Running an online retail store is harder then it looks

At first when you look at it it seems easy enough. But when you get right down to it there is a lot of work involved. When you get started you have to decide between building a site, renting a site or shopping cart by the month. Both require some time and work to find out what is best for you in the short term and long term. Once you have you decided and things are set up the real work starts.

Unless you have a limited product line there is going to be a lot of work put into getting product into your shopping cart. It is not just a matter of slapping a picture on and the products name and price. No each product is really a mini add and should be treated as such. What information you have in the description and title are what is going to be used by search engines to find your product. Then the description that shows up under your link is what people are going to use to decide to look at your product. The competition starts way before people see your product. You are competing with millions for each view. Please note that was view not buy. Just because you get someone to view your product does not mean they are going to buy from you.

The idea is to market your product online with a description and key words that will attract the people interested in your product. There is no point in using key words or descriptions that will bring lots of people to your site, but only a few of them are people interested in your product. You want to focus on your target market and attract them to your website or online store hoping that once they are there they will buy something. These means you have to think about what you put into the description and title of your products. What key words will your target market be using to find the product? Are they in your description or title? Once it come up in a search will your description stand out from all the others? Will it attract your target market to your site?

So now you put some time into reaching your target market and they click onto your product, what will get them to buy? There are a million and one other web site’s selling the same or similar items, why should they buy from you? What are they going to see first your product or home page? If they are searching for a product your link should open to the product. So how you have your shopping cart set up is going to give people their first impression of your company. How it looks is going to influence people to buy or not buy. Other things that will influence people to buy or not buy are your prices for the product, product image or picture, shipping costs, shipping options, return policies, where you are located, overall appearance of site; feed back from other customers, your home page, about us page and any other information you provide. How much information you provide or don’t provide will help people decide if they want to do business with you and not the other million sites.

At all points of contact with potential customers you need to be marketing your company, store and product. This is from the fist search people use to find you, to how easy it is to use the check out to buy and pay for your product and how the product was shipped. Even how the product was packaged can influence a repeat buy or not. Once you have a customer you need to do everything you can to keep them. Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool out there. Once you have a customer keep them happy and hope they tell everyone about you. But first you have to get that customer, and that is not always easy to do no matter how great your product, prices and company are. It is not just a matter of putting your product out and having it available to buy. You have to put a lot of time and some times money into marketing your product, store and company even after you start making sales. The marketing never ends because there are new online stores showing up and you have to compete with them and any local stores that can and will sell to your customers. In other words the work never ends if you want to keep brining in customers and making sales.

So if you are thinking about opening up an online store because it is easy money, think again. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you plan to put product out and sit back and wait for the sales to come in, save your money and find something else to do. There is no easy money to be found on the Internet anymore, it is a highly competitive market that is becoming more competitive everyday.

What you need to know before contracting a web designer or developer

We learned a lot over the last few years about the do’s and don’t when dealing with a web designer. We had some real problems. I would like to keep others from having the same or similar problems. The first thing you need to understand is that there is a big difference between a web designer and a web developer. A web designer will make pages for a web site and are wonderful if you have an information site. Web developers create the coding and programs that web designers use to create the web sites. Web design is the icing on the cake; the web developer made the cake the icing goes on.

If you are doing anything that is more then just an information site I recommend going with a web developer or learn to do it yourself. If you have just an information site that does not require the integration of other programs like a shopping cart then a web designer is the right person to go to. However, if you have the time and inclination you can also pick up a great book called “Beginning HTML with CSS and XHTML modern guide and reference” by David Schultz and Craig Cook. My husband used it to create our new web site.

There are some wonderful web developers who can integrate existing programs and software into the pages they create for you. The main purpose of a web designer is to design the look of your website and that the programs being used on your site function well together. The more complex the site is the more knowledge and experience will be needed. You need to understand what you want and need your web site to do before you design how it looks.

This means that you need to find out if pre-existing programs will work for you and will work together with any other programs you want. If they do then great find a web designer, buy the programs and let the designer make your site look and work how you want it to. If there needs to be a lot of tinkering with the programs you are interested to make them work the way you want and together then you need to make sure your web designer can do the work, or find a web developer who can make them work or create a new program that will do what you want. Do not assume that a designer can do it; their job is to design the look of the site, not create programs.

That is the biggest thing most people do not know, a designer creates the look, a developer creates the programs and can create the look you want. We made that mistake thinking that a designer was a developer. We needed a developer as our site was more complex then what our designer could do and he used up our service contract with our shopping cart program provider to get them to do the installations of their programs. We know this from the from our shopping cart provider after we forced our designer to transfer our shopping cart licence to us. We now have to buy a new service contract if we need their help with the shopping cart program. This would not have been the case if we had hired a web developer. Know what you need for your website and hire the right person for the job.

