CategoryWebstore POS integration

For website development,  Australian retail businesses have a choice: go local or look overseas. While offshore options may seem enticing due to cost, partnering with an Australian web developer company offers a multitude of benefits that can significantly contribute to your success.

Here at Tower Systems we develop POS software for local small business retailers, and we develop websites for these businesses too.

Understanding Your Market: Australian consumers have distinct preferences and shopping habits. An Australian web developer inherently possesses this local knowledge. Our local WebDev crew understand the terminology used, the design aesthetics that resonate, and the overall “Aussie style” that fosters trust and engagement. This ensures your website speaks directly to your target audience, promoting a seamless customer experience.

Streamlined Communication and Collaboration: Time zone differences and language barriers can create significant hurdles when working with offshore developers. With us, communication is effortless. You can easily have phone calls or even face-to-face meetings during your business hours, fostering a collaborative environment. This ongoing dialogue allows for clear exchanges of ideas and ensures your vision translates perfectly into the final product.

Design that Reflects Your Brand: A website’s design serves as the digital storefront for your business. We understand the subtle nuances that differentiate Australian retail from global brands. They can create a website that reflects the unique look and feel of your brand, fostering a sense of familiarity and trust with local customers.

Flexibility and Adaptability: Here at Tower Systems we offer a one-stop shop approach. You work directly with the team building your website, eliminating the need for intermediaries who might misinterpret your requirements. This flexibility allows for on-the-fly adjustments and ensures your website can adapt and grow alongside your business.

Ongoing Support and Refinement: Websites are rarely a “set it and forget it” project. We understand the importance of ongoing support and maintenance. We are  available to address any issues or implement changes as needed. Additionally, after launch, you might identify areas for improvement. We can make those tweaks quickly and efficiently, ensuring your website remains optimised for the local market.

Investing in the Local Economy: By choosing us, you’re supporting a local business and contributing to the broader Australian economy. This aligns perfectly with the ethos of many local retailers who advocate for “shopping local.” It demonstrates your commitment to the community you serve.

While cost might be a tempting factor when considering offshore options, the potential pitfalls can outweigh any initial savings. Choosing an Australian web developer fosters a collaborative, results-oriented partnership that delivers a website tailored to the Australian market, ultimately contributing to your long-term success.

Tower Systems – trusted web development for local small business retail

At Tower Systems, we’re proud to be a leading Australian provider of both Point-of-Sale (POS) software and web development services specifically designed for Australian speciality retailers. Our team of local developers understands the unique needs of your business and can create a website that reflects your brand and resonates with your customers.

We have a proven track record of success, serving over 3,500 local retail businesses across Australia. Let us help you build a strong online presence and achieve your business goals.

It’s easy to say no to a website if you don’t have one because you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s also easy if you had one in the past and it failed.

Most websites don’t work. Smart people use a failure to do better next time.

Core to website success is filling needs and wants. While needs and wants are quite different, they compel good online business.

Here are the top reasons why we think every retail business needs a website:

1. Capture sales when you are closed. Typically, more than 50% of online purchases are then the brick and mortar business is closed.
2. Engage when you are closed. Use chat to answer questions from anywhere, or you geek-out and have an AI chatbot do this.
3. Reach people not currently shopping with you. Typically, 75% of sales are from people located nowhere near your shop.
4. Have a second outlet for quitting stock.
5. Have a place where you can experiment.
6. Playing with a plan Bin case your shop finds itself in choppy waters.
7. To learn. A website, especially your first website, teaches you so much: What people want. What they could pay. Haw awful some people are.
8. To get you out of a rut. If you’ve been in your shop for ages and are mailing it in each day, a website could put a spring in your step.
9. To make your shop more valuable. Having a website can make your shop more appealing when you decide to sell.
10. To find a secondary brand. Could be the first step in a shop rebrand.
11. To drive traffic to the shop. People will find products on your website and visit as a result, for sure.
12. To give you another source of revenue that is completely unrelated to anything you do in your shop.
13. To harvest email addresses. Email marketing from Shopify is a breeze.

