Whether you're a small online startup or an established retail chain, we can help you start or grow your business. In 2014, we did just that by introducing omnichannel commerce, a revolutionary idea at the time. One unified platform for eCommerce and Retail integrated the best of eCommerce with a native, state-of-the-art Point of Sale system. The unified inventory system, built from scratch, freed retailers from oversold online orders, and the inventory reconciliation issues that plagued an industry of add-ons and plug-ins.
This time we're helping retailers leverage the network effect of multi-vendor marketplaces with all the advantages of a branded online store. Why? Here are just a few of the compelling reasons:
Own your customer relationships
Online marketplaces, like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon drive traffic to merchants, but they also withhold customer contact information from merchants, so that subsequent orders
go through the marketplace. As an intermediary, the marketplace controls the commission fees, as well as the terms imposed on the merchant. The marketplace doesn’t care
whether customers repeat purchases with the original merchant or its competitors. The marketplace collects fees regardless of the selling merchant. The competition amongst
merchants drives prices and profits down while increasing interest and traffic in the marketplace. Merchants need to sell through their own stores to own their customer relationships and promote subsequent sales.
Merchants also need to own the marketplaces that drive traffic, and profitability, selling products from other stores in addition to their own.
Sell the products that draw customers. Increase sales and profits.
Except for big box retailers that carry huge inventories, most small and medium sized retailers lack the product selection to draw a sizable audience.
W3bstore offers merchants the ability to sell each others’ products, enhancing product selection to attract the desired audience. Commission earned on sales increase profits without holding inventory.
Large marketplaces regulate the type of products sold, and oftentimes the brand, leaving no room for merchants to address niche markets.
If merchants want to participate in less competitive segments, where price is not the only factor, they will need to look beyond the popular marketplaces.
Make Dropshipping Work As It Should
Despite the allure of easy profits, dropshipping from wholesalers can be a challenging business. Low margins on unwanted products, that are expensive to market, are common in this business.
A far more profitable option is to resell in-demand products sitting on retailers' shelves, for "Groupon-like" commissions from Google, the most popular marketing platform for local retailers.
Like dropshipping, w3bstore's online marketplace offers the benefits of selling without carrying or shipping inventory, and the ability to set your own margins. You can resell highly desired products, from
local retailers, willing to sacrifice margin on loss leaders to bring traffic into their stores. Companies like Groupon, Yelp and local neighborhood flyers have proven this model works.
Create an online store for local merchants. Link it to their Google profile for free, and collect a sizable commission every time local shoppers purchase online from Google or Google Maps.
Attract customers without breaking the bank
The chances of attracting shoppers to your online store are practically nil without robust marketing. To stand out amongst the 9 million stores online, merchants need time,
money and the ability to take on risk. Stores with large budgets, and dedicated marketing specialists dominate ad placements on the major advertising platforms.
Even the major marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Etsy are no guarantee for attracting customers as merchants compete against
hundreds of other merchants offering the same product. W3bstore offers independent merchants more effective options for advertising.
If you’re competing for eCommerce business across the entire US, you can leverage w3bstore’s marketplace to sell your items in other stores, for minimal costs.
When customers order your products from third party stores, the order is created and fulfilled from your shopping cart, where customer data is saved for subsequent remarketing.
Customer support and the relationship belong to you, the seller of the order. This eliminates the biggest issue that merchants face when selling through 3rd party marketplaces.
W3bstore helps you get new customers, and keep the ones you have without forcing subsequent orders through a marketplace, where a sales commission is charged on each order.
Retailers can leverage their physical locations to narrow their competition on location based platforms like Google Maps, Facebook, and Yelp.
All are high traffic sites that help local retailers advertise for much less and in some cases for free. These also happen to be the local go-to sites for neighborhood shoppers.
Offering “buy online, pickup in store” or courier delivery to local customers relieves both the merchant and the customer from the complexities of shipping, when the order can be fulfilled nearby.
Create a low friction sales funnel
Google Maps and other online marketplaces can direct thousands of shoppers to your profile, but unless you show real-time inventory, and pricing from an online shopping cart,
many of those shoppers will buy from another store that does. Customers almost always take the path of least resistance.
W3bstore offers everything to reduce friction in the selling process. Our shopping cart displays real-time inventory, collects payment and fulfills orders as desired.
It also offers promotional capabilities that turn shoppers into buyers. Coupons, bundles, cross-selling and discounts are some of the tools w3bstore merchants have to convert shoppers into buyers.
Online stores lacking these features, or ones that force these features over multiple transactions, discourage impatient shoppers from placing orders.
Lost first-time customers are lost opportunities for repeat business. Make your products easy to buy, and fulfill, so your customers will come back, again and again.
Online stores must work with existing retail operations, not change them
Most small and medium sized retailers don't have staff to monitor and fulfill eCommerce orders, especially when shipping is required.
They also don't want to invest in expensive online marketing required to generate traffic to their online stores. Retailers want eCommerce to drive online shoppers into their
stores, where customers browse for additional purchases.
Offering customers the option to buy online and pickup in store is imperative, but the online store must also present real time inventory to avoid stock outs on customer pickup
orders. This requires a modern platform where the POS and the online store present the same inventory. Legacy platforms, built prior to 2013, were designed to fulfill retail
orders OR online orders, NOT both. Merging both requires inventory synchronization which is problematic by design. W3bstore avoids this issue by serving a single inventory
and customer database to online and retail orders.
Online stores also generate sales reports where sales tax and shipping are calculated in order subtotals. Retail accounting excludes these charges in order subtotals.
To accommodate retailers that sell online, W3bstore presents online sales reports and retail end of day reports separately, simplifying daily operations and tax reporting.
Minimize time to market
While the days of coding html and CSS are long gone from today's DIY eCommerce platforms, there's still a lot of complexity involved in selling online.
The monthly subscription fee charged by hosting companies like Shopify are a small drop in the bucket of costs. Web design and branding require the ability to
generate aesthetic, compelling user experiences. Expect to spend in the thousands to create a website that will generate interest and convert viewers into buyers.
Creating and managing the product catalog with images, descriptions and updated pricing is time consuming and expensive.
This only gets more complex when product variations, add-ons and promotions, including quantity discounts, or product bundles are created.
W3bstore minimizes costs and time to market by providing a ready-made, fully functioning store right off the bat, then presenting point and click options to customize as needed.
Ongoing store management is minimized with an all-in-one design that requires no integration of 3rd party apps. Even the POS is integrated so the store catalog is created one time only for both retail and eCommerce inventory.
Adding a website to your store catalog is accomplished through point and click themes, but even the website is optional. Many retailers prefer their Google profile to point directly to their store catalog,
reducing the number of customer clicks required to locate and purchase product(s) from their store catalog. Going "headless" reduces the time and money required to go to market. Bulk editing and scanning UPC labels speeds up creation of the store catalog.
Merchants can create and post an online store, attract shoppers, and convert them into buyers in less than an hour.
Technical support, complete with instructional videos and 7x24 assistance ensure there’s no need for technical staff to create or manage your online store.
Independent merchants have neither time nor the budget to tackle mammoth projects. Yet, they benefit the most from the increased visibility of the internet. Our goal is to help merchants grow by leveraging the internet to increase sales, without breaking the bank. Our success has helped us invest in new opportunities for growth. We’re hoping you’ll take this incredible journey with us, as so many merchants have, to fuel your own growth.
