Tag Archives: MOST

Andrew Faulkner, MOST Consulting Group

How Dispensaries Can Create Superior Online Experiences

By Andrew Faulkner
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Andrew Faulkner, MOST Consulting Group

Even the most traditionally-minded, tech-averse entrepreneur accepts their success relies on providing customers with a superior online experience in 2023. Trying to succeed without a robust web presence is akin to running the 100-meter with your legs tied together.

On that note, the legal cannabis industry might have a leg up over other sectors in providing superior experiences online. After all, the legal cannabis market is relatively new, meaning no legacy systems require any rehauling. Still, many dispensaries must start their websites from scratch.

A website bolstered by an excellent user experience offers many benefits (e.g., branding and additional revenues), but ground-up projects are daunting. Fortunately, the insights below will make your web design process more manageable.

Design Your Website To Click With Your Customer Base.

The primary commodity of all dispensaries is the same. Yet, each dispensary is different. They all have unique branding, voices, and stories they’re trying to tell.

Moreover, every dispensary wants to provide customers with a brand-specific experience. There’s no one-size-fits-all dispensary website for the above reasons.

A brand-specific experience can have a sense of familiarity that customers may desire

Even so, the following general best practices will be conducive to streamlined, successful dispensary website design. While every website designer or agency has their own process, this process has proven to be extremely effective for the dispensary clients we’ve helped:

Develop an outline and wireframe for the website’s structure and content:

  • A guiding principle during this process is to include the necessary pages and sections to optimize vital brand components and effectively promote products.
  • Other factors to consider are sections, features and calls to action.
  • Dispensary websites should contain educational content and resources.
  • Fluid, straightforward navigation should also be prioritized.

Move onto the front-end design:

  • Incorporate and harmonize multiple brand elements.
  • Identify aesthetically pleasing typographies and imagery.
  • Design each page outside of the content management system. This makes it easier to make changes and adjustments after the first draft has been completed.

Get feedback from relevant parties (e.g., clients, colleagues, management, or other stakeholders):

  • Transparency and open communication are paramount to this step.
  • This phase will ensure that all expectations for the new design are met while providing a platform for course correction as needed.

Use the feedback to create a foundational website framework:

  • Meet for a second feedback session before committing 100% to a web design framework.

Develop the website inside of your content management system of choice:

  • Now that the front-end design has been created, the website will be built out in the actual CMS platform, ex. WordPress.
  • Share every page with other relevant parties to maintain and foster the web design process’s fluidity.

By now, you should have a solid base for the website’s final form:

  • The stage involves fine-tuning as the launch date nears.
  • Also included at this point are the following:
    • Ancillary page development.
    • Dispensary menu integration.
    • Tablet/mobile optimization.
    • Speed/performance tests.
    • Contact form designs.
    • Lead capture setup.

One last guiding principle in web design is to view your website through a user’s eyes. Continually assess how intuitive and convenient it is to navigate your site as a customer.

Optimize The Customer Experience With Seamless Navigation 

Dispensaries benefit by guiding visitors to their website’s most important sections.

It’s an understandable oversight only to prioritize seamless navigation to the menu page. However, customers will be less inclined to order if they can’t access educational content to learn more about your products. Plus, they may want to visit your physical store, so they’ll wish to view your location information.

Furthermore, visitors sometimes need clarification about what they want from your website. Build their pathway with insightfully structured navigation systems with clear prompts, calls to action and an emphasis on the following:

  • Specifics about store and location
  • Brand information
  • Where to find responses to FAQs

Lastly, be mindful of the mobile experience on your website. Your customers expect seamless navigation on their phones and tablets as much as on their laptops and desktops.

More people will visit and shop your menu on the mobile version of the website than the desktop version, so it needs to take priority in the design process.

Create an Intuitive Online Ordering Process

The ordering component of the customer experience is integral to receiving desirable returns on your online investment.

Intuitive, easy-to-parse menu systems are a must when optimizing online ordering.

Of course, every visit counts and brands are happy to educate consumers. A steady, always-growing stream of eCommerce transactions paints a winning picture of your site’s navigation. More to the point, success with online orders means you’ve optimized the ordering experience.

Intuitive, easy-to-parse menu systems are a must when optimizing online ordering.

Ensure that your customers are one click away from their preferred menu and location (if you have multiple locations), regardless of where they are on your website. It’s even better if those pages can rank on Google based on local searches (e.g., Pennsylvania dispensary menu).

Online shoppers also respond well to search filters on your menus, such as:

  • Products with the highest or lowest THC levels
  • Products with the highest or lowest CBD levels
  • Specific strain types (i.e., Indica, Sativa and Hybrid)
  • Product types (e.g., flower, concentrate, oil or edible)

Build A Robust Resources/Information Section

Almost every branded website has a resource/information section. In some instances, it’s a blog. For other brands, it’ll be eBooks, guides, case studies, press releases, videos or news articles.

Customers respond well to search filters on your menus

A resource/information section is uniquely vital to cannabis brands. Many prospective customers will be first-timers and require sure-handed wisdom to guide them through the experience. Also, many seasoned enthusiasts want to learn about the latest trends and the best new strains.

Furthermore, providing resources and information is a form of education. This “teacher” approach helps push back against stigmas by focusing on cannabis’s nuances and benefits.

Consider using a “pillar page” system to organize your informational content (e.g., blogs, videos, eBooks). Doing so will make it seamless for website visitors to learn about strains, terpenes, upcoming community events, consumption methods or information about local cannabis laws.