Having a website gives people a landing page from your Facebook, Instagram and TikTok posts. This is important.

Tower Systems makes Shopify and Big Commerce POS software connected websites to help retailers find new shoppers, sell 24/7, drive in-store traffic and run more valuable retail businesses.

In this video we explore what people search for when searching online to shop.

We just switched another local retailer to our POS software because they wanted a website integration that worked. They were using a POS software solution that linked to an obscure webstore platform recommended by that POS software company.

After more than a year of problems and minimal sales, the retailer gave up.

They switched to our POS software and to a beautiful Shopify website directly connected to our POS software.

As a Shopify partner, the connection is true and secure, fast and easy to use.

The Shopify website offers better facilities and more elegant customer interface than what they paid too much for previously. We are grateful to be of service, to help this local retail business get POS software they love and get live with a website they are proud to promote.

If you are choosing POS software, go with one that supports mainstream website platforms rather than an obscure platform. Go with one that is a partner of well known and loved webstore platforms.

We support several but prefer Shopify.

Shopify is an ideal platform for sites that do not have out of the ordinary requirements.  It is hosted securely by Shopify, reducing your reliance on, and costs associated with, web hosting.  Linking the site to our Retailer POS software is also easy. Shopify is easy to modify and change pages, products, look and plenty more.

For ease of reference and transparency, below is a numbered list of all work and tasks included in our fixed price Shopify website development. This is the complete list.

1. Shopify account. We would use our development account until such time, as we deliver the live site to you. Once this has occurred you will need your own Shopify account and we will transfer the site to you.  We can help you get your own account.
2. Template / theme selection. We will guide you through template / theme selection options. You will have free choice over any theme available at themes.shopify.com. Many templates have no cost while some have a cost, paid to Shopify. We will also fund the purchase of a paid-for theme up to US$250.00 in value if that is the theme you want.
3. Overall design to be applied to the template selected to customise the look and feel of the site. While there is back and forth involved, the design process is not priced to be an extended back and forth process. Please be clear and concise in articulating our needs. We will listen to your brief and provide a design for your consideration. Adjustments can be made within the quote but any major diversion from the original brief may add to the cost.
4. The setup of loading of products into the site via a live link to the Retailer software. We would need you to have this data in Retailer ready for export.
5. Interfacing to payment gateways: Shopify Pay, Apple Pay, Stripe and Paypal.
6. Training: over the phone and usually around two hours. We’d like 2 people from the business there as we have found this helps the business get the most from it.
7. The site we create will have the following elements:
   1. 1. Including text and images (which you provide through the Tower POS software), and site navigation. We would also include a business location map.
      2. Social media links to any business accounts you have for: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
      3. About page. Your text, describing you and your business. This will need to be between 150 and 350 words. Well written, clear as to what you and your business are about.
      4. Legal / Privacy Policy. We can use yours or you can edit ours and use it.
      5. Terms and conditions page: terms and conditions that you can modify.
      6. Contact us page showing your contact details as well as an enquiry form.
      7. Configured Product Page showing the images and details about products.
      8. Shopify Chat setup, if you want chat turned on.
      9. Blog feed. A blog allows you to publish your own news stories. These can be critical for helping people find the site through Google.

When it comes to choosing a POS software and website software company, take your time, do your research, ensure that what you are buying is right for what you want. If you’re not sure, ask for reference customers from your type of business.

Tower systems has announced details of another free workshop that aims to provide advice, guidance and support for local retailers to sell online. Our experts and retailers will be there with free advice for anyone see to sell online from any type of retail business.

This free session is open to anyone. Get details by emailing sales@towersystems.com.au

Our how when and why to sell online workshop is Wednesday, May 11 @ 10am Melbourne time.

