In this series, we'll discuss why your business needs to be offering online shopping in 2025 to be relevant and take advantage of the key benefits. Finally, we will get into what you need to get started and which features to consider when building your online store for the first time or updating your existing website.
Many businesses had to find ways to diversify and stay afloat during the era of contactless pickup and closures to in-person shopping as you well know. Since then, adding omnichannel retail and payment solutions has made businesses not only more adaptable and resilient but relevant in 2025
An eCommerce tool also gives you several key benefits, including:
- An easy way to reach more customers and secure more sales.
- Adds resilience by providing alternate ways for you to get paid if you experience a disruption to your traditional in-person payment experience.
- Builds brand awareness and trust
- Gives your customers more flexibility through a faster buying process right from their smartphone or home computer.
- Reduces overhead costs
- Creates a market edge among competitors by enabling your customers to compare products and prices.
Benefits of having an online store for your business
Easy, low-cost way to reach more customers:
Insider Intelligence estimates that eCommerce sales will grow to an impressive five trillion worldwide in 2025 and another trillion two years later. Supply is evolving to meet the demands of consumer habits, with customers coming to expect businesses to have online stores.
If your customers are looking for your products or services, you can bet they are looking on Google. The key to being findable and accessing this vast market? Well, you have to get online first.
Having an online location to host your products with a way for your customers to find you, browse, and checkout in an easy and intuitive manner is easier than you think.
The last thing you need when trying to create a low-maintenance platform for your customers to find your business online is an expensive and time-consuming solution. Luckily, online stores are easy to set up, and some payment processors will include access to a free online checkout with your existing account. If this is the case, getting started can be as easy as clicking the "Feature Online" button in your product listing. Having an online checkout included as part of your merchant account makes it easy to keep all your transaction data in one place, set up your store faster, and reach more customers, all without costing your business extra time and money.
Adds resilience to your business model:
The pandemic made one thing clear: eCommerce is a lifeline for cutting costs while reaching customers wherever they are without a physical location.
Having alternate options for customers who wanted to shop safely from their homes allowed them to support local businesses during more challenging times. An online store makes it easy for customers to order and receive products from anywhere. This means that if your business ever had to cut costs during a recession or face closing your brick-and-mortar storefront, you could still reach loyal and even new customers.
Even if you're not offering delivery yet, customers embrace placing online orders that allow for quick pickup at the business location.
Convenient 24/7 shopping for customers:
One of the best parts of having an online store is that it keeps working even when you're not. Customers can submit orders at any time of day, so you can easily find yourself waking up with an inbox full of orders —something that can't happen with traditional brick and mortar stores. Adding detailed pickup, shipping, or delivery instructions to your checkout page helps set customer expectations upfront and gives you the time you need to get their orders ready once received.
Diversifies your income streams:
The word pivot might be one of the official slogans of 2020. Small business owners everywhere have demonstrated their creativity, resilience, and ability to adapt time and time again as they adjust to constantly changing regulations, health guidelines, new bylaws, and customer demands.
Adding digital tools to your business toolbox helps businesses become more resilient by removing the reliance on just in-person payments as an income stream. Having an online store created and ready to go makes it easy to redirect customers if you decide to cut the overhead costs of a physical location.
It's easier for customers to support your business:
One of the advantages that small businesses have over their larger counterparts is the personal connection and relationship that they build with their customers. Your customers truly believe in your business and want to help support you, particularly when they know it has been a tough year. Sharing your business journey and being transparent with your customers means a lot more than when you're a big box store. Most customers will be happy to support you and order through your online store, especially when you let them know why you set it up and how much their orders mean to you.
Not only that, but meeting customers where they are, whether online or through payment links for social commerce, gives them seamless checkout options so they can easily purchase your products without having to leave their web browser or social channel.
How to add an online store to your existing website
If your business has an existing website and you want to add payment functionality to it without having to do any programming, then Helcim's Hosted Payment Pages are the solution you've been looking for.
