The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is chipping away at some critical foundations in our little big city, especially our vibrant small businesses that rely on local traffic each and every day to stay open

It’s great to see Canadians taking recommended precautions to help slow the spread of the virus, by self isolating and avoiding groups. It seems that we’re ready to do what we’re told is necessary to keep everyone safe for as long as we can.

It’s also great to see in our little city that there’s a strong movement to do what we can to support our local businesses as they make tough decisions to close their doors, send staff home, and to do what they can to manage in an increasingly challenging situation.

As a small company ourselves, and as engaged residents of our communities, we need to see these businesses survive these first difficult days and weeks, and to stay positive about opportunities for what could be a very different world when everything is done.

Shop Local

So many Saskatoon residents want to shop local, and as self isolation and social distancing continues, we will all be turning to technology to keep ourselves engaged. 

If you find yourself with time to spare, this might be the opportunity you’ve been looking for to improve the online experience for your clients, and to let them shop from home!

Setting up an online store can seem daunting, but there are a lot of online store platforms to choose from now, and setting things up is easier than ever.

Get Started with Shopify

We recommend Shopify, a Canadian based company that has built a great content management system for ecommerce. If you just want to set up something quickly for your regular clientele, or if you are in a position to get a lot of your inventory online, Shopify is low cost to get started, and makes it simple to build a great online shopping experience.

If you want to give it a try, go to shopify.com and get started with a free trial. You can pick a theme, start setting up products, get images uploaded and get selling within a couple of days. Connect easily with your choice of online payment processor, get that connected to your bank, and set up a Canada Post business account.

It might not be the most beautiful ecommerce store ever built, but it will give you a way to let your loyal customers engage with you even if they can’t get there in person, and to keep your spirits up!

Feeling Overwhelmed?

We get it. We’ve been doing this a long time, so it’s simple for me to rattle off some steps for you, but if this is your first try, you’re going to get stuck. We know that. 

We want to help! Our team has worked with Shopify for years, so we’ve already gotten stuck and unwound in the same places you will. 

We also know that it’s not necessarily the best time to think about investing in a full ecommerce website rebuild. So we’re offering a few different ways to get our help while still keeping your eye on that balance sheet.

By the Hour 

You’re a web savvy individual. You’re ready with your images, you know about online payment processors. You’ve worked with CMS before. You’re just a little stuck. 

Get started and when you get jammed, get in touch with us. We’ll consult via phone or video conference, or get our Shopify developer in there to fix and fuss. We cut our bill rate for these projects to $100/hour, so we could unwind your problems for a few hundred dollars and be up and rolling quickly and efficiently.

Design Time

You get the way the CMS works, but you can’t quite get the look of the thing right. It’s a common problem. Fortunately, we have some designers ready and waiting to give the site the polish you’re hoping for. So you get things set up, the designer works with your template to give it a bit of polish. Then our developer cleans things up and you’re ready to roll!

We can give you site design and development support starting at $1200, including content consultation if required.

Let’s Do This for Real

You’re looking at shopify.com and your head is already spinning. You’ve got a million things on your plate, and you just want someone to deal with this as much as possible. You can provide images and product descriptions, but you’d really just love it if you didn’t have to deal with this in any other way.

This is a full meal deal, and it can be used to set up a simple ecommerce solution for this unique situation we’re in, or it can be an investment in the way you do business permanently. 

In this deal, we pick a template, design it, set it up and program it, assist with setting up a payment processor, and a Canada Post business account. We upload a few products for you to get started, and give you the ins and outs of dealing with orders and adding more products as you need to. 

For a basic storefront, we’re charging $2000 to get you going, but if you want more, let us know!