Online Store

JB.

Hi guys, I've been looking into setting up an online store. My knowledge is fairly limited but learning a bit everyday!

I was hoping to find some help here. Any information at all is appreciated.

- I want to find out information on Drop Shipping - Who does it, how do I contact them etc., Is there companies in Ireland that do it?

- I want to find someone who will give advice in how to set up the website or for a fee set up the website. I also want to know how much it may roughly cost and how much it would cost the keep it running. Or is the larger companies that host sites?

- (How) Do I register the business to be legitimate, Will it all cost much?

- Could this help me? - http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Starting-an-Online-Business-For-Dummies-6th-Edition.productCd-0470602104.html#

If anybody can help me in setting up and getting going please reply or PM me. Sorry if its in the wrong section.

sandin

You won't like my reply - don't do it unless you are funded and have patience.

Reasons = You say you have very limited knowledge. Good and profitable online retailing is way more difficult than normal retailing. If you don't have experience of service based retailing, you will not do well at online (I'm sure there are exceptions).

Online retailing can take up to 3 years before making a profit - and that's the good operators.

Avoid dropshipping at all costs - in reality you become an agent and responsible for all the crap that goes with it.

Read up about online retailing, see who has been successful (award winners - eircom spiders, retail excellence Ireland awards etc), look at their unique selling points - you will find Exceptional Customer Service the back bone of all the good ones - can you answer all queries within 4 hours, what is the return policy, what is the refund policy, what if you don't have the product in stock, what if delivery is lost/delayed etc etc etc.

Possibly try your hand at regular retailing of the product first and see reaction - then get online and operate the online from the store you have, but ensure you have funds that will allow you lose money for first year or so, followed by breakeven, followed by profit.

If you do it properly, have the right product and the right customer service and you have the time to allow it build, you can have a nice little earner - I'm in year 4 of my online business and currently employ 6 people directly associated with online operations (have off line business too) and online will take about €1m turnover this year and we have about 40% 6month customer retention rate (40% of customers return and purchase within 6 months)

fishbun

I was going to go all "Webster's dictionary.." on you, but instead I will refer you to Matthew Carroll's Quora answer on dropshipping (actually read all his posts - it's as good as a MBA in online retailing!)

Dropshipping can be a good choice. It is way harder than it looks and needs a good niche and dedication, but it's a pretty decent automated money earner. It will require a LOT of time upfront to build an optimised store & develop the operations side (shipping, arranging fulfillment, customer service etc), but once the clock is wound you can pretty much just let it go.

Dropshipping is really apealling to cash strapped entrepreneurs because you're not actually holding physical inventory ($$$) and it sounds like the other company will do all the hard work for you by picking, packaging and shipping your products.

The major disadvantages will be managing ****ty foreign suppliers, the tiny margins, the time it takes to learn SEO/PPC effectively, not to mention giving control to third party suppliers over the most important aspect of your business (fulfillment, shipping latency, returns). Because it's your name on the store all their problems fall back on you to solve.

Dropshipping wasn't for me. When demand is high and there is money to be made, it makes sense to warehouse the product yourself. I don't know what stage you are at now, but if I were to give you advice it would be just to put something simple out there yourself.

If, for example, you are trying to start "Worldwide Dropshipping Gardening Centre Emporium ltd", I would suggest scaling it back for now and doing something way simpler like posting plant seeds through An Post. This sort of thing doesn't require a large capital investment and still gives you a good feel for running an online store. All business is simple when you boil it down - buy something in bulk and repackage it nicely into smaller items, or abtriage something from China. Try not to get ahead of yourself.

If you're really persistent that you want to set up a dropship operation just make sure you can
1) Provide value (through educational content or whatever)
2) Find good suppliers
3) Manage mulitple suppliers (dependency and geographic diversity for shipping)
4) Run a really good PPC/SEO campaign

I've run across a number of dropshipping marketplaces like doba.com and shippd.com but most of the stuff on here will be uber competitive. Affiliate marketing sites like clickbank and commissionjunction will start to look tempting too, but stay away from being an affilaite unless you want to hate yourself more. I think the true way to go would be to develop relationships with local suppliers (like actually pick up the telephone) and discuss how your rockstar like e-skills can complement their brick and mortar offerings.

- I want to find someone who will give advice in how to set up the website or for a fee set up the website. I also want to know how much it may roughly cost and how much it would cost the keep it running. Or is the larger companies that host sites?

I'm going to answer your question indirectly but I want to run you through the spectrum of ecommerce packages ranging from the most most control to the least. Just remember that high control usually = high developement time and low control = giving control for the sake of expediency/ease of setup

• Roll your own - hand program your own store (or use something like spree + heroku). Full control over the look and UX, choice of great payment processors (e.g. Braintree or Stripe, eventually), drill into the nitty gritty of SEO and it costs only time to develop if you're an amazing programmer + you can optimise for hosting costs. This is heavy duty enterprise level commerce, open sourced.

