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hi everyone and welcome to the idaho small business development centers coven 19 e-commerce what you need to know now uh this if this is the webinar that you meant to come to you are in the right place we're going to talk about e-commerce for the next hour or so and we are super fortunate to have this uh workshop presented by via studio out of louisville kentucky um they they are based in louisville kentucky they have clients all over the world all over the country and um we're we are we're really really pleased that they agreed to do this webinar for us because we have seen this webinar and we know how good it is and we know how good it will be for you um we have jason clark and nick wonderland presenting from via studio um and they're going to go through their presentation for the first um 30 minutes or so and then we're going to open it up to q a so we really want you to ask questions however you do not have to wait for 30 minutes to ask questions you can start asking questions right now so the best way to do that actually the only way to do that is to click the q a button at the bottom of your screen that'll pull up an interface where you can type in your questions since we're in webinar format everyone's going to stay muted so you can't unmute yourself to actually ask a question uh but you can type it in so please type them in there we want as many questions as possible additionally open up the chat box so if you look at the bottom of your screen there should also be a chat icon open that up because we're going to be chatting in to all of you key points as we go and it's a great way that uh for you all to chat with each other so if there's something that you're wondering about from other panelists or other attendees in the webinar you guys can have a conversation about that um so way to get the most out of the webinar is to open up the q a put all your questions in there open up the chat box so you can see what's coming in through the chat and have conversations with the other attendees at this webinar um and uh i really look forward to the next uh 30 minutes or so with with via studio and to get that started i'm going to stop sharing my screen and kick it over to jason all right let me turn my audio and video back on share my screen thanks everyone for attending this is um the second time we've done this uh presentation for small business development centers and um like will said it's been very successful so we hope you get a lot out of it uh so we're calling this uh some of what you need to know about e-commerce the world of e-commerce is massive um so we're gonna give you kind of the 101 entry-level information that you need to get started in e-commerce if anybody has any more advanced questions after this and wants to talk e-commerce uh we're happy to set up another call or anything and answer your questions or help out if we can so uh can you see my screen will are we shared okay yep we can see it just at least i can see it so great i can see it i'm hoping everybody else can awesome okay um so uh we are via studio is a um what has been called digital agency but we're just moving to the word agency because so much is digital now um kind of descended from the ad agencies of old but there's lots lots behind the curtain of what we do that's more than just traditional media so the way we break out our company is into four disciplines that is our accounts team which handles um client communication project managements um moving the ball forward essentially our strategy team uh which nick wonderland is a part of nick um he's a strategist at via um highly competent capable and fun to work with we're lucky to have him on staff but this is business analysis research goal setting measurements a lot of lots of behind the scenes work with what happens with marketing and website tactics our design team is what it sounds like they they design all the beautiful work that we do and our development team is our team of coders that build websites and um back-end integrations um and our marketing and advertising initiatives are based on those four disciplines we put teams together in order to do the any work that we need to do for our clients uh the difference here um in the way that we like to think about things we like to put your website into a bigger ecosystem uh that it consists of these five components so brand strategy this is uncovering your story creating a story for a brand that's easy to associate with relevant to your target audience uh brand identity is the the look and feel of your brand and your company um content is um the biggest tool in your marketing toolbox now that we're in the age of digital with those three kind of foundational components we build websites and then from there we do marketing and advertising programs for our clients the way that to look at your website from a marketing perspective uh again this is kind of a foundational approach uh how we look at the work that we do we feel like your brand strategy your identity your core messaging should be the foundation of all of your marketing initiatives and that work should last at least five to ten years your website your marketing collateral is built on that foundation and that should last a little bit less we say four to five sometimes a little bit longer sometimes a little bit um less time a funny story there we had a client that we built the site for um about six months before the original iphone came out and we got a call last year from that client and they were upset because their site wasn't mobile friendly uh or mobile responsive to be specific and they were very upset and then we looked back at our the project management tool and when we launched and the whole concept of a responsive design hadn't really been uh codified yet so that was um you know it was an old website and it really needed to be rebuilt um kind of a cost of doing business now and then when you go up from that it gets the the um the work that you do in marketing becomes more tactical so ad campaigns content reporting and analytics and updates uh day-to-day kind of stuff falls from that so this is kind of a good visual of how we see this landscape moving on to the website two websites specifically so how we look at this and again we start from a very strategic perspective and then work down to the more tactical pieces of websites so the goals here when we build a website number one for any commerce website is clear calls to action and a measurement plan so calls to action sometimes called a cta is the essentially the buttons on your website what you want people to do when they come here so making sure that it's very clear that you want them to press the add to cart button the buy now button the contact us button i know that seems simple but sometimes those goals are lost a measurement plan allows you to make and test hypotheses and improve a website over time according to the data that you're getting back from that website your unique value propositions