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| Posted on 4/28/08 at 02:46 PM | |
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I wasn't going to respond to this post because it would take up too much of my time, but i guess some help is better than no help. You have 3 choices. 1. Pay someone to do everything for you, including maintainance, updates, etc, for as long as the site exists. 2. Learn everything yourself and do it. 3. A combination of both. In all situations you will be PAYING A LOT. Whether in time, money, or both, rest assured it will be A LOT. I recommend #3. You probably have a budget, an that budget is not going to afford #1. In case 2, is best, but it's been over 3 years for me now, and while i know A LOT of things, i know that i don't know even more =). I really recommend you get some kind of overview or general understanding of just how the internet industry works. keep in mind that the internet is not just about having a site. Consider that your web store front is just like a traditional storefront. In this case, opening up a store on the corner certainly does not guarantee success, now does it? You still need to have a solid busines plan, business skills, marketing skills, sales skills, a profitable product-backend system, etc. SO all of these things you'd need to do with a traditional store front, you also need to do online, but note that online , you do it a different way, with different tools, and so you need to learn to master those tools! Lets say you walked into a store called "soda emporium". Great, you want soda, so you walk in. In the store, there are hundreds of rows of soda, and there are signs above the rows, but they are very far away (from you) and so its hard to read them. You know you want coca cola, so you try to see if you see any coca cola signs. you get lucky and there it is, a pack of coca cola, so now you are ready to buy, but where is the cash register? There are NO employees in the store, so you walk around and try to find the checkout line, you spend 10 mins going around the store only to find out its in the back corner somewhere. So you finally get there, but its one of those stupid "automatic checkout" centers. You fumble through the buttons, it doesnt make sense, there's no one there to help you, you find out they only take credit cards, and you get so fed up that u leave the soda and you walk out. ---------------------------------- It's a rushed example, but the point is, website shopping and ordering HAS to be massively streamlined, efficient and EASY. The buy rates , statistically, are very low. Any fumbling on you or your customers part will result in an "abondoned cart". Amazon.com is successful not only because of its pioneering inventory management system, but because of its order processing system (and the sheer ease of it). Do not take for granted that difficulty involved in making something easy. --------------------------------------- Write out in stone what you NEED your website to DO. Yes DO, what does it DO. If you do not have a rock solid and clear picture of what your website will do, guess what, neither does that website, so it will sit there and not do anything. -------------------------------------- So my hurried advice is to develop a general understanding of the internet industry. Research what makes amazon so great. (its the king of ecommerce), and then read up on more niche oriented sites like http://www.johnnycupcakes.com/ LEARN LEARN LEARN LEARN, not necessarily technical stuff like coding and web marketing, but on principles of successful web based businesses, that is afterall, the main goal, is it not? Once you understand the principles, and if you are still motivated! then you should expand on what tools you need. i.e the techincal aspect. Like i said, one of those fundamental principles is EASE OF USE. a clear and defined path that the use takes to doing whatever it is you want them to do, (i.e buy a shirt). ANYTHING the impedes on that path, is hurting you and your sales. what tools streamline this path, what tools are good for marketing, what tools enable auto emailing to customers, what tools do that cool "shirt color change" effect. You can spend YOUR LIFETIME, chasing things you don't really need, so please take my advice and don't do that. If you understand what it is you want, what it is you really need (through research of current companies doing what you want to do and doing it PROFITABLY), you will be a thousand times better off than if you just blindly paid for or built some "website" that you assumeed would come to life , talk to your customers, hold their hands, and rake in billions of dollars for you. Really take researching seriously! What is the single greatest asset known to man other than his own mind? Other people's minds. You have unlimited access to hundreds if not thousands of other lives lived, and currently living that are doing exactly what you want to do, some of which are painfully better than you are. Learn from that! And don't just research how "hollister" sales shirts. Hollister's main busines is certainly not online. They funnel customers, and use their PRIMARY outlets, to generate SUPPLEMENTAL revenue from their site. Again, this all comes down to what exactly you envision your business to be. If its online only, then you need to learn not only about hollister's practices, but "online only" retailers too. DO NOT FOCUS ON BUILDING SOME RUN OF THE MILL WEBSITE, before you answer these questions for yourself. Now that I think about it, your website isnt even that important! you can skip any and all web coding,product creation, inventory, and fullfullment, but just opening up a cafepress store. You can again eliminate web coding, transactions and fullmillment, by going with amazon, or yahoo. The point is, the tools are out there. Don't worry about them (unless you love coding and are obsessed with the techincal aspects like me) 1.Define your business (in its entirety). 2.Research companies that fit your busines definition. 3. After research, reformulate your biz definition to include or dis-clude anything you realized you did or did not like about the system. 4.When you are confident with your definition, implement a small TESTABLE prototype of your system. A small system reduces risk, and does not waste unecessary efforts. NOte when i say implement a testable system. that may simply be trying out a cafe press site. That's minimal risk. Or if you want to creat the products yourself, i recommend a yahoo store. the price will be maybe 100 a month or so, but recognize that that cost is nothing compared to what you will waste your money and your time on, if you decide to be stubborn and "do it all yourself". This is true because suppose it took you 1 year to create a testable site yourself only to find out that your test produced UNPROFITABLE results! You'd have to refine your system, spend more time, and redevolop everything. All that time and effort wasted.... Think like a businesman, utilize the resources of others, limit your risk, and get the test rolling !! If you get unfavorable results, FIND OUT WHY, reorganize, reimplement, and retest. find different platforms, maybe ebay, etsy, amazon, etc. TEST IT. [Edited on 4/28/08 by superjadex12] ____________________ Failure is Great | |
 
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