When a site is enough

If your sale goes through a conversation — because the price depends on scope, because the product is configured, or because the customer wants reassurance that you understand their problem — a store adds nothing.

In that case the site's job is different: answer the questions that come before the conversation and make the enquiry easy. A well-made page with prices as ranges does more work than a shopping cart.

When a store pays off

Three conditions must hold at once: the product is standard and needs no explanation, the price can be public, and order volume justifies the daily work.

The third is the most underestimated. A store brings daily tasks — processing, packing, delivery, returns, enquiries. At a few orders a month that work does not pay for itself and the store is quietly abandoned.

The middle option that is often right

A catalogue with public prices but no cart. The customer sees everything needed to decide and orders the way the industry normally does — a call, an enquiry or a request.

This is the sensible choice in wholesale, where prices are negotiated per customer, and for products whose delivery needs to be agreed. You gain the transparency without taking on the operation.

The store has to be connected

The most expensive mistake is a store with its own stock and its own prices, reconciled by hand with the real system. That works until the first peak, after which you start selling stock that does not exist.

The right arrangement is for the store to read stock and prices from the ERP and return orders into it. We covered how in the integration article.

Frequently asked questions