Value of Ecommerce for Salons and Spas
If your salon or spa business has a website, adding an online store that features the products you carry is an ideal way to amplify your revenue and diversify your channel.
Many salon and spa owners have held off setting up their own shop for a number of reasons. If you shied away because you didn’t understand ecommerce, thought it would be too difficult to manage, or were worried it would be too expensive, here are some facts about how profitable and easy online shopping features can be that will encourage you to reconsider.
FAQS About Ecommerce
What is Ecommerce?
Short for electronic commerce, ecommerce is simply the selling and buying of services or products electronically, over the internet.
These types of digital marketing services can be a great supplement to a brick and mortar business, or can be the primary method of transactions for others.
Why Have Your Own Online Store?
The beauty of ecommerce is that unlike traditional stores that must display products for customers to look and touch, and are dependent on salesclerks to answer questions and complete sales within finite hours of operation, online shops can sell products 24/7.
While this will never replace the high-touch services provided by salons and spas, the ability to service people during their work day, or after hours when they remember they are out of the favorite shampoo or styling product is priceless.
Owning your own online store has many benefits. It allows you to add a variety of products and collect one hundred percent of the profits. While it can be tempting to sign up for a third-party platform, the ongoing commissions or monthly fees detract from your maximum sales revenue. Salons may only receive 25% commission on online sales, which is a significant dent in your margin. You will rapidly recoup your initial investment with your own online store, and experience a higher return on your investment soon thereafter. Online shops are also a great way to foster customer retention and loyalty.
What Does It Cost to Set Up Ecommerce?
Depending on the number of skus or products you will be selling online, it is surprisingly inexpensive to establish an online shop. After a consultation with our experienced team to determine the products you want to sell, we can quickly prepare a customized proposal that gets you on your way to selling more merchandise.
How Are Customer Payments Collected?
Through a payment gateway that we set up with options like PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net.
We favor Stripe as it is easy to use and, only charges 3% per transaction making it less expensive than other methods. If you have Bank of America, or Chase Bank or already use Authorize.net. for payment processing, we can connect Authorize.net if you prefer.
To assure shoppers that your site is safe to use, we will set up a SSL certificate, a secure portal that tells people the site is protected for payment processing.
How Are Orders Shipped?
We set up online shops to automatically calculate rates for shipping via USPS, UPS and Fed Ex. Once you set up an account with whichever shipping provider(s) you prefer, we can optimize it in as a shipping solution. As today’s customers expect to receive their products quickly, within 1-2 days, we recommend USPS as they ship the fastest locally. All you have to do is box up the order, affix a label and schedule a pickup. It is that easy!
How Do I Get Started?
To make your website ecommerce ready, our website developers will assess your website theme to see if it can accommodate an ecommerce store, then determine which shopping software component, or plugin, will be the most compatible. If your theme properly supports various plug-ins and software solutions, it allows us to better tailor your online store. We will also confirm that it will give you the functionality you need.
We have extensive experience working with all types of ecommerce platforms. The most popular platform we currently utilize for salons, spas and other local businesses, is WooCommerce as it is a great option for existing WordPress platforms that allow for the plugin. Once your business website platform is determined, we select the most optimal ecommerce platform plugin and program it to your existing website.
What Will I Need to Provide?
We ask that our customers provide all assets in regards to the products they would like to sell. For hair care and skin care products, this typically includes product images, names, prices, UPC/SKU, descriptions, benefits, usage, purpose, who the product is best for, ingredients and/or any other pertinent information. Your brand partners are typically able to share marketing assets via a portal or downloadable link.
How Long Will It Take to Set Up?
Depending on how many products you would like to feature and the complexity of your store design, it can take two to three weeks for us to develop a customized ecommerce extension to your existing website.
Will It Integrate with My Existing Software?
The ecommerce extensions we program will interact with existing software. We have a customized approach in working with each client and their existing software capabilities to ensure that there are no interruptions to your current process. Mattisante is adept at selecting the best solutions that work with our client’s unique platform and in-house software.
How Do I Acquire New Customers?
As part of a comprehensive brand marketing strategy, we recommend SEM, or search engine marketing that will drive traffic to your site and shop to maximize conversions.
- Google ads – In an effort to promote your business to shoppers with an intent to purchase, we run targeted campaigns that focus on your specific geographic location, and feature your selection of products and brands within a pre-identified radius.
- Email Marketing – We recommend running campaigns that entice existing customers to buy from your online ecommerce store to ensure that they will purchase from you directly!
- Google Analytics – This tool allows us to measure all efforts via reports that indicate where your website traffic is coming from, consumer demographics, conversion rates from each source of traffic and much more.
Why Mattisante for your Ecommerce Store?
Experience Counts! Mattisante is more than just an online marketing agency. Our team brings their extensive knowledge and years of experience in beauty and ecommerce with premier brands like Aveda, Davines, Dermalogica, Pevonia and Yuni Beauty. We understand the beauty business of salons and spas which makes us highly fluent in creating online shopping features for local salons and spas. We don’t believe in a one-size-fits all approach and customize each store to meet the unique needs and preferences of each business.
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