I have recently opened a hardware store and my friends and family constantly keep telling me that I need to get a website up quickly.
As someone who doesn’t consider himself to be “tech savvy”, I fail to see the point in having one as I get enough traffic through my “plain” brick-and-mortar storefront.
Some questions for small business owners who already have a website or plan to get one would be:
What is your reasoning for creating your website?
Why not use Amazon, Shopify, or a similar platform?
Was it profitable?
Really it is to make as much equal between you and your general competitors, and then to beat out our immediate competitors.
If there are 10 small hardware stores with no website, having a website will instantly put you into a different category of appeal for your customers. Now you’re with the other small stores with websites.
Look at it like climbing a ladder.
Having a website is a tool for your business, something to be invested in, much like the tools that you sell.
You can buy a good drill or a bad drill. But you can also be good bits and bad bits, specialty bits, good batteries and bad, good chargers and bad, etc.
I’m surrounded by small towns, with small hardware stores, and big box hardware stores about an hour away. I don’t want to go to the big box stores, but my small ones have no way for me to check online to see if they even carry what I need.
I don’t need to see an entire inventory, I just need to know if you carry lumber? Plumbing materials? Insulation?, I’ll spare a 15 minute drive to go and browse as long as I know atleast a category I need is there.
Why don’t I just call? I don’t want to call because a phone call takes more of my time that googling you, then click your website. I can press those buttons while I’m doing all the other things I have to get done in my life (since people these days are generally busy).
Anyway, that’s my thoughts and where I’d start. You don’t need a fully fleshed out e-commerce site yet.