It helps to customize each pillar page with an icon and create an individual page for every post in a given category. This way, newly published content will automatically appear under its associated pillar page.

Other Considerations

We understand the budgetary challenges many dispensaries face when getting off the ground. You can grow your budget by making decisions and taking educated risks that generate returns.

Your customers’ online experiences are a worthy investment. Nonetheless, are you investing wisely by building (or redesigning) your website in-house? After all, your team’s expertise is in cannabis sales (or cultivation). They’re smart enough to learn as they go, but would this trial-and-error web design process be efficient or ideal for your dispensary’s bottom line?

Conversely, working with a Consulting Group like MOST who specializes in dispensary website design can ensure your website generates the desired returns and results. Contact us today to learn more.

The Evolution of Cannabis Entrepreneurship

By Jonathan Monk
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Cannabis presents a plethora of challenges for entrepreneurs not seen in more traditional industries. Akin to the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, the cannabis industry has seen an astonishing flurry of business over the past decade. Within this dynamic landscape, new cannabis companies come and go on a near-daily basis.

To capitalize on novel markets’ potential, hopeful entrepreneurs from all walks of life have “jumped headfirst” into the cannabis space. This new breed of entrepreneurs must not only be smart, but they must also be challenging. Yet, as the cannabis industry evolves under the forces of legalization and innovation, our understanding of what defines cannabis entrepreneurs continues to change.

Cannabis businesses are shaped by the regulations, challenges and opportunities of specific market niches. As such, cannabis entrepreneurs have evolved with the environments in which they do business.

California & Proposition 215   

California paved the way for the industry of today by legalizing medical cannabis in 1995. Since the passage of historic Proposition 215, cannabis has continued to gain momentum across the globe. This progress has happened through the visions and hard work of small business owners.

The early days of legal cannabis in California are now criticized for their lack of regulation. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, all you needed to start a cultivation business in California was a place to grow a garden. While early dispensaries did need local business licenses, they could legally purchase and sell untested products from unlicensed growers.

The genealogy of the modern cannabis industry can be traced directly back to the days of California’s Prop 215. During this era, the first cannabis dispensaries were founded – this model has since been replicated thousands of times. Also, the Prop 215 model gave rise to America’s first legal, commercial cannabis farms.

Cannabis entrepreneurs in California’s medical space focused primarily on developing the blueprints for a brand-new industry. To this end, they did not have the time or luxury to finetune the businesses for such things as operational efficiency and brand awareness. Even more, these people did not have to deal with such complexities as employee screening, product testing and seed-to-sale tracking.

Medical Cannabis Entrepreneurs

New medical markets stand in stark contrast to those seen in the early days of California. To this end, today’s medical markets operate within a web of stringent government regulations. For entrepreneurs, these rules set forth major emphases on both compliance and technology.

The Pennsylvania medical cannabis industry provides an excellent platform for understanding how the regulatory system of a market shapes entrepreneurial paths. For instance, medical cannabis cards are only issued to patients that meet the minimum criteria of 23 qualifying conditions, including severe conditions like aids, cancer and epilepsy. Beyond that, cannabis dispensaries in Pennsylvania must meet a slew of challenging criteria to operate and pay large sums of money in licensing fees.

To handle the regulatory requirements in places like Pennsylvania and remain profitable, medical cannabis entrepreneurs are incredibly dependent on technology. To this end, dispensaries utilize point-of-sale (POS) and seed-to-sale software to track inventory and stay compliant carefully. Even more, they use state-of-the-art security systems to safeguard their operations.

Cannabis entrepreneurs in medical markets must be able to run compliant operations and support their businesses with requisite technology. These elements stand in stark contradiction to the “wild west” mentality that pervaded the early industry. As such, it’s safe to assume that the rules of today’s markets force entrepreneurs to be more professional than in the days of CA Prop 215.

Adult-Use Cannabis Entrepreneurs

The most considerable difference between medical and adult-use cannabis companies has to do with their available customer base. Importantly, adult-use cannabis companies are only bound by minimum age requirements and state borders. Furthermore, limited restrictions on licensing create highly competitive markets that require sophisticated sales and marketing operations.

As there are no limits on potential customers, and limited regulations on license counts, business opportunities in adult-use markets are primarily directed by supply and demand rules. Because competition is the driving force in adult-use markets, entrepreneurs in this vertical have a good deal in common with peers outside the cannabis industry.

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of adult-use entrepreneurs is an emphasis on branding and marketing. As adult-use markets mature in places like Colorado, a phenomenon known as “brand concentration” occurs when a few companies come to dominate a majority of the market. As smaller companies fight for market share, they must develop professional brands that appeal to a broad customer base.

Cannabis entrepreneurs in adult-use markets must master the skills required in medical cannabis while also expanding their knowledge base in modern business dealings. Of these, the development of professional brands is one of the most defining characteristics of adult-use entrepreneurs.

It’s astonishing to see how much the cannabis industry has grown and matured looking back just a few short years. As business opportunities come about with new legalization efforts, entrepreneurs quickly rise to take advantage of untapped markets. As the cannabis business continues to evolve with the times, entrepreneurs must pivot to stay compliant, relevant and successful.

While the early Prop 215 market in California barely resembles today’s industry, it’s important to remember where we came from. Namely, our understanding of the contemporary cannabis business results from everyone who came before us. As the industry progresses, we will continue to complement established best practices with the requisite innovations that come with new opportunities.