It’s a dream all online entrepreneurs have, that of one day waking up to what is now the reality of some insane sales figures which you perhaps partially dreamed of and partially believed could actually be attained, with this belief instantly instilled in your mind the very moment you made your first ever sale.
That’s the advantage e-commerce sites give you – the ability to get the ball rolling with a whole lot less of the overheads you’d otherwise be faced with if you were opening the doors to your physical, brick-and-mortar store. The good thing, moreover is that there are some reputed IT Services providers that can help entrepreneurs, not well versed in the online mode of doing business, scale and solve most of their IT-related problems.
To make reference to an age-old cliché, with great success and power comes great responsibility, so since you rightfully harbour the belief that your online business will eventually scale some great heights, now is the time to put some measures in place in preparation for the scaling challenges which will catch you blind-sided if you’re not adequately prepared.
Integrating a Merchant Account Solution
Look, you’re perhaps suitably justified in assuming that the merchant account service provider behind solutions such as the Clover POS system offers a lot more commercial payment processing solutions such as comprehensive merchant account management, but you don’t want to leave the integration of such a solution ‘till you have no choice. Rather do it now.
If your sales are exploding or even if they’re showing a gradual, slow and steady rise, you will inevitably get to that point where making use of a comprehensive merchant account solution is something you have to do rather than merely being a scaling option. This is because online payment processors such as PayPal have a threshold for processing online payments, which basically means once you start making “too much money,” if there is such a thing, you will essentially get kicked out with no warning and then find yourself suddenly having to run around, trying to organise a more suitable merchant account solution to continue processing your payments.
As you know, any interruptions in a growing online business can prove to be very costly, causing you to lose more than just short-term sales but also causing you to lose out on long-term customers who can simply go elsewhere within mere seconds. So, to combat this, online business owners should consider getting a good merchant account and increasing their payment security. When users purchase from businesses online, they want to know that their credit card details aren’t going to be stolen. By using a secure payment gateway, online business owners can increase security and customer loyalty.
Turn Your Office into a Physical Retail Space
This suggestion may seem like it goes against everything a web-based business like an e-commerce site enjoys as a set of advantages over a brick-and-mortar store, but turning your office into a physical retail space will give your web-based business that much more credibility. Additionally, it will streamline operations because then you can start to stock physical products as well alongside using the same space as a warehouse of some sorts, with nothing more than something like a Clover register to take advantage of those buyers who still prefer the human touch to form part of their shopping experience. Besides, a service provider such as Merchant Account Solutions dynamically designs all of their payment handling solutions with scalability in mind, best suited to all types of businesses which include full or hybrid e-commerce as well. Scalability thus becomes that much more streamlined.
Alternatively, you might want to read this article by TradeBeyond about how to get your products into already existing stores. This is a great compromise as you still get the physical products out there but without the overhead of managing your own store.
