What Are We Really Saying Here?
Is it wrong to consider selling dive gear on line? Hardly. There are stores who have done well by branching into online sales, and stores that will do well by following suit. The question is, is yours one of them?
Among other things, it is important to remember that selling dive gear on line is an entirely different business from selling it over the counter. You are marketing to a very different group of customers, over a diverse geographic area, and putting a helluva lot more investment capital at risk. In fact, the only aspect of the business that is in any way similar is that dive gear is involved.
You need to know what you are getting into. Visit the top online scuba retailers and, as you do, ask yourself these questions:
- Can i offer such a wide selection of products?
- Can I afford to match these prices?
- Can I stock sufficient inventory to meet potential demand?
- Can I create a website that inspires the level of confidence that some of these websites (notably Scuba.com) do?
If you can’t answer each of these questions with a resounding Yes, maybe you should be thinking of alternatives — like that Subway franchise we mentioned earlier. It’s likely a safer investment (and probably no more different from running your present dive store than selling on line would be).
And what exactly are those alternatives?
Don’t Laugh Yet
If you are already selling dive gear on line, and doing well with it, you have to be getting a chuckle out of this entire article. If you are not doing so well, now you know why.
If you are selling equipment on line and succeeding, congratulations. You have accomplished something that a lot of people are not. Still, we hope you are not making a common mistake.
What is that mistake? It’s using your shopping cart site to promote classes, trips, activities and in-store sales. And it’s a mistake we see being made far too often.
Shopping cart software does one thing well: Sell hard goods. If all it takes is a photo, a brief description, a few bullet-point features and benefits, and a list of available sizes and colors, you can sell it on your shopping cart site. Does this sound like the typical scuba class? Hardly.
If students can only sign up for classes by selecting a course date, putting it in a shopping cart and then checking out, they are going to find the process confusing at best. Worse, you are far more likely to have students show up for class not having completed the requisite self study, not having gotten a physician’s approval if needed and not having the right equipment.
If you have both a traditional dive store and do online sales, you actually need two different websites to sell both well. You need a shopping cart site for online sales and a website like this to sell everything else.
You can keep both websites under the same “roof” by having a subdomain (i.e., store.mydivestore.com) for your shopping cart and a primary domain address ((i.e., www.mydivestore.com) for everything else. Use a common logo and color scheme to tie everything together and make sure both sites link to one another.
Let each of your websites do what they do best and you are less likely to confuse customers.
And what exactly are those alternatives?
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