Do you own a boutique, a gourmet grocery, a food store or a specialty shop? Your customers know your products, like your selection and come back regularly. But once you lock up for the day, your sales stop.
An online store lets you extend that relationship beyond opening hours. Customers can browse your catalog, plan their purchases and order from their phone.
The hard part isn't necessarily building the website. It's mostly getting your physical store and your online store to work together without piling on admin work.
Why sell online when you already have a store?
A physical store gives you several advantages when you start selling online: an existing customer base, products you've already selected and real-world sales experience. Online sales can complement that business in several ways.
Stay available after closing time
A customer may discover a product in your store and decide to buy it a few days later. With an online store, they can find your catalog again without making a trip just to check whether the product is in stock.
Offer new ways to buy
Not every customer wants delivery. Some prefer to order from their phone and pick up their purchase in store: that's how click & collect works, combining the convenience of ordering online with the proximity of a local store.
Grow sales with new customers
Your online store can become a new way into your business. Through organic search (SEO), some product pages and category pages can show up in search results. That visibility still takes work, though: on your content, on site performance and in the face of competition.
How do you set up an online store in five steps?
- Choose which products to offerYou don't have to put your entire catalog online right away. Start with your most popular products, items that are easy to prepare and products whose availability is reliable enough. This first selection lets you test how orders work without disrupting how the store runs.
- Prepare your product pagesEach page should help customers understand what they're buying: a clear name, a description, a price, a photo and useful information about the product's features. For food products, the mandatory information must match the type of product and the way it's sold.
- Set your ordering optionsHome delivery, in-store pickup, online payment, pickup in a set time slot: you can offer several options. It's usually best to start with a simple setup you can keep under control.
- Sync your catalog and inventoryThis is one of the most important steps. When a product sells in store, its availability must be updated in the online store. Likewise, an online order must be reflected in the quantities available in store. Without syncing, you risk selling the same product more than once or having to cancel orders.
- Test the shopping journey before launchPlace a complete order the way a customer would: payment, confirmation, product availability, preparation and pickup. Test the journey on a smartphone too: that's often the device customers will use to browse your store.
To dig deeper into step 4, read our guide to syncing inventory between your store and your online store.
How do you manage in-store sales and online orders?
The main risk of selling across several channels (omnichannel) is ending up with a pile of disconnected tools. An order comes in by email, inventory is tracked in a spreadsheet and in-store sales are recorded on the POS. Every task then takes several manual steps.
A centralized system, by contrast, shares information across your sales channels. Catalog, prices, availability and orders can all be managed in one place. That makes it easier to update prices, change availability and track sales.
Can AI make selling online easier?
Artificial intelligence can help with several tasks involved in running a store: writing product descriptions, organizing a catalog, preparing a sales promotion or analyzing orders.
It becomes even more useful when it can also take action in your management tools. For example, Gillia can generate an online store from a description of your business or from your catalog, then let the store owner make changes with plain-language instructions:
“Create my online store from my catalog.”
Gillia also connects online sales to the business information already available in its environment. See how the Gillia online store works.
Do you have to give up your physical store to sell online?
No. For an established retailer, an online store works best as an additional channel. The store keeps its role for advice, local presence and discovery. The website lets customers plan purchases, order remotely and find the products that are available.
The goal isn't to replace one channel with another, but to build a consistent shopping journey.
Key takeaways
Selling online when you already have a store doesn't mean running two separate businesses. What matters is bringing your catalog, orders and inventory together in one consistent setup. See how to create an online store with Gillia.