Tower Systems makes POS software and POS software integrated websites for specialty retailers in a range of retail niches.

Tower Systems offers Aussie retailers access to Aussie developed and supported Shopify e-commerce websites connected to the Tower Systems POS software.

We like Shopify plenty because after the website is live, local retailers can maintain the site without having to rely on others to do this work.

Offering a fixed price website development solution is rare, yet here we are doing just that, in service of efficient and effective e-commerce for local small business retailers.

Tower Systems offers to create a Shopify website for a fixed price for which each client receives:

1. Pre development consultation. This is comprehensive phone call reviewing needs as outlined in the survey, seeking to more completely understand your needs.
2. A checklist of work you complete with our guidance, to provide us assets such as text and images for the website. The current version of the checklist is part of this quote. This lists what any web developer will require from you.
3. A live Shopify site as per everything outlined here. During development, there will be back and forth discussions by email and phone to ensure that the evolving meets expectations. Your timely attention to communication is key.
4. Shopify theme choice. Included in the quoted price is the selection of a paid-for theme up to the cost of US$250.00.
5. Personal hand-over training so you can make your own tweaks to the site as needed. This is usually around 2 hours.
6. Three months of phone-based assistance (but not software changes) following delivery of the site.
7. A comprehensive pre-prep / handover document that provides support, written training and guidance on your next steps. This is the same for all our Shopify site customers. i.e. it is not document written especially for you.
8. Shopify link. The Retailer POS software to link with Shopify. This link transfers to the Shopify site the following data points for each inventory item:
9. 1. SKU
   2. Name
   3. Qty
   4. Web Description
   5. Web Price
   6. Department
   7. Category
   8. Images

This is all backed up by pre-planning documentation, to help any retailer properly prepare their data and other assets needed to bring an awesome website to life.

The Tower Systems Shopify website development service is personal, engaged and accessible. We have developed many websites for many different customer situations. We are grateful to have a terrific portfolio to show-off and help others find the path they would like to follow.

A POS software integrated Shopify website delivers plenty of benefits to local small business retailers beyond the expected, beyond what you may expect from an awesome website.

While selling online, reaching new shoppers, adding icing on the cake revenue to the business and leveraging exisiting overheads for this new revenue are valuable benefits, it is through the smart POS software / Shopify website connectivity and integration that a local small retail business really benefits.

This is what Tower Systems does – it creates beautiful Shopify websites connected to its specialty retail POS software, for its POS software customers. In the back end, though, it helps in myriad ways:

• Reduced mistakes through synchronised data sharing.
• Time saves through using the POS software inventory data.
• Inventory managed in one place.
• Accurate selling what you have in-stock thanks to auto-syncing.
• Better management fulfilment through the POS software connection.
• No double handling of inventory and sales data.
• Easier order management through the integrated dashboard.
• Smart management of variants through the sync between POS software and Shopify.

These are just some of the benefits Tower Systems brings to the table through its POS software connected Shopify websites. Tower Systems has been delivering to small business retailers in this space for many years, we are a Shopify partner and are grateful to leverage their expertise for our local retail customer community.

Best of all, our customers have the ability to tune their websites, to evolve them over time. This is something to love about Shopify – it’s easy for non-tech people to engage with. It is a reason to love it, as many of our customers do.

A Shopify site, like any website, is a hungry beast. By this we mean that it  needs to be fed, with new content and changes, regularly.

1. Continue to add products and ensure they are named and described how people would search for them.
2. Refresh your collection / category landing page descriptions. A landing page is a collection page on which you have items for that collection. Write 3 or 4 crisp sentences of 15 or 20 words each with the sentences punching keywords people are likely to search for. Remember, you are writing more for the search engines than humans.
3. The best photos are those you take, of single products. A photo of a display is not easily understood by humans or Google.
4. Add articles. Your knowledge could be what differentiates your business from any competitor. Indeed, non-product content will most likely drive more traffic than product content.
5. Get suppliers and others to link to you. The more the better.
6. Sell products on additional channels: Facebook, Instagram & eBay.
7. Regularly pitch your site on social media.
8. Use Shopify’s abandoned cart feature to push sales.
9. Pitch promotional discounts to draw in new customers.