When hiring someone to create a web site do your homework

In the last two years we have dealt with three different web site designers, and learned a lot what not to do, and how to do things on our own. We are upset about the time and money we lost dealing with the different people but at the same time we are grateful things happened the way they did. We now have a wonderful website that James designed and created on his own. He decided that instead of paying more and more money to get people to work on our site that he would just learn how to do it. Now he has 100% control of the website and what is on it. I was forced to learn how to market a website with both hands tied behind my back. Now that we have a properly functioning website I can use the tools and skills I had to use before, but ever so much more effectively. We learned and changed because of our experiences, but I don't want anyone else to have to go through what we did.

With anything you need to do your research. Put the time into finding the right person or company that fits your budget and creative ideas. Never forget that it is your website and needs to reflect who you are or your companies image. Don't just go with the first person or company that fits your budget. You are hiring someone to do a job for you. Treat this as you would if you were hiring on staff, contact references and find out what other people have to say. Don't just look at what is posted on the persons website as reviews, actually call them and talk to past clients. You’re the boss, not the other way around.

Look on the Internet for other sources of information. If there is something negative about a designer or company it is probably out on the net, it is just a matter of finding it. See how many websites have links back to the designer. Try to find a couple that indicate that they were created or designed by this person or company that is not being used as a reference. Contact them and find out their opinion. Sure it is going to take time and work, but it can save you a lot of time, money and effort on your part.

When you have decided on a designer make sure you get a clear contract that stipulates exactly what you want the website to do and look, when you need the site up and that everything needs to be purchased in your name or your companies name so that you own the website, not the designer. You may also wish to include the term functional website in the contract, small thing that can make a big difference. This helps both of you to know what is expected and when. This way if something was not done you can refer to the contract and have the work done. If you find that the web site is not doing something you want it to do now the web designer can refer to the contract to show you it was not included in it and you can either re-negotiate the contract or do another one just for that part.

It is important to make sure that you keep on top of the project, not just assume things are being done when and how you want. Our first designer took 3 months and no website. He had all sorts of reasons for why there was nothing to see, but we knew there was something wrong. Our dead line came and went and still no website. We put some pressure on and finally was told our website was done, take a look. Then came the sucker punch, before he would give us our site we had to pay 3 times what we agreedapone. Why because it took him longer then expected and he wanted to be paid by the hour, not the job. So after three months we had no website, but a nice lawyer.

The second designer agreed to do the work in a timely manner and within our budget. He came back to us after three weeks and let us know that a retail website of our site was beyond his experience. He was fine doing information sites. We accepted that and appreciated his honesty, but were also glad we had a contract.

Always make sure that you change your passwords once the work is done and if you need more work you create temporary passwords for the designer. Also make sure hosting companies, licences and software are all purchased in your name, or companies name or signed over to you once the work is done. The third designer was hired because he could get the site up and running in two weeks and we were 4 months behind schedule. We did our research, and got a very clear contract. He did give us a site with in the two weeks that appeared to be functional. We had some problems and concerns but that was explained away as issues or restrictions caused by the shopping cart. There were things that did not do what we wanted and some of his explanations did not make sense to me, but he would not talk to me and explained everything away to James as a problem with the shopping cart that could not be fixed. Eventually the only solution he would suggest was to buy a new shopping cart and pay him to do all the work again.

Every couple weeks something would go wrong and it was $50.00 to fix it, or there was an upgrade that would make things easer with the shopping cart but again $50.00 for the designer to install it. I kept asking for contact information for our hosting company and shopping cart company. He would not release the information, so every time something went wrong or we had a question we had to go through him, and yes it cost money. We started to question things, had some independent web designers look over the coding only to be told that there was malicious coding causing the problems, not our shopping cart. We tried to contact the hosting company and shopping cart company only to find everything was purchased in his name and there was no record of us purchasing anything. We demanded the license be transferred to us, why had it not been transferred when the job was done. We had to threaten legal action to get the licence in our name. At that point he severed business ties with us.

