Speaker 1: 0:00

If you just assign all these things to all these people and don't have anyone kind of overseeing it, it's probably not going to go very well for you, Similar to your storefront, your brick and mortar location. If you didn't have a good manager, then your store is going to get dirty and not be well merchandised and all of these things. So I think you have to treat e-commerce just the same way.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. I'm Tina and.

Speaker 3: 0:32

I'm Amanda and we're here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses, so you can reach more people and change more lives.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Hey there, welcome back everybody Today on the podcast. I'm really excited because we are digging into some material that Amanda knows a ton about because she's had experience with multiple shops using e-com platforms and I know that a lot of the natural products retailers that we work with Amanda either don't have an e-com platform or they are working with one that they might not love.

Speaker 1: 1:07

So what we'd love to cover today and, by the end of this episode, what we'll be talking about are the benefits of using an e-commerce platform. So, if you don't have one, what you'll get out of it if you do, and things to ask yourself before going online. And again, if you've already got an e-com platform, don't worry, this will still apply to you, especially if you're thinking about changing anytime soon.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Then we're going to discuss a few of the different e-com platforms that we've used with clients before and pros and cons for some of this. And finally, if you stay to the end of the episode, we're going to have all the be-wares be-ware of certain things if you use an e-com platform and how it can affect your business. So, Amanda, get us started. Okay, so I'm sure that pretty much all of you have shop online, and the fact of the matter is that over 80% of Americans do shop online. So there's definitely a huge demand for e-commerce and right now, all of if you look at retail sales globally, 21% of all retail sales globally take place online. But what that means is that so many 79% of retail transactions being done in brick and mortar locations. So it begs the question do you need to have e-commerce before we hop into? Whether or not someone needs that? I would have guessed way lower on people going to brick and mortar stores. That's what I thought too. Yeah, and they're excited, though. That's a lot of really great hope for our brick and mortar retailers, Absolutely, and I think that they have one. Yes, and I think that the e-commerce conversation it's not a black and white issue. I think for certain businesses, absolutely, you should have e-commerce. For other ones, it doesn't make sense. So we're just going to kind of go through, like Tina said, some of the benefits, pros and cons things to ask yourself before you kind of make that move.

Speaker 1: 3:10

I've worked with multiple retailers that have done e-commerce and have kind of been with them through the launching of that, so this is nothing new to me.

Speaker 1: 3:20

So, yeah, speaking from a lot of experience, of a lot of trial and error too, of finding out that there are some bad apples out there, so lots of firsthand experience.

Speaker 1: 3:33

But one of the first things that I wanted to talk about was just some of the benefits of e-commerce. We all know how expensive it is to operate a brick and mortar location, and one of the beauties of e-commerce is it allows you to expand your reach without having to add another physical location. And I think for people that have really high performing websites where they're gaining visitors and traffic from people outside of their local area, it definitely is something to consider If there isn't demand. If you have a lot of great content that you're putting out, whether it's on your website, on your social media platforms and you look at those analytics and you see you know my stores in Florida, but we're getting all of these hits from Alabama and North Carolina and California even, Like maybe that's something to consider if you're drawing in a lot of traffic from outside of your local community. Yeah, and let's talk about what local is to your brick and mortar store.

