Why IndieCommerce? One Bookseller's Thoughts

From Bookselling This Week: Lars Townsend of Washington DC’s Politics & Prose Bookstore discussed transitioning the store’s website to IndieCommerce, and the benefits both store and site have seen.

The bookstore, its website, and electronic communications with customers are "extensions of P & P's very community," Townsend explained. "We do sell books online, but in my opinion, selling books via the Internet is a very distant fourth objective to:

• Informing people about what's going on at P & P
• Encouraging people to come into the store, presumably to buy books
• Helping people find the books they want to read, and finally
• Increasing online sales."

84 percent of Politics and Prose website visitors "arrive from within 25 miles of the store, 92 percent from within 50 miles. Furthermore, the 'Directions to the Store' webpage is P & P's fifth most frequently visited page."

The click-through rate for the Politics & Prose e-newsletter "pales compared to our website traffic. 29 percent of our website visitors come through the e-mail, 49 percent through search engines like Google, and 22 percent through links from other websites." In the first two weeks that Politics & Prose IndieCommerce site went live, the numbers of visitors to the site grew significantly.

Each bookstore has the ability to create a website that's visually appealing while reflecting the unique character of the store.

"If something is unappealing visually, it doesn't matter how well the text has been written, how excellent the events it promotes, or how typo-free it is; most readers will not bother to read it. As we booksellers know, to some extent, and for better or worse, books often are judged by their covers. You're not stuck with what some programmer decided your site should look like. You can move features around, add backgrounds, hide things, change colors, shapes, fonts, etc.... IndieCommerce staff have been really helpful in giving me access to tweak these things."

The Politics & Prose website is "unique, emblematic of our community."

IndieCommerce's content management system has allowed Politics & Prose to create "a site that pushes the user inwards," Townsend said. Visitors "can follow links pushing them deeper and deeper into the site, presenting them with more and more relevant material."

"You don't need to know any HTML at all," Townsend said. "Knowing that language helps, but it isn't mandatory. Changes are as easy to make as logging in like a regular customer, and if you have the right access, all you have to do is click edit and type away. Changing content is almost as easy as writing in a word processor. "

Another benefit "is its handling of text and pictures—they flow," he said.

Townsend said ABA has "put together a really phenomenal product.”