um why are you different than the comp than from your competition why would someone want to do business with you is another big goal communicating your brand essence again having a personality for your brand and then organizational clarity if i need to talk to someone who specifically should i be talking to our web development we've got a very mature team here at via that they view their work as craft so they address the challenges of our clients with the goal of making their lives easier they focus on function first then form and essentially function as making a website work and do the thing that it needs to do and forum is it's the essentially the art the amount of polish of the site make it work then make it beautiful the dev team does a lot of work in automating processes that are manual and cumbersome if any of you have a crm system attached to your website like hubspot or salesforce we do a lot of back-end development with those types of tools essentially you know just clearing hours and hours out of somebody's schedule so they don't have to do the more manual tasks associated with this digital world we inherit a lot of projects and improve them over time a lot of small businesses don't have the budget to rebuild an older tool so many times we inherit those and then make them better over time and then writing code that extent that is extensible and easy to maintain that is really important if any of you all have ever worked with developers um they they uh developers working in a silo can write themselves into a corner that really requires you just to blow up whatever they've built and start from scratch so that's uh what we try to shy away from so what we'll cover today is how the first obviously is how can ecommerce help my business model um there's uh obviously it's easy when you sell a product um that's easy to understand like a t-shirt but e-commerce is coming into play in all kinds of different ways now and there are some ideas that hopefully we might be able to share with you to kind of open up your vision of what e-commerce could mean for your business what needs to be considered before opening an e-commerce shop so that is your relationship with the bank uh the types of products you're selling making sure you're charging the right amount that type of thing the third what platform do i use there's a bunch out there there's so many options so we try to winnow it down to just a few that are our recommended platforms so that you don't have to go do research for 30 different ones how do i drive customers to my site once that's built and then after everything's set up or the what are the considerations once you are up and running all right so how can e-commerce help my business model so obviously the first one in this time of covid is safety less touch during the pandemic we've seen a lot of this work being done with restaurants just ordering off of a digital menu being as touchless as possible i think is the the biggest thing and honestly i think a lot of these changes will stay after after we have a vaccine hopefully we'll have a vaccine right building and communicating with a loyal audience i think this is another really important point that people don't consider is when you have e-commerce you get to trap a lot of data about how people interact with your website and your brand and you can use that information to grow that audience additional revenue types again this is really important to kind of expand your vision of what e-commerce can be um obviously if your brick and mortar store and you haven't been able to be open being able to sell digitally is super important um and then back to data we we do a lot of work in the data and analytics world so the more that you can transact online the more information that you have about your audience and um what they want from you all right um i'm going to take it over to nick hand it over to nick wonderland our digital strategist here um and he'll take you through the next section so i'm gonna go ahead thanks jason um so yeah my name's nick wonderland i'm a digital strategist with the studio so a lot of what i do is the thinking planning execution of digital projects and working very closely and collaboratively with our different disciplines within the agency so strategy tends to kind of be a hub for our agency that touches varying elements from design to dev to further silo disciplines like copywriting or promotion and marketing so um one of the ways to kind of think of the flow chart of your e-commerce website is starting with the customer and ending with the bank so your customer wants a product or service ultimately their money needs to end up in your bank account between uh between those two steps there's a few different uh tools and systems that you need to consider when building or updating your e-commerce platform so obviously first is the platform itself um so this is different services like shopify woocommerce varying other ones a payment gateway and a payment processor and those may sound like the same thing and while they both handle your payment ultimately getting the transaction from your e-commerce platform to your bank they do uh kind of uh fulfill different roles within that process which we'll talk about here in the next slide actually so a payment processor is the system that actually executes the transaction uh between you and your bank and a payment gateway is the system that communicates the approval or declines that transaction between those two services so an analogy that i like to think of is your e-commerce system is kind of like a toll road leading in and out of chicago or disney world or any place like that um where the the product itself is arriving at your destination but you have to pay for the for the road that you use so um the toll booth is like your payment processor it's where you stop and actually make your payment whereas the payment gateway is the tollbooth operator the person that says yes they have a fastpass card or yes they paid that dollar fifty to me directly i am now physically lifting that gate so that they can continue on their way um so while they they sound the same there's a slight difference between the two um looking at some of the top payment processors and again this is just kind of our top three the three that we most commonly use or see clients or prospects using but again there's tons of these um so depending on a custom build or if you need very specific services features you may want to look beyond this but between these three i would say that these are probably three of the most popular payment processors that you're seeing across the web paypal very well known it's simple to set up it easily embeds uh within existing web websites however on the back end it's kind of hard to integrate you're typically uh executing that through kind of like an iframe so you don't have total control and the sharing of data between your website and that payment processor can sometimes be incomplete or you know maybe missing some details that you want to