online shop

Improve Your Website in 5 Minutes a Day with These Simple Updates

Got five minutes to spare? Forget doing an ab workout on whatever the latest As Seen On TV recommendation is. Five minutes is all you need to make some quick updates to improve your Storbie site!

A little bit each day can have a positive impact on the performance of your site, including huge benefits for your SEO (search engine optimisation) and your customer’s experience. Way better results than your ab machine!

Your Storbie site should be thought of as part of the team. Not only can it be a retail outlet, but it’s like a staff member too.

Along with being a place for customers to shop online, your site essentially puts on its uniform and name badge to welcome visitors, provide suggestions, and answer a number of questions.

And as with your human staff members, your website needs a little support and guidance to really make it shine! Just five minutes of attention can make a huge difference.

Consider if you were to include your Storbie website in your staff meetings. You would check in on how it’s doing, discuss some products or services to promote, and catch them up on the latest business info. 

In this article we break down how to make the most of your five minutes so that your web-team member works best for you. (more…)

What New Zealanders want, and how you can give it to them

New Zealand is a pretty ka pai place. Consistently named one of the top countries to live in the world, there are many benefits, like the scenery, the culture, and the lifestyle, to name a few.

However, finding information about New Zealanders and how to market to them isn’t always easy. Especially when it comes to habits and spending (unless we’re talking sport). Most online information is for the US, UK or Australian markets.

Anecdotal evidence can be helpful to a degree, but sometimes you need the cold hard facts to help make informed business decisions.

At Storbie, we’ve sorted through the latest reports relating to Kiwi shopping habits to bring insights for how best to sell to the locals. (more…)

Create a Home Page with Impact and Revitalise Your Online Shop

How often have you looked around your living room and wanted to rearrange the furniture or bring in new items to freshen up the space?

What about your website?

Moving furniture is linked to creativity and mood elevation, and you can get the same rewards from an update on your website.

And there’s even more benefit to be had from changing just a few settings online, including a boost in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

There are no set rules on how often you should change up your site, as it’s different for every brand and business. However, if it’s been a few years, it’s likely time for a little nip and tuck.

Whether you have hours or just minutes to spare, here are some easy adjustments to revitalise the look of your website. (more…)

Create Stunning Product Photographs for Your Website to Suit Your Brand and Budget

Whether we like it or not, the quality of product photographs directly correlates to how a business is perceived. The less professional an image looks, the less professional the business seems.

Product photography should accurately yet appealingly showcase your merchandise. It’s what catches your customer’s eye and initially pulls them in.

And as customers can’t touch, pick up, or hold your product online, it’s important for your image to sell itself.

If you’re currently building or updating your e-commerce website with the easy-to-use Storbie platform, you’ll know that getting good shots of your products can make a big difference to sales.

There are many different types of product photography which we will take you through, as well as provide advice on how to achieve the look you want, without going over budget. (more…)

Storbie’s Vision for a Pain-free Pharmacy Online Store Product Catalogue Management System

Updated 19 Dec 2017

Over the last 12 months Storbie has quickly grown to be the biggest supplier of ecommerce-capable websites to independent pharmacies in New Zealand. During that time, we have spoken to hundreds of pharmacies, come to admire the important work that they do and appreciate the way that they manage a complex and challenging business.

Pharmacies are not only delivering an important health service – that many of us take for granted and takes years of training, focus and attention to detail – they are also managing a complex retail business, bringing together products from hundreds of suppliers into a busy store. It’s no wonder that pharmacies often struggle to find the time to get their pharmacy and product catalogue online even if they appreciate the importance of doing so.

Identifying the challenges of online product catalogue management for pharmacies

At Storbie, we are a practical bunch. We are always striving to identify and solve our customers’ real challenges. We have also always been the champion of the independent retailer. While working with pharmacies, we have come to learn that the biggest challenge facing the independent pharmacy in New Zealand regarding setting up and managing a digital channel is the product catalogue.
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Getting Started With the Storbie Ecommerce Website Builder: 5 Top Tips for Planning, Designing and Building Your Own Website

With the Storbie website builder, it is extremely easy to build your own ecommerce website and start selling online. However, as with any project, it’s useful to have some guidelines and a plan to follow to help you get there. Here are our 5 top tips for getting started with our ecommerce website builder. We also suggest you read the Storbie Quick Set up Guide for step-by-step instructions to follow when creating your online store.

Tip #1: Have a clear plan for what you are going to sell online

Before even creating your online store, it’s essential that you are clear in what you are going to sell online and what makes your products or services unique. This forms the basis of your value proposition. Whether you already have a great product idea, or you’re an entrepreneur looking for a golden opportunity, you may find it useful to answer the following questions:

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Optimising for local search: How to make sure your Google Business listing is up to date

Local SEO (search engine optimisation) is an important strategy for all businesses, especially small to medium sized businesses which somewhat rely on their locality to serve customers (think your local pharmacy, local Italian restaurant, or local mechanic).

One of the first tactics we always suggest to business owners wanting to improve their local search ranking is to take advantage of the free Google Business tool. In this article we look at why local search is important and how you can turn the thousands of local searches performed every day into paying customers.

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storbie ecommerce online store and marketplace new features

What’s new in Storbie: December

It’s been a busy start to the festive season for the Storbie team! We’ve released a bunch of exciting new features for both online shops and marketplaces that will help you grow your business. The team have added Facebook Pixel and Google AdWords conversion tracking (beta), a new billing system for Storbie so you can easily pay by credit card and switch plans yourself, a Markets tab in your Manage area to allow you to promote your products in our new marketplaces, and more improvements and fixes detailed below. For marketplaces, there is a new member opt in/opt out system, the ability to display products filtered by price and more! (more…)

Ecommerce marketing guide for your online store

Marketing Ideas To Promote Your New Online Store

So your shop is now live! Now what? We’ve put together this handy guide for ecommerce stores to help you on your way to a successful and profitable online business.

The most successful online shops are those that combine both online and offline marketing to draw people to their site. Bricks and mortar stores can rely on a bit of foot traffic, but the internet doesn’t offer that luxury. Over time you may generate traffic from search engines such as Google (read on for how to help this along) but to get started you will be relying on more direct methods, such as past customers, word of mouth, social networking and traditional advertising. Here are a bunch of ideas to kick-start your marketing and develop a long-term plan that works.

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