• CMS platform - use Wordpress or Magento for basic functionally, then pimp it out with custom themes and plugins. Most of it is open source, can look pretty good with a premium theme but you're trying to squeeze your store into a weird, PHP programmed, box. Account for a lot of late nights and staring at ugly code. Can be installed on most hosting providers.

• Hosted commerce - use Shopify or Magento Go. Less custom functionality, less control, monthly cost. They host your shop for you and your shop works pretty much out of the box. Less themes choices but also much less of a headache than the above options.

• Online marketplace - Amazon, ebay, etsy. Not much to optimise, can't really build a brand on these platforms but you can get started with the click of about 5 buttons. Really easy, pretty good way to sandbox a shop and see if there's demand for your products.

It really comes down to how much time you have, how much effort you're willing to put in and how much money you have to throw at your problem. If I was doing it again, I would probably start with an Amazon store and learn how to buy ads effectively, then move to hosted commerce.

Could this help me? - http://www.dummies.com/store/product...70602104.html#

I wouldn't take this book as gospel, but it's a good reference to flip through on the toilet. Send me a PM with your email because I can send you my copy

Peterdalkey

sandin wrote: »

You won't like my reply - don't do it unless you are funded and have patience.

Reasons = You say you have very limited knowledge. Good and profitable online retailing is way more difficult than normal retailing. If you don't have experience of service based retailing, you will not do well at online (I'm sure there are exceptions).

Online retailing can take up to 3 years before making a profit - and that's the good operators.

Avoid dropshipping at all costs - in reality you become an agent and responsible for all the crap that goes with it.

Read up about online retailing, see who has been successful (award winners - eircom spiders, retail excellence Ireland awards etc), look at their unique selling points - you will find Exceptional Customer Service the back bone of all the good ones - can you answer all queries within 4 hours, what is the return policy, what is the refund policy, what if you don't have the product in stock, what if delivery is lost/delayed etc etc etc.

Possibly try your hand at regular retailing of the product first and see reaction - then get online and operate the online from the store you have, but ensure you have funds that will allow you lose money for first year or so, followed by breakeven, followed by profit.ppppp

If you do it properly, have the right product and the right customer service and you have the time to allow it build, you can have a nice little earner - I'm in year 4 of my online business and currently employ 6 people directly associated with online operations (have off line business too) and online will take about €1m turnover this year and we have about 40% 6month customer retention rate (40% of customers return and purchase within 6 months)

OP you are getting some fantastic advice here, you could not buy it. Sandin I don't know what your business is but we sell online and offline B2B here and in the UK directly, and in other markets through local distribution.

I find your figure of 40% repeat in 6 months very interesting, we do worse than that, about 30% at best. I would be interested if you would share how much you interact with the customer after the first sale. I know you are doing this twice as long as us and you would benefit from the cumulative effect, but either way it is a great performance.

I also saw your post on shipping rates and again your numbers are a great target for anyone serious about growing to decent volumes online, clearly you are doing relatively high monthly shipment numbers to achieve these rates. The UK figure is the one that catches my eye in particular, as our European is typically pallets, half and full loads.

Cheers


Peter

sandin

Peterdalkey wrote: »

OP you are getting some fantastic advice here, you could not buy it. Sandin I don't know what your business is but we sell online and offline B2B here and in the UK directly, and in other markets through local distribution.

I find your figure of 40% repeat in 6 months very interesting, we do worse than that, about 30% at best. I would be interested if you would share how much you interact with the customer after the first sale. I know you are doing this twice as long as us and you would benefit from the cumulative effect, but either way it is a great performance.

I prefer to remain very annomymous on boards - great for venting and a bit of slagging so won;t say too much.

I have 10,000+ facebook fans and use this as a very fun/casual means of communication - only use it for heavy selling when a particular offer starts, but keep it more an informative and fun page.

The main product I sell is widely available, but stockists only keep about 10-15% of the range as it is very substantial (1200+ sku's) whereas I keep 100% of range.
Due to being largest customer for this brand, I get more offers than other sellers and also receive new items first.

I will use a mail program to email customers twice a month with product news and offers - I get about 40% open rate of which about 35% click through.

It all sounds nice and easy - but it was hell for first 2 years, (just 2 of us) barely had enough money to pay bills, then in year 3 managed to take a basic salary, year 4 we did well and this is now year 5 and we've already met last year's total sales with over 5 months to go. (and over 30 employees) - That's the beauty of good internet retailing - you can get huge growth year on year that would never be possible off line. The downside is it takes a hell of a lot longer and a lot more money to get to a profit situation.

And the most important aspect is Brilliant Customer Service - without that, you're dead in the water.