collect stripe is probably our preferred solution it's developed for friendly it's simple it's got fair pricing it's crowdsourced so there's a lot of enthusiasm behind it there's a lot of documentation from other users who are successfully navigating issues that you may encounter and there's a lot of documented processes for that um some vendors can be frustrated especially by the uh reserve account um however you know it really comes back to your familiarity with the with the system um last is authorized.net their big calling card is security i know that over the past five years we've seen numerous big profile security breaches from places like target walmart uh expedia and credit uh so obviously everyone wants to avoid that sort of situation so if you are large scale or have some you know very confidential data that you want to protect authorized.net is a great option since their focus is on security um it's well established it's been around uh for a while however it will be your most expensive option with payment fees on top of each transaction and a monthly fee as well but between these three you can really find a solution to meet any budget or scale project uh i will add to that um at via studio we do take credit cards and sometimes those are for big projects so it's not um unreasonable that somebody wants to um charge a ten thousand dollar invoice um through a credit card to get those credit card points which we all love so we actually use authorize.net because it's a little bit more secure for big purchases like that uh much more trustworthy excellent um another feature that you know has been around a while but you're seeing it pop up on more and more sites and is seeing more and more people use these systems are digital wallets so this is obviously gpay apple pay paypal and these are great systems if you have them set up to make checkout a breeze i know personally that i hate a checkout process that feels like is a never-ending process of steps some of which can feel redundant so these can alleviate kind of that concern but also um in the age of covid with you know contact list transactions and contactless payments um g pay and apple pay are really great option because uh if if your merchant terminal is set up o take those you can complete a transaction just by not even tapping your phone on the terminal but getting it near enough for it to make that that transaction so you can literally do a complete in-person transaction with these systems without making any contact so that's always something to consider if you are venturing out into the world right now now getting into actual e-commerce platforms and what what really kind of defines an e-commerce platform is this is your store on the web so this is where typically your products are viewed and accessed and managed on the back end um this is where your customers go and view those products add them to their carts complete checkout so this really is kind of the bread and butter of your e-commerce platform and like with payment processors there is a ton of options um these are some of the ones that we we primarily use um apnea so uh again existing site embeds this would be like your paypal or i'm sure you've seen square websites either advertised to you or popping up um because they're a simple kind of low barrier option for an e-commerce platform so these are great if you're you know dipping your toe into e-commerce or you know setting it up for the first time or you don't have a full dev team to work on these sort of projects um so they're simple and fast and kind of all in one box options uh they don't have all the additional features that you'll see in some of these other uh platforms but again if you're just trying to get into e-commerce uh you know you may not need all those features just yet you can build that out over time they're not always the most user-friendly both from a dev perspective making changes and also for your end user because they are pretty much out of the box and also depending on your setup and integration your content uh might be skipped by search engine engines when they're doing their indexing and i know that we'll talk about this later in the webinar but that's that's massive for your e-commerce platform to attract users through organic search so that's always something you want to consider uh when when making this sort of decision next up is woocommerce and this is probably the e-commerce platform that we use most at via studio it's developer friendly you know you can make changes to the source code or there's a lot of existing kind of features and functions uh from other developers that you can lean and leverage on uh it's seo friendly so you know that your products will be indexed by search engines and appearing on search engine results pages for your users and customers it does require a developer or dev team to set up and fully integrate um and it does lack that sort of central support channel because it is open source um the support really comes from other users in the community that has grown around it that's not to say that there is no support because it is a very large passionate community plus open source development does have a sense of morals and responsibility built in to where if you encounter a problem you're really encouraged to document your fix and share it so that others can find that if they encounter that same sort of problem um another e-commerce platform that that we use for some of our clients is shopify this probably is the most popular option it's widely trusted it's it's considered industry standard at this point there's tons of integrations between content management systems and other tools like the the google suite between google analytics and google ads and other google properties it also offers turnkey payments so accepting and receiving payments is really a breeze on shopify however there are some drawbacks again uh to the platform it is the most expensive and it does include fees on each transaction so if you are scaling up um you know the the the transaction fees are at a scale but if you're doing thousands and thousands of transactions a day week or month that is going to add up and and add to your shopify cost so something to consider right um nick i'm going to back up just a little bit um to talk about payment gateways and processors um if you have a relationship with a smaller bank like a local bank in idaho i would recommend asking your banker if they have a preferred payment processor a lot of times that can integrate a little bit more seamlessly if they already have a relationship set up one of the downsides is that can be a little bit more expensive because of that one-to-one relationship but you know it might be the difference between getting e-commerce set up in a week versus a month yeah that's that's a really uh great point and thanks for thanks for bringing it uh it back up probably the first place to start with any of these projects is with your bank and see if they can offer any guidance because at the end of the day