Putting your business online has several advantages. It ensures that you can keep your business open 24/7 and gives you access to many new customers. An e-commerce site also allows you to run your business from anywhere and keeps start-up costs low. That noted, if you have a brick and mortar store, an e-commerce site is the next logical step. That does not mean that if you are starting your business from the ground up, you cannot build an e-commerce site. You can just as easily sell guns online without a brick and mortar store by building good relationships with FFLs close to your customers’ home. These will help you with background checks and other government requirements.
Why Is Selling Firearms Online An Excellent Strategy?
Selling firearms online gives you access to brand new clients. If you are accustomed to wholesale, retail will produce higher profits for each item you sell. That does not mean you should give up wholesale and start selling to individual clients only; tapping into both revenue streams is a great way to maximize profits. The online store will also allow you to reach new wholesale clients around the country.
Your new online firearm store should be as intuitive and logical as possible to facilitate sales. Bear in mind that when people get onto your site, they are still in the consideration process, and your site should draw them in so that they buy your products. Having a gun friendly ecommerce website provider when building your site will help you create a site that will boost your sales and increase our profit margins.
Qualities Of A Good E-commerce Store
Here are the essential qualities of a good e-commerce store.
Fast Load Time
There are many other e-commerce stores online today. If your store page loads slowly, customers are likely to shop somewhere else. Research shows that if the connection is slow, 40% of online shoppers will leave your site, and 23% will stop shopping. Your e-commerce site should encourage buying, and it is, therefore, crucial to your online store success that your site loads quickly and is optimized for use on a variety of devices. To ensure fast load times consider using Gzip compression to reduce file sizes, enable browser caching and minimize the use of redirects and plugins.
Clear and Easy Navigation
Your online firearm shop should be easy for customers to navigate. If it is difficult for customers to find items or pay for them, it will discourage them, and they will not buy anything. Talk to an expert to help you create an e-commerce site that is easy to navigate. They can do this by creating meaningful and clickable labels, dropdown menus for subcategories and include a search box. It will ascertain that customers can quickly find what they are looking for and pay for it. Simply put, a good e-commerce site should be user friendly. Creating your website with a firearm-friendly provider like us, MakeReadyArms, will ensure that you can easily customize your site to suit your growing needs.
Appealing Aesthetics
When building your site, make sure that it draws the customers in. Your site should be beautiful but usable. Cleverly combine white space, colour, graphics, and creative fonts will make your site appealing to users. A beautiful website will grab customer attention, keep them on your page and have a positive impact on branding. Make sure that when you pick a website provider for your e-commerce site that they are firearm friendly and offer websites that are 100% customizable. You can then make use of your colours, fonts to create a website that represents your business perfectly.
Efficient Shopping Cart
Online shoppers prefer a cart that allows them to add multiple items while shopping. They can then pay one time for everything they chose. If they cannot add more than one product or the process is complicated, then they will abandon the cart. In that situation, you will lose your sale. Make sure our cart is sale-friendly and easy to use.
Secure Payment Network
A secure payment network ensures that customer information is safe. If your customers do not feel that their personal information is secure, they will abandon the cart, and you will lose a sale. To ensure that all customer information is safe, look for a website provider that offers an SSL certificate on their website packages. You should also choose a gun friendly ecommerce payment processing company.
Good Delivery System
Customers, after paying for items online, will expect to receive them as soon as possible. Your site must provide information on how long delivery will take. Make sure there is information on government requirements for the transfer of possession and what happens if the buyer is not qualified to own a gun. Most stores charge a restocking fee, for instance, if the buyer is not of legal age. When choosing a firearm friendly website provider, look for one that has worked with larger firearm stores for shipping deals. Companies like Zanders, RSR Group and Lipsey’s are great partners for dropshipping deals.
SEO Optimised
Your e-commerce site must be SEO optimized. That ensures that it ranks higher in the search engine results, which increases your website traffic. It helps if you use the right keywords and have an easy-to-navigate website that loads quickly. You can talk to your website provider about setting up your SEO to attract a wide range of clients.
Mobile Responsiveness
Most of your prospective customers use their phones for shopping online. It is, therefore, vital that your site is optimized for use on mobile devices. If it is not, it will be slow and require zooming and scrolling to read the text, all of which will discourage customers. Ensure that you choose a website provider that offers websites that can be optimized for any device prospective customers are using.
Setting up a firearm store online requires that you partner with the right website provider. Choose a provider who is gun-friendly, offers customizable websites and has a connection with larger distributors to enhance drop shipping. They will help you create a gun friendly ecommerce store that will grow revenue and has all the above qualities.