We have entered the era of eCommerce. Many customers today prefer to shop online, even when they have favourite local stores. This has inspired thousands of brick-and-mortar brands to expand into e-commerce by opening an online store.
Having an online store in addition to your brick-and-mortar location makes it possible for customers to peruse your inventory online, fill a virtual cart, order items for local pickup, and even make delivery orders from much further away than your typical customer radius. Opening an online store makes it possible to serve a national audience, even with your local inventory, and connect more with customers in your community.
Tailbase provides a comprehensive eCommerce toolkit, empowering brick-and-mortar businesses like yours to open an eCommerce store from setup to sales. This is your guide to getting started with Tailbase so you can start selling online easily and as quickly as 4-weeks.
1) Book a Consultation
Step 1 is to book your consultation to build your strategy and begin your eCommerce store creation. Tailbase specializes in building custom-tailored online stores for traditional businesses selling appliances, furniture, electronics, mattresses, flooring, and outdoor solutions. We have all the tools you need to build an eCommerce-ready product catalog, a searchable store interface, a virtual cart, online checkout, and order delivery logistics management.
Our solution includes ensuring you have the perfect online store ready to welcome customers and provide a singularly satisfying online shopping experience.
During our consultation, we will tailor our toolkit to meet your unique business needs, visualize the final product, and help you start down the path of eCommerce integration.
2) Choose Tailbase Version 3 or Tailbasify
Next, you’ll decide the scope and features of your brand’s eCommerce website. Tailbase Version 3 is a comprehensive online selling platform that incorporates your product catalog and provides a great selection of promotional features like featured products, upsell suggestions, and add-on services to enhance the online shopping experience. Tailbase Version 3 comes in lite, standard, and all-inclusive to suit your budget, inventory brand size, and desired feature set.
We also offer Tailbasify, a custom-tailored version of Tailbase designed to interface perfectly with Shopify. If you’ve fallen in love with Shopify’s feature set or already have a Shopify store, you can dive into a solution that provides all the excellent features of both Tailbase and Shopify combined.
3) Upload Your Product Catalog
Once you have chosen a solution, the foundational step is to upload or rebuild your product inventory into the Tailbase catalog system. The Tailbase platform supports hundreds of brands and can help you automatically select exact products, quickly connect details like features and materials, include official brand photos of your products, and provide a pricing tool to help keep your listings competitively profitable.
Our catalog supports:
- 425 Furniture brands
- 179 Appliance brands
- 172 Electronics brands
- 109 Mattress brands
- 84 Outdoor brands
- 11 Flooring brands
4) Tailor Online Listing Design
Tailbase makes it easy to create beautiful online listings with all the right details provided directly from each product’s manufacturing brand. You can also take control and fine-tune how listings on your online store appear to customers when they are browsing, searching for specific products, and exploring individual product listings.
You can choose the cover photo, write product descriptions in your brand’s unique voice, or let the platform do the work for you.
5) Select Your Payment Processor
One of the unique requirements of an eCommerce store is an online payment processor. You will need to choose a trusted financial platform that will handle credit card payments from your online customers. Tailbase offers seamless integration with PayPal, Authorize.net, Worldline, and Clover as your payment processing options.
You can also offer customers the convenience of pay-over-time financing with partners like Flexiti, Affirm, and Uown Leasing.
6) Establish Your Delivery Logistics
Once you have prepared your online store with both a product catalog and payment processing, it’s time to plan for logistics. If you don’t already have an established shipping solution, you can work with Tailbase pros to help you choose and streamline your delivery order fulfillment logistics process.
You will need a routine that allows you to pick and pack, label, ship, and track orders for your online customers. If this is new to you, we can help just as we’ve helped hundreds of other brands take their retail business online.
7) Design Your Online Store Website
With the behind-the-scenes work complete, you’re ready to build your website. Tailbase specializes in building custom websites that suit the unique style and personality of each brand. You can build your website using Tailbase 3 or Tailbasify, our Shopify integration. We can also help attach the new eCommerce functionality to your existing brand website or rebuild your website using your brand’s domain.
Together, we will build beautiful landing pages, a custom store page, and a website template that will give your customers a unique online brand-aligned experience while integrating smoothly with your business’ operational technologies.
8) Promote Your eCommerce Grand Opening
The final step is to promote your grand opening. Opening an online store is a lot like unveiling a new location, except that you can welcome customers from all over the country. Start with releasing a brand-new digital advertising campaign announcing your online store to draw in customers and ensure your first day is successful.
Tailbase makes it easy to integrate marketing through the Google Marketing Platform, MailChimp, Emma, and Constant Contact. We can also help you syndicate your brand presence through Syndigo and Loadbee.
Enhance Your Brick-and-Mortar Store with eCommerce Today
Your brick-and-mortar retail store has more potential than a single location can hold. Enhance your brand’s reach and open your doors to customers across the country with Tailbase. Our expert teams are here to help you smoothly integrate your catalog, build your website, and launch an online grand opening that will open new horizons for new customers and members of the community who love your brand.
Contact us today for your initial no-obligation consultation.