf, and the customer hears back within two hours.

Both December questions now have an answer on the website, at any hour, without a phone call.

What to leave for later

Shipping is where small shops lose the most time when they start selling online: packaging, carrier rates, parcels lost or broken, and returns of things bought unseen.

So is a live stock link between the till and the website, which has to stay accurate all day.

Both are worth doing once the smaller steps work. Neither is a reason to wait.

Small, but built properly

A gift card page and a reserve button are small builds, but they handle payments and customers' details, which is where care pays.

Card payments should go through the processor's own secure form, so card numbers never touch your website.

The site needs HTTPS, pages that work on a phone, a clear pickup and refund policy, and a confirmation email that says exactly what happens next.

The calendar for next year

The quiet weeks after the holidays are when to decide which step comes first. Gift cards can be running by spring, and reserve and collect by late summer.

October is for testing with real orders from staff and friends. November is not the month to learn a new system, for the same reason nobody changes the till the week before Christmas.

When each piece goes live, tell customers where they already are: on receipts, a sign by the till, the shop's email and its Google My Business listing.

The counter-case

Some shops sell things people need to see, touch or try: fabric, eyeglass frames, anything fitted or made to measure.

For them the website's main job is bringing people in, with gift cards as the online step.

A shop of one-of-a-kind stock, such as vintage clothing or antiques, cannot keep a catalogue current easily. New arrivals posted weekly, each with a reserve request, may suit it better.

And a shop that is already stretched can start with gift cards alone and stop there for a year. Smaller is fine.

Start with one step, and have it working before next November.

Before next November

1. Check your point-of-sale system for online gift cards.
2. Add a gift card page by spring.
3. List thirty best sellers you always stock.
4. Add a reserve button to each of them.
5. Name who answers reserve requests each day.
6. Leave shipping until pickup runs smoothly.
7. Test everything in October, before the rush.

Step five decides whether the rest works. A reserve request that waits a day for an answer is worse than no button at all, because the customer has already concluded the shop is slow.

What a store that already sells online checks on its busiest morning is covered in Black Friday morning checks.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.