Online shop

[AmeliaR]

Do you have an online shop attached to your salons website? I'm thinking of adding this to my website or setting up a new website as everyone seems to online shop today! Which website provider would you recommend and do you find you get many sales?
I stock Dermalogica so think this would be quite popular but then everyone seems to be selling it online so would it just cost more to run the website than sales!? Any thoughts or experience would be great

 

[SalonNerds.com]

You'll have to take a hard look to make sure it's financially worth the investment. Putting an online store together and managing it can be a real pain in the neck and take quite a bit of time, especially if you're doing this yourself.
If you sell a lot of your products in store, and the brand that you carry is very unique, then it may be worth it. But doing a quick search for Dermalogica in York, I see the dermstore.com is paying for a google adwords campaign to take the top spot.
Is it possible to sell online? Yes. Would it be financially worth it? Hard to say, unless you have some crazy unique proposition like; we're a local salon and we'll deliver same day within a 10 mile radius.

 

[squidgernetball]

I looked into doing online retail, but my skincare range is Environ which should only be sold with a face to face consultation, so then I thought about a code so only existing clients could use it. I retail a lot of Jane Iredale but don't carry the full range, so would have to have a lot of stock bought in, and then I just gave up.

I promote the fact that I take card payment over the phone and do free delivery. I offer all my retail lines and will often do same day delivery (on my way home) if it's local. I advertise this on my website. I sell a lot of products, but am a little afraid of moving onto 'proper' online retailing because of the stress, not having the product in stock, forgetting to check orders etc etc!

Vicki x

 

[virtues2011]

.....and if I remember correctly an e-commerce shop has tax implications attached to it and different regulations for customers credit card details being sent through and stored on computers.

 

[JemimaFox]

I sell gift vouchers through our website, also clients can book appointments online and pay for them in advance via PayPal.
Can anyone recommended a different pay system other than PayPal?

 

[enterpriseserv]

Running an ecommerce shop has gotten a lot more complicated than it used to be. You have to make sure you're PCI compliant and not to mention it may or not be a distraction from your core business. I would dedicate at least one full time resource (full time employee) to manage your ecommerce site. Are you going to have your products drop shipped or shipped to your storefront? That's a whole different can of worms if you have to deal with the logistics of shipping and receiving. I hope that helps :biggrin:

 

[Donnalizy]

I have an online shop to sell vouchers for the treatments, once its there its not much to maintain, only update when changing prices yearly or adding a new service.

I use Paypal which can also take credit cards if the person doesn't have a paypal account and charges not massively different from other suppliers like world pay.

another reason for using Paypal standard is that the processing is off my site and with paypal, which is fine for PCI compliance

Hope that helps

 

[salon doctor]

you can make your online business a separate entity and have 2 income streams, one vat reg and one not ?

should cost about £500 to £2000 to set up properly

if you do it in conjunction with your salon app you can send out info on stuff and the client can click on the pic you sent out and go directly to purchase or reserve in salon for next visit.

you can show clients products at the chair and if they dont buy that day you can send them the info right there on the spot so that when they go home or in the bus or train they can read about your products and purchase later.

the good ecomm sites also recommend more ideas to the client, also it creates its own database so you can have people buying who dont even come in the salon and then you can set it up to send them and offer to try your salon out .

 

[BannerPenguin]

I personally run 2 online businesses and find it very easy and reasonably priced.