you want that money going into your bank account right yeah i'm sure you've seen with venmo and whatnot you can you can get money in and out of your bank account a lot more easily these days but those aren't necessarily the most trusted or secure systems um so this this next section is really focusing on the nitty-gritty of e-commerce because um you know something like payment and online shopping that's all handled on the internet itself but when an order comes in the responsibility is now on you to deliver that product from your office your warehouse your fulfillment center to your your customers front porch or office so this is really where uh it moves off the digital realm and into reality and we have a few uh few slides to help you kind of navigate this process um so first is fulfillment and shipping options so this is actually which provider you are going to work work with to move products from point a to point b there's again lots of options we've highlighted some of the most popular ones so ups and fedex both have e-commerce fulfillment programs where they work with uh companies from small businesses to major corporations to help uh move products from point a to point b um with ups marketplace shipping there's a lot of expedited shipping options so if you are selling any sort of time sensitive uh products or want to offer that sort of overnight or next day delivery ups um really is kind of the the gold standard for those expedited shipping options they also offer easy shipment tracking beyond just relaying that back to the vendor but helping you share that with with with your customers i know personally if i make any sort of substantial purchase online i'd like to get that tracking number and see it move from point a to point b c d e eventually but they they do not offer free saturday delivery so that that is something that would fall under that expedited shipping uh plan that they have lots of options for but that's something that can kind of catch uh users off guard fedex they have the industry best track best tracking it's pretty much instantaneous um it's you know they can help you get it out to your customers in confirmation emails or follow-up emails and it's a really easy to use uh platform they've they've clearly tried to make one of their unique value propositions to be the easiest to use and integrate with your system some drawbacks though it does have some of the highest shipping rates and there have been complaints about some inconsistent customer service quality so those are some items to consider uh if you're looking at fedex or ups the last option is stamps.com which is um really kind of usps's uh storefront for for shipping um they they work through the usps um and they're really kind of one of the best options for a smaller operation a mom-and-pop shop maybe running out of a house or a single office building that you know may not have a fulfillment center or warehouse so what's great about them is uh pretty much they allow you to move your products through the usps you can print shipping labels from any home printer and you know take them to the package and get them get them out through the usps so it's great for smaller operations that may not have a team dedicated to fulfillment and logistics it does require manual shipping entry for each product so again good for good for small operations uh does not scale well for larger and it does have some fewer integration options it has enough to to really work with most platforms but if you're looking for a highly customized system uh stamps.com may not be the best bet for you so um moving on to the actual content on on your on your website um most users are really not going to not going to care about your backend systems as long as it's easy for them to use what they're going to care about is your actual storefront which is managed through your ecommerce platform so just a few items to consider when you are setting up your product listings or your storefront online uh make sure that you have the accurate copy that is descriptive enough so that it's not like just black t-shirt but it may be black t-shirt with a v-neck and you know the the sizing measurements um you want high-quality photography um i know in working with some amazon fulfillment uh any product uh for an amazon uh prime listing has to have a at least a thousand by thousand pixel product uh photography and this is this is required so that you can do the zoom-ins that everyone loves to do when they're looking through amazon prime easy to understand options so this is everything from selecting your size color you know different cuts different lengths anything like that well-structured data for search engines so as you'll see in this in this uh example there's a description here there's details or size chart that's great for google because when they are scanning all that content they'll say okay this is the description of the of the product these are the details or specs these are sizing options so that's just more content for google to understand not just what your product is but the options available with it um as as i'm sure everyone's aware mobile is really king um in this case more and more of our clients uh are seeing mobile eclipse desktop traffic so it really kind of the goals or the standard to use when setting up any sort of web presence is think mobile first whether it's design copy uh how content needs to break on your website um focus on mobile first because it's it's a smaller screen it's smaller to get everything you want there and when you transition to desktop that gives you so much more room so it's easier to structure other items upselling so in this example they could pair that dress with shoes with accessories like jewelry or hair bands or what have you encouraged reviews um and the second to last point is some that we're going to touch on later but this idea of virtual tours and showrooms so that's something to consider integrating in and then lastly pay attention to google i know that we typically say search engines so that we're not leaving anyone out but google really does have the dominant market share in search engine optimization so always start with them because typically the requirements of google will apply to being yahoo and the others so what we're going to look at here is kind of some things not to do so comparing this graphic with the previous slide it's clear to see a difference but you want to avoid busy confusing site mapping site navigation store optimization um you don't want minimal copy you want you don't want low quality or limited photography so uh you know something smaller than a thousand by a thousand or a product shop that's not actually the product um i know that that sounds silly to say but it's happened to me it's happened to numerous others where you order something online and what you get is not what you ordered based on the imagery so pay attention to that um always be able to have a system to say out of stock if a product isn't available um always integrate product