8 Tips for Bringing Your Boutique Online | How to Start an Online Boutique for Brick & Mortar Retail

Hey, welcome to the boutique hub, the connection point for the global boutique industry. And every tip a boutique owner, a retailer and an e commerce store must know.

Hey, guys, let's talk about how to go online. If you are a brick and mortar store and you're wondering, how do I get my brick and mortar store into an e commerce store, number one, I'm glad you're asking that question because that means that now you're going to have multiple streams of revenue. You guys know, in business and in marketing, if there's one big giant mistake that we all can make, it's putting all of our eggs in one basket. It's counting on just the brick and mortar to get us by. And you guys know brick and mortars have huge overhead. So how could you supplement that income with an additional revenue stream that makes money while you sleep and that's online selling. So I'm going to talk about eight strategies that you must know to start your online boutique when you're going from brick and mortar to to an online boutique. You ready? All right, number one is, let's talk about the tools. My favorite e commerce tool is Shopify. It probably always has been and always will be because it's so easy to use. There's very little code, setup, worry, stressful things, and we can do it all of our all on our own. We don't need any expert help. If you want to make it look absolutely beautiful and you don't even want to worry about it, there's so many Shopify experts out there that can do this set up for you. But all the product uploads and the things you'll be doing on a daily basis are super duper simple. The other thing with Shopify is it has the most integrations out of any e commerce platform. So it's going to connect with Pinterest and Shopify and Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook. There's so many different apps. It connects with a number of point of sale companies, email service providers, basically anything you need to grow and run your business. So get Shopify number one. But question number two is this, and I get this question all the time, how do I make sure my products sync? Right? You've got all your products in store and going online. Does that mean that you have to have a complete separate inventory? And the answer is no, you don't. Because Shopify syncs with so many different point of sale systems and platforms. There is multiple opportunities for your inventory to sync. So let's say you're using something like lightspeed in your store as your point of sale. There is a tool called Accumula that will help connect your lightspeed to Shopify. So. So all of your products can easily be synced in one place if you're using Springboard. They also have a great Shopify integration, as do a number of other tools. But Shopify itself also has the point of sale system. Now it may not be as robust as some of the others on the market, but what Shopify has are some apps that you can use to get some of the reporting that your point of sale might be giving you. Things like shopventory or Inventory Planner or Delirious Profit are all really, really good apps to help you further track your invent inventory, which is where Shopify point of sale sometimes can fall down with not as much data as you might find other places. So make sure your inventory sinks because I don't want you worrying about ordering more packs and worrying about it selling out online or in store. But I want all of your inventory to sink beautifully into one easy, convenient spot. I know that there's lots of questions around this topic, so if you ever have those questions, shoot us an email. At the Boutique hub, we work with all kinds of point of sale providers and connect you with someone that may be able to share that answer with you. Alright, tip number two is once you have Shopify and you've got this e commerce platform and you figured out how to get your inventory to sync in that one place, now we have to talk about shipping, right? We're going to talk about the process of shipping. We use a tool with our Shopify store called Shippo and there's a number of them out there, shipstation, stamps.com, there's all kinds of things. We love Shippo, we find it really, really easy to use. Again, it's an app that you'll download in Shopify and it's going to allow you, when an order is ready to be fulfilled, to click a button. It's going to go into Ship Ship a foe that's Shippo meets Shopify. Apparently it's going to go into Shippo. It's going to allow you to connect your Dymo printer which is going to print your shipping labels. So you get those two things. You can get the printer on Amazon for not a lot of money, pretty affordable, Best Buy, any store you want to go to. You print out your shipping labels which now you're going to go through. You're going to, you're going to pick and pack your orders so you've probably created in your back room somewhere a shipping station where you're going to pull pick pack, you're going to package all those pretty orders up, you're going to slap your sticker on them and you're going to toss them in a bin that's going to go to the post office. But remember, rather than having your post office scan each package individually, you're going to want to go into Shippo and print the manifest, which is a single piece piece of paper that they can scan in. And it's going to take care of scanning all those orders so they don't have to do it one at a time. Because, homegirl, I know you're going to have lots of orders to ship. It's not going to be like one or two packages. It's going to be a lot. So the manifest again in Shippo is going to help one piece of paper cover all of those orders that you're taking in the post office. All right, Tip number three is what's important for brick and mortars to know when you go online is that photography matters. I know in your store you're relying on your window displays and your merchandising and your customers to come in and try on in the dressing room. But you don't have that luxury online. So photography is really, really important. So make a plan. Now, what fits with your brand image? Do you have a really fun and youthful, spunky brand? Do you have a brand that's more for Missy's, for women that are a little higher end, right. And