How to adapt your business to sell online

Are you also affected by the pandemic and you need to act quickly? How to adapt your business to sell online to be prepared for the future and especially in changing times like we have currently. Adapting quickly is the key to success. Whether it is a personal matter or business related topics. Adapting to a new situation and new trends don’t come for free. Time, effort, thoughts, and money is needed to invest to be able to change.

2020 was a challenging year for many companies, in so many ways. Many have had to adapt to the situation quickly and decided to take their businesses online. On every corner of the internet, new online shops, online gym classes, tutorials, and many more were popping up. Every entrepreneur needed to find a way to get through the whole lockdown challenge. Some were apprehensive of taking the chance to sell online — not only as a part-time solution but rather as a long-term strategic benefit. The necessary infos on how to bring your business online is out there, and we are going to highlight some points in this blogpost on how you can easily adapt your business to start selling online today. You will notice that the implementation of the technical details are not that difficult.

Set up an Online Shop

The easiest way but at the same time the most expensive and complex solution is the creation of an online shop. There are many ready-made solutions by a number of SaaS (Service as a Solution) companies such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Ecwid and many more. Little knowledge to no knowledge of programming skills are needed. In our blogpost Webshop in 5 Hours we have highlighted a couple of shop systems, their advantages and disadvantages as well as their costs. Manage your products, their prices, stock and sell online in one portal, as easy as by the click of a button.

Payment by Link

Another way of selling online is using the pay by link solution. This kind of payment enables you to create online payment links easily — without a shopping cart. For example, a customer calls you wanting to order a certain product. In current times this is the easiest way to to sell and receive money and works for almost every vertical such as:

• If you have a click and collect business and your store is currently closed
• If you have takeaway menus for restaurants
• If you do not know the amount of the payment now and before delivery you send the customer the payment link to pay
• For call centers

Create the customer in your database with all the necessary details, such as their name, email address, phone number etc. Follow up with an email to the customer with the payment link, which the customer can then use to pay for their purchase. With Wallee, you can generate a payment link within your portal, and email the link to your end customer. Every customer using the payment link is able to pay within seconds and the payments are carried out in a secure way. As wallee also manages your emails and documents you can directly send out invoices in your design, receipts and emails to your customers and keep you in cc. Manage both your customers from your portal, as well as your payment links. To learn more about payment links have a look at our product page.

You can also implement a payment link directly in your website or place it in a QR Code on your flyer. You will need a little knowledge of HTML, but once it is implemented, it is ready to be used. An example is using payment links in your Google Sites website. Or if you are using WIX or Jimdo, you can read about how to implement the payment link in our blogpost here. By using these payment links, you can turn your website into a shop quickly without hosting your own payment platform.

Conversational Commerce and Chatbots

Apart from online shops and payment links, you have the opportunity to sell directly via email or chat. This is a good solution if you’re focusing on personal touch. When it comes to chats you may focus on consumer oriented communication or general chatbots. Chatbots are widely seen to gain relevance within the next few years. Conversational commerce refers to the trend towards interaction from businesses with customers via messaging apps of all kinds. Whether it’s through social media or directly on your website. Wallee has partnered with secondbrain AG for this technology, you can read more about it our Conversational Commerce Post.

Be Prepared

It is important to have your call centre and support teams ready. Customers conversing through the chat solution or calling directly, will want to have the best customer service. Taking the call from a customer is easy, however the payment part has to always be secure and the details captured have to be compliant. By using the payment link, the payment is an e-commerce transaction, protected through secure customer authentication. Let your customers know that their details are being processed securely. To learn more about PCI DSS, read about how Wallee is set to the highest standard.

Conclusion

All in all, adapting your brick and mortar shop to an online version is not that tricky. Solutions like payment links and conversational commerce, allow you to create new sales channels in no time. Especially during these unpredictable times, technology will help you to keep you agile whenever consumers need change.

Support/Help

Ready to transform your business to sell online? Get in touch with our support team and we will gladly guide you through.