Speaker 1: 4:33

And I know we have some anomalies that are in the audience, but for the most part, 10 to 15 miles around your store and radius is what's considered your local community when people are coming in. If you check who's buying from your area, from your area, and especially like multiple times in a month, right? So if we're talking about building bigger baskets while we're there and having people return again and again, it's really that 10 to 15 mile radius that happens around your store. So think about e-commerce. Not just am I going to sell to another state, but what if it's expanding that reach to 20, 25 miles, 30, 50 miles, 100 miles away? You just continue to expand your reach in that radius and it can still be close to home and people feel like they're still shopping global while shopping online. Yeah, exactly, now, that's a great point and I think and we can kind of go into more of the specifics but if you're doing like a delivery service, you can set up perimeters and you know there might be a little bit more of an upcharge if you're 25 miles away instead of 10, but you can, you know, service a larger community just locally without even doing nationwide shipping, and you can do more than delivery action. So another huge benefit and I think in the digital age that we live in, when we're constantly on our phones, being able to have around the clock service. You know I feel like I'm on my phone more in the evenings when I'm off work and just you know, scrolling my phone might see a video come up on Instagram and I'm like, oh yeah, I love that retailer. Maybe I'm going to go to their website and if I wanted to make a purchase I could do that at 8pm, 9pm, after they're closed and still like, while it's fresh on my mind, be able to make that transaction because, knowing myself, I'd probably forget if I didn't have that opportunity or it might just be a lot further down the road To make that transaction. So that is really nice to go to have that around the clock sales opportunity, especially given the emphasis on digital content nowadays.

Speaker 1: 6:49

And just asking a quick question around that for around the clock sales, because I know that a lot of our retailers have perishable items. So I'm curious do, if you go e-commerce, do you have to put all your products on there or can you just do things that are non perishable? You can do either way. It really just depends on your business model and I want to dive into that a little bit more when we talk about different platforms or really more things to think about. But you can definitely do perishable items. You just have to be thinking through more of the logistics of what does that look like as far as delivery goes or shipping. So just be mindful of that.

Speaker 1: 7:30

The next thing, as far as just a big advantage to doing e-commerce is, you just give your customers more opportunities to shop with you. You're showcasing that you have kind of the convenience in mind. Just because everyone's different, not everyone has the luxury of coming in to your store at any given time. Maybe they work different awkward shifts and you want to be able to allow them to shop with you when it's convenient for them. And I think being able to do things that combine both in-store and digital experiences are really nice.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So having the option to buy online and pick up in store, so that way they can do things at their own speed and also still come in and see you and get that community feel. Another great thing about doing stuff like that is you have in-person returns, which is a nice thing to be able to offer, but also have policies in place for people that just want to be exclusive online. But I think there is definitely a time and place to be able to integrate both that in-store experience and online and also make sure that your e-commerce platform feels like you.

Speaker 1: 8:44

And that's another kind of thing in the platform's discussion of hey, here's some platforms that allow you to be a little bit more like yourself. I love it. I think we've talked before about creating a little bit more of that in-store feeling, online in certain ways, that you can do that, and I'm sure we'll cover that in another episode. But people can be creative and they'll have to do it within the e-com platform that they choose. So once we get into the different platforms, I'm sure we'll talk about places that allow you to be more creative than others.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Yeah, so kind of some questions to ask yourself before you go online and if you are already online, still kind of be paying attention, because I think there are some things that you can even consider in these list of questions that we're just gonna go over about. Is the provider that I'm with the right one for me? So the first thing I would ask yourself is is there a demand in your market for e-commerce? And I think it's easy to look at those statistics that we shared earlier about 80% of people shopping online and being like, well, yeah, of course there's a demand, but I think it's easy to feel hasty and feel like you need to. But it was funny. I found I'm a big online shopper.

Speaker 1: 10:05

I do grocery delivery, I do all the things, but I do really enjoy going into stores and I was on the Instacart app the other day and just kind of scrolling through what stores are in my area that do delivery, and I was shocked to see that Trader Joe's was not on there, and Trader Joe's is a national brand, they're everywhere and they have no e-commerce at all, but their sister company, aldi, does, and so I thought that that was really interesting, that you have one store kind of in the same umbrella that does no e-commerce whatsoever, not even through Instacart, and I just thought that that was really interesting to think like, okay, they're always in larger metro areas and they were just like no, like we would want you to come into the store, and so even big grocery store chains don't necessarily have e-commerce, so don't feel like you need to just because everyone else does.