they're going to require more videos. Videos that's like a fit. Video is now video. I'm really good at combining words today. Think about how you want to photograph your items because that's going to be important. To get those photos uploaded to Shopify, make sure they're all sized correctly. You do not want a hodgepodge of like a small square and then like a big rectangle because it's going to make your site look really cheap and kind of thrown together. So make sure they are uniform, they are unique, your, your personality, they're all sized appropriately. And you take multiple photos. Okay? Not just one photo of this jacket, but all angles. So at least eight product photos for every product that you're going to upload. And when you take them, make sure it's completely styled. Because you guys know in your brick and mortar, when you do your merchandising, you're so good at educating your customer on how to wear your products well. You're not There online. So your photos have to do the talking for you. So making sure it's fully styled. And if you want to do a video, a video, a fit video to show how to wear the product, how the product fits, how it's going to lay, how it's going to wash, basically serving your customer just like you would do in store, make sure that's included when you do all of your videos and photo shoots and that you get all of that onto Shopify. Now, tip number what are we on? 4 is to serve your customer online just like you would in store. So once you've done your photo shoots and your videos that way, now in all of your marketing content, talk to her online, talk to her on social media just like you would if she was in your dressing room. Have fun with her, ask her questions, educate her, entertain her, build trust with her, get to know what is she shopping for right now, right? If I have Easter in my window display in my brick and mortar, then I should make an Easter collection online. If I'm talking about the fourth of July and I've got my store all decorated, I should do 4th of July online, right? Merchandising your online store is just like merchandising your brick and mortar. So take those same concepts and train and speak and have fun with your customers just like you would in both places. That's called creating an omnichannel experience, where your customer has the same experience online as they do in store. Tip number five, make a launch plan. Where are you going to share your new arrivals first? Are they going to go in store first? Are they going to go online first? Really, you're gonna have to figure that out. For most of you it's going to be you're going to put all of your new arrivals online, you're going to train your customers that that's where they go first. And they can do in store local pickup if they want, which means when they come to do in store local pickup, you're going to have your store merchandise in such a way that there's going to be add ons and upsell opportunities as soon as she walks in the door. And your team that's going to check her out at the register with more additional items, right when they're coming to do the in store local pickup, which she's already paid for online, let me mention. But your team is going to be trained to say, is there anything else I can add your order? We just got this thing in and it looks just like you. I think you would love it will you go try this on? In fact, it's brand new and I haven't seen it on anyone yet. Would you go try this on for me so I could just see how it fits and get your opinion right? Awesome opportunity to train your staff so that they're always upselling and adding on with your customers, serving your customers. Tip number six Post more. You're probably used to posting on social media in such a way that goes we just got this cute new thing in come in store and grab it. Come in store and try it on. Our hours are blah blah blah. Now you're gonna have to get used to posting more and more products, right? At least four product photos a day. At least one recap post a day. A recap post means it's a post where you've added like five to 15 photos to one single post highlighting a collection or all of your new arrivals or all of your sale category, whatever it is, right? Just like merchandising and collections, we post in collections. So think about posting more because we're trying to get as many people not to walk into your store but to go to your website. Okay? Posting more is going to get her there. But when you're posting, remember this, don't just post my boutique.com but post to my boutique.com product name or sending traffic directly to the product and not just to your general website. Because the fewer the clicks it takes to get to the product, the more likely someone is to purchase it. Tip number seven Video. More and more video, right? Get in front of your customers, do try on sessions, do videos, do live selling. If you want you can use Comments Sold which also integrates with Shopify which or start live selling and posting links to your Shopify products. But customers are responding to video and it's just like an in store experience. So use it to your advantage. And finally, tip number eight is to remember that your time has to be used wisely. So do what you do best and hire the rest. But pick where you most what is the 20% of your list that's going to get you 80% of the results? Then hire around that. So if you're running both an online store and a brick and mortar store, you're going to be stretched super duper thin. So just know you don't have to be Superwoman. You don't have to feel like you have to do it all. But go where you can be the leader of your brand and hire people around you to support all of the following up with vendors and ordering and unboxing and hanging and tagging and steaming and shipping and uploading new arrivals and posting to social media. Right. Those things you can have help for, but you've got to be the leader of your brand online and off. All right, good luck guys with starting your online boutique going from brick and mortar to e commerce store. Follow us here on the channel and let us know anytime you've got questions in the comments. And I hope to see you guys, all of you, inside of the Boutique Hub where all the magic happens in our community.

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