Web site start-up

tweety11981

Hi everyone, I am currently looking into setting up my own online shop, but don't know where to start! I have located my supplier and know how to register a business name etc but want to know the basics of a web site before I start. If anyone has any advice on who to set it up, how to set up credit card payments etc. I would really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance

StupidLikeAFox

There are 3 main areas you need to cover,

Design:
You could teach yourself how to design it using a free out of the box software option like ZenCart, VirtueMart for Joomla, OS Commerce etc. These have big communities to help you with problems along the way, good knowledge base out there but for some problems you may be reduced to asking questions on forums which may or may not give you a satisfactory answer in a short space of time. If you choose to go this route it will take a while to master the technology, but when you do you will have a greater understanding of how the website operates. There are also paid options such as Cube Cart which will have technical support sections to help.

Or else you could get a web designer or developer on board. Depending on the site requirements and extras such as Search Engine Optimisation you could pay between €500 and €2,500. It would be good to shop around and be fully aware of what different people are offering.

Payment Processing
There are two options,
A payment bureau will handle all processing, customers will be redirected to the Bureaus site and you withdraw from your bureau account to your bank account when you want. For these check out Paypal, moneybookers.

A payment processor will deposit money straight to your bank account, but you need an internet merchant account from your bank. Processors here would be Realex (good rep around here) and SagePay. Internet merchant acc's are given by your banks merchant arm, you'll have to jump through a few hoops to get one but if you have a decent business idea i dont think they are impossible to get.

Check out www.webpayments.ie for a better overview.

Delivery Options
Getting your product to the customers door! Different courier companies provide different options and pricing plans, the most suitable ones will depend on the nature of your product. Try Fastway, GLS and DPD

When you have all that set up look into marketing, Google Adwords & Facebook advertising would prob be a good place to start. Also make sure to install Google Analytics on your site, this is a ridiculously important tool for measuring traffic and understanding visitor behaviour

There are probably a few more things but theres a starting point for you anyway!

Ronan007

What type of business it is? If you are targeting Irish market, better to have .ie domain. I am in a process of launching an online jewellery shop with in couple of weeks. Initially I start developing the site myself then I found out I am not capable of doing this as there is no professional touch in there. Then I got a developer through boards and it came up very well with stock management, very intelligent shipping and billing modules etc. If you like, please PM me I can give you the developer’s details. Or you can advertise on boards to get someone. Best of luck for your new venture.

tweety11981

Thanks ColHol and Ronan for your reply. I have a lot to look into!! It's hard even to know how much stock to order

nellyshark

Depending on your requirements there are some nifty open source eCom applications out there. What will you require? Don't forget about hosting either as an additional cost

Eoin

Good post ColHol, but I think the budget sounds very low. I certainly wouldn't consider €2,500 to be the upper end, and I'd be quite dubious about what you would get for €500.

tweety11981

Hi NellyShark, I don't know enough yet to know what I acquire, im completely new to this. Basically I want to keep the site as simple as possible. And I'm going to ask a stupid question...what is hosting?? Advertising??

tweety11981

Eoin, are website really that expensive?? for the year or for overall set up?

Eoin

Hi tweety11981 - they definitely can be very expensive. That would be a once-off set up fee, and then whatever the hosting per year would cost.

The hosting is hard to price, as it would depend on the traffic and the eCommerce package you need. I understand that Magento is quite resource intensive, so might need a dedicated server, while Zen Cart (a very feature rich and free shopping cart) should run fine on a shared server. I don't know what the security implications would be of the latter though. At a complete guess, let's say €100 per year, plus your domain name renewal fees if you're on a shared server.

The development cost of the site will vary quite a lot, depending on your requirements. You might find that one of the packages does everything you need out of the box, or you might find that you have custom requirements that would require extra development work. Also, there might be extra work involved with integrating with the payment processor you choose. Some providers like Realex provide plugins that are easily installed, and you just enter your merchant details, but some might require more development.

On the plus side, you can get loads of decent themes for the likes of Zen Cart, which could be tweaked slightly to suit your logo and so on, so that would be a saving there.

Still - in the long run, unless you don't value your own time too highly, I think it will be cheaper to get a professional to do it. There's a lot to learn about setting up a standard brochure site as a beginner, let alone trying to set up and configure a secure and robust shopping cart.

tweety11981

Hi Eoin, I think I would go professionaly, it would be well worth it for the overall running of the site I think. so the hosting is the site address I take it? Thanks so much for your advice, was very helpful!

