Too often retailers think a website connected with their shop needs to reflect what they sell in the shop. While this can often work, it is not essential.
There are plenty of retailers, including newsagents, who run websites from the back of their shop, using the resources of the shop without additional overheads.
There are newsagents who started this way, with a website as a completely different business, who then discovered that the products sold through this other business could also sell in their shop.
I know of one newsagent who stumbled across the opportunity when unpacking goods for the website they ran from the back office. A customer noticed the items being unpacked, items you’d never expect to see even in an innovative newsagency. Soon enough this newsagent had a section for these products in the shop and attracted a whole new range of shoppers as a result.
I know of another newsagent who let a friend use spare space at the back of the shop to run a new online business. Soon enough the two were working together offering the online products in the shop once they discovered that something they never considered would work worked a treat.
A website connected with your newsagency could be a perfect way to explore what you could sell. That a website can easily reach many more times the people your shop reaches, it is easier to experiment. That it is new means you can experiment outside any boundaries you impose upon yourself in your shop.
This approach of experimenting completely outside what you do in your shop today is what I call a plan b., It’s you experimenting in pursuit of fresh traffic and revenue for your business, through which you might find a financially rewarding path beyond what the physical shop currently offers.
Websites are easy to setup and run, they can evolve too, as you learn more of what can sell.
By all means offer what you have in your shop online. Think, too, about the opportunities of playing completely outside what you do today and through this attracting revenue from shoppers you will never see and from products you thought you would never carry.
Connecting your website to your newsagency software is easy, offering one place for managing all inventory and all sales. This is time and labour efficient. It also protects against theft.
We had an idea for a very niche website for one of my newsagencies a couple of days ago. We have the domain name and are working on inventory. Always chasing change.