A lot of cannabis brands and businesses are moving to e-commerce options as they become available. If you have a cannabis brand that does the majority of its business online, you might want to consider creating a cannabis shop for your website. An online store for your cannabis products will allow you to reach a larger target market online. Here are a few things to consider in order for you to make your e-commerce store a success and not a waste of money!
Choose a Platform
There are hundreds of website hosting/platform options out there, which can make it a little tricky to choose one that makes the most sense for your brand. Be sure to compare the functions of each platform with the simplicity and the cost of the platform. Make sure you consider your needs and your purposes before building your website out. It’s also smart to be sure that the ultimate platform you choose to go with has functions that won’t limit you from your goals for your website.
Not sure which platform will make the most sense for your cannabis e-commerce business? Team MaryJane specializes in branding and website design and development. Our savvy experts can help you build the perfect e-commerce store to suit your customers.
Design your Website to be Fast Loading and Mobile-Friendly
Ever come across a website that took forever to load? Perhaps everything on the page loaded except images. Maybe you visited from your mobile browser and the entire website turned out distorted, illegible, and slow? No matter the circumstance, a slow loading website or a website not optimized for mobile is annoying! Websites that aren’t responsive don’t invite site visitors to keep coming back to your site. In fact, you’re probably losing customers.
Luckily, there are a lot of things you can do. For one thing, most e-commerce website platforms offer a mobile optimization hub that allows you to edit what people on mobile see, in the case of Wix sites for example. Additionally, you can make your mobile site bare bones, and offer your shop feature, a bit of copy, and some small, easy to render images.
As for slow websites, there are a lot of things you can do to up your speeds. For one thing, you can make all of your images smaller. Additionally, you can compress resources to lower the number of bytes a page is sending over a network by enabling compression. Here’s a great resource on making your website load faster.
Focus on the User Experience (UX)
In all aspects of your design, think about your users. How will they find your website useful? What will they like or dislike about your current layout and design? Will the site flow well and make sense? Your website is a great marketing tool for you, sure, but ONLY if its a great resource for your users. You should create an e-commerce store that is easy to navigate, understand, and control. Make good use of white space so that your readers feel the message you are trying to convey clearly. On the other hand, color conveys a lot of important feelings that help make the user experience that much more viable. A good balance of color and blank space, images, and design is key.
Use Attractive, High-Quality Imagery
When you shop online, have you ever come across an e-commerce store that uses low-quality product images? Odds are, probably not! The first rule of selling anything online is to make potential buyers feel like they’ve seen what they’re getting. That means your products should be photographed in a variety of different angles and situations. This creates trust between the buyer and the seller. Make sure you never use images that are pixelated or low resolution. High-quality imagery makes your website more appealing to the eye and can also give your store that professional look which helps products sell.
Additionally, you should keep a close eye on your alt text descriptions and image title tags. These configurations are designed to help search engines understand what’s in an image and why it’s relevant to your page. Additionally, these configurations assist the visually impaired by allowing these images to be read out loud by a web browsing program.
A picture is worth a thousand words! Just make sure that your message is clear with good high-quality imagery.
Optimize for Search Engines
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for cannabis companies is important since many forms of traditional marketing and advertising are simply out of the question. Search Engine Optimization isn’t an option for marijuana dispensaries and other cannabis brands. It’s a requisite. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to understand for the average person. It just encompasses SO many different working parts.
At the most basic level, your website needs to contain valuable information on cannabis that you can “sell” to your readers and customers. You need to use google analytics to better understand the audience you currently have. Your headline tags, meta descriptions, and keywords must be relevant and properly written as to what you’re advertising. Also, your images on the website must contain correct descriptions and keywords. If you want to dive into the meat and potatoes of SEO, check out our archive on the subject.
Bring it All Together
Combining all of these moving parts together to create a stellar cannabis e-commerce website is no simple task. If at any point you feel overwhelmed, Team MaryJane offers full-service marketing options, as well as our Marketing in a Box program and Dispensary in a Box programs which are designed to get you everything you need to get started for one low monthly flat rate fee. We can help you develop your brand and bring it to life. Get in touch today!