When you have a Hosted Payment Page, customers start their shopping as usual, by visiting your website and browsing your products. Once they have finished adding items to their cart, they can proceed to the checkout. It's here that they will access Helcim's Hosted Payment Page to complete the transaction, and the best part is, they won't even realize that they have left your website! It's a seamless integration that can make any site an online store.
Setting up a hosted payment page with Helcim is easy; with just a few clicks you can choose which information fields you want to collect, what amount you want to charge, and customize the look and feel of the page. This saves your business money because you do not need to spend the time or resources figuring out how to add payments to your website or hire someone to do it for you. Some of the highlighted benefits of using a Helcim Hosted Payment Page are:
No Programming: You don't need to use a programmer or have any development experience to add a payment page to your website, all the steps are straightforward and easy to complete. This also means that you're able to save your business money because you do not need to hire a developer to do any work on your website.
Customized Look and Feel: Just because the payment page isn't a part of your actual website doesn't mean that it has to look different than the rest of your site. You can customize the look and feel of your payment pages so they reflect your company and brand colors, creating a consistent and seamless customer experience.
Secure Payment Processing: Using the Helcim Hosted Payment Pages means that you get to benefit from Helcim's security standards. We are committed to helping you stay secure and compliant. To do this we complete strict audits, security testing, and inspections to meet the highest level of security in the industry.
Ready to Bring Your Business Online? Every Helcim account includes access to a fully hosted online store that you can set up in minutes so you can reach customers anywhere. Online orders automatically sync with your account, so all your payment information is available in one place, and you can get paid faster. Learn more about the Helcim Online Store.
Tips for eCommerce beginners
Now that you have a solid understanding of how online stores can help your business, why an online store is beneficial, and some of the core features you should look for when selecting your online store provider, you're ready to get started.
Today's technology makes launching an online store easier then ever and with the right partner you don't need to worry about hiring a developer or bringing in extra help to get started. Here are some things to keep in mind when you're first setting up your online store.
It's okay to start small
Don't feel like you have to add all of your products or service offerings online right away. It's okay if your online store is not a replica of your in-person store. You can always add new products over time as you adjust to selling online. To stay competitive, an Amazon scraper API can help you track similar product prices across different platforms, making it easier to set appealing price points. You can also choose to use your online store specifically for seasonal or temporary promotions. For example, a holiday collection, special gift packs, or pre-orders for hard to get products.
Learn as you go
The best way to learn how to sell products online is to get started. Once you launch your online store and start making sales, you will see what products customers are most interested in. From here, you can adjust your product descriptions, images, and how you promote your store to increase your sales.
Take great photos
Having beautiful images that accurately represent your products is a great way to encourage sales and help customers feel confident in their purchases. Even if you're not a professional photographer, you can add a mix of customer photos, supplier images, or your photos to highlight your products. Try and include multiple images for each product to give customers a good sense of each item.
Organize your products
Sorting products into categories, collections, and brands can make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for and for you to highlight specific items for sales or promotions. Using the available organizational tools in your online store helps keep your store easy to navigate.
Add your business details
Having clear policies on your shipping, return, and warranty policies is an important part of operating your online store. Once you have these policies covered, we also recommend including a brief overview of your business in the form of an "About" page so customers can begin to build a relationship with your brand. Adding blog content and articles is another way to regularly connect with your customers and drive traffic to your online store.
Let people know
Once you have set up your online store, it's time to let people know about it. Include a link to your store in your social media profiles and regularly encourage customers to visit your online store to check out new products in your social posts. Ensuring that you mention your online store in all your advertising materials lets more customers know they can connect with you online and in-person.
Ready to bring your business online?
Every Helcim account includes access to The Online Checkout that you can set up in minutes so you can reach customers anywhere. Online orders automatically sync with your account, so all your payment information is available in one place — and you can get paid faster. Learn more about the Helcim Online Checkout.