search functionality typically people will start with your nav but if it's again point one if it's busy or confusing people pretty much immediately check down to site search and we'll use that and then lastly inaccessible customer support option so you should have uh how to return or get a refund on a product um you should have some information on typical shipping uh times and weights so just the best advice i can get for this slide is put yourself into the shoes of your customer of your user and think about what you would want to see and experience on an e-commerce website um so i know that we touched on virtual uh showrooms this is this is becoming more and more popular uh as as the pandemic kind of drags on um this idea of you know showing a product to someone online in this example this is a car sales where uh you know dealers and car salesmen now are taking things like their iphones android phones gopros what have you and literally walking customers through a car opening the trunk uh showing the back seat showing how a car seat might hook up literally kicking the tires for customers who may be miles and miles away um we we know that you know we need to stay socially distanced and we're all trying to limit contact with others right now so being able to demo a product whether it's a car or having like a 360 spin on an individual product any way that you can make that product kind of come to life become real on your website or when helping a customer can really help you eventually close the sale um another option that that we want to share and this is actually one of our clients um they're around the block from our main office and they're they're a boutique called uh revelry and they share goods and um art from local manufacturers and artists what they did uh in in the peak of the pandemic was they turned their storefront into a virtual showroom where they put even more products out front than they normally do but they put an associated qr code next to each one so passerbys on the street could walk past see an item that they like stop pull out their phone scan the qr code and it would pull up that products page on their website where they can order and have it shipped or order and pick up in the store again just minimizing that contact they can do that shopping while they're outside um before they come in to you know just complete that transaction so this this is a system that we we found to be very creative um they laid it out nicely they had plenty of instructions and i know that i have seen people literally walk by stop pull out their their phone and do some shopping right there in their storefront yeah i think this is a tactic that will live on past the pandemic it's just such a good idea in general if you've got um uh window space exactly and um you know qr codes were viewed by a lot of people as kind of a dead or outdated technology but they are making a serious comeback during the pandemic right now um so moving on to perhaps one of the most important elements after you are all set up is uh making sure that google can find and show your website and your products to customers as they are they are looking around the web um so you know seo is a is an art it may be considered a tactic but it is something that is iterative that you have to build on past uh past experiences and successes with um so here are just kind of a few low-level items to add to your checklist when you are setting up your e-commerce storefront um you want to focus on just one product per page um so you know you can have a a sundress and you can have you know red or black or blue different color options but if it's different styles different brands if it's considered a different product beyond just sizing and coloring set up a different product page uh per product you also want to avoid complicated uh urls that if they don't make sense to an end user they probably will not make sense to google or other search engines so this example here you know you'll want uh dot com slash product category slash product title um and really that that should be it it should make sense in terms of your site architecture if you're just reading that you can also get an idea of what the product page is about um i'm sure product images have descriptive alt text so alt text is what tells google what an image is um google can not scan an image and say that is a bicycle so alt text yes a little bit of copy that will tell google this is a picture of a bicycle um another really helpful thing that alt text will do is um with for amer for users who are disabled and maybe using a screen reader alt text is also what will help them convey the content that is on a page so it kind of has a dual benefit of helping with seo and helping make your site more accessible which is another topic that i know internally at via we've seen more and more of our clients ask and we're building it more and more into our general dev process to make sites as accessible as possible um ensure user reviews can be indexed by search engines a lot of the review sites will just pull it in through an iframe so that rich that content rich review uh may not be indexed by google so make sure when you are integrating reviews that that content is uh part of your site and indexable by search engine um and then lastly leverage google for retail i know that we've pretty much all you know made a google search for something like you know nike running shoes and even above the the websites listed there's kind of like a shopping pane um that's that's google shopping which is powered by google for my for retail and that basically allows you to say hey google here are my products show them as part of a as part of search results as well all right um so we've just got three or four more slides before we're finished and we can jump into qa just a couple of minor pay attention types of slides so i know we put pay attention to google um as one of the bullet points in the slides and and this is you know use your site as a user would in google so for example this is a search for this is a local bank in kentucky that uh if you search for joint checking accounts um they're actually paying in google paid advertising um for that search term to go to this specific page so as you can see in this page there's no calls to action there's not even really a reference to joint checking account so this bank is probably paying three to five dollars for that click that goes to a page that doesn't really solve that problem so what i would encourage you to do is to search for terms that you would expect to find your site to rank for and see if it's just intuitive that you're going to to a page that makes sense so this is another bank searching for joint checking account and they're ranking for as you can see even the picture is a picture of a couple so simple shared checking accounts there's that call to action that's apply now so as you can see like this isn't a very helpful web page this is a super helpful web page and it's just that attention to what people actually want