What it takes to manage an online store

Introducing next year’s panelists

[Our company] had an e-commerce site prior to the pandemic, and then re-launched a new e-commerce site post pandemic. Originally, we did not have prices across all product categories. Now we do. We’ve seen good growth in our chemical and accessories business. Our core categories have also grown; however, those purchases transition to online chat, phone or email and then a sale. It has made remote buying much easier for our customers and drives in-store sales. The sales team is handling those chats, emails and phone calls. We have not seen a massive increase in strictly fulfilling online. We are continuing to ramp up our online marketing presence to eventually see that spike.

We have a website manager who handles online fulfillment and the website with the help of an external web developer. Our web manager receives commission for online transactions, and if a customer worked with a sales team member, the salesperson’s name is added in the checkout process to receive credit.

E-commerce and online pricing websites are a full-time job. It actually takes more than a single employee to manage it. You have to have a website developer, an online marketer (PPC, Google shopping) and an internal website manager to do it right. With all the pricing and inventory changes, you have to keep those current real-time. We allocate this in our marketing budget. It is the most critical piece to our marketing (and we advertise on television heavily).