New Business - To Launch or Not To Launch??

scottyboy1973

I'm about to launch a new online business.

Called iCessorise.com, it's an online store for iPod, iPhone and MP3 accessories - stuff like skins, cases, speakers, headphones, power adapters. Key USPs are price and qualty - there are a few guys doing this out there at the moment but they are all selling high profile branded items at high prices. I'm introducing ranges of products at what are think are far fairer prices to suit customers current economic challenges.

Thing is, I've been getting some grief along the lines of "....just get the bloody site live" and that "you'll have the best written site that's never been live!"

However rather than having a half arsed site ready to go, I've been waiting until I have a decent enough range of products in stock and a fully functioning site before I launch.

Anyone have any advice on whether to go live now with the site as is and tweak as I go or hold off, adding more products and go live later?

Feedback on the site, offer, prices, products also gatefully received.

Thanks a million - ScottyBoy

DubTony

Not much to say here. Just flicked around it. Looks pretty good to the untrained eye (i.e. most of your customers). Nice job. Nice products. Best of luck.

scottyboy1973

DubTony wrote: »

Not much to say here. Just flicked around it. Looks pretty good to the untrained eye (i.e. most of your customers). Nice job. Nice products. Best of luck.

Thanks Tony - comments appreciated

DubTony

Actually Scotty, there is one thing. The blog. I'd be inclined to make it look more like the site. Black on white. Old geezers like me get a little flustered when we have to look at text in a way Gutenberg didn't design it

scottyboy1973

DubTony wrote: »

Actually Scotty, there is one thing. The blog. I'd be inclined to make it look more like the site. Black on white. Old geezers like me get a little flustered when we have to look at text in a way Gutenberg didn't design it

Yeah- good thinking. I will look into what blooger offers by way of design

thanks - SB

StephenM_smc

Looks good, I quite like the design. It might be a good idea to go ahead and launch it now. I'm sure having a cash flow while you are building things up can help a lot.

What had you in mind in terms of promoting the site?

Scotty #

Your FAQ page needs to have more info like delivery rates. I see in your checkout that delivery in Ireland is €3.50 so I guess your not using a courier. If you plan on posting by ordinary post you're in for a world of s**t!!!

You simply must get proof of delivery (POD)!!! I can't stress this strong enough. I ran an online lingerie store for a year and every second sale was a problem with delivery. If you send by ordinary post and the customer tells paypal or visa that they never received the stuff then you are screwed. Paypal and Visa WILL give them their money back. If you have a POD you have some chance so at least send by registered post although personally I'd still use a courier. This too can be tricky though as they don't like delivering to private residences. Fastway work out about €7.50 I think.

Do you only accept payment via PayPal? If so you should state this clearly and this will turn many people away. I'm not sure why but the Irish are still afraid to use paypal for some reason.

I see a customer MUST set up an account. This is also not ideal. I'm not sure what shopping CMS you are using but many of them can be addapted to allow for purchases without accounts (or anonymous accounts).

I've only gone as far as the as the page where I should enter my personal info but I see there is no SSL security cert (https://) on the page. This is another thing that will turn people off. Even if you intend to let paypal handle all the transaction, €120 a year for a SSL cert is money well spent as it will give your customers the peace of mind that their details are secure.

Do not launch until you are happy that everything looks and works as it should.

EDIT: As the sites not live of course there's no SSL Cert... but do get one on the live site. It'll pay for itself I assure you.

Just had a quick look and from a consumer point of view, thought it was fine, like the idea.

I'd be worried about how you're going to make money from it as the margins seem quite low for an online business since most your products are under 10 euro. I'd offer the option of a courier too because once again, I know how unreliable an post is, but if I'm going away and want to get some speakers for the plane, I'd like a courier option.

You should probably go all out and cover other mp3 players too. I have a microsoft zune, will your stuff work with my mp3 player ? I'm a bit of a gadget freak so I'd be able to find out but you want to make it as easy as possible for your consumers because a lot of them won't know.

Edit: I also like the name, think it's quite cool.

TheWaterboy

I think you should defo launch it. There are a few small issues as mentioned already but nothing too serious. I wouldnt expect you to become a millionaire over night as it will take time to build up the site. You are also in a highly competitive market and i think Ebay will be a big competition to you especially for iPod accessories.

Make sure to add in your telephone numnber on the contact us section.

Also get that press release out there to as many places as possible.

Other than that best of luck with it.

W!zard

The website looks nice & you should launch it now as it will take a few months to build a small customer base that can give you the reviews for publishing, feedback to improve the site & work with your first few customers how to increase the sites appeal to others.

The bottom of the page has the background over looping & the blog needs to look like it is part of your site as well does not pop up in a new window. For a commerical site, this is vital.

The shopping area is good, so you just need to polish up on a few things now than writing more. I would add an extra few pages about your company, a way for customers to see reviews, interact with each other in the Web 2.0 world these days.

Best of luck with it !

scottyboy1973

StephenM_smc wrote: »

Looks good, I quite like the design. It might be a good idea to go ahead and launch it now. I'm sure having a cash flow while you are building things up can help a lot.

What had you in mind in terms of promoting the site?

Hey Stephen - thanks for your comments.

I had a phased plan in mind for the marketing. Phase One - Soft launch using friends and friends of friends to get the name out there plus dropping a news release out to a couple of the news sites. Phase two - adwords and facebook PPC advertising. Phase 3 - some kind of viral promo that I havent yet come up with!

And then there's Google - SEO is built into the CMS I'm using and I've been giving that a good bit of my braintime and think that I should be pretty solid on that front - I'll submit my sitemap, get the SEO all completed and in place and just let google do it's thing

scottyboy1973

Thanks a mill for all your inciteful comments - Ive had some further thoughts and included them below.

Scotty # wrote: »

Your FAQ page needs to have more info like delivery rates. I see in your checkout that delivery in Ireland is €3.50 so I guess your not using a courier. If you plan on posting by ordinary post you're in for a world of s**t!!!

You simply must get proof of delivery (POD)!!! I can't stress this strong enough. I ran an online lingerie store for a year and every second sale was a problem with delivery. If you send by ordinary post and the customer tells paypal or visa that they never received the stuff then you are screwed. Paypal and Visa WILL give them their money back. If you have a POD you have some chance so at least send by registered post although personally I'd still use a courier. This too can be tricky though as they don't like delivering to private residences. Fastway work out about €7.50 I think.

Fair point - I was planning to offer just regular mail but in hindsight, registered might be a good tradeoff to start with - at least with that the person's package is held for them for collection

Scotty # wrote: »

Do you only accept payment via PayPal? If so you should state this clearly and this will turn many people away. I'm not sure why but the Irish are still afraid to use paypal for some reason.

No, CC and PayPal - as a new merchant I cant get a full merchant account with Realex, Worldpay or the like so I'm using PayPal to accept Credit and Debit Cards too - the CC and PayPal icons are in the template and I;ve updated the button in the basket to say 'Click here to pay by Paypal or Credit Card' - is it still not obvious enough?

Scotty # wrote: »

I see a customer MUST set up an account. This is also not ideal. I'm not sure what shopping CMS you are using but many of them can be addapted to allow for purchases without accounts (or anonymous accounts).

I've only gone as far as the as the page where I should enter my personal info but I see there is no SSL security cert (https://) on the page. This is another thing that will turn people off. Even if you intend to let paypal handle all the transaction, €120 a year for a SSL cert is money well spent as it will give your customers the peace of mind that their details are secure.

Take your point about SSL certs - I can get one of those through the CMS provider for £60pa so will go ahead with that.

Re accounts - I've set up online stores before and, as you'll no doubt have experienced, as soon as you launch you get hammered by scamsters - the more information I can have on the person purchasing, the easiere it is for me to make a call on whether they are real or not - though I take your point.

Scotty # wrote: »

Do not launch until you are happy that everything looks and works as it should.

EDIT: As the sites not live of course there's no SSL Cert... but do get one on the live site. It'll pay for itself I assure you.

scottyboy1973

Deleted User wrote: »

Just had a quick look and from a consumer point of view, thought it was fine, like the idea.

Thanks a million :-)

Deleted User wrote: »

I'd be worried about how you're going to make money from it as the margins seem quite low for an online business since most your products are under 10 euro. I'd offer the option of a courier too because once again, I know how unreliable an post is, but if I'm going away and want to get some speakers for the plane, I'd like a courier option.

I think I'll go down the route of registered post as standard per previous posters suggestion and add Courier Post as an option on all purchases.

