Selling weed online requires compliance with local laws, furnishing a great website, and offering an outstanding shopping and shipping experience at your dispensary.
Cannabis is still a tightly regulated industry both by provincial and federal laws. But thankfully, North America and its surrounding areas continue to witness more legal doors opening when it comes to the consumption and sale of cannabis online.
Selling cannabis legally online is a booming business that had a 22% increase in sales in 2021 in comparison to 2020. This is a very profitable figure irrespective of the industry, but for cannabis, it shows the growing amount of buyers and consumers of legal marijuana.
If you’re interested in partaking in the cannabis industry by selling it online, here’s a practical guide to getting you started
Top Tips for Selling Weed Online
Start with a great website
The importance of search engine optimization aside, a great website will allow you to market your weed very effectively to consumers and buyers.
Weed buyers will not hesitate to abandon your webshop if it takes time to load. A one-second delay in a website load time cuts down customer satisfaction by almost 20%, according to one report. This is an alarming figure, and you can lose a good number of potential weed buyers from your site. In addition, online cannabis buyers also do not take kindly to sites that do not work on smartphones.
A top-selling cannabis site has an intuitive interface, loads within a fraction of a second, and works seamlessly across all devices.
So aim to have your weed website with the above-mentioned features.
Fine-tune your weed inventory
A hallmark of top weed sellers is a great consumer experience through several features.
A detailed list of weed products offered on your online cannabis dispensary. This can include weed products, edibles, smokables, topicals, and accessories. In addition, information about THC or CBD-specific products, if you offer them on the site, can be very helpful to potential buyers on the platform.
If you browse the site of a top-performing weed website, each of these sites offers a clear and defined category of weed products, whether it is a potent marijuana strain, organically sourced weed, or premium CBD products. Not only is this attractive to cannabis consumers, but it tells them exactly what they get from your site.
Two, describe your weed products, including the ingredients. The ingredient list of weed products serves an important purpose as it allows buyers to have all the information they need. For instance, whether they want a high concentration of THC in their weed product or a mild one can be decided easily if they know the ingredients.
Information about whether the vaping cartridge is refillable or not and its compatibility with smoking devices can be of great help when it comes to other products.
Employ effective marketing strategies for your weed business
You might have the most potent weed strain in your inventory, but if you don’t know how to market it, selling it won’t be a success. Top weed marketing strategies that are effective include:
- Social media marketing: Advertising your weed business blatantly on social media is not allowed on any platform. However, most of the top online weed dispensaries harness the power of influencers with a strong following through influencer marketing.
- Pay per click: Pay per click or PPC requires strategically placing your weed business ads on search engines and websites. PPC for weed advertising is a great way to generate traffic and sales.
- Traditional marketing: In the weed industry, traditional advertising mediums still work very effectively, and you can make it work for your business. This includes billboards, print media, and satellite radios.
- SMS marketing: SMS or text marketing is another very effective way to spread the word about your weed business. The response rate through SMS marketing for the weed industry is one of the quickest.
Deliver the weed along with a great shopping experience
It’s one thing to impress your weed customers with an impressive-looking website and another to deliver them, so the buyers are satisfied and want to come back for more. Most of the top weed sellers deliver their packages through door-to-door delivery or a delivery point through dispensaries.
In recent years, cashless payments have also trickled into the weed business, which has been a boom for the industry in general. This great change, in turn, has also sparked a rise in a lot of cannabis e-commerce owners to transition to the online platform completely. So, it won’t be long for the weed industry to rely solely on the delivery model.
Working with a reliable delivery partner that is authorized to deliver weed products can make a big difference in giving your customer base a good weed delivery experience.
A delivery partner will allow you to work out the best weed delivery options. This can include the weed delivery costs, payment methods, tracking of the shipment, and of course, the delivery times.
Understand the weed laws
You may have the best strategies to sell weed online, but you can land in hot waters if it does not comply with the legal side. The provincial and federal laws regarding the production, sale, and consumption of weed vary greatly from one state/country to the other, and a legal weed practice in one state may be illegal in the other and vice versa.
In addition, marketing weed and delivery jurisdictions can also vary greatly from one location to the other. In most provinces, penalties for violating weed laws can include monetary fines, suspension of business certification, and even a jail term in some areas.
Wrapping Up
The business of selling weed can seem complicated and restrictive. However, legislators and the head of states are constantly working towards widening the perimeter for legal use, sale, and consumption of weed and its products in several parts.
Several weed businesses have been successfully marketing and selling weed for decades. So there is no reason why you cannot sell weed online with great results.
The secret to selling weed online comes down to understanding and complying with the laws, marketing it strategically, and delivering the right products on time. If you narrow down the above-mentioned factors, you are on your way to selling and running a successful weed business online.
Clout Brands can help take your cannabis business online. Contact us today!