Several weeks ago our team at Tower Systems hosted four free workshops covering a range of topics related to creating POS software connected Shopify sites and how to drive traffic to them. The goal was to share insights and offer free advice and training for retailers looking to grow online sales.

We share here videos of these sessions in which a deep well of free advice was shared and explored.

Here are videos of the workshops for anyone interested. If you are considering a website for your business, buyer beware. There are plenty of shonky business people in the web development space. Our hope is that the four workshops share information that you find useful in navigating a path to growing your online sales.

This last session is all about writing good blog posts and how they play a key role in driving traffic.

We are grateful to the retailer who participated.

We have shared updated SEO advice with our local small business retailer customers for whom we have developed beautiful POS software connected Shopify websites.

Through personal training and backed by peer-reviewed written advice, we have shared how they can. Make the best use of product names, descriptions and other text so as to drive up their rankings through Google and other search engine platforms.

Just as the search algorithms change overtime, so does our SEO advice for POS software connected Shopify websites. Our latest advice was first field tested prior to sharing with our customers. we have been able to sow them how following the advice can play for their businesses.

Small business retailers can’t be expected to be SEO experts. Our recommendation is that they NOT hire SEO experts though as too often we have found that money wasted. The key is to now the best type of customer for your business. They, to research how to best connect with that type of customer. This is where an understanding of your specific specialty retail business can make a difference. It’s where our Tower Systems expertise can make a difference.

Our latest SEO advice for POS software connected Shopify websites has been provided to all customers for no charge, as part of our customer service suite of services. we see it as a genuine value-add for our customers, something we are grateful to have been able to provide to them.

Running consumer-facing websites ourselves positions us for useful knowledge, which we leverage for our customers through advice like we have mentioned here. We’ve made SEO mistakes from which we have learned. we have also made some very cool SEO moves, from which we have also learned. We have sheared our own experienced, to add to the free resource pool available for our customers.

Helping our local small business retailer community leverage practical advice for SEO settings for their type of business is part of what we offer as a specialty retail focussed POS software and web development business. We have helped several retailers recently stop paying fees to external businesses based on the free help in this area available to them as part of the Tower Systems community.

Our Zoom meetings yesterday with local small business retailers about getting online and making the m out of the online opportunity have resonated, and resulted in plenty more informed with evidence they can use as they walk the pathway to doing more business online.

Our sessions stayed away from pitching our web development services. We said they would be educational, not sales focussed, and that is how we ran them. we even had a couple of web developers join us to find out about connecting with our POS software.

With so much misinformation abut there about taking your retail business online, it’s important to us that we offer facts from which small business retailers can benefit.

When you are ready to connect your POS software to Shopify through a beautiful and easily found website, we can help through our professional web development services.

We offer a service whereby we help small business retailers fix problems with websites created for them by another business.

While our preference is to create a fresh website using the skills of our webbed team, in some cases it is better to fix what others have done. So, that’s what we do.

We help our customers connect their tower POS software to their Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento website. W have a proprietary platform through data flows between the website and the POS software, s0o that the POS software maintains accurate stock on hand data.

It is frustrating seeing some of the mistakes in websites delivered to customers by external web developers. They range from poor design through to technical failures. All fixable, but all should have been addressed as part of the solution delivered.

Our skills webbed team is ale to help our small business retail customers fix many of the website problems they have been left with by others. Sometimes, this work evolves into a re-design to make the website look more presentable.

