Looking for feedback on new site\business

Gambler

Hey all,

I've been working away for a while on a new service (times are tough and I need to diversify what my company is doing) and so I was hoping to get some feedback on the new site and the general idea behind the new business before we go for our "official" launch.

The site is at http://www.yourshop.ie/ and the basic idea is that we will handle the stock management, order fulfillment, web hosting and associated technical support for anyone looking to open a new online store.

Basically we become a one stop shop so someone can open and run their own online shop from their house. They can start with 1m2 and expand\reduce their space (and associated costs) as their business needs it.

Please let me know what you think of the basic idea and any suggestions you have for improving the service, the website and\or the "branding"\impression that we are giving with the new site.

Thanks in advance!

[edit]Oh I also have yourstore.ie which points to the same place, which domain do you think is better suited?[/edit]

hedgehog33

Great idea and nice looking site. This is definitely a service I'd consider using if I didn't have enough time to devote myself to my site.

Only point I'd add is there are no contact details on the site (that I could see), I always prefer to see contact details. (Especially if you're going to be holding my stock!)

lanod2407

I can see where you're coming from with the idea, but I'd be concerned that people / companies may not want to literally put all their eggs into one basket - web design, development, hosting, order fulfilment, storage, etc. I'd certainly be concerned that I'd not be getting optimum prices, service, expertise across such a wide range of activities.
Those that would go with the service may well be quite small cottage-industry type businesses - so a very niche market with high risk?

The site - the flash at the top of the page is too large - your messages below are lost and always have to be scrolled down to.

Contact - there are no contact details, no address, no names. If I came across the site I'd most probably steer away immediately as I've had my share of bad experiences online which I can almost always track back to a total lack of names / addresses / contact details on the relevant sites.

Typical Logistics models do not bundle fulfilment activities with storage/space rental. The customer does not want to pay large fees for storage - it doesn't add any perceived value. I'd want to see costs on an activity basis - i.e. how much per shipment received, and how much per product / package shipped. Storage is typically per pallet space per week, not per square metre. Office space is rented out per sq m ....... storage is per pallet space.

Also, if a customer has low levels of activity he'll be paying through the nose for storage that also has fulfilment activities embedded. On the opposite end of the continuum, a customer who has, say 4 pallets of material, that he turns several times per week will be getting massive fulfilment activity at a very low cost --- but a high cost to you. You need to be able to cost your business by activity.

When I click through all of your pages I keep coming back to - "who are these guys?" I won't make contact if I don't know who you are, and feel that you may be capable of executing on my requirements.

Finally, you're possibly going head to head against long-established logistics and fulfilment organisations who may look at this market for growth given the downturn in business activities.
Think about the downturn ......... companies find that their forecasted volumes are not happening, and then they end up with inflated stocks as materials already on order get delivered. This drives a need for increased warehousing on a short-term basis, so logistics companies are not suffering in this particular area, yet! Then the companies need to burn off these stocks as they adjust to their revised business volumes, and warehouse space starts to become available.
Now, decreased volumes are in place right across the supply chain, and businesses are driving their business models to remove even more stock to improve cash-flow ......... even more empty storage space.
So - what will the logistics companies do to fill this space, and create additional business activity? --- looking to take a slice of this market may be on the cards for some guys.


Hope that this helps, and best of luck with it - I know that there was another guy on this site asking for input on a similar business a short while ago.

Gambler

D'oh! I actually thought of that myself but was holding off to see if I could get the new phone number sorted in time. Won't have it for another week or so but can use our main phone line for now..

Does that change leave the contact us page looking a bit strange now?

Pixelcraft

PMG is the group you're looking for with regards to Canterbury

lanod2407

Wow - that was fast! Gotta give credit for taking on feedback so quickly!

TheWaterboy

I think its a very good idea and it could do very well but it needs to be marketed to the correct people.

I think you should be looking at targeting the new startups area etc. instead of the bigger stores like Buy4Now.ie do.

There are no prices on the site - i think there should be something there for people to see. Offer a few different packages -- gold, silver, bronze etc. or a monthly recurring payment of 30 euro etc.. This, I think, is a better model than a once off payment of 3000 euro or something.

The big thing now is to get a few stores live - even if you have to do it for little or no money. Once people see how other peoples stores work it will encourage them.

You are kind of competing with Ebay Stores, Yahoo and Amazon so dont know how you will overcome that, but best of luck with it.

Gambler

lanod2407 wrote: »

I can see where you're coming from with the idea, but I'd be concerned that people / companies may not want to literally put all their eggs into one basket - web design, development, hosting, order fulfilment, storage, etc. I'd certainly be concerned that I'd not be getting optimum prices, service, expertise across such a wide range of activities.
Those that would go with the service may well be quite small cottage-industry type businesses - so a very niche market with high risk?