Speaker 1: 11:02

So it has to be right for your business. Yeah, I love that, and also I think one of the ways that you can decide if you have demand in your market is exactly what you were talking about before, especially looking at website statistics. So is there enough volume of people that are coming to your website from other places? That might naturally lead into some sales, and I would definitely have an expert help you look through those numbers, because there can be things like bots, trolling and other pieces that you'll want someone to examine and really tell you okay, we have hundreds thousands of people coming to the website who can't buy because they don't come locally. And really look into that before you start making that decision to go e-commerce, yeah, and I think that's a really good point and one that I didn't really have on my notes here, tina.

Speaker 1: 11:53

So thanks for bringing that up. But kind of looking at your competition and really doing your homework to see if you have even the traffic to support it on your website, because if your website is getting 300 hits a month, probably not worth it for you, but if you're getting 100,000 hits a month, definitely something to consider. And then kind of, like you said, do that deep dive, bring in a professional to really look through those numbers to see how many of these are legit and potential customers.

Speaker 2: 12:29

Yeah, because you also need to take into consideration conversion rates on websites, which are typically between three and 5%.

Speaker 1: 12:37

So that's how much traffic. So you need to work the numbers backwards how much do you need in order for this to pay off and give you an ROI, and then think about how much traffic you need at a 3% to 5% conversion rate to end up with some good sales, and what you have currently doesn't necessarily predict what you'll have on e-commerce.

Speaker 1: 12:58

You might go up in traffic once you get e-commerce because it's available, but don't count on it for making that happen. Yeah, another thing to think about is if your competition's using it and you really want to make that leap, how can you be different from your competition? So I think a lot of that's going to go with the provider that you choose and kind of just how you set that up, but that's just something to think about is how you can differentiate yourself from your competition. The next thing is cost. Like I said, it's a great way to expand your business at a low cost. However, there's still a cost. So you kind of have to be figuring out in the back of your mind what are you willing to pay for and what's going to be your ROI on investment? So seems to be thinking about, as far as expenses would be your platform of choice. Those really vary by platform, whether it's a monthly or an annual fee, transaction fees plus the credit card fees.

Speaker 1: 14:06

So a lot of things to think about. What's the manpower that it's going to take to operate it? Be thinking about the technical side of things, the backend. Who's your nerd on staff that's going to be dealing with all of the integrations with the point of sale or uploading files, with your price changes and things like that. Who's doing product descriptions? And then also, if you're doing curbside, who are your pickers? If you're doing shipping, who's your shipping team? Is it the same Cost of shipping itself?

Speaker 1: 14:36

Shipping is very expensive, so be thinking about if that's something that you want to offer. Do you pass the pricing, pass the cost along to the customer? So all things to think about. And then, kind of like what Tina said, what are your revenue projections based on reverse engineering your current site traffic, obviously knowing that not all of your customers are going to purchase online, but kind of get a rough estimate based off of your conversion rates that are currently on your site. Yeah, and think about it too. I love that. We've talked so much about making the inside of your store beautiful and keeping it up to date and keeping it clean and running well and well lit, and just everyone should know.

Speaker 2: 15:17

you have to do the same with an e-commerce platform.

Speaker 1: 15:20

It's basically a store to manage, but just online. So you do need someone cleaning it regularly, maintaining it and taking a look to make sure that all the product is right, that you have merchandising looking the right way, changing out banner ads, like. There is some work that goes into it that needs to happen regularly, so you have to think of it as a new storefront that you're bringing online. Yeah, and it might be a different skill set that you don't currently have on your team that if that's something that you really wanna do, you might have to look at hiring someone to fill those shoes. So just another thing to think about there.

