The ABCs of Setting Up an Online Shop
Posted by leepeng on August 29, 2009
Setting up an online shop is not straight forward as some might think. It is far beyond getting someone to develop a e-commerce website or installed a off-the-selve ecommerce solution.
Just share some experience we gained after developing some e-commerce solutions for our clients.
Are You The Pro?
I do not mean are you tech-pro; but are you your product-pro?
Personally I don’t believe you can sell something online if you do not have in-dept professional knowledge in the product you selling. One of our very successful client is a jigging master who selling popping and jigging equipments online. He kicked start with and online shop and eventually evolve to a real retail store. In addition, he also runs a fishing hobby forum and organising fishing trips to various hot-spots.
Where to Start?
Many people jump into conclusion that having eShop means building a e-commerce website. I always advise my friends to start small at places like forum and ebay, or promoting products at blog. Only invest in online store when they have sufficient product range and loyal customers. Do not start without a base. Do not think about the big market before you can establish a small market.
Payment
We normally advise people to start with a mixture of offline payment and PayPal at the beginning. Only consider premium payment gateway like Citibank when they have substantial online transactions.
Shipping
Shipping is an area that neglected by many during the planning of their e-commerce site. However, it play a major part as it affect the total price that the buyer going to pay. The value of the product must be justifiable enough for the shipping fee paid.
Take for example a 500g package will take about $65 to ship from Singapore to US using UPS. The fee will become ridiculously high if the item only cost $20!
Merchant can think creatively for the cheap and fast delivery of the products. Take fore example small items like neglacts can actually be shipped as registered mail instead of parser.
Marketing
It is actually a myth that an e-commerce website will be “self-market” after it goes live.
Just like normal shop front, nobody will know you if you do not market your shop.
Google will not rank you #1 in a very common search keyword after your website goes live.
There will be a lot of effort in doing visitation monitoring, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing, online marketing using various social channels or event offline marketing.