and what you're serving up to them and then the last point we like to make is use data to improve so uh google analytics is a free package um it will analyze your goal optimization your bounce rates a little bit of budget into pay-per-click or display ads or paid advertising digitally will tell you what types of keywords results in conversions and in this case we're saying conversions are sales search engine optimization tactics can help you understand your competition and the types of content that is successful and gives you some intelligence behind the scenes there crm stands for uh customer relationship management uh the c for stands for different things for different industries but uh essentially you get quantitative insights over time if you're nurturing a specific audience and then the same thing for social media you get you get audience insights from participating there and seeing how people react so with all this data you get new hypotheses into how to make how to improve your website and you make better decisions so you should start to see a curve of success on a website sales goes up traffic goes up uh ultimately you are a happier small business owner which we like so uh to wrap this up what platforms do you use for products paypal square shopify woocommerce there's a bunch of other platforms um so i've already seen some comments come through the chat about big commerce and whatnot there's a ton um uh but we're we focused today on the ones that we have found either easy to use or successful or user-friendly uh multi-channel integration this is kind of the bonus points or the phase two to your e-commerce uh you can sell on amazon's platform um and facebook and instagram are making big big moves right now to sell products on their platforms so you can essentially just stay inside those websites or apps and buy the things you're searching for we haven't talked much about service companies uh but there are uh products like harvest and fresh books that can do subscriptions and invoices and whatnot from a more backend perspective and not necessarily a product focused e-commerce perspective so for example if you're a lawn care service you probably want to get someone on a recurring payments and you know instead of trying to remember to invoice them every month or every week you could just set up a subscription get their credit card and it just automatically runs that and again this is where the very small businesses we see a lot of success if people can take the time and research these platforms that make their lives easier because a lot of small business owners myself included weren't necessarily trained for some of the types of things that we have to deal with so tons and tons of options there and with that we can move on to questions thanks for your time you guys from kentucky know what you're talking about that was great information um we do have a bunch of questions so i'm just gonna jump in and um i if all of you who are listening if you have more questions it is not too late put them in there we'll try to get as many of them answered as possible so uh the first one here that i wanted to ask is is there a place to learn about html and sources to help build a website is there like a khan academy or something like that where you can learn to do some of this yourself uh yeah there's uh tons actually code academy is a good one lynda.com lynda.com i'm not sure about idaho or any specific cities but i know the city of louisville here for both of those platforms gives you free access to those if you have a library card so i think those are really good um places to to check out um i imagine there's some youtube channels now youtube's done a really great job of monetizing their platforms so people are making money by delivering content on youtube so i don't know specifically nick i don't know if you know any that are singular to youtube no not youtube uh one other thing that i wanted to mention was that there's typically like code guilds or you know kind of local trade organizations that uh focus on development um that you know are always looking for new members uh who typically have some sort of mentoring program or training so um if there's not an online solution uh just just google you know uh learn html in boise and i'm sure that there will be groups organizations or services to help you learn that skill great and i would say even if you are outsourcing this to a firm like the uh it really pays to know some of the concepts and to go search out some information as a business owner so you can ask them the right questions right make sure that you can manage it once they're done building it yeah basic html i feel like is you know i wish they would start to teach that in middle school because it's so important now um i would also say though that you if you don't have experience in web development you probably don't want to try to do too much of it yourself um find a freelancer you know if you're strapped for cash to get something spun up i would say um it's probably worth it for to pay somebody a couple hours for their time rather than to spend 40 hours trying to figure it out yourself here's another question we got here which is uh can you go over the gateway versus processor again do we need to engage two different companies or do most offer both services in one so a lot of uh services will offer kind of uh all-in-one um for payment processing versus payment gateway um so you know something like square i believe offers both uh with if you're working on maybe an uh woocommerce project they typically will require a another system to actually handle the payment processing um on it so really it just depends on your ecosystem which tools or services you want to use um also if you're engaged with any sort of sales rep um i know that we're work we're working on onboarding a a new e-commerce platform for a client of ours that does subscription bundles direct to b2b sales so they needed a really custom service for them that is new to us but their rep has a recommendation for any additional tool or service so if you are engaged with someone um like a sales rep or even just through a support channel um ask because they typically will have their sort of preferred vendors that they can recommend and will make your life a lot easier here's the question about um skus so we're a small but many skus is there an industry standard of how many skus we should list what are the pitfalls we should avoid um really that kind of depends on on your your back end processes um i i typically feel that um each product variant probably should have its own sku just so that you immediately know what exact product to go to however there's really no kind of set standard of you need this many skus for this many products so really it comes down to your back end organization and um being able to update inventory find products on your shelves to get them out the door so there's really no hard fast rule it's it's really just what works for you and your business okay um another question