Speaker 1: 15:59

The next thing is how important is it that your e-commerce platform integrates with your point of sale? So I know for a lot of retailers it's super critical that that's the case. For others, they don't care as much. So, depending on your system, just kind of just have that in the back of your mind. Ask those questions of your e-commerce providers if they do integrate with your point of sale, what that looks like. There are some point of sales systems that play really nice with others and others that don't play nice at all. So definitely do your homework on that component. The next thing is loyalty programs. I know a lot of retailers have loyalty programs and that is something that's really important to their business. So one thing to ask yourself is if I go online, am I able to integrate my current loyalty system with my brick-and-mortar location? Am I able to integrate that online? If.

Speaker 1: 16:57

So what does that look like? So, typically, if you want it to sync perfectly, there has to be some sort of API between your e-commerce platform and the point of sale in order for them to work in both places. So again going back to that, point of sale conversation. Do they integrate how well? And if that loyalty program is that important to your business, how can you integrate that? And if you can't integrate it, then maybe they're out of their way for you.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Yeah, and also if someone says that they integrate with a loyalty program, not only do you want to talk to both companies about that.

Speaker 1: 17:34

To be shorter but also ask for references for people who have done this before, so that you can talk to real people who have seen the integration happen and work, so that you can understand all the work that needs to go into that in order to integrate them, or if it's just seamless and wonderful.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yeah, the other thing that I think is really important to consider is what marketing budget are you going to need to promote this? I think some people have e-commerce as an afterthought. It's like kind of just an out on, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you really want to make this thing really, really work, kind of just think in the back of your mind how much you want to put towards promoting it and have that ballpark number kind of in the back of your mind and know, hey, if we're going to do this, not only do we have the initial setup, but if we really want to promote this thing, we need to spend a couple thousand bucks on add dollars and things of that nature. So just be thinking about, as you're doing, all the math. It's not only the setup, but how do you launch successfully, yeah, which I think marketing budgets are important to talk about anyway.

Speaker 2: 18:48

But let's talk about return on investment for that money that you're spending. So again, a lot of math involved here.

Speaker 1: 18:55

To make sure that you're getting a good ROI. What kind of sales do you need?

Speaker 2: 19:00

to have, and how much more traffic do you need to produce in order to get that?

Speaker 1: 19:04

sale based on your conversion rate. So just sit and spend some time with some numbers and looking at the data that's already there and know you'll have to make an allocation with the time and budget to get you there.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Yeah, one thing that we have found to be really popular and there's businesses- that are completely built around this concept of subscription models where they're shipping your monthly supplements to your door every single month like clockwork, and I think that that in the wellness space, that's a really good idea to have at your disposal, but only a select few platforms allow you to do that.

Speaker 1: 19:47

So if that's something that you really want to incorporate, just choose wisely and we'll kind of go through what we know as far as platforms that accommodate that at this point in time.

Speaker 1: 20:00

And then kind of the last thing is who is going to spearhead this in your company? I was just having a conversation with someone today, actually, and they said, if everyone is accountable, then no one's accountable, and I thought that that was really really powerful, because I think that, at the end of the day, you have to have one point person that has their hands on everything, kind of knows what's going on within your e-commerce division of your company, and that will be able to fall on the sword when things go wrong. And so I think that knowing who that person is ahead of time because it is a pretty in-depth and kind of long and drawn out process to get this off the ground and then to maintain it like a well-oiled machine so I think, just knowing who that person is. And if you don't have that person on your team right now and you really really want to do this, how do you find that person and go through that process of hiring that person if you want this to really be successful?

Speaker 2: 21:11

Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1: 21:12

I love all of those questions to ask because obviously there are a lot of pitfalls that can happen that we'd love to help you avoid before you launch your e-commerce platform. Yeah, oh, one other thing that I forgot was kind of going back to your question do you need to list all of your products online? It depends. I tend to lean towards yes, just because I feel like it gives your customers a full picture of what you have to offer. Obviously, there are going to be certain products that sell better online, but I personally am a big believer in offering all, because I'm like, if you're going to do it, just do it. That's kind of my personal opinion.

