Help with new online business

[Lee-solo]

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Hi All,

I have decided to create an online store E-commerce store
However, I have no web design experience, or knowledge in this field

Does anyone have any recommendations or suggestions on starting a web e-commerce site?

Thanks, Lee

[mike_allen]

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Hi Lee,

You should provide a little more information about what you want to sell, and what your budget is, so that people can get a better handle on your business. Check out this blog for an incomplete list of things that you would need to do for an online store. It’ll give you something to start with.

I’ve got a spreadsheet that does payment gateway costing which you could also use to cost the whole website, let me know if it would help.

[King]

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If you have no web experience then maybe a decent pile of cash will help if you are wanting someone else to develop the site for you, plus a willingness to embark on a very steep learning curve (how steep? This all consuming for the next 3,6, maybe 12 months).

If you do some steep learning first, you can set up a successful basic site yourself, using web site building tools available with many web hosting packages, a free cart and a simple merchant account or use paypal and have a site set up for cash outlay of under $100.

You will need to learn html and css (even at a basic level) so you can understand how websites work and be able to self manage (DON’T get locked into a system where your developer makes updates for you…what if they get hit by a bus??!)

You will also need to gain an understanding of SEO (its not rocket science, so don’t go paying lots of $ to anyone).

Also learn image manipulation so your images are great (and how to take a great pic if you are taking the photos, tho if high value items or ones that will be long-standing, then maybe using the services of a pro photographer will be warranted.)

[John Debrincat]

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Lee-solo, post: 41029 wrote:

Hi All,

I have decided to create an online store E-commerce store
However, I have no web design experience, or knowledge in this field

Does anyone have any recommendations or suggestions on starting a web e-commerce site?

Thanks, Lee

You have 3 choices in direction:

1. Get an open source shopping cart product that can be added to a website. You will need a web developer to help you. Go ask on the web development forum as there are lots of good experienced people there.

2. Get a full online web shop and website product like Magento community edition or one of the OS or licensed products. You will have to get a separte hosting plan from a hosting company that supports the software you select. You would also be best using a company or developer with experience to help you setup and get started. Check in the developer forum.

3. Use a complete Hosted eCommerce Solution where you will get a DIY workbench to setup and manage the website, orders, customers etc.

Ask any potential provider or developer for sample or reference customers and call them and check on how it all went.

You may need some design help regardless of which way you go.

You will need a domain name and business email and maybe a SSL certificate.

You need to describe the types of products you want to sell, how many SKUs and value of a typical order. Are the products large or small as that will determine how you ship.

You need to think about the payment methods you want to use and shipping methods and they are determined by the product info above.

Do you have a wish list or a set of requirements that you want to see. Its better to think through those things first before deciding on the solution you will use.

Think about a budget to build (or setup) the site and then run it monthly. How much can you afford over a full year and you can use that as guidence. Expect to see a huge range in cost estimates but for a small business with say 1000 SKUs and a nice design I would say $2500 – $5000 to design and setup and the $100 – 150 / month to run.

Make personal contact with whoever you want to use. Either face to face if local or by phone. My preference is always for Australian based companies but I am bias. But ask where you developer and hoster are based so it is clear.

Ask for an estimate and then a full statement of work with a fixed price and delivery

My recommendation is to try out a few and see what they can handle. There are many levels of non-technical and you need to find a solution you can manage. Some of the providers will allow free trials for their ecommerce solutions so start a few and make a list of what you (or they) like and don’t like. If you are asked to signup or provide a credit card to get a free trial just don’t do it.
Some of the hosted solutions will come with some pre-built templates where you can easily change banners, colours, navigation areas and items. So you might want to consider starting with a basic design and see how you go first. Your view on site look and feel will change in the first few months. I am not suggesting not getting professional design just leave it for a few months.

Functionality is really important and payment and shipping are the 2 key areas that need to fit your business processes. Make a decision on where the business is focussed and where you expect to make the most sales. We often hear customers tell us they want to sell worldwide but end up getting 99% of the orders locally.

Australia Post eParcel works well up to 20kg and most good ecommerce solutions support Australia post for shipping calulations in real time.

You can use PayPal to accept credit cards as well as PayPal accounts and you can accept any currencies it will just cost more in transaction fees. Longer term a online merchant account with your bank and a payment gateway like http://www.eway.com.au would be worthwhile if your business is successful. You can have multiple payment methods so even direct payment or invoice may work for you. But this should be a business decision and not a technical one as cost depends on the average value of the order and expected number of orders and your established margin.

The other big issue is what are you selling because that will have an influence on what style of online store you need and functionality (like digital product download).

When looking at functionality also think about:

— Newsletters
— coupons
— cross sell and upsell (manual and auto)
— accessories
— Portals – eBay, Getprice, Shopping.com
— How variations are handled
— Image processing – auto resizing and multiple images
— Handling analytics like Google Analytics
— User account capability (ie login for customers)
— Price lists and discounts (and by customer groups)
— ability to add attributes to customers, products etc
— ability to bundle products
— Social media – forums, blogs, gadgets for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc
— SEO capabilities – Titles, Meta tag, Image alt tags etc
— SEM integration – like Google conversion tracking code
— Security – SSL and PCI

You can find more information about costs and issues on one of our blogs at the following link “How to start an online business”. We have a nice online business budgetting tool that I can email you if you are interested.

All the best

John

[King]

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Lee-Solo, I have just been poking around in CPanel, which comes as part of many hosting packages. It includes all sorts of softwares, free.
One of these is called concrete5 – just spent 10 mins fiddling with it – seems very good.

So look at a web host that includes cpanel, that might be your webhosting and site design method taken care of.

Then look at Mals-e.com – free cart – very flexible yet very simple, and has a very good range of shipping options, payment methods plugins etc.

Use those and you are 1/2 way there already (depending on the complexity that you want to eventually get to)

[WAHM]

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If you are just starting out and tetsing an idea, take a look at (shameless plug here……) http://www.webcitypro.com

Take a free 10 day trial and have a play

[LukeMoulton]

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Take a look at Shopify.com, it’s a good hosted solution for people who want to get up and running without too much expense.

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