do existing site shopping cart embeds also include carts that appear in wix squarespace godaddy etc or are you adding lu or shopify to those sites say i'm sorry yeah read that question again that's a little confusing you bet do existing shopping cart embeds also include carts that appear in wex i'm sorry wix squarespace godaddy etc um that's not something that i know just off the top of my head but it really kind of comes down to how you integrate it in the simplest integration most likely will not um square i know is is kind of falls falls under one of these embeds but they're working really hard to become more of a e-commerce platform themselves so if you're using a service like that i i would imagine that they probably have some sort of shopping cart feature but it really just depends on how they integrate into your site and what features you're using through their platform shopping carts are great especially when you're able to marry that with other products and services like dynamic remarketing or cart abandonment emails um can really help move sales where people may fall off so it really kind of comes down to the to the system itself square like i said is is working on building out their products so i imagine that they would have some sort of integration or system for you to offer that you're just working through paypal probably not though all right um this question came up a couple times so i want to ask it uh can venmo or square be used instead of paypal and others that you mentioned i think square has a online payment processing but venmo is uh i know that they're working on a payment button for online but but they're really they'll tell you in their documentation they're really made for trusted transactions between friends and family so i don't think they're going to make any real active moves into that space and i think the the venmo audience is small enough to where if you added a venmo payment like i would focus on apple pay google pay amazon pay in that order um and then you know if you want to offer any other kind of wallet you know wait for those to achieve some type of um uh mass saturation before you even consider that do you think there's an issue if you're a service provider and say maybe you don't have as many customers as a product uh retail product company um accepting payment from your clients in venmo is there can you anticipate any issues with that even if it was just kind of you know that's more phone to phone versus having a post on a website um yeah i mean personally as a service provider that takes credit cards and online payments i would not use venmo for my business i think it's the paper trail is sketchy at best a cpa is going to look at your transactions um we actually do some venmo we have a property management company and we take uh we've got a um an apartment tenant that pays us through venmo and but she's the only one and if we had multiple people pay through venmo that would be a nightmare to try to track and manage on the back end from an accounting point of view so i i would just advise against venmo in a business capacity great and a couple people have chatted in since since we asked that question that it's against the terms of service prevent though as well so i'm breaking the law don't tell anybody well that's one trusted source but in terms of using the business yeah it sounds like it's it sounds like it's pretty clear uh yeah it's yeah looking at that on the bank transaction side is just it's it's it's not good okay next question go ahead i was just going to say if i had to look in into my crystal ball to imagine what venmo's moves will be in the next five years i imagine them more to go towards a payment wallet like apple pay or gpa rather than trying to become uh payment processing gateway themselves right consumer focus versus business focus yeah uh okay so next question generally speaking how long should a business expect this process to take one month six months like if they're saying like okay i need to get e-commerce up how long should they expect it to take um you could probably spin up a shopify store and get all of the back-ends connections made in a week or two um you know you're that but that's the most expensive option unfortunately from like a a uh you know a platform expense um so that's the quickest way to do it um even quicker would be adding like a paypal button to an existing site which again has a lot of drawbacks long term so really you know if you need to spin up and let people give you money through some kind of e-commerce immediately you can get that done pretty quickly uh building an e-commerce site from scratch uh with something like woocommerce or a more extensive kind of shopify build might be two to four months yeah if if uh time is of the essence i would really suggest you know maybe taking an iterative approach you know get a minimum viable product live as quickly as possible but don't stop there work on you know regular optimizations to it building out content better structuring your backend data so you know to jason's point you could probably get something set up in a week or two um but you know that sort of quick uh integration is not going to be ideal so you know do do not consider it done if you do it that way uh be coming back and and be updating it and optimizing it and your life will be much easier absolutely good question okay here's a question for a home-based business that has products they say i'm not sure i want to give out my home address as a return address what kind of options uh have you seen for you know other kinds of return to appeal boxes or something like that people can return their goods um i mean i think your only like safe option is a po box um i know lots of people that have done business that way through a po box um or if you've got you know i i have let other small businesses use my business address as a mailing address so if you know someone that owns a brick and mortar place you could possibly ask them to use their address but yeah i'm with you i wouldn't recommend giving away any home address on anything related to money so jason you're saying you're saying you can use a po a po box to accept product returns yeah yeah i mean uh i've i've done it on a smaller level with things like um t-shirts and you know i played in bands a million years ago and that type of thing and we we sold um t-shirts and cds and whatnot through a p.o box and back and forth a good male you know a good post office loves that kind of thing because it's consistent you make friends with the people who run the post office there and it's just another community k nd of thing that's kind of awesome one other thing that i would uh i would just add to that is if you are using a po box or maybe sending it to another business uh using their address just be transparent in your returns um just so that you know if they google that business and it's not a business that they're currently working with they're not thinking that it's a scam or or anything like that so i i just always