What we found, he had charged us for installations and used up our service points with the shopping cart company to do a lot of the work, so we actually paid for it twice. There was what is called malicious coding causing our website to not function properly, our products would not index on the Internet and we were limited to the smallest pictures for our product. The shopping cart company discovered this, and they insisted that it was deliberate coding designed to prevent the shopping cart from working properly. This could not have been done by accident. Then Canada Post previewed the non-functional shipping calculator and discovered something called a siphoning code. It was designed to invoice a customer extra for shipping on their invoice, show the correct shipping on our copy and then deposited the difference into his paypall account. I guess he did not expect us to test it when we got it, we just thought there was a problem with the Canada post calculator and did not use it. There were quite a few other coding issues discovered and we were looking at legal action when suddenly our hosting company shut us down and we lost the site.

It seems he had kept the hosting company contract in his name so he cancelled it without warning and we lost the entire site. Or at least he thought we did. What he did not know is that James was already in the process of designing a new site. It was a work in process still and we did not have the shopping cart up and going but it was there. It took 4 days to have the shopping cart installed and be a working site. We also had backed up the old site the day before. All we lost was some time, though we have to re-enter our entire product manfully due to an incompatibility between the old shopping cart and the new one.

Over all we learned a lot, are able to do things ourselves now and have a much better website that is just going to keep on improving and growing.

Be smart when starting and running your own business

Over the years we have built up our business the hard way, mostly with luck, hard work and unexpected opportunities. The biggest thing we have realized is that you have to be constantly learning and changing. Just because something works or sells today does not mean it will tomorrow. It is a lot harder running your own business then being told what to do by a boss.

If you are your own boss then you need to be smart about it. Put the time into market and product research. Don’t assume that because you can sell something at place A that you can sell the same thing the same way at place B. We started selling to a very large hobby group, with a very focused market.

I started buying and selling used items to a medieval historical re-enactment hobby group. I was doing what everyone else was doing and that was working well for me. I made some money and had fun. Then I started talking to everyone, found out what they liked and were searching for; Market research. I made sure that is what I brought in; Meet the needs of the target market. I ended up having people giving me shopping lists and they would pick up the items from me at the next event we were both at. This was great, I was making money and people where getting what they wanted. I soon discovered that I could not always find what people were looking for as used items. I saved my money and then started buying from wholesalers and designing my own line of jewelry; Created a new way to better meet the target markets needs.

Suddenly it was a whole new ball game. I was the only local merchant selling new product; Created a market. My sales when out the roof, I had cornered the market. I re-invested the money into more stock and displays; Meeting ever changing needs and building a brand image. Sales increased and I started selling all over Ontario; Increasing my target market. After about two years other people started to copy me and eventually I started to loose some sales as the market was small; Recognized a change in the market. I expanded to a larger market, selling at craft fairs and then moved to large festivals all over Ontario; Changing my target market.

Again I had an unusual product as everything had a medieval theme to it. This helped make us stand out from other vendors; Creating an image branding my company. However we had to learn how to sell at festivals, it was much different from selling at smaller group events. Both my husband and I had to be there, selling and creating; Expanding the business to meet customers needs in a timely manner. Before I had an established market and because we had consistent contact with our customers we could take orders and almost guaranty sales at the next event. Suddenly we had to earn peoples willingness to part with their money to buy from us with out the established relationship I had with my other customers. We had to develop an entire different way to market our product and ourselves.

We were very fortunate in that we only sold at juried festivals, this limiting the number of competition and pretty much guaranteeing that no one else was selling exactly the same thing as us. We also had several different product lines and prices, that all fit the theme we were able to meet the demands of several different target markets at the same time. As one of the only theme vendors we stood out enough that people brought their friends just to look at our both, and usually buy something.

It was strange because what sold at one festival was not what sold at the next. We had to be able to quickly identify how to market our product and our company at each festival. This was usually accomplished with our displays and even what product we displayed front and center. It was learning experience every festival. Eventually we developed a brand image as we did the same festivals every year. Again though people saw what was working for us and suddenly we have competition starting to sell at the festivals. So we are no longer as unique and different as we used to be. Time to make some changes.

Just over a year and a half ago we opened a theme online store, http://www.medievalmagic.ca/, yet again expanding our target market. We have spent the time learning about selling online. It is a completely different beast then selling retail to impulse buyers or established customers. There is no end to the competition so you don’t market your product you have to market your site and build a brand image. It is a lot harder then it sounds unless you have a lot of cash to throw around.

We have taken what we have learned have made some drastic changes in our website this month. We changed the look, redesigned how our site works, whom we market to and how we market to them. We are even changing our product from mainly manufactured product and some of our handcrafted pieces to a 50/50 split. We will slowly move away from pieces we buy from a wholesaler to what we make. However the key is flexibility to change with market demands.

