How can I help grow sales locally?

Just over a year ago we started taking part of our business online.
At this point of time we only sell products in Canada, however most of the inquiries and visits to our site comes from the States....
Shipping time and cost to the US is not an option right now.
So we have to continue our online business here in Canada.
The problem is that not too many Canadians shop online. How do you address this issue?
Here is the site: http://www.bigoncartridge.com

The answer is no, and if we open an office or distribution center in the US, there is a lot of cost involved in it. I hate to miss this opportunity.

Yep, you're right about Canadians not shopping online even though we have one of the highest rates of computers and users with high speed connections in the world.

I would suggest that you start PROMOTING your services LOCALLY in your own city using free online classified ad websites to start (I will list several good ones below). You can still offer online sales and delivery / mailing for a reasonable price in your own city. One of the biggest mistakes I always see with companies that try to sell online to everywhere in the country or world is that they often forget just how big the market is right in their own backyard where they are already well known. And then they wonder why nobody is buying from them online... because nobody knows them outside of their own city! It's much easier to put your money and faith into the local store around the corner... regardless of price.

The added cost of shipping anything, anywhere can also be a major roadblock to gaining business outside of your local area. Personally, I would never buy an ink cartridge online because too often I have bought the wrong one and had to return it. I would then have to go to the time and expense of mailing it back to you, waiting for my refund, and then buying the correct one. Meanwhile I have no ink for several days and the cost for me to ship it back to you means I am saving virtually nothing buying it from you if you are on the other side of the country (or even another city nearby). It is simply easier and more convenient for me to pay a higher price at a local Staples or Office Depot to have it when I need it, and be able to return it immediately if it is the wrong one, with very little time lost.

I don't need to tell you that the printer ink business is highly competitive online. I'm sure you already know. A quick Google search for the words "printer ink" yielded almost 5 MILLION results!! Several years ago I also did a very detailed business plan to look at buying an Island Inkjet franchise. I made 2 trips to their head office in Courtney, BC and spent 2 months doing the plan. I never invested in it for reasons too numerous to list here, but I can tell you that the franchise fees were way out of line for such a new, unproven operation that could literally be crushed by the big printer manufacturers at any time if they wanted to.

Anyway, the bottom line is that printer ink of various types is something that people discover they've run out of too late and they simply go to their local store to get more so they can complete whatever they were doing. I have yet to see any person or small company who stockpiles cartridges in the event they run out. It just doesn't happen. They just go to the nearest store and buy more when it's needed rather than tying up the money to stockpile it. And if they are only buying it as needed, saving $5, $10 or even $20 is simply not enough to motivate a person or small business to WAIT for the product to be shipped when they need it right now.

Anyway, here's the list of free online classified ads sites that I use all the time. They all have Canadian city links.

http://www.kijiji.com (it's owned by eBay and it's FREE)
http://www.usedcanada.com
http://www.ebosa.com
http://www.craigslist.com

www.craigslist.org ???

is there anyone in the US that you know that could be your US distributor?