Fellow Fastlaners, I come to you for advice.
As you may know, I own a small retail store which my wife runs while I slave away at my day job. In order to speed up my business' growth and quit my job sooner, I'm looking to expand to e-commerce.
Issue: I paid about $1,000 on Elance to get my website built and it is hosting on the Site Builder Avenue platform. I didn't realize that this was going to be the case at the time, and now regret it because Site Builder doesn't seem to be a particularly great or well-known platform, although it does to e-commerce for $50/month and seems to have all the basic necessities. On one hand, I hate to pay to have the site moved to a different platform, but on the other hand I hate to use a platform that doesn't give me the best chance of success/least headaches.
Should I switch Platforms? If so, to who?
Once I decide on the Platform, the next step will be to get products listed. This seems pretty straightforward... I plan to use manufacturer pictures whenever possible, but if not possible I'll likely need a small photo tent and nice camera lens to take the photos myself. Once I have the pictures, I just come up with product descriptions above and beyond what the manufacturer says about it.
I have a lot of different product categories though, and am not sure if I want to list them all. In particular, we sell costume jewelry which changes constantly and this seems like it would be a bigger headache than bigger, more continuous items.
Should I include costume jewelry on the website? Am I missing anything in the process of adding items?
Once products are listed, I need a system to actually get the products out. I use Quickbooks POS currently (looking to change this year though), and it seems I will have to manually update the website with quantities, then manually update the POS system with sales, both of which seem like a pain in the @$$. Then I will need someone to actually box the orders up and ship them out. On top of that, 90% of my merchandise is on the sales floor, which seems like it could be a problem with limited quantity items.
What works for combining B&M and E-commerce? Do I need seperate inventory for each?
Once I have the website ready and a system to ship the products, I just need one thing - CUSTOMERS! That means I'll need more people to find my website, which will require SEO, PPC, etc - I'll come back to guys later on that.
As you may know, I own a small retail store which my wife runs while I slave away at my day job. In order to speed up my business' growth and quit my job sooner, I'm looking to expand to e-commerce.
Issue: I paid about $1,000 on Elance to get my website built and it is hosting on the Site Builder Avenue platform. I didn't realize that this was going to be the case at the time, and now regret it because Site Builder doesn't seem to be a particularly great or well-known platform, although it does to e-commerce for $50/month and seems to have all the basic necessities. On one hand, I hate to pay to have the site moved to a different platform, but on the other hand I hate to use a platform that doesn't give me the best chance of success/least headaches.
Should I switch Platforms? If so, to who?
Once I decide on the Platform, the next step will be to get products listed. This seems pretty straightforward... I plan to use manufacturer pictures whenever possible, but if not possible I'll likely need a small photo tent and nice camera lens to take the photos myself. Once I have the pictures, I just come up with product descriptions above and beyond what the manufacturer says about it.
I have a lot of different product categories though, and am not sure if I want to list them all. In particular, we sell costume jewelry which changes constantly and this seems like it would be a bigger headache than bigger, more continuous items.
Should I include costume jewelry on the website? Am I missing anything in the process of adding items?
Once products are listed, I need a system to actually get the products out. I use Quickbooks POS currently (looking to change this year though), and it seems I will have to manually update the website with quantities, then manually update the POS system with sales, both of which seem like a pain in the @$$. Then I will need someone to actually box the orders up and ship them out. On top of that, 90% of my merchandise is on the sales floor, which seems like it could be a problem with limited quantity items.
What works for combining B&M and E-commerce? Do I need seperate inventory for each?
Once I have the website ready and a system to ship the products, I just need one thing - CUSTOMERS! That means I'll need more people to find my website, which will require SEO, PPC, etc - I'll come back to guys later on that.
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