Unveiling the Blueprint
Understanding the Art of Planning for Your Cannabis Dispensary's E-commerce Website.
Posted by Brian Metros
July 24, 2023
You live, sleep, and breathe in one of the fastest growing, most rapidly developing industries. Keeping the ship on an even keel in such a tumultuous environment can be quite the challenge.
In traditional ecommerce, there are many paths to victory. Some of them well-walked and known. Unfortunately the landscape for cannabis ecommerce technology can be somewhat of a bumpy road. The technology supporting cannabis ecommerce really has still yet to reach an adolescent state.
Familiar go-tos like Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce and the like aren’t ready to play nice with the cannabis industry. So what to do? How do we get the same marketing power, technology benchmarks, and professional design aesthetics that can be so accessible in ecommerce for traditional products?
There are many back-office options available. Most of which come pre-packed with an ecommerce solution, that while it gets the basic job done, desperately lacks the in-depth marketing functionality, merchandising, and content control that will ultimately set your dispensary above your competitor across town.
We're big fans of Dutchie Plus. With Dutchie's user-friendly interface, paired alongside Greater Green's specialized cannabis-focused tools you are empowered to command enhanced customization, branding, and customer engagement.
2. Decide how you will publish content, and how often.
In any ecommerce environment if product is king, then content is queen. As your product line grows, shrinks, adapts, and evolves to market trends, keeping your customers engaged and informed on what’s happening is surprisingly overlooked.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when considering content, but you do need a vessel to carry it to your customers hands.
Does this screenshot look familiar to you?
If it does, then you’re likely trying to cross the ocean in a rowboat. Sure, all the promotions are listed out, but only in one place. WIthout any kind of backing imagery or branded material, and ultimately lacking in any of that attention-grabbing sizzle that we know drives traffic.
3. Decide what budget works for your new dispensary ecommerce site.
If you’ve carefully considered the first two points in this tirade, then this is likely the biggest point of contention, confusion, and uncertainty.
From here there are a few things to keep in mind:
- When considering a bespoke, custom built site, understand that spending more money doesn’t make things happen any faster. In fact, it can be the opposite.
- When considering SaaS products, be wary of the quality of the user experience. They can often be clunky, have unoptimized user flows, and have poor site-speed and performance.
- Some web technologies may be more familiar to you. Wordpress for example, has been around forever. While this may sound appealing, be careful. Wordpress is notably insecure, slow, and prone to frequent mishaps.
4. Understand what your budget buys you.
You can spend hundreds of thousands on a bespoke, custom built site and still lack the basic features you need for your dispensary to thrive.
You can also spend $3k a month on a SaaS based site and end up married to their support team to get basic things done, not to mention constantly protecting you from the vulnerabilities of the internet.
You should keep your feature list near and dear to your heart, but also keep in mind that any website is a living, breathing entity that needs to be constantly cared for. Make sure you are investing in solutions for your business, and not just a set of future problems.
Why we built Greater Green.
We’ve been down this road many times. And like you, we’re pretty much over the hassle and problems that come with trying to get a new cannabis ecommerce site off the ground.
You don't always get what they promised, or what you paid for.
And that offends us. We’ve toiled tirelessly to bring to you a solution that considers all of the above factors to present to you a fully customizable, next-gen, fast as F#¢& cannabis ecommerce solution. An enterprise solution that allows you to easily add, remove, update, or even schedule content to be displayed on your site.
A solution that embraces not just modern, but future forward best practices. A solution that gives you the power to market and sell, without having to worry about design and layout. A solution that frees you from the grips of costly agency partners and never-ending service costs.
Ask Us Anything.
Our team is happy to help you understand the differences between platforms and help guide you to what is right for your dispensary.
