How to sell services on Shopify – A Quick Guide
Let’s face it, customer behaviour has been changing drastically for a long time. The days when would-be customers responded well to the hard sell are a…
Let’s face it, customer behaviour has been changing drastically for a long time. The days when would-be customers responded well to the hard sell are a fading memory in our parents’ imaginations, and soon pre-Covid-19 ways of selling will be a thing of the past too. While services have always been just as important as products, selling them has not always been straightforward.
But, with the advent of our current era of interwoven interwebs, all sorts of fantastic options for selling services better have opened up. What’s interesting about this particular moment in time is that harnessing these service selling options properly has gone from preferable to essential, and is sure to stay that way long after a pandemic has any say in the matter. Why? Because the writing was on the wall. People want, nay, need a fluid transactional experience. A truly effective sell has no need of red tape.
Take Shopify, which has 1,632,643 live ecommerce websites around the world and counting, having raked in a total of $135B in sales, with a market share of 21% among all the available ecommerce platforms.
It’s a proven ecommerce platform for both product & service-oriented businesses. While you can sell services on their platform as you would products, it’s worth noting that there are also great Shopify apps for your service business that can help you hone in and really streamline that service sell.
Why Shopify is the best platform for selling services:
Traditional ecommerce portals are a thing of the past, having long ago been replaced by modern cart generating software. Among the ecommerce platforms available, Shopify is the first name that comes to mind for most businesses–understandably, what with all its impressive stats. But stats aside, here are a few of the practical reasons Shopify is the best platform for so many businesses:
- Omnichannel Ecommerce: With Shopify online store & POS system, you get the power to sell online or in your brick and mortar store from a single platform. Customers can gather information in person and buy online; book online and redeem in store; or buy in store and have their service delivered. There’s never a reason to lose a sale with a system like this.
- Smooth Payment Processing: A smooth and efficient payment processing system is crucial for any successful ecommerce store. Shopify supports all the well-known payment methods such as credit & debit, cash on delivery (COD), net banking, wallets, bank transfers, UPI, EMIs, and PayPal. In addition, Shopify offers its own payment gateway too, with no transaction fees and lower credit card fees.
- Easy To Set Up: As a hosted ecommerce platform, Shopify offers a logically structured, user-friendly, intuitive way to quickly launch an online store without any hassle over servers and development costs. You will also find extensive documentation and helpful video guides on the Shopify site!
- Tax Collection & Reporting: You can set up your tax rates as needed to account for any and all shipping zones you’re using. To make things easier, Shopify can be set to automatically manage the calculation of sales tax based on state, county, and local tax rules.
- Tools You Need To Grow: Using Shopify opens up the opportunity to harness the power of all the new-gen tools you need to grow your business. Shopify
- Support. Shopify has a great customer support culture. They’re available 24/7 via phone, email or web chat, and their response time is pretty instant, so you’re never left flailing.
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How to sell services on Shopify:
Once you’ve got Shopify, there are ways to hone your service business further, and there’s an app for that. Sesami offers seamless Shopify integration and was built by entrepreneurs that understand firsthand the challenges of booking and selling appointments while running a small business. In a time when customer and user experiences are largely overlapping, the following superpowers become exceedingly handy:
- Add, display, and sell services just as you would products.
- Take advantage of an easy-to-use booking calendar that updates and displays appointment availabilities in real-time.
- Book group appointments for classes or events.
- Benefit from automatic confirmation emails that instantly make their way to the inboxes of service provider and customer alike, effectively eliminating disorganized chaos.
- Let your customer reschedule it or cancel an appointment as needed.
Shopify businesses opening Sesami:
Trying to list off the many types of businesses that sell their wares and book appointments or sessions or classes or lessons on Shopify and could therefore benefit by adding Sesami to the mix is like trying to list off my favorite Prince songs—please don’t ask me to count.
The tip of the proverbial iceberg: Let’s see, we’ve got professional services including copywriting, design, accounting, and photography. Then there’s all things training and consulting. Workshops and seminars. Painting, belly dancing, and piano lessons. Stained glass classes, Tai Chi classes. And of course, true blue appointment-based businesses like personal shopping services, spa services, or massage therapy sessions are all the perfect fit for Sesami as well. The list really does go on.
Here’s a quick look at a couple of real-life businesses that have breathed coherence into their behind-the-scenes operations and reaped the very tangible benefits of Sesami:
Kitchen Provision is a kitchen provision & knife sharpening service in the UK which marries proper technique and the right equipment with a passion for advising their clients on quality ingredients and recipes. They run a real, live physical shop, sell top tier knives and other kitchen equipment, and, best of all, they manage their booking of knife sharpening appointments across several different locations with the help of Sesami.
Madame Monsieur is a beauty salon, concept store, and purveyor of natural beauty products that does beauty and wellbeing differently by offering a unique array of exclusive services for women and men (think beard straightening, old-fashioned shaving with a hot towel, clay facials, natural Brazilians). Regardless of the multiple services offered and the ability of clients to choose their preferred team member, MM is able to use Sesami to quickly and easily manage their calendar—along with the schedules of every single member of their team.
The Ski Company is a ski retail shop with four conveniently located stores dedicated to providing the best equipment and services to their loyal customers. They sell winter clothing, and a wide range of skiing and snowboarding equipment while also offering tune-ups and one-on-one shopping appointments to their loyal customers–what better way to find the perfect fitting ski boot while also diminishing risk in the time covid? Thanks to Sesami, their customers can easily preselect their desired service, duration, and the number of people in their shopping group.
Bottom line: Everyday, more customers and merchants alike understand the need to streamline online service businesses. It’s not just the Covid-19 context that has generated customers who expect a pleasant and intuitive online booking process. Merchants too, want an appointment selling tool that is both easy-to-use and beneficial to their overall operation.
Sesami is that mutually beneficial booking app. Why not try it on for size?
Grow your service business online with Sesami on Shopify: Try Sesami for Free