I do expect it to mostly be small businesses, ebay store types that are currently using their spare bedroom\garage as a storage room. There are risks alright but that's true of any business!

The site - the flash at the top of the page is too large - your messages below are lost and always have to be scrolled down to.

Contact - there are no contact details, no address, no names. If I came across the site I'd most probably steer away immediately as I've had my share of bad experiences online which I can almost always track back to a total lack of names / addresses / contact details on the relevant sites.

Yeah, I need to review the header, the designer I was working with is the sort of guy to give you what's fashionable and he did talk me around to the idea but not 100% on it myself either.

Have updated the contact us page with full contact details, would it be worth making that more of an about is page to explain who we are more?

Typical Logistics models do not bundle fulfilment activities with storage/space rental. The customer does not want to pay large fees for storage - it doesn't add any perceived value. I'd want to see costs on an activity basis - i.e. how much per shipment received, and how much per product / package shipped. Storage is typically per pallet space per week, not per square metre. Office space is rented out per sq m ....... storage is per pallet space.

Also, if a customer has low levels of activity he'll be paying through the nose for storage that also has fulfilment activities embedded. On the opposite end of the continuum, a customer who has, say 4 pallets of material, that he turns several times per week will be getting massive fulfilment activity at a very low cost --- but a high cost to you. You need to be able to cost your business by activity.

I went with sqm but it's no big issue for me to change that to per pallet (My thinking was a m2 is about the size of a pallet anyway give or take a bit). Fees wise they aren't going to be large at all. Without giving a huge amount away we are looking at about €10 per week for your first unit of space (pallet\m2) and increasing that by about €2.5 per additional unit with discounts per unit at various space levels reached. which I think is competitive with current storage rates given the additional hosting\picking of orders etc.

One thing that we probably haven't explained brilliantly and I need to re-write the page to reflect this I think is that there will be a small fee per delivery sent as part of the post and packaging costs that you can pass onto the customer (or not if you want to absorb the cost). If it's an envelope type size it will be <= 50c or so and if it's a box it will be in the range of a few euro depending on the size. Ideally we'll sit down with the potential customer and go through what sort of deliverys they might have and work out a pricing that makes sense for all involved.

When I click through all of your pages I keep coming back to - "who are these guys?" I won't make contact if I don't know who you are, and feel that you may be capable of executing on my requirements.

Yeah, I understand where you are coming from there alright. To give you a bit of background here my company is software development but we are part of a larger group who are involved in a lot of large projects ranging from traffic management stuff (they were involved with the barrier free tolling on the M50 and provide a lot of the traffic management equipment to DCC) to sports ground equipment (Turnstyles for thomand park and Landsdowne Road for example.

The only area we don't have an in-house experience with is the actual postage\delivery and for that we are partnering with a courier company who do specialize in that side of things.

I'm not sure what the best way of conveying that kind of background through a website is, I guess I'm hoping people will be intrigued enough to contact us (and of course we will be doing direct marketing as well) and once we get talking to someone we can hopefully convey that in a proper manner. Would love any suggestions on the sort of thing we can do right now to improve that side of things on the website!

Finally, you're possibly going head to head against long-established logistics and fulfilment organisations who may look at this market for growth given the downturn in business activities.
Think about the downturn ......... companies find that their forecasted volumes are not happening, and then they end up with inflated stocks as materials already on order get delivered. This drives a need for increased warehousing on a short-term basis, so logistics companies are not suffering in this particular area, yet! Then the companies need to burn off these stocks as they adjust to their revised business volumes, and warehouse space starts to become available.
Now, decreased volumes are in place right across the supply chain, and businesses are driving their business models to remove even more stock to improve cash-flow ......... even more empty storage space.
So - what will the logistics companies do to fill this space, and create additional business activity? --- looking to take a slice of this market may be on the cards for some guys.

That's exactly where I am hoping the other strings to our bow can help out. I don't know of any logisitics company that have in house development and technical support capabilities.. Also we are aiming more for the small business side of things.

At the moment there are a lot of people looking at opening online businesses who are out of work or have ended up working 3\4 day weeks. This is my real target market for right now and if that works out well then I can start to actively pursue the big boys. (don't get me wrong, if someone comes looking to get space for 500 pallets with 300 orders a day going through the system I'll be able to facilitate them, just not expecting that kind of business anytime soon!)

Hope that this helps, and best of luck with it - I know that there was another guy on this site asking for input on a similar business a short while ago.

Thanks, I appreciate the long and well thought out reply! I think that might of been me before btw? I did post asking people who are running\starting an online store to get in touch and I ran the idea past them to get a feedback on what sort of services they might be interested in..