Hope I can take the 'risk' as I call it, to set up the business :-)

nellyshark

No, the site address would be your domain name e.g. www.domainname.com.

Cianos

Tweety, what type of business are you looking to set up? Is the website to compliment something else (eg an existing shop or service), or is the website the full entity of the business?

If the latter, then without coming across as rude, it sounds like you have a lot to learn before turning it in to a successful business. It's not just a simple case of putting up a website and then the money starts rolling in. You have to have a very clear idea of what you are doing, and more importantly how you are going to do it.

It's easy to get a site online. The hard part is getting people to the site, getting the site making money etc.

tweety11981

Thanks NellyShark! Cianos, I have sent you a pm..thanks.

Thanks everyone for your help, much appreciated...just a quick question - anyone import from abroad?

Eoin

tweety11981 wrote: »

Hi Eoin, I think I would go professionaly, it would be well worth it for the overall running of the site I think. so the hosting is the site address I take it? Thanks so much for your advice, was very helpful!

Hope I can take the 'risk' as I call it, to set up the business :-)

As nellyshark says, the site address is just the domain name. The computer that stores your files so people can see them on their browser is the hosting service. In the majority of cases, this also refers to the service that looks after your email as well.

In a rather shaky analogy, the domain name is like your phone number, and the hosting is the service that allows people to actually ring you on that number.

If you want, PM me the type of online store it will be, and I might be able to give you an idea of what package might suit.

nellyshark

You should post your requirments here, we should be able to point you in the right direction

tweety11981

I understand now Eoin, Thank you. Will send you a PM in a moment

tweety11981

I forgot to mention I hope to sell some clothes in my own retail shop if the website works out, so i can link to customers that way. the shop will be a mix of souvenirs, gifts and clothes.Thanks

Zascar

If you don't know what you are doing don't pay a fortune for a big ecommerce site, use something like www.shopify.com - its pay as you go and very cheap to start. Very easy to put everything on and works well. If in time you get laods of customers and you are selling loads then it might be time to invest in a big proper site...

Also it would help if we knew what you were selling...

tweety11981

Good idea Zascar. I have no intention of starting off huge. If you re read the thread it is a follow up conversation on selling clothes online

Zascar

Oh sorry I missed that. Take a look at the video's on that site. You can set up a free trial account and see how it works, brilliant simply but still pretty powerful and infinately better than trying to get a fully fleged ecommerce site up yourself. They take a small cut of your sales but its worth it

Eoin

That looks like a great way to test the water.

tweety11981

Sounds good...Zascar, do they take a percentage of sales every year?

Zascar

https://app.shopify.com/services/signup

tweety11981

Thanks Zascar il take a look at that

nellyshark

afaik shopify take a transaction fee, not too sure tho

tweety11981

I don't see a transaction fee, I could be wrong though

tweety11981

Maybe I should try sell on ebay first as I'm so new to this

Eoin

tweety11981 wrote: »

I don't see a transaction fee, I could be wrong though

Yep, here's their pricing - it depends which option you go for:
https://app.shopify.com/services/signup

eBay wouldn't be a bad idea, just bear in mind that PayPal fees add up.

Zascar

1%-2% depending on package

tweety11981

Actually Eoin their prices aren't that bad at all. I might try sell one or two things on ebay to try it out. But everytime i go into the P & P on ebay I can't seem to get anywhere so don't know what to charge! I know that ebay auctions for a person but never tried it

Zascar, thats a very low percentage, what is that based on?

tweety11981

sorry zasar I see what you mean now - 1 or 2 % per transaction fee

Zascar

I think ebay could be very expensive, there is a listing fee even if it does not sell. The bonus is ebay has an absolutely massive traffic base whereas you'd have to build it yourself with the shopify site. Although, you could always list a few on ebay and put links to your shopify site (this could be against the rules though I have no idea...)

tweety11981

I guess there are pros and cons to ebay. Can be expensive, and the traffic base is a pro due to a lot of trade but a con as one's business could get lost among the rest! I think I will just take it step by step and go my research!

CanvasHeaven

Hi Tweety,

One poster was right when they said you seem to have a lot to learn and making sufficient online sales to justify the effort is a hard slog.

Going the Ebay route also has negatives - whereas you may have a reasonable mark up on small wholesale products you import selling on your own site, often ebay is saturated with similar products and it is a race to the bottom re: price.

(on a side note, best not to hold any stock - lots of wholesalers out there willing to drop ship to your end customers).

