The Wholesale Forums

[wholesaleguru87]

Hi,
I have decided to create a thread For both new and experienced buyers and sellers interested in either setting up an e-commerce store for there business or for people who have already got an e-commerce area but would like to expand. i decided to post this thread as daily i see new posts asking on something e-commerce related (myself included)
i thought it would be handy for other members to see what is needed to create a succesful e-commerce shop.

i will start the list, feel free to add your own.
-Domain name
-Host
-SSL certificate - shared or dedicated.

Post Yours!

Regards
Dale

[King-Tees]

The most important part! The cart!
Pete will give us a big rant about it in a minute

[TSP]

Payment Processing
Adverising

[jedi777]

A good template or design

[Pete]

A business plan and some stated goals.

None of the rest means much if you do not have a clear idea of the end result.

So many "put up a cart" and hope it will evolve. You need to know your market, your supplier, the industry you are going to be joining, etc. It's way more than picking a cart and a host.

And think "down the road". Where do you hope to be in 3 or 5 years? No sense getting a cart that just works well in one country if you want to expand as time goes by. It's a pain changing carts, you're better with one a bit above your needs that can handle what you have planned, than to settle for one that takes one currency or has shipping for one country. (As examples.)

Basics - your domain name in your name and under your control. Host where you can get your own control panel account and can leave / move your site, should you so decide. Be the master of your own fate.

And know how you plan to get traffic to your site. There are a number of ways of doing this, not just "being #1 with Google". But you have to know what those ways are and have a plan to get buyers to your cart. "Hits" are meaningless, you keep score by "sales".

That's the rant for the day.

[wholesaleguru87]

Thanks for everyones responses. keep them coming..

[wholesaleguru87]

anymore suggestions?

[Titchimp]

Wow this could get very detailed and complicated. My top 5 things to think about:

Domain name - Keep it simple and memorable, this means something that the customer will be able to remember, domains should tell the customer what you do but its not necessary as long as they will remember it. Cheap-ipods-uk.com might sounds perfect but if a customer forgets the hyphens you have taken them to what could be a competitors site.

Cart Software - This is something so many people get wrong, you need to research research research, if it is B2B then you need to make sure the software will allow all of the various payment methods, accounts, quantity breaks etc.

If it's consumer based then whilst you don't require so many of the features mentioned on B2B but the merchandising in the cart must be top notch, easy to use navigation out of the box, good image manipulation, recommended items, and one of the most important things: a good checkout. Why throw a willing customer away because your checkout is cumbersome? Choose a cart which allows one or two page checkout with features such as Post Code lookups and prompts to help the customer through the process. My biggest piece of advice is Do not go to a designer and ask them for a cart, find a cart and then find a designer. too many will just recommend the easiest to skin without a thought of what you need and what the future of the cart is. Whether you choose a hosted cart or not is up to you as is whether you go open source or proprietary, we have two hosted shops (shopify and Bigcommerce) and one we host ourselves (magento), the choice for each has been down to our needs of the cart.

Store design

The old saying "you get what you pay for" really comes into its own when you see some sites, i am of the opinion that if a site is done correctly i should have to look hard to find out what software the site is based on. The site shouldn't be just a showcase of just the products you sell but also the brand, in the same way that a Bricks and mortar store would be. Sticking a logo on the top of a standard Cubecart or OSC install and changing the colours of a few things is not the way to go.

Payment Gateways - Choosing the right gateway really will be on a store by store basis, we use Paypal for all of our stores because we get much better rates than most would offer for our products and Paypal is something many consumers love, its fast, its easy and its safe (for them). We are happy to expose ourself to the extra risk for the added reward!

Hosting - When your working in an environment where every visitor is a potential customer, its best not to lose them with crappy or un-optimised hosting. A £6.99 per year deal isn't going to cut it once the visitors start to roll in so i suggest start as you mean to go on, invest in good hosting from the start (its quite a bit of hassle to move things over once you are established). An example of this is Magento, its feature heavy and requires some pretty good hosting, but not only that try to choose a host who has knowledge of your software, we chose one which helps us as they know the tweaks to the software and hardware that will make it run smoothly.

[b]A good plan[b] - As pete said, a plan is most important! At first it might be the difference between a good site with good products that sell and a good site with crap products. But then once you have got the products and the site sorted you need a plan on how you are going to get visitors to the site, the old "Once i rank well on google" won't last long unless you are pro actively going out to get customer!

Yeah so thats my little rant. The gist of it is plan well, and don't skimp when you are laying the foundations of your business,

[Pete]

New Day, New Rant

As Above - Notice titchimp put the cart before the design. This is something that so many just DO NOT UNDERSTAND. The cart is the functional part of the website. It is what displays the goods, what lists the prices, what computes the totals, the shipping, any taxes, etc. It is what does the work of the website. The most beautiful design in the world, covering over a lack-luster shopping cart is just a beautiful dud.

Paying for a design to match a cart that comes with it, then finding the cart is not what you need, only results in more expense, for a "template" or "skin" for one type cart will not fit another. They must be done from the ground up for a particular cart. So, you get that beautiful design and have to ditch it, along with the cart that does not meet your needs.

Make SURE the underlying cart is what you need. If you want to have a place for customer comments, or "people who bought this also looked at this" as a couple of examples, a beautiful design will not add them to a cart that does not have them. It will simply give you a good looking site that does not meet your desires in functionality.

The most beautiful template on a cart that does not offer a tie-in with Moneybookers is junk if Moneybookers is part of your plans as a payment processor. You need to make sure the cart is right for you, then find a designer who will give you what you want in the way of looks.

I have to explain this over and over to people who come to me for hosting. They want to see what the carts I host look like. Well, they look like crap, they look OK and they look totally GREAT. But you can't judge a cart by it's cover. The design is no more than a coat of paint on your store. Get the store you want, then get out the paint brushes.

[Titchimp]

Originally Posted by Pete

New Day, New Rant

As Above - Notice titchimp put the cart before the design. This is something that so many just DO NOT UNDERSTAND. The cart is the functional part of the website. It is what displays the goods, what lists the prices, what computes the totals, the shipping, any taxes, etc. It is what does the work of the website. The most beautiful design in the world, covering over a lack-luster shopping cart is just a beautiful dud.

Paying for a design to match a cart that comes with it, then finding the cart is not what you need, only results in more expense, for a "template" or "skin" for one type cart will not fit another. They must be done from the ground up for a particular cart. So, you get that beautiful design and have to ditch it, along with the cart that does not meet your needs.

Make SURE the underlying cart is what you need. If you want to have a place for customer comments, or "people who bought this also looked at this" as a couple of examples, a beautiful design will not add them to a cart that does not have them. It will simply give you a good looking site that does not meet your desires in functionality.

The most beautiful template on a cart that does not offer a tie-in with Moneybookers is junk if Moneybookers is part of your plans as a payment processor. You need to make sure the cart is right for you, then find a designer who will give you what you want in the way of looks.

I have to explain this over and over to people who come to me for hosting. They want to see what the carts I host look like. Well, they look like crap, they look OK and they look totally GREAT. But you can't judge a cart by it's cover. The design is no more than a coat of paint on your store. Get the store you want, then get out the paint brushes.

Exactly. I think alot of people fall into the trap of saying "It will do for now, I will sort it when we start selling more" and then that time comes and they get a major headache of trying to move to a new system, retain their site structure and also not lose the SEO benefits they have picked up.