Online Seller - wanting to open shop like argos...help.

[patrick47]

Morning People,

Look for some advice here.

Currently trading on ebay, Amazon and my own site, using Channel Advisor.

Our line of products is heavily weighted towards Q4 and generally we get a surge of people wanting to come to our premises to pick up the items (We are just a warehouse, but we are in town and have a perfect area which could be used as a shop), this has shown us how we could probably benefit with a physical shop.

However how do i go about it, i dont want to get a till and i cant display all of my products in this shop area.

I was thinking of something along the argos/screwfix route, yet we have no catalogue. So i could get a couple computers down in the store and set them up to use our site only.

I have a card machine, so can process card payments and also people could pay online through my usual methods of paypal, Google etc, but obviously not pay delivery and we'll just go grab the item off the shelf.

Has anyone done this? Tried to do this and failed? Or has anyone got any bright ideas / advice?

Cheers,

Pat

 

[akirk]

If designed well then this could work - I am always amazed that Argos continue to print catalogues - but I guess people like to flick through the pages...

you would just need a method of ensuring that your system knows that they are in store - ideally you would link in a credit card pin terminal beside the computer and a small printer to print out the receipt with a code on it - and a matched picking list sent to your pickers.

def. doable - but you might want to speak to your website developers / some epos specialists to make it slick - much depends on the volume of people who might come through the door - as to how slick it needs to be, but optimum would be to not require any additional staff servicing the 'tills'

Alasdair

 

[PerfectP]

Argos have catalogues still because a) Joe Public still want them and b) Argos knows that for every catalogue they get rid of = £££'s in sales.

 

[akirk]

Argos have catalogues still because a) Joe Public still want them and b) Argos knows that for every catalogue they get rid of = £££'s in sales.

sorry - meaning in-store

Alasdair

 

[bovine]

Kiddicare do something like this ( a large baby shop). They have standalone terminals dotted around the store and you can use them and order the items, you pay at the terminal then go and collect them.

Works very well in my opinion.

So if you implement something at your site, should work well. Might be an idea to look at the payment side of things with cards though - its customer present so you would want a system that accepts chip and pin. Otherwise you have very little protection against fraudulent transactions.