email me to purchase

I recently finished building out the website for my latest bag in the Strathmere Leather lineup, Ocean Front, and got down to the end, the part where I need to seal the deal, make the sale, initiate payment, have money change hands.

I thought about embedding the product directly from my Shopify site. That way you could just click or tap Buy Now, pay the money, and move on. Felt kind of yucky to me. Most of my products are quite personal in their origin, the inspiration of them has meaning to me, and putting a Buy Now button at the bottom of the page where I just poured my heart out felt sleezy. Didn’t feel right.

I know it probably goes against all of the best practices out there for making all the money and such, but I opted to ask those interested in buying to send me an email saying so. There’s a very simple to use form right on the page for them to use, so they don’t even have to open another app or copy and paste my email, and so on.

Email, while less personal than a phone call or face to face meeting, is the next best thing, I think, and is much better than clicking a button and having something happen somewhere, maybe, hopefully.

My thought with the email connection is just that: connection. By emailing we can connect - human to human. You can ask me questions about the bag, I can answer them. You can make a special request, I can let you know if it is feasible (and it most likely will be). I can ask how your day is going. We can finalize all of the details and then I can send you an invoice. You can pay from the invoice online, or mail a check, or whatever works best for you to pay. The transaction at this point can be much more flexible and tailored to each individual.

Much slower, but this feels like a more human way to do “e-commerce”.

Thoughts?