When an online shop pays off for your business

"We should sell online too" is a sentence that comes up in many businesses at some point. Sometimes it is right. Often, though, it hides the hope that a shop brings in revenue by itself. It does not. A shop is a second sales floor that needs looking after, just around the clock.

This post helps you judge whether a shop adds up for your business, and what else there is.

When a shop fits

A shop fits well when three things come together:

1. You sell something with a fixed price. Products, vouchers, tickets or clearly defined packages. Services whose price is only set after a conversation sell better through an enquiry.
2. Customers already buy without advice. If people call today only to ask whether something is in stock, a shop is the shorter route.
3. Delivery or pickup is sorted. Who packs, who takes the parcel to the post office, what happens during holidays?

If one of the three is missing, a shop usually comes too early.

What a shop demands day to day

The technology is the smaller part. The processes behind it take more time:

• Product data: photos, descriptions, variants, prices and stock have to be right, with every change.
• Orders: each order needs confirming, packing and shipping, usually within a few days.
• Withdrawal and returns: consumers in the EU can generally withdraw from online purchases within 14 days without giving a reason. In Austria this is governed by the Distance and Off-Premises Contracts Act (FAGG). Returns therefore belong in your calculation.
• Payment: a payment provider handles cards, transfers and other methods and charges a fee per payment.
• Legal: terms and conditions, information on the right of withdrawal, prices including taxes and shipping costs.

Count this work honestly in hours per week. A shop that only pays off if nobody counts the time it takes does not pay off.

What a shop costs beyond the build

On top of the one-off build come running costs: hosting and maintenance, payment provider fees, packaging and postage, and possibly licences for extensions. On top of that, a shop without visitors sells nothing. Part of the budget therefore belongs in visibility, for example through search engines, social media or ads.

A simple check helps: how many orders a month do you need for margin minus running costs to be positive? If that number is far above what you sell on site today, caution is advisable.

Smaller steps before the big shop

Not every online sale needs a full shop:

Solutions like these show with little effort whether the demand is there. If it grows, a shop can be built on it deliberately.

How to recognise a good shop

A good shop is fast, works on a phone and leads to payment in a few steps. Shipping costs and delivery time are shown before the basket, not only at checkout. Products and prices can be changed without programming skills, through a content management system or the shop's admin. And it runs encrypted with a valid SSL certificate, because payment details and addresses are entered there.

What every business website has to do, shop or not, is described in What a website has to do for a small business.

If you are thinking about selling online, we clarify in a 30-minute first call whether a shop, a smaller solution or none of it fits for now. For the build you receive a written quote with scope, price and timeline.