The black hair industry has changed so much in the last ten years, particularly with the rise of e-commerce, naturally everyone wants to get a little share of this gigantic cake. But before starting your own website, you might wanna check a few things in this blog.
- Why do you need a website?
I know this is a no-brainer question, but asking yourself this question is very important! Because it affects how your website functions, more so it decides what platforms you should choose to build your website on. For example, if you are a stylist who has established a large clientele on your Instagram or Facebook page, you need to have the ability to accept credit/debit card payments for wigs sold to out of state customers so that you’re not missing out any sales, then Shopify is probably the best platform for you. If you are not a stylist, never sold hair who just wants to get into this market, you think having a website will make you look more “legit”, then hiring someone to make a graphic-geared(gorgeous photos, lavish styles) website can really help you attract customers’ eyes and lead to higher conversion rates, you can also build your own with wix.com.
One thing we have to remind you though, is that hair extensions are such high value items, if any charge-backs were to happen, it really hurts your credit card payment providers(they are the companies that process credit/debit cards for you). Also due to the fact that you can’t put a stamp/logo on the hair extensions(it’s untraceable if the hair sold was obtained illegally), the payment providers to this day still define online hair business as a “high risk” business, that means higher processing fees, more likely to freeze your account over small things or hold large amounts of your total sales within 90 days (they call it the “rolling reserve”), so please be very careful of scammers when you start sell hair online.
- How To Build Your Website?
After establishing the purpose of your website, we are ready turn the idea into reality. Most likely you will build a website off Shopify, wix.com, Squarespace or other “drag and drop” website builders. They all work very similarly and a basic e-commerce store will run you at $25 - $30 per month. There are also plenty of Youtube videos teaching you step by step how to set up your website, the most import thing to remember is to make sure the default payment provider of the platform allows your transaction fees without extra fees, if you have more questions about that, you can also contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
Some will say, all the stuff above, I already know! But I don’t know how to make a beautiful logo or where to get gorgeous pictures for the website, do you have solutions? Yes, we do! Don’t have a logo? Go to Fiverr.com, or Freelancer.com, where you can post a job for literally just $5 and have professional graphic designers around the world to bid and make you a logo to your content. They have photographers and webmasters for hire as well, if you are willing to pay a decent price, building a stunning website is considered done! But if you are more of a doer yourself, we recommend getting some stock photos to make your website look more professional. Adobe Stock(they also own Photoshop) and Shutterstock are the best just because they have the most stunning photos and huge collections, problem is that they charge a lot for each photo. You can also use free stock photo sites like Pexel or Canva and try to find photos that you like. If budget allows, the best way to do it would be to get a photographer and take your own photos, what’s a better statement than being your own model at your own website? It creates a bond between your customer and you, makes them more confident in putting their credit/debit card information on your website.
- Is It Worth It?
No matter which way you decide to go, the million dollar question is -- is it worth it? We are not here to answer the questions, but we will provide you with good information so that you can be better prepared when you decide to do it.
Having a website doesn’t automatically mean you will get sales right away, if you have 100k followers on Instagram, sure, you can start making money right away. For everyone else, your new website will maybe get 10 visitors a day if you are not spending anything on marketing, out of those 10, 5 of them are probably Aliexpress hair vendors trying to get your contact info, 3 other are most likely webmasters who email you to say how paying them can help you rank higher on Google search results, the other 2 might just be your friends that you talked to earlier in the day here to check out your site. The hard truth is that you have to spend money to attract people to go to your website, as far as if they’re buying or not, there really aren’t a set of rules to follow. Organic traffic can happen, but it takes a long long time, we are not here to discourage you from doing anything, just to give you hard facts.
Now that you know more about this subject, please think more thoroughly! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us, we are here for you!