✳
TECH TALK
commonly offer a combination of One such store is eBay’s ProS- It also has built-in marketing tools ‘the technology headache’”: issues
site-building tools; product catalog tores, which is available to everyone, that will help you promote your new including security, backups and
tools; shopping-cart technology, not just eBay sellers. You can create a online store. redundancies. Nexternal Solutions
payment, shipping and marketing professional store, customized with Nexternal Solutions also offers acts as an extension of your web-
strategies; tracking and reporting your own branding and domain fully integrated program, says presi- site, and some of its clients include
capabilities; domain registration; name, and you won’t have eBay dent Alex Gile. “We host and manage USA Today and San Francisco’s
and hosting. branding anywhere on your site. all the technology, which alleviates high-end Boudin Bakery. Nexternal
also offers tools that help stream-
line options such as shipping-label
generation, marketing tools such as
data feeds, comparison-shopping
engines and other channels that
can generate traffi c.
Take the Next Steps
And that is key for any e-com-
merce site: You must have a mar-
keting plan set up for your online
store. How else will people know
it’s there? “A lot of people have the
attitude of, ‘If you build it, they will
come,’ but you need to really have a
plan so that people do visit and pur-
chase,” says Nexternal’s Gile. He rec-
ommends a combination of online
marketing and offl ine advertising.
You can also optimize your site
to rank well organically in search
engines, Gile says, which can be a
good source of free advertising.
In-store fl iers and signage, adding
the URL to your print advertising or
linking to the site in e-newsletters
are great ways of letting customers
know about your site. Williams also
buys Google Adwords and pays for
click advertising on Yahoo!.
Or consider setting up a kiosk in
the store like Bern’s Garden Center
did. The brick-and-mortar store
doesn’t carry everything available,
so if a customer asks for something
that’s exclusive to the online store,
employees are trained to guide
them over to the kiosk to check.
That way, it’s really just an extension
of the physical store.
The main thing to remember,
Christian says, is not to expect too
much from your e-commerce site in
the beginning. “It’s a building thing,
just like anything else,” he says. “I
think we have a great foundation
and think it will be successful, but we
have to continue to work on it.”
Ashley Puderbaugh is a Kansas City–
based freelance writer. She can be
reached at apuder@gmail.com.
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28 Lawn & Garden Retailer November 2009 www.lgrmag.com
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