When it comes to marketing, shopping online is like shopping in the real world. If your store is out of the way and looks uninviting, people may continue their search elsewhere. Similarly, if your website looks untrustworthy or messy, customers will be hesitant to buy anything, let alone give their credit card number to make a purchase.
Your eCommerce website should stand out to your desired clientele while still being functional. Using BigCommerce and Lightspeed’s Vend plug-in is how you can accomplish both of these things.
Using BigCommerce to Create the Best Website for Gun Shops
BigCommerce is a well-established eCommerce platform and one of the few companies that likes to do business with the firearm industry. BigCommerce offers an easy-to-use, plug-and-play website builder along with fantastic U.S. based phone support and a vast array of third-party plug-ins to make your life as a business owner easier.
A Custom Website for Gun Shops
People who frequent gun shop websites want to see something different, otherwise websites can start to feel boring. For most gun shop websites, the online distributor is prominently displayed across the website, the layout is usually the same, and the in-store stock is usually inaccurate.
BigCommerce allows you to build a 100% custom website tailored to your desired clientele. The best part is that your website will automatically adapt to whatever device a visitor is on.
Writer’s Note: As a website builder, getting a website to work across all screen shapes and sizes can be the most time consuming part of building the website. With that in mind, you can see why BigCommerce is so helpful.
Some of the Best Content Delivery Networks for Gun Stores
BigCommerce has some of the best content delivery networks (CDNs) in the business. This translates to extremely fast load times for website visitors. If you usually have a substantial amount of products in stock, this is going to be a blessing.
With a lot of products comes a lot of images, coding for buttons, and the text for the descriptions. BigCommerce’s CDNs will deliver this information to your clientele in a timely manner.
The quick load times also improve your website’s ability to rank in search engines as load times are one part of the search engine optimization (SEO) equation.
Optimized URLs for Your Gun Shop Website
A proper SEO strategy includes having short, succinct URLs. BigCommerce automatically shortens product URLs and ensures they’re unique, even if there are minor differences between products.
Here’s an example of a shortened BigCommerce URL:
Now here’s a non-BigCommerce URL:
As you can see, the shortened URL makes a lot more sense, which will help your customers have more confidence when shopping on your gun shop’s website.
An Easy-to-Use Blog on Your Gun Store Website
Search engines inhibit the distribution of gun shops in searches. If you have a poor ranking on the search engines, it can be difficult to grow your business online without an established following on Facebook or Instagram.
This is where having an easy-to-use blog on known servers comes into play. Google, Bing, and other search engines all prefer blogs that are hosted by established companies such as BigCommerce, WordPress, and Shopify.
The BigCommerce blog feature will allow you to promote firearm industry news that ranks on search engines, resulting in increased website traffic.
Vend™ by Lightspeed and How It Can Benefit Your Online Gun Shop
Vend by Lightspeed can offer many benefits to brick-and-mortar stores and BigCommerce websites when used as your point-of-sale (POS) software, online payment processor, and inventory management software.
Inventory Management for Gun Shops
Vend can make managing your inventory easier when integrated with BigCommerce websites.
When you take-in a shipment and add it on Vend, it updates your website and physical store’s inventory logs simultaneously.
However, Vend does not put new products into the proper categories on BigCommerce. Products that have never been listed enter the website as “Uncategorized” and will remain hidden until you do something more with them. When you’re ready to show them on your site, you will have to manually insert them into the proper category (remember to uncheck “Uncategorized” after!).
Vend allows you to maintain an inventory log for your store and the available quantity you want allotted for online sales. It even allows you to set-up a separate register and inventory count for when you go to gun shows.
Tracking Orders for Your Gun Shop
With BigCommerce, you can let people choose a “Pick-Up in Store” option at checkout. Vend makes it easy for you to know which orders need to be shipped and which ones are for pick-up. It also lets you see which orders have already been sent out.
If a customer calls, you can easily search Vend to see the status of their order.
Payment Processing for Gun Shop Sales
Vend offers more than just allowing you to process payments both online and in-store on your POS. It allows you to track quotes that have been given to potential customers and to check people out for custom gun work.
For example, you can create a hotkey on the Vend dashboard that you use on your POS for in-store-only items such as apparel and gunsmithing work.
Loyalty Programs & Promotions for Your Gun Shop
With Vend, you can create loyalty programs, apply MIL/LE discounts, and run promotions.
Loyalty programs are a fantastic way of ensuring repeat business. In fact, loyalty programs can create brand evangelists. These are customers that go around town talking about how great your shop is!
Promotions are a great way to showcase in-store-only or online-only sales for products to entice new visitors to your store or website.
Firearm Friendly & Functional
BigCommerce offers many benefits for a gun shop including the ability to create a custom website, achieve fast load times, enjoy some automated SEO features, and create an easy-to-use blog. Vend works seamlessly with BigCommerce and your brick-and-mortar store as the payment processor. It can also work as your inventory management software.
Both BigCommerce and Vend aren’t only functional, but they’re firearm-friendly.
If you’re looking for a pro-gun team that can help manage your gun store’s online presence, send us a message by filling out the form below!