With the website an online representation of a retail shop, it is important to get it right, to get the website itself right as well as the connection to the website with the POS software right. We offer web developers a ton of help to do this. Unfortunately, some of them reject that help, thinking they know better. oo often, what they deliver demonstrates that they did not know better. This is why we end up spending time fixing issues, fixing their websites to be of commercial value to our customers.

Our years of experience in commercial web development using Shopify, Magento and Woo see us with a terrific skill set, which we leverage for our customers through the websites we deliver to them.

Our web development work is fixed price, based on a thorough understand of what each customer needs. We only get to this point once we are certain we know exactly what a customer is looking for from a website. The biggest mistake we see web developers make is not knowing what a customer needs or wants. We see this when we are called in to fix problems with websites.

Having a website for your retail business is terrific – as long as the site is terrific. That means serving a need, being easily found, being enjoyed and integrating seamlessly with your business.

Here at Tower Systems, we develop websites for our POS software customers. Websites that integrate with your POS software.

To help you consider what your retail business website could look like and could be used for, here are some suggestions that we and our customers have found useful for those considering a website to engage with …

1. Look carefully at competitor sites online locally and overseas as it is beneficial to see what someone else is doing.
2. Only use unique images. If you use supplier supplied images, they may be on other sites and Google will know this. Google likes fresh content.
3. Write your own product name / title. Use search keyworks in the name. Google likes fresh content.
4. Write your own product description and think about what shoppers search for.
5. Do not load everything. Too much stock makes a site hard to navigate.
6. Consider using a website name that is different to your business name. Online can benefit from a different brand to your in-store situation.
7. Be open to additional sites. You may make more money from having multiple.
8. Support the site with active social media. A Facebook page with a name the same as the web name.
9. Promote the site with an email monthly at least, through MailChimp or similar.

Too often we see small business retailers think their website needs to reflect an online version of their shop. While that may be okay, it may not be the best business move. Sometimes, exploring a new category of product or service online could be a soft and good way to explore expanding the business without disrupting the existing in-store business.

A website connected to a retail business can be a good way to explore the expansion or evolution of the retail business. Tower Systems as its webstore team can work with you, helping you to explore options and opportunities that may align with your current business and the goals you have for it and for yourself.

This is where an engaging and consultative approach could work to help you walk to an online solution that is more nuanced and enjoyable to your personal and business needs.

Tower Systems offers a fixed price website development solution for retailers keen to sell online using Shopify. Our POS software connected Shopify websites are made to serve the needs of each retail business that partners with us.

We engage in a discovery process to ensure we genuinely understand their business needs. Our website development team then works with them to create a beautiful POS software connected Shopify website.

The work is considerable, detailed, interactive and focussed solely on delivering for the retail business the POS software connected website solution they want. And, yes, all of this is delivered on a fixed price basis.

We went with offering fixed price Shopify website development because of the need we saw and the discovery that too often web developers hooked people with a lowball quote and then applied add-on charges, making the website far more expensive than needed.

Our fixed price Shopify POS software connected solution has already been embraced by many retailers with commercial success, helping them to sell to shoppers who live in other states and even countries.

Our approach is structured from the outset, undertaken with the goal of delivering what our retail business customers want. We have found that by engaging in through pre-planning we are able to deliver happiness to our customers. The old adage of measure three times and cut once is true when it. comes to our fixed price Shopify POS software connected website service.

Our Tower Systems Shopify website development service is 100% based out of our Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia office. This matters as our web development people understand the needs of local retail. They work local hours. They have the cultural and retail knowledge experiences to deliver an intuitive and engaging Shopify website solution. And, again, this is a fixed price service.

We suggest you approach launching a website as a start-up business. Sure, it may sell some or all of what you sell in your shop. However, it is different, it is its own thing with different needs and different opportunities. Seeing it as a start-up can help. Also, seeing it as a start-up could take you on a fresh path.

You need to love your website. If you don’t it will not get the attention and support it needs from you. By lovewe mean love what it sells, how it does this and how it represents you.