recommend be as transparent as possible in any sort of process like that right and as a as a follow-up to that i mean has amazon just ruined e-commerce for for everyone like you've got to get it you've got to include shipping you've got to have a quick quick uh get it to their home and then you've got to allow them to return it easily and at no fast well i to be fair to local businesses there's a huge backlash against amazon right now i you know their search engine is because they have it you know they're turning it into more of a platform for other people to sell there's garbage all over amazon now you search for anything that's kind of low cost and you could get something from china that takes two months to get to you and you don't even know that until after you've purchased so i know the expectations are high for customer service now with e-commerce but you know that's really just the cost of doing business now so i mean honestly now is a great time to to ladder up an e-commerce site because of that backlash i'll also say uh customers kind of also understand that an etsy shop does not have the might of amazon behind them um so most people will understand that they're working with a small business and kind of temper their expectations to that um who they're working with yeah we all as business owners deal with unreasonable customers all of us do i know what we live i know personally i've bought things from small businesses and and when they arrive at my doorstep there'll be a note in there that says like thank you for supporting a small business oh yeah and i have an indicator i mean i work for a small business development center so it means something to me but like i'll make repeat purchases because i know i'm supporting a small business versus yeah manufacturer overseas you've got a smaller sorry nick you've got a smaller audience but they're much much much more loyal yeah and i was just gonna say personal touches like that or even like if you have stickers throw some stickers uh in a package and that's just some free brand exposure granted it may just be on a water bottle or something but you know people love stickers and you never know where where they'll be end up and who they'll be seen by yeah oh i just we just have to there are there are some open questions here so i apologize to everyone that we can't answer all the questions but i do want to end with one i think is really important to address which is what would be the cost range to pay someone like an agency or freelancer to build a site like this that could handle products right um if so the the level of expectation on what you're building is very important uh like i say we could and have ramped up a shopify theme in a couple weeks um that might cost um if our client would be handling most of the content that could cost as little as five to ten thousand dollars um a more reasonable project cost for us for e-commerce you could because we work with a little bit larger businesses that can afford it would be more like 30 to 75 000 um and we've done crazy e-commerce that's you know hundreds of thousands of dollars but i would never recommend that for a small business so there are kind of tiers good better best um getting something ramped up very quickly with you know a lot of your time with contents and learning the to put in the products and that kind of thing can be fairly quick and inexpensive relatively i guess um but if you're a bigger business and you have more long term and long lasting needs that could get um you know again you could get into the tens of thousands of dollars fairly easily my advice for for small businesses in thinking about doing that is have a conversation with a few different firms and understand which ones really are focused on helping small businesses because if they are then you'll be able to figure out maybe how to piecemeal it together in pieces or have them do parts of it and you can do some basic stuff to keep the cost in within your budget right yeah a good agency will be helpful without being desperate um if that makes any sense you know there is definitely a minimum engagement that we need in order for us as a small business to be profitable where a freelancer or you know you know a developer that works alone might be a better option for a very small business great so um thank you thanks jason thanks nick um we're just past the hour now so so we do i do want to respect everyone's time and wrap up uh we have an open poll uh if you if you all haven't um had a chance to take the pulse three questions really quick um we really appreciate your your feedback just so we can kind of understand how valuable this webinar was to you um i do want to plug really quickly upcoming webinars we have a webinar on government contracting so as a small business as you're trying to figure out where to find new revenue streams government contracting might be a place to look um and so we've got one coming up on that and then if you're a small business that has a commercial lease and you're in the midst of trying to figure out how to pay that lease and how to renegotiate at least with your landlord we've got a webinar coming up that's focused on that so stay tuned to your email inboxes as we send you notifications on those upcoming webinars also there's one question here that says does the idaho spdc offer web or graphic design i if you have a web or graphic design need email us we don't offer free services like that but we do have a program um through our office in pocatello where you may be able to get some level of assistance there so do email us if that's a question that you have there might be sorry to interrupt but there might be a um an aiga chapter in idaho um they're the american institute of graphic arts uh that would be a good resource to look for a freelancer that might be near you excellent yeah great great tip okay so i just want to say again thank you thanks for this fantastic information you know it's it's kind of a it's it's a black art of of um how do you have a successful business in this digital world there's so many options out there and it was really helpful to hear you guys walk through some known options that these businesses can uh can can look at and i want to say if there's anybody on here who um wants to have another conversation with via studio i'm sure you're open to working with clients you know even just to answer questions absolutely our my email address was in that last slide so if you want to shoot me an email i'm happy to answer any quick questions as my time allows over the next week or so great wellstudio.com is the website as well excellent and and we appreciate all of you for tuning in and um working on your business uh and uh and we are here for you we want to keep supporting you through this uh pandemic and hang in there we will all be buying stuff from each other as we go in one form or another we're going to do our best to keep all these businesses open so thanks everyone absolutely and and we will see you next time all right see you guys