Deleted User wrote: »

You should probably go all out and cover other mp3 players too. I have a microsoft zune, will your stuff work with my mp3 player ? I'm a bit of a gadget freak so I'd be able to find out but you want to make it as easy as possible for your consumers because a lot of them won't know.

Fair point and, actually, a load of the products will work with other MP3/4 players too - particularly speakers and headphones,

Deleted User wrote: »

Edit: I also like the name, think it's quite cool.

Thanks - just in case anyone wass going to get arsey about my spelling I also bought iccessorise.com! ;-) it looks rubbish if you spell it like this in the logo but helps to have the bases covered in terms of someone just typing the name in!

scottyboy1973

TheWaterboy wrote: »

I think you should defo launch it. There are a few small issues as mentioned already but nothing too serious. I wouldnt expect you to become a millionaire over night as it will take time to build up the site. You are also in a highly competitive market and i think Ebay will be a big competition to you especially for iPod accessories.

Make sure to add in your telephone numnber on the contact us section.

Also get that press release out there to as many places as possible.

Other than that best of luck with it.

Thanks - agree with all your points, particularly eBay. I guess I'm trying to on the old fashioned corner shop principle that it's better to deal with someone local that someone in Hong Kong or China where shipping takes two weeks

Will certainly be adding phone number.

FusionNet

Site looks nice. Id be a little concerned about the name but once its googleised it should do the spelling fine. I know if I saw the logo Id recognise it but after seeing an advert Id be hard pushed to remember the spelling!! That neither here nor ther now but worth noting.

The site design is good, its fast and punchy which is excellent and I like that you have proper pictures and havent cramped too much on one page.

Regarding delivery you should talk to a courier like Fastway. They sell you a book of tickets for a couple of hundred euro and thats any parcel of nearly any size delivered next day. I think its between 8-12 euro, but most couriers will hagle Im sure. Most of your stuffs going to be tiny packages so POD's are important.

Best of luck, Ill definately be getting my few itouch bits from you..

scottyboy1973

FusionNet wrote: »

Regarding delivery you should talk to a courier like Fastway. They sell you a book of tickets for a couple of hundred euro and thats any parcel of nearly any size delivered next day. I think its between 8-12 euro, but most couriers will hagle Im sure. Most of your stuffs going to be tiny packages so POD's are important.

Best of luck, Ill definately be getting my few itouch bits from you..

Thanks Fusion.
I take your point re POD and courier. However, I started banging prices for couriers into the shipping manager this am but, as I was working on it, began to think how mental I was - "who is going to pay €8-12 shipping for an iPhone skin that costs a tenner"??

For me (your input most welcome) - the issue arises on the larger, higher value items that can't be put through a letterbox (all of the skins and cases for example are in a bag that fits through a letterbox). So, I've decided to offer folk the option of standard or registered mail (signed for) for smaller items and ONLY registered mail for more expensive items. Also, I'll add in an option for Ireland Courier Mail (next day guaranteed) for those who need their purchases quickly and are happy to pay a premium.

On the name front I bought iccessorise.com & .co.uk too just in case!

scottyboy1973

All - thanks for your feedback. The site is now live at www.icessorise.com for a range of accessorise for your iPhones, iPods and MP3 players. As a launch offer there is 10% off for the month of July.

Please log on, have a browse and, if you see something you like, buy it! ;-)

Thanks again for your feedback - ScottyBoy

Tav

@ ScottyBoy,

Best of luck with the website - I'm getting new headphone from you

Is e3.75 for standard post not too much??


@ Scotty
Since you run lingerie store before, can you have a look at my website and also give us some tips? All comments appreciated!

dmcg90

Had a look at the site, prices are actually cheap which is good for a start up, good site, gona order a battery extender tonight,

scottyboy1973

Tav wrote: »

@ ScottyBoy,

Best of luck with the website - I'm getting new headphone from you

Is e3.75 for standard post not too much??

Thanks - I look forward to your order. 3.75 is a bit more than An Post's standard mail and covers the cost of the time taken to pick and pack the item. I did a good bit of scouring around on this and believe that all in it still represents great value.

byrne0f56789

Launch. Site is good. However I prefer WordPress over Blogger for blogs. I think that launching early and collecting web stats and feedback is always better than being in "Stealth Mode."

I don't think a website is ever complete. So you may as well get it out there.

scottyboy1973

Thanks Byrne. Your advice was along the same lines as others in the thread so I did launch it a week or so ago! Thanks for your input