Gambler

TheWaterboy wrote: »

I think its a very good idea and it could do very well but it needs to be marketed to the correct people.

I think you should be looking at targeting the new startups area etc. instead of the bigger stores like Buy4Now.ie do.

There are no prices on the site - i think there should be something there for people to see. Offer a few different packages -- gold, silver, bronze etc. or a monthly recurring payment of 30 euro etc.. This, I think, is a better model than a once off payment of 3000 euro or something.

That's exactly the sort of market we are looking to target alright. Lots of little stores rather than a couple of big customers. Pricing wise it is based on the amount of space you are using in any given month and it's done on a monthly basis. You could get 3 pallets in when you start, month 2 you might be down to 2 pallets after sales and then month 3 you might go up to 4 or down to 1. We're going to do the pricing on a flexible space used monthly basis.

The big thing now is to get a few stores live - even if you have to do it for little or no money. Once people see how other peoples stores work it will encourage them.

You are kind of competing with Ebay Stores, Yahoo and Amazon so dont know how you will overcome that, but best of luck with it.

Actually I am hoping to get people who have ebay stores and the like on board. I haven't spoken about it on the site because I am looking at the back end programming needed but I am hoping to setup a system that will automatically update your ebay store for you as well as stock comes in.

I've done a bit of coding for the ebay api before so there shouldn't be any huges issues but I didn't want to announce until I know for sure and have a working demo of some sort.

Gambler

Pixelcraft wrote: »

PMG is the group you're looking for with regards to Canterbury

Was this maybe meant for the rugby thread?

Pixelcraft

didn't reply here, there must be something up with boards! the reply to it is here also.

hedgehog33

Hi Gambler,

Fair play on adding the contact details so quickly. Think they might fit/look better underneath the contact form, that's where I would usually look for details anyway - and the contact form would be more prominent then.

An About Us page would be a great addition, it would help with the trust factor, which is important for a service like this. On your Support and Advice page you say "With over 10 years experience in the area of website development and eCommerce" maybe you could expand on this to create the page. Examples of sites you've created or run would be great there too if it's possible.

Somebody said they thought the slideshow on the homepage was too big, I like it at the current size, think it's eye-catching and it held my attention - I read each slide, normally I would skip straight to "real" content.

Re the webshops you'll be hosting, will they have their own domain name, or will they be sub-domains of your domain?

Gambler

hedgehog33 wrote: »

Hi Gambler,

Fair play on adding the contact details so quickly. Think they might fit/look better underneath the contact form, that's where I would usually look for details anyway - and the contact form would be more prominent then.

Done!

An About Us page would be a great addition, it would help with the trust factor, which is important for a service like this. On your Support and Advice page you say "With over 10 years experience in the area of website development and eCommerce" maybe you could expand on this to create the page. Examples of sites you've created or run would be great there too if it's possible.

Yeah, I'll have to look at putting something together on this side of things. I'll have to check with customers we've done work for before but I'm sure they'd be happy enough to let us link to their websites..

Somebody said they thought the slideshow on the homepage was too big, I like it at the current size, think it's eye-catching and it held my attention - I read each slide, normally I would skip straight to "real" content.

Re the webshops you'll be hosting, will they have their own domain name, or will they be sub-domains of your domain?

Hosting wise they will have their own domain name (but that will have to be paid for by the customer). I can offer free sub domains but didn't think anyone would got for photo-shop.yourshop.ie as a domain?

Maybe I should think about a generic .com\.ie that people could use for free sub domains?

hedgehog33

No, I think the separate domain is miles better. I was just asking as I've seen some ecommerce hosting sites that only give you a sub-domain, which isn't great for SEO etc.

Gambler

Oh yeah, the hosting is actually a full hosting package with it's own web control panel (helm) and full access to create your own email addresses, look at stats, create ftp accounts etc. etc.

Gambler

Quick question, what are peoples thoughts on putting more price details up on the site?

My inclination at the moment is to put up some basic information but keep it sparse but a few people have suggested to me putting a full price list up.

honeymonster

Hey dude great idea and the design is sweet. Good job lad!

Axwell

Gambler wrote: »

I need to review the header, the designer I was working with is the sort of guy to give you what's fashionable and he did talk me around to the idea but not 100% on it myself either.

The flash header is way to big and too over powering to the eye, also it wouldnt be considered fashionable to be honest. Something more subtle would be a better option and to darken the font colour on the menu on the right its a bit hard to see and with the flash going on above it on screen it tends to distract you.

In terms of the hosting etc, are you hosting all of these individually or have you got a shared server and you are giving them all space on this. If its the latter then in terms of bandwidth etc would you not be crippling the server if you host a lt of these shops using Magento as from what I have heard about it its a little slow and hard on resources. If you have multiple shops all using it the bandwidth could go over the limit and you will have to pay for the excess to the hosting company.

MB74

A lot of feedback already and I won't get to read it all so forgive me if this is already said.

Maybe include a contact name, make it personal. I would love to read something about the company, where you are coming from, going to, how you are getting there. Maybe it could be useful to include some existing clients, almost like an endorsement. Make me confident to use you as a company.

Best of luck.

Varkov

One thing i've noticed on many forums and topics, is the challange for first time business owners of finding suppliers.

Would oyu offer any sort of help or directory of suppliers details?

lecheile

Hi Gambler - well done to you for seeking and taking on board what I'm sure is potential customers feedback!

Few observations:

(1) Payment engine - no mention that I could find re payment types supported - this can be a big issue for people starting out and a big mystery for many
(2) Providing site only - have you considered getting people hooked into your service by offering the the upfront store functionality that can support the bedroom storage option and as they expand (and you will know when from the activity!) you can make an appropriate, timely offer
(3) Pricing - the thing about pricing is that if not pitched right (ie competitive to the market) if you publish you may lose potential customers before you have had a chance to talk to them. It can sometimes be a good idea to give a sample price of a generic bundle that you provide and encourage people to ask for a price for their scenario. If your competitors want to find out your prices, they will mystery shop you!!

Best of luck!

Gambler

Axwell wrote: »

In terms of the hosting etc, are you hosting all of these individually or have you got a shared server and you are giving them all space on this. If its the latter then in terms of bandwidth etc would you not be crippling the server if you host a lt of these shops using Magento as from what I have heard about it its a little slow and hard on resources. If you have multiple shops all using it the bandwidth could go over the limit and you will have to pay for the excess to the hosting company.

Without going into too much detail I can easily host hundreds of shops with millions of hits no problem. I have expandable facilities in a data center as part of a hosting business I already provide through the software as a service side of my business so bandwidth and resources aren't an issue!

Varkov wrote: »

One thing i've noticed on many forums and topics, is the challange for first time business owners of finding suppliers.

Would oyu offer any sort of help or directory of suppliers details?

That's something that I could certainly look at, as it stands we are happy to help customers source suppliers by helping them out with information on the right places to look but maybe some sort of business directory for customers would make sense..

I'll have to think about that one some more!

lecheile wrote: »

Hi Gambler - well done to you for seeking and taking on board what I'm sure is potential customers feedback!

Few observations:

(1) Payment engine - no mention that I could find re payment types supported - this can be a big issue for people starting out and a big mystery for many

The short answer is that we will support and help setup and payment gateway someone wants to use. If the system doesn't already support it then I can program a new add on to handle it..

The slightly longer answer is that we are hoping to add the facility for smaller customers who wouldn't have the turn over to afford their own merchant account to use our merchant account but we're running into some major problems finding a way to do this legally and in a manner that protects us and our customers from fraud..

Either way we have experience of using all sorts of different payment gateways so we can help someone who is looking at setting something up for the first time find the right answer

lecheile wrote: »

(2) Providing site only - have you considered getting people hooked into your service by offering the the upfront store functionality that can support the bedroom storage option and as they expand (and you will know when from the activity!) you can make an appropriate, timely offer

I hadn't thought about this simply because when I first started getting into offering software as a service I also tried my hand at running a web hosting company offering services like eCommerce and the take up was very low at the time..

I must look into this again because it would be a very easy thing for me to add as a product offering right now..

lecheile wrote: »

(3) Pricing - the thing about pricing is that if not pitched right (ie competitive to the market) if you publish you may lose potential customers before you have had a chance to talk to them. It can sometimes be a good idea to give a sample price of a generic bundle that you provide and encourage people to ask for a price for their scenario. If your competitors want to find out your prices, they will mystery shop you!!

Best of luck!

Yeah, I must put together a small "Case Study" type page with some pricing details outline. I'll have a look at doing something about that over the weekend (We are moving into our new building this weekend so it's all go!!)

hedgehog33

Hi Gambler,

I agree about not putting detailed prices on the site, just a guideline is fine. For a service like this I think it's better to guide people to contact you, so you can make sure they understand what the advantages of what is being offered. Think it's also easier to convert sales when you are in direct contact with the customer.

Best of luck with the move.
H.

MOH

I know this is a bit old, just came across it during a search, but the first thing I noticed is the title on all your pages reads YourStore.ie rather than YourShop.ie

Donagh_mc

That's true, hadn't spotted that one! Also I think the active tabs could do with a redesign. They look a bit out of place compared to the rest of the site.

Gambler

Thanks for that, I actually have both yourshop.ie and yourstore.ie pointing to the one site, I'll add some code to check which domain people are looking at and redirect as necessary.