If you don't know too much about the process of eCommerce, hosting, urls etc. best bring in a partner who does. Obviously you'll have to show what you are bringing to the table; capital, know how, connections, contacts re: product supply etc. etc. Don't worry if you have to give 40% equity away as it's more important to make a venture a success and move on to the next than own 100% of nothing

I've learned the hard way and spent a lot of money on developing bespoke ecommerce solutions only to revert to white label 'off the shelf' solutions (with white label solution you customise the online shop with your colours and, in some cases, can move certain sections around as you please).

If you don't want to bring in a partner and are happy to spend two years learning by mistakes that's grand. Just don't give up the day job. You can email / p.m people who are in business and might be willing to do a deal on work in exchange for equity and increase their contacts base. Again, I made that mistake of giving up the day job and was on the breadline for a long time while developing my online ventures and only wish someone given me the following 'rules' when I was younger:

1/ Keep your job.

2/ Develop business in eve's / weekends in your attic / spare room (don't rent an office).

3/ Pay a professional to develop the whole site / software solution (don't pay by hour). If a number of people are required to get it working (if a more complicate site than just a eCommerce site) ensure that you are dealing with and paying just one Project Manager where the bucks stops with them if the yoke doesn't work at the end of the whole process. Give them (agree on) detailed site specification at outset. Pay 20% deposit at outset and 30% when in Beta (site almost working but is in testing mode).

I hope this helps.
Paul.

tweety11981

Paul, yes i know I have a lot to learn, that's why I am on boards!! If you read my threads I havn't even registered with CRO yet, im just looking for advice. It will be a very simple business - no project manager or anything like that. Im not looking to make a fortune, just want to get a taste of what it is like. Thanks

RND

We have used http://www.shopify.com/ in the past for a client & we found it to be excellent.

http://www.bangecommerce.com are another Irish company who seem to offer a similar service.

Best of luck with it

tweety11981

thanks RND, shofifty bangecommerce 3% on every transaction (or 50euro flat rate over 1500euro) whereas shopity charge 1-2%. Is one better than the other, anyone have experience?

Pixelcraft

I've never heard of bangecommerce, but shopify has been going for a while. Also, if you decide to move up from templates to a custom design you can stick with shopify, designers can code using shopify's templating system.

Axwell

Pixelcraft wrote: »

I've never heard of bangecommerce, but shopify has been going for a while.

Bang Ecommerce is run by Denobi as their Ecommerce platform/solution

tweety11981

Is there a difference with using shopify and setting up site professionally besides the price? I presume you can add more things professionally -flash etc?

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Pixelcraft wrote: »

I've never heard of bangecommerce, but shopify has been going for a while. Also, if you decide to move up from templates to a custom design you can stick with shopify, designers can code using shopify's templating system.

We were chatting about this before here, they offer a "free website/ ecommerce store" to get business in but that turned out to be an off the shelf one, which they charge to customize and then take monthly fees for everything €50pm month for hosting the page, €10 per month per 100 products after the first 500, €5 for 5GB after the first 10 etc. It sounds like a very appealing offer for someone who doesn't know much about e-commerce. Limits the upside and down side potential. @Axwell, I believe its a spin off rather than run by Denobi.

Personally i'd avoid ebay, as the experience you learn there won't translate to running your own site. Focus on getting and owning your own domain and getting traffic, then once you've made a few sales work on the SEO and Conversion optimization.

@tweety11981

Shopify In my opinion is more a test platform, If you got successful you'd probably want to move to a new system.

As for professional stuff like "flash"... flash is fairly irrelevant if your thinking e-commerce IMO. There's too many security holes, HTML5 (or even Ajax) would be more suitable.

It all comes down to control, a professional site will have far less limitations than the likes of shopify.

tweety11981

I did a lot of research today and found a good web developer so he is helping me out and explaining things to me, along with ye! I'd prefer to pay for one proper website and avoid ebay too.

fergalfrog

tweety11981 wrote: »

I did a lot of research today and found a good web developer so he is helping me out and explaining things to me, along with ye! I'd prefer to pay for one proper website and avoid ebay too.

I just wanted to add that you should get at least 3 quotes for what you are looking to get done and then if possible show the three to someone who is impartial and not in the bidding process. I and possibly some others on this thread would be happy to do this for you so feel free to PM me .

Zascar

Or head over to www.elance.com and post your project - you will get dozens of (mostly indian) designers and subcontractors who will bit for your business. Definitely give this a go

fergalfrog

I think there are an increasing number of Irish developers on elance and odesk - I saw a php developer yesterday willing to work for less than the minimum wage :eek: