Many people I talk with each week still believe ecommerce is only for product-based businesses. The good news is, it’s not. You can easily sell services online and reduce the time it takes to turn someone’s awareness into cash.
If you’re running a service-based business and feel that making sales takes forever and involves being tied to your phone, having an ecommerce website could change your life.
What you’re about to learn might not work for your business. That’s fine. However, by reading this article, you might open your brain to new possibilities and ideas you can apply to your business and make more profit.
We’ll cover how you can start to sell services online, the basic setup that will allow you to take your first order, easily get more customers using marketing, and I’ll illustrate with some real-life examples along the way.
So, let’s position your service-based business to sell more using an ecommerce website!
Why Sell Services Online?
We spend more time online than ever before. We’re happy using Amazon, eBay, and more to order physical products to our door without moving from the couch. And yet so many small businesses are stuck in the 80s when it comes to adopting technology that will help them drive their business forward.
Yes, there are differences between selling a physical item and services online. But the underlying principles are the same. Most service-based businesses can package their offering as an easily deliverable option that can be sold like a product.
If this sounds too theoretical, here’s an example that might help you reimagine how you make sales.
Every 6 to 8 weeks, I get my hair cut. My usual barber has a first-come-first-served approach. I’ve sat in his shop for an hour on some visits while he trims the other people who arrived before me. It’s a pain to have to wait for so long.
I recently went to a different barber, who offers online booking using Barberly. I simply selected my slot, selected to pay on the day (I could have paid upfront), and entered some details. I didn’t have to call the shop, visit it, or try to get lucky and hope no one else was waiting.
On the morning of the appointment, I got an email to remind me that was followed up with a text two hours before the slot. There was no queue when I arrived and the owner was expecting me. It was a painless experience and one, that I could book from my bed at 2 am.
By automating how he takes sales, the barber can focus on what he’s good at, cutting hair, and not trying to keep walk-in customers happy. It also means he can predict his revenue for the day before he opens up as he has a certain number of guaranteed customers.
But that’s just some of the benefits of using an ecommerce solution with a service-based business. If I opt in, he can continue to build a relationship with me. He could text me weekly promotions and email me monthly to remind me to get a haircut. Both will drive more profit with little effort.
Most business owners hate having to do sales. It’s lengthy, time-consuming, and full of rejection. They’d much rather be delivering a great service to their customers and closing warm leads.
The answer is to package your services up and sell them as a product using an ecommerce website!
How to package your service as a product (and make it easy to sell)
You probably understand that you need to develop easy-to-sell packages. Here are the steps you can follow to make this a reality and make it simple to sell services online.
Before you create packages, it’s worth dividing what you do in a few buckets. Collect services that are repeatable into one group. Consider what add-ons can go with this collection and put them into another bucket. You’ll also need another bucket for custom work.
To drive the point home, here’s an example. Say offer a window cleaning service. You could have a package for weekly window cleaning for homes with up to 10 windows. The medium package could be up to 25 windows, and so on.
With each package, you could offer several levels of service. You could charge more for cleaning the windows using specialist chemicals rather than water. Another extra could be cleaning the front and back doors.
You can still have a custom option where you visit the potential client and create a specific option based on their home. That said, the majority of your customers will pick from pre-built packages that are easy to deliver and profitable.
Another benefit of packages is being able to bill recurring revenue. As business owners, we want predictable revenue and profit and not feast or famine.
Choosing the Right Ecommerce Platform
I recommend spending as little as possible at the start and using any profit you bring in from sales to build more sophisticated systems. Don’t bet the house without proof it’s a worthwhile investment.
If you have a WordPress website, adding WooCommerce to it is simple and affordable. Other CMS like Wix and Squarespace also have ecommerce options that make selling products and services very simple.
Another option is to build a Shopify store from the ground up, but that’s likely to cost a few thousand dollars and take a month or two. Again, when you have proof of concept and some money in the bank, you can invest in a better, more custom online store and marketing.
Starting to sell services online requires having a system that allows you to create a few product pages, a category page, a calendar for customers to book on, and a checkout that links to a payment gateway.
You’ll also need the system to talk with your calendar to ensure you don’t double-book or miss appointments. It’s not as complex as it sounds. Many ecommerce platforms integrate with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar.
At this stage, everything else is great but unnecessary. The old saying is true: Keep It Simple!
Creating Pages That Sell Your Services
For the proof of concept stage, focus on creating service pages that convince your website visitor to book or contact you. Consider the problem you’re solving, the emotional triggers, and the benefits of hiring you. Next, write compelling service descriptions that cover these points.
It’s worth including one unique photo that showcases you delivering that service and at least 3 customer reviews or testimonials. Also include your phone and email address, even if it’s just in the footer, as this reassures potential customers that they can talk with a human.
Don’t worry too much about SEO or having the prettiest layout or photos. Instead, focus on creating something basic together that helps you quickly get 10 customers to use your website to book.
Marketing Your Online Offer
It might sound weird coming from a marketing consultant, but I suggest spending as little money as possible. There’s a good reason why. You probably have enough existing customers to test the new system and build from there.
Before you dive into SEO or paid channels, do the basics. Can you email your existing client list and ask them to help you test the new system (you could offer a small discount as a thank you)? Can you call them? Could you show a few clients how to use the online system?
It might take you a few minutes to write on your social media channels about the new buying options, but that could help you to get a few customers by selling services online. The effort will be worth the results!
Yes, all of these options involve sweat equity but actually prove your idea works. After you have some traction, you can refine how you generate leads using SEO, paid advertising, and email marketing.
Case Studies: Selling Services Online Successfully
It might be useful to dive into a few examples of how you can use an ecommerce website to sell services online.
Electrician
You might think a lot of an electrician’s workload is custom jobs that they need to visit customers and provide a quote, making this whole exercise a waste of time.
However, most electricians offer annual checkups, which are easy to sell online using a calendar booking form. Some offer EV charger installations with a single standardized price, again making it ideal to sell these services online.
They can offer pay in advance, on the day in cash, or bank transfer after the job’s complete. It’s likely they are already offering these payment options, just not online!
Beauty Therapist
Many beauty therapists live on their phones, waiting for customers to text or WhatsApp them. They don’t need a ton of customers to be fully booked but a few extras won’t hurt!
The problem with taking a booking in person for the next session or via phone is you have to be reactive. If you’re not available or proactive, the customer will find someone else.
What makes ecommerce ideal for beauty therapists is they already offer packages with a set price list. For example, eyebrow wax for $25, full body massage for $90, gel nails for $200, etc.
So it doesn’t take much for them to create bookable product listings that link with their calendar and PayPal. Yet doing so will make them far more efficient and build predictable revenue into their business.
Health and Safety Training Company
In certain industries, businesses must demonstrate they’ve invested in health and safety training. These courses typically range from 1 day to 5 days and are priced per attendee. Again, an ecommerce store is ideal for selling these courses as they are already packaged.
What’s also great about health and safety training courses, is the add-on options. If you need an additional day for a workshop on stress management, biohazards, or creating a better health and safety culture in the workplace, it’s easy to deliver these and bill the client.
Some training companies need to verify information before booking a client in, and so you don’t have to take payment at checkout. Instead, you can capture their credit card detail to make it a seamless experience.
You can then use a step in the checkout process to inform the potential client that someone will call them within the next 2 working days to confirm their order, get them booked in, and take payment.
Getting Started
By using technology to sell services online, we can deliver better customer service and reduce the time spent talking with people who aren’t interested in what you offer.
Start simple and don’t spend a ton of cash. You don’t need a brand new website or custom software. Instead, build the simplest possible system and make a few sales.
When you have proof the idea works, invest in a better website, more marketing, and creating more packages.
Again, the idea behind using an ecommerce website to sell services online is to make your revenue and profit more predictable while reducing the amount of effort you need to put in. You have finite time and focus, which is better spent delivering services than juggling 100 tasks.
Hopefully, I’ve inspired you to try to sell your services using your website and given you the basic steps to get going!
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