Lately when I have gone on-line to purchase some tools or related wood working things, I haven found more and more American stores will not ship to Canada. They dont say this up front either, its only after you have filled out all the bs forms, selected shipping and payment options etc etc that you find out. Pisses me right off. Or they will ship via a third party shipper, which I dont get at all. All that does is double my shipping costs and add days to an already long process. This is something relatively new it seems too. I dont buy much fly or fishing stuff on-line as there are several shops in my area , and I try to support them as much as I can. It would suck to not have them around, even if it costs me more to shop locally. I'm ok with that.
To actually address some of your question:
-have accurate pics that when you hit the zoom that it does really zoom in. No point in hitting zoom and it doesnt zoom.
-when you are out of stock, say so right up front in the product description
- be realistic with shipping both time wise and cost, It costs more to ship out of Canada, A lot more then out of the US. It also takes longer. Most Canucks get this, but be clear on this to your US customers. Combine shipping etc. Maybe offer incentives..
-there already are many on-line stores that specialise in fly stuff. Some are even Canadian. What will you be doing differently that will be better? For hard to find materials for tying classic Atlantic (and now SH bugs) its a drag they cant or wont ship certain products to Canada.
- have a fault proof customer is always right dispute resolution process.
- offer more ways to pay than just paypal
- offer something different ie, if you volunteer your time in fish advocacy you get a discount. lol...I'm joking but wouldn't that be a novel way to encourage people to give back.
An acquaintance used to manage a tackle shop. He got flack from the co-owner for making super deals that actually moved a lot of product. They didnt make the typical markup, but when the thing has been sitting there so long its got UV sun damage its time to discount it and move it. The store still made money, the customer got a deal, and the old stock finally got out of there, so really most of us thought it was a win win thing. The owner didnt get that though. Funny. the store went tits up. He had a lot of customers that followed him from store to store. He has an on-line store through E-bay that ships fast, cheap and accurately. He gets it and understands why people shop on line. That is something to understand: some people will spend $5 in gas to save 38 cents. Now with the on-line thing that mentality has become worse. You wont make all of your customers happy all of the time, understand that some people will consume so much of your time and you wont see any return from that. Even in a faceless on-line environment. Understand this will consume 10 times more of your time than you are expecting and will change the relationship you have with your friends in the retail world.