I went for a internet marketing conference, not a sales meeting

Today I spent almost three hours of what I consider my valuable time at what was supposed to be a conference on Internet marketing for retail websites. What I was actually at was a presentation focused on telling me I could make lots of money on the internet, but I need to use this companies store front that is included in their hosting package. Come on people, I could not believe what I was put through. The worst part was that if I wanted to get the actual course for marketing it was included in the package as part of a full day of how to be successful using their store front and hosting company, but I had to pay the one time fee of $25.00 right then and there (which is $199.00 any other time, don’t you know!)

They tried to pressure me by telling me that I must not being doing everything I need to do in marketing my web store Medieval Magic, because if I were I would be rolling in money and would not be there. Um, actually I was expecting to have spent my time learning about other methods of online marketing and had hoped to find some new ways or better ways. I am always looking for a way to positively market our product and web site. Only a fool thinks that they know everything and does not understand that there are new programs and methods developed all the time. I am not a fool and did not like being treated as one.

What I did find shocking is the number of people signing up and handing their $25 for their new website. They don’t even have an idea of what they want to sell or who their market is, but they have a web site. Next week they are going to this full day course on how to be successful with their stores. These are set up to hold them by the hand and show them what to do step by step, including giving them a list of drop shippers and some one-on-one time with someone who is going to help them do it all.

The basic idea is that they are getting an out of the box web site, a list of drop shippers and instructions on how to market the web site. As this wonderful company pointed out, if these people are not making money they will not keep their website up and they will not get their $24.99 a month. They want people to succeed. They also want people to have multiple web sites as diverse income streams. All good ideas, except I feel it has more to do with the $24.99 they get each month for each site you have. The more sites you have reaching out to different markets, or using different branding strategies the more money they make off of you.

I may or may not be going as a guest with one of the people who signed up. It depends on them right now. For me it is just to make sure they don’t get pulled into the, "oh by the way to be successful you need to add these add-on’s to the original shopping cart." The company has already indicated that you need $5,000 of add-ons but they are selling them for $3,000 but they are willing to give you a deal on the day of your training. The sad part is that up until I heard about the add-ons I was actually comparing their price and service favorably to other companies I did research on when we were looking for a new shopping cart. I don’t like any company that said here is a web site and hosting fee, oh but your going to need to buy all this other stuff to succeed. I don’t think they are going to have much to add to my online marketing strategies, or at least not ones I am willing to use. It will be interesting to see what they have to say if I end up going, but I would not be upset if I don’t go.

Medieval Magic web site dealing with unexpected issues with hosting company

We were contacted by EWD Hosting to find out if we were going to renew our contract with them in June. James replied that we had already found another hosting company and would be transferring our web site to them. Within an hour our web site was gone and our account with EWD was closed, a month and a half early. So our slow building of the web site on our new hosting company has just gone into overdrive. Thank God James had just done a back up of our website so we have some of the data and pages. Gone is our record of sales. That was to be down loaded just before we switch over so it would be right up to date. Nice shock. Good thing we printed off the invoices. Now we have to do a year’s worth of accounting manually. Nice of them to let us know that they were going to do this. Oh wait; they did not let us know that they were going to close down our account a month and a half early just because we were not going to renew our contract in June.

The best part is that because our web designer did the contract in his name if there is any refund (and there should be) it goes to him, not us. We suddenly have no web site, and no shopping cart. It is a good thing that James has been building our new website for the last month and we at least have a home page up and some information pages. Suddenly we have to try and get our new shopping cart installed on a Friday night. I don’t know if we are going to be able to have it installed before Monday. I don’t know how long before we work out any bugs and can transfer the inventory over. We had expected to have some time to make sure the new site was complete before the other one was shut down. Now we are scrambling around trying to get every thing done fast. We are going to have to work out any bugs live. It is going to be interesting to see how things go and how people like the changes we have made. I just hope that we get the shopping cart up and running sooner then later and can download the inventory data successfully. Then all we have to do is put the pictures in and clean it up a bit. Otherwise we are going to be spending a lot of time redoing our inventory.

I just hope that people like the changes enough to forgive the time it is taking to change it up. I don’t like being thrown to the wolves like this by a hosting company that we had paid for our space till June. I am so glad that we started looking into this before Christmas and then actually started working on it in January. Otherwise we would have been completely hung out to dry and SOL with out any type of web site. We would have just vanished for a few weeks. Something told James that he needed to have what he needed for the new website months before our contract with EWD was up. He was in the process of getting the new shopping cart installed next week when this happened. So we are doing much better then we would have if he had not done all this work.

For those who love checking out what we have, please have patients and know that we are trying to get the shopping cart up as fast as possible.