Speaker 1: 21:57

I've seen people that do some and then I kind of am left asking the question well, why that product and not that one? Typically, I leave confused because I've been to that store. I know you have all of these other things, why are you only offering these ones? So I feel like it leads to confusion. But that's just my two cents. Do you have any opinions on that? Tina, I think you're probably right that it does lead to some confusion about why something's offered and why it's not.

Speaker 2: 22:33

However, here's my caveat.

Speaker 1: 22:36

There are some products that are in really high demand and so if you wanted to sort of dip your foot in the water of e-commerce and I think there's a couple of platforms that lend themselves more along those lines like we're going to talk about e-commerce where you're building out your own team and that would lend itself to I'm going to try one product or one category of products and then build from there. So if there's something that really shows up well online or people are, it's in high demand and people are asking for it over and over, it might be the place to start in your e-commerce experience and you can set up simple things on e-commerce versus some of the other platforms and give it a try. That makes sense. It's a little bit lower cost of entry, yeah, and I think another thing to consider is if you do like curbside versus shipping.

Speaker 1: 23:32

I think that there are certain things you obviously can't ship, like shipping frozen food. Wouldn't recommend it. There are certain companies that do that, but I think they kind of specialize in making sure that they're packing and shipping their stuff well. So I think that would be my caveat as well is, if you offer curbside or in-store pickup and shipping, what's available for both, and I think obviously a lot of the food should not be shipped if it is perishable. So, yeah, and even some supplements, because some of the supplements are refrigerated, we know that. So if you do have refrigerated supplement items, then that might be more difficult to do in shipping, and so that would be a reason to not have it on your platform.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah, exactly, so as far as companies that I have personal experience with, I just wanna kind of go through what I've seen and try to be as objective as I possibly can. So, yeah, we'll just kind of get started with different possible providers that you can look into. The first one and I think this is probably the most recognizable to most retailers in natural products would be ECRS. So they have a web cart product that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. If you work with ECRS, they've probably tried to sell it to you or at least showed it as an option for your business. So if you have ECRS as your point of sale, it's a great option. It really is. I mean, it is seamless integration into your point of sale, live inventory, any sort of loyalty program that you have in store will be able to translate online.

Speaker 1: 25:23

So I think for the first time E-commerce user, if that is your point of sale, I don't think it's a bad move. The thing that I will say about them is I do feel like they're a little clunky. It's not the most user friendly. I've found that you kind of have to have some code and knowledge, or at least figure out the initial code that you need, and then be able to just copy and paste and adjust things, but it's not as user friendly as I would hope it would be, considering how easy some of these other platforms are to do product descriptions and things of that nature. So it is a little clunky, it's a little outdated and there's certain things that, unless you know, exactly what you're asking for.

Speaker 1: 26:11

They're not gonna offer it to you. For example, to do a custom subdomain, you have to ask for a custom subdomain. That is not just a given. Well, let's talk about what that is. Yes exactly so a subdomain is, so let's just say your website is naturalproductscom.

Speaker 1: 26:29

So if you wanna do a custom subdomain, it would be shopbountifulproductscom. So it's that first part of your domain name and it could be whatever you want it to be, if it's catering or shipping or whatever you want. You have to ask for that capability with ECRS in particular, but also some of these other ones. You just have to know what you're asking for and I think that that is really important for branding. To have that subdomain, it feels, even though it will take you to another site that's not your main site, it does feel more trustworthy, I think.

Speaker 1: 27:10

Yeah, otherwise it's just some random numbers behind their domain that ends up showing up in the address URL in your web browser and that can be confusing for some of your users. People get used to it. So I'm not saying it's make or break, but it is helpful to have that user experience feel seamless. And I will kind of say just going back to the web cart product, it is slowly, slowly getting better, but I personally just didn't have the patience for it. It was just a little too clunky for me. So that's kind of my two cents on that.

Speaker 1: 27:53

But again, if you have ECRS as your point of sale, it is by far the easiest to integrate with. They're one of those people that don't really play nice with others, so you might kind of be stuck with them if that's kind of what you wanna do, unless you have a different plan for why you want to do E-commerce. Yeah, and just a couple of other notes about ECRS because we've worked with clients. They've not been great with SEO. So one of the reasons to go E-commerce is say that you can start showing up for specific products, especially if you have the market on a particular category of products like essential oils. Maybe you're the only one in the area that sells that and then you can start to rank for that. If you have those products listed on your website Just really helps people find you when they search for that locally. The problem is in the past ECRS has not been they don't allow you to change that information for each of the products.

Speaker 1: 28:57

So you might show up for a category or you just might show up that you have supplements, but you can't show up necessarily for individual products or brand names or that kind of thing. Well, and they're about to roll out a new release and as soon as that gets upgraded, then you'll have the capability to go in and tag things and categorize things and put your own meta descriptions into. I'm excited about that for some of our clients because they're gonna start showing up in search results for brand names, product categories and all of those things as well. Yeah, that's super exciting. Again, they're a little slow, but when they get there.

Speaker 1: 29:32

It can get better. So, if you're not aware about the descriptions though, amanda, do, they do descriptions. As far as I know, that is not a thing that they offer and that's a good segue into WooCommerce, looking for where I was going next. So, woocommerce, I love for these subscription capabilities. If you want to offer product subscriptions, I think that they're one of the best that you can do. It's super easy to set up or hire a professional that can do it in a fraction of the time that you could try to do it yourself, but I think that that's a really good option for people. You could do your whole site using WooCommerce as well, but again, it's the integration into your point of sale. You'd want to make sure that they can do that, but if you just want to offer a bunch of subscriptions or single products, if you don't want to go all out on e-com, woocommerce is definitely one that I would check out. Yeah, and it's stackable. That's one of the things I love about WooCommerce, because you can get in there and do something really simple for one or two products or product categories, or you can make it really complicated in doing all the auto-ships and bundling these things together and you can stack things on top of it. It costs more as you stack more items on there, but it's really buildable, which is one reason I love it Right, the other thing about WooCommerce is great for SEO. We love WordPress websites. They rank the best for SEO. As long as you have all the technical pieces, that's good to put together. Well, woocommerce allows all of the meta descriptions and titles and all the things to allow you to show up for specific products, specific brands, product categories, all of those things, yeah, so definitely want to look into. If SEO is super important to you, I think it's a good introductory thing, maybe if you're just wanting to get your feet wet and see if there is a market for it. Maybe you have a blog article that performs really well and it's like well, hey, what if I tap on a product link where you could purchase the Ashwagandha that we're talking about in our blog? See how it does? But it's an easy kind of get your feet wet in TV commerce and, again, you don't have to have everything. You can test it out and see if it's right for you.

Speaker 1: 31:56

Yeah, the next platform is Instacart. I'm sure all of you are familiar with Instacart. Personally, I really enjoy it as a customer. I think their interface is fantastic, as someone who's used them in my business. They're also super easy to work with. Though they don't integrate with every point of sale, they integrate with a lot, and if they don't necessarily integrate with you, they figure out a way to do file transfers. It's very simple. The other thing that I like about them is their reporting tools are very nice.

Speaker 1: 32:31

The downside and this is where I think it completely depends on your business model is the cost. So I have found that the only way to really be profitable with Instacart is to pass their costs along to your customer. So typically that's looking like anywhere from, depending on how much you want to take on as a business. You'd be wanting to pass on anywhere from 10 to 15%, depending on what the rate that they give you as a business is, and then they also have transactions. These are things of that nature, but I found that between 10 and 15% is typically the upcharge on these items that most all retailers are passing along to Instacart shoppers. I would say, if all you offer is supplements, or the vast majority of your business is supplements, I would not consider them, just because, with the price wars that there are already to have your items listed for 10 to 15% more than what they're in store at, especially if you're already not super competitive, then it's like, oh wow, they're really price gouging. But if you are more food centric, it's definitely worth looking into as an option. I've been really happy with it. Again, great customer service. Implementation was really easy. But again it is a little bit more on the spending side and you would probably want to pass those costs along to the consumer.

Speaker 1: 34:02

The next one I've never actually implemented them, but I came pretty darn close. They're a company called Homesum. It's H-O-M-E-S-O-M-E. They're a relatively new startup, but they were probably the most impressive company I've ever worked with on the sales side of things Incredible customer service. We're very willing to innovate and try things that were going to suit my business. I really appreciated that. I've talked with the owner of that company multiple times. Just really, really class act, guy. I think that they have a lot of really good things going for them. The interface is really nice. They have good mobile apps. Overall, I just really, really enjoyed the sales process.

Speaker 1: 34:59

Even though we didn't end up pulling the trigger on it, that came down to a loyalty and integration with point of sale. It really just depends on what's most important to your business and what groups you're willing to jump through. But if you're starting from scratch, definitely look into them as an option. Again, subscriptions they didn't have it at the time when I was talking to them, but they were like, if that's something that you want, we could do it. They were willing to invest the resources into making that an option, or at least that's what they told me. I think it doesn't hurt to ask, but they were very hungry, I think, to work with independent retailers. Obviously, there's way more e-commerce providers out there. I need to Shopify. You can do something with Squarespace, whatever it is. There's lots of other options. Those are just the ones that I have personal experience with, tina if there's any others that you have personal experience with but I feel like that kind of gives a pretty nice overview of what options are out there for our independent retailers.

Speaker 2: 36:18

Yeah and look. Shopify and Squarespace both have options for doing recording subscriptions and those sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 36:26

They're similar to WordPress, where you have to sort of stack these what we call plugins on top of each other so that they do they have the functionality that you want to have. You would likely need to have some expert help. You build out your Shopify site or your Squarespace e-commerce site just like you would with a WooCommerce WordPress platform. The real question mark would be around that integration with your POS and your royalty programs. I'm sure that they have options for things like that, but, like we said, if ECRS is your POS, then I feel like I'm just saying a bunch of acronyms now, but if ECRS is your POS.

Speaker 2: 37:13

They don't really play nicely with a lot of other people.

Speaker 1: 37:16

So Shopify and Squarespace might not be the right fit for you for that. Yeah, so again, it really just depends on what your goals are as a business and just knowing the questions to ask of these potential providers. So I wanted to just give you a few bewares or be mindful of. One of the things that has been, I feel, like a reoccurring nightmare for me has been CBD and trying to sell CBD online.

Speaker 1: 37:47

So if that is something that you want to do. We have gone through just way too many bad experiences and I feel like we finally have a solution for that. So just a little backstory CBD was fine to sell online for quite a while, no problem during, like, the initial CBD boom I don't know when was that like 2014, 2015, somewhere around there the things were just it was all oh, all was fine. But now, well, I guess a couple of years later, all of these payment processors just started cracking down on CME sales and would completely shut down your site and take, like, hold your money and it was like, you know, if you didn't have your strike transfer into your bank account, it's like, oh, there's like $10,000 just sitting in my strike account that I don't have access to. Not a very good feeling.

Speaker 1: 38:50

There were times when we would just take off CBD from our e-commerce site and that fixed it. And then it turned into oh no, any mention of any CBD on any page on your website. They found it and they would freeze your account. So to say it was stressful is a bit of an understatement. So it got to the point where I was just like I just don't want to sell CBD online ever again, and I already talk about it. I already talked about it. Yeah, no blog articles or anything, because I didn't want to get in trouble. So we found a payment processor for CBD. What is it? Precision payments. So, if CBD is something that is super important to your business, we recommend precision payments. This is not sponsored.

Speaker 1: 39:41

I know that would be great. I know precision payments. If you're here, you can just sponsor this podcast, so precision payments is the only one that we are aware of right now that allows you to just speak really self-release CBD. So, again going back to picking your provider if they don't integrate with precision payments and that's something that's important to you then you might need to look somewhere else. Yeah, and CBD is still trending in organic search, so people are looking for that product, and the fact that you could get shut down by a payment processor on your e-commerce store or even your website where they would hold your money, if you mentioned it on your website was very frustrating because people want a product that you have and are capable of selling, and we know the natural products retailers are selling clean, top-of-the-line, good CBD products and we're being hamstrung by that.

Speaker 1: 40:45

So, 100%, if you want to increase and take advantage of that organic traffic and the fact that people want to buy a product that you have and get that out there in the market, choose a payment processor. That'll help you do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:59

And there's ones that in theory, should work. I know Square was one that I was looking into as an option, but they wanted to take more money from you so you could sell CBD. It was like an extra 3%. I was like I know, just don't like that, that just does not feel right. So, and I didn't even know if it would work, I was very suspicious that even if I did go with Square, as a provider that it just it didn't feel right.

Speaker 1: 41:27

I feel like they would find some way to hold my money. Yeah, it was scary for a while, for sure. Yeah, and kind of just like. My last warning to just think about is going back to what I said earlier about if you just assign all these things to all these people and don't have anyone kind of overseeing it, it's probably not going to go very well for you.

Speaker 1: 41:53

So I think that it's really, really important to have one designated leader in your company for e-commerce that knows exactly what the expectations are, knows how to perform well online, knows how to communicate with payment processors, with any web experts that you have, because I think the key to succeeding in e-commerce is you have to have top of the line images, product descriptions, everything needs to be just super easy to navigate, and if you don't have the right person leading that team, I don't think that you're going to be successful, because I really think that it's a lot similar to your storefront, your brick and mortar location. If you didn't have a good manager, then your store is going to get dirty and not be well merchandised and all of these things. So I think you have to treat e-commerce just the same way that you do. It's just different technical skills. But I think if you put in the time and find the right person and do the implementation well, train everybody well, I think it's a recipe for success. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1: 43:15

Because the expectation of people who are shopping online is that there's fast delivery, fast service, and that nothing that's on your website is not available. Whatever they go hit it, it can stay out of stock, and at least you're communicating that, but the expectations that you saw on your website need to be fulfilled and that's why it's really important to have an employee or a vendor who is just on top of that, because it can pull your reputation down in the community if you're not fulfilling like you're promising on your website.

Speaker 1: 43:52

So really important to make sure that that is up to snuff. I know I can feel intimidated sometimes by these big box like the targets and the Walmart's that have teams of hundreds and hundreds of people that make sure that their e-commerce is up to snuff at all times. I think it's easy to look at that and be like I could never do that, but you can Like. Obviously they have a ton of money that they're investing into their mobile apps to make sure that they're amazing and they are but there's so many ways that you can also have a great e-commerce experience without spending millions of dollars and having teams of 100 people. Most e-commerce providers are really good nowadays and understand what it takes to be successful in e-commerce, and so the tools are available. It's just having the people to manage it, and someone needs me in charge, which is your point, and I love that point. It's great.

Speaker 1: 44:53

So, that is e-commerce, just a high level overview. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Like we discussed, we've worked with several providers and have lots of insider information that we didn't share all of it today. But if you have further questions, just feel free to reach out to us.

Speaker 2: 45:16

Absolutely, and the links to these providers that we've discussed here on the podcast are going to be listed in the share notes. So I'm really excited that you joined us today for this. Hope you got a lot out of it and definitely look for the resources in the share notes.

Speaker 1: 45:30

See you later.

Speaker 3: 45:31

Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Nat for Products Marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today's episode.

Speaker 2: 45:44

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or wherever you're listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give you more marketing tips so that you can reach more people and change more lives.