Footwear Insight

footwearinsight.com July/August 2017 ~ Footwear Insight • 23 create an online store that's easy to shop for your consumers — and easy to use for the store — is critical. (And having it fully looped into your point-of-sale might be a pain to set up, but pays dividends going forward.) For example, Faustino says Extra Butter uses Shopify, not only for its user-friendliness, but because the software is constantly updating and adapting to new developments to make things run smoother. "You need to be a consumer yourself," he says. "I'm constantly shopping other sites, and comparing — if that purchase elsewhere was a one-step process, why is ours a three-step process? And then making it easier to navigate." Make the Time To do e-comm right, it needs staff support — it can't just be an afterthought. For Extra Butter, the internet team is big, including dedicated people to handle IT, customer service and packing and shipping orders, contracted outside designers as well as three staff photographers. But even with that kind of infrastructure, store associates are dedicating time to shipping out orders as needed. Quiambao says Commonwealth's in-store and online work is shared, but that staff dedicates about 30 percent of their time to online sales. Rime's Boyle says she just hired her first dedicated person for Web sales and customer service, although she notes the site is designed to be easy enough to maintain that she can step in when he's off. And her in-store staff know they'll be packing and shipping orders as they come in. "At boutiques, we all wear many hats," she says. Ship Fast. (Faster than that. Nope, still not fast enough.) If there's one thing owners agree on, it is this — speed is king. "Any order in before 4 p.m. needs to get out the door and be on its way that day," Faustino says. Boyle agrees. "It's packed within the end of the day — and it has to be priority mail, arriving within 2 to 3 days," she says. Since almost no footwear independent can match the big e-tailers' free shipping offers without taking a catastrophic margin hit, making sure that the shipping consumers are paying for is responsive and above all fast is critical, they say. And giving customers a heads-up that their package is coming — via a store email or shipment notification from UPS or Fed-Ex — keeps customers happy and helps compete with the near-instant gratification they can find elsewhere. Get the Buy Right While all the stores surveyed handle buying a little differently — some buy for the web like it's a separate storefront, others see it as an extension of their in-store offering — they agree that getting the merchandise mix right for web isn't exactly the same as getting it right in-store. "Our [store] buying is done from a localized point of view, but our Online orders that come in at Rime are packed and shipped within the day says owner Susan Boyle.

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