Look at what happened pre- and post-COVID for cannabis eCommerce:

A big, fat chunk of legal cannabis transactions are coming from computers and smartphones vs. in-store. This behavior is sticky, too - shoppers were forced into a digital environment en masse during lockdown, but once they learned how to use online portals and experienced the ease-of-use, there is no going back.

The problem is that a lot of people think they can throw up a listing on Weedmaps and call it a day. In 2010, this approach worked great. In 2021, it represents a monumental waste of a retail license.

Let’s address the basics.  

Here’s how cannabis eCommerce works:

Let’s break down the funnel:

1. Get Customers to your site 👀

This is your “top of funnel,” and it’s a tough one. Imagine you are a new retailer, with a shiny new license, and zero customers. Where do you start?

• You start with search engine optimization (“SEO”), enriching your website with juicy keywords that Google cares about. This allows customers that are searching “best dispensary near me” to find you at or near the top of the search results.

• You continue with advertising. Paid placements of your URL hosted on other sites, paid search, social media placements, OOH, text blasts, sponsored content. Weedmaps and Leafly are leveraged heavily in cannabis and are often very effective; you pay them for priority placement of your ‘pin’ on their sites, and customers can find you depending on their location.

2. Show them your stuff 📦

When people get to your site, you have to showcase your goods. Images, descriptions, meta tags for searching, and verified product reviews are all vital.

This should all be AUTOMATED based on the inventory in your POS. That means your eComm partner must be good at custom integrations.

Jane does this the best. There are other providers, too.

3. Make it easy to buy the stuff and come back 💰

What are the chances that each of your menu loads will result in an actual, honest-to-goodness transaction? Do you know? (Probably not).

We’re getting into my bread and butter: conversion rates. It’s the juiciest of the eCommerce metrics - it’s your North Star. Your main squeeze. Your everything.

“What influences conversion rates, Brian?” Good question! Lots of things, but mostly:

• Fast load times (people bounce if they wait too long)

• Rich content (people like looking at pictures and reading descriptions and interacting with verified product reviews)

• Merchandising relevance (people like to look at products that are relevant to them)

• Ease-of-use (people like to search, filter, etc. through hundreds of products)

• Seamless checkout (people want to check out quickly)

To maximize ‘customer lifetime value’, your system should also remember customers and curate the experience, as well as encourage up-sells and return trips.

That’s the general flow. Now, how do we know that any of it worked? Or, more importantly, how can we measure if we have optimized our customer funnel?

4. Look at good data. 📊

You must review the various stages (and sub-stages) of your customer funnel, to find inefficiencies and improve them.

Here’s another helpful graphic, with relevant stages on the right:

Ultimately, the numbers you should care about are:

• Sessions (how many people are showing up?)

• Conversion rate (what % of sessions result in a checkout?) < This is what some providers misrepresent

• Average ticket size (how much do people spend?)

If you put a laser focus on these 3 metrics, you have a good start.

To chit chat or ask a question, email me at [email protected] or send me a message on LinkedIn. ‘Til next time.