Opening a website

[George Beck]

Hello Everyone

I am in the latter stages of turning a life-long hobby into a retirement business
and selling on-line. So many of you have great websites! How did you design you store front or did you have it done for you? How did you start? I would really appreciate experienced advise.

George

[Mitchell Andrus]

Wow... where to start.... First, get yourself a business. Then, create a website... DONE!

Well, not so fast.

Shopping Cart websites used to be for the wealthy. The fact that I have one proves that that isn't true anymore. Websites used to be about all you needed to elbow your way into a market. Not true any more by a long shot. It's very crowded out there. If your products don't sell at a brick and mortar, they won't sell on-line either. My best sellers sell on-line and in the brick shops (12 shops and 2 print catalogs carry my goods) at about the same ratio. Try testing your goods in a dozen 'real' stores all around the country for a year to see if you really want to bother. Forget church bazaars. You'll set up next to the lady that makes glitter covered candle holders. Waste of time trying to sell anything for more than $19.95.

If you do go for it, go for the gusto and build a shopping cart site right off the bat. They're relatively cheap nowadays... find a software package that looks like you can handle it and spend 10 hours or more reading their forum to see where their sortcomings are (every package has problems). HTML is on it's way out. CSS, ASPX, etc. are coming up strong. Stay away from PHP based sites and make sure you talk to a prospective host before diving in. The site's host will save your bacon over and over as well as helping you with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The basic site (behind the curtains program) will run $300.00 to $2,000.00. If you can afford it (an additional $2,000.00 to $5,000.00) have this site designed for you. This is for the layout (look and feel) into which you'll add you 'stuff'. You can do this yourself but you'll be learning a fair bit about programming and CSS, file transfers and file management. Forget most off-the-shelf website creators like Dreamweaver and Frontpage. These are for show-and-tell sites and won't handle a cart-site's code-behind and graphics needs.

Then you'll be adding your products, pricing, credit card and PayPal integration, emails, UPS or Fed Ex integration, security, etc.

Recap:

1. Software
2. Design
3. Products
4. Host

All 4 above are separate considerations.

How much you spend will be determined by how much you can do and what you want to see on the screen. Allow about 6 months because the good designers are busy. While the site's format is being worked on, you'll be setting up products, credit cards, etc., Many things can happen at the same time.

Even with a strong package ootb and a sharp designer getting it to look good, plan on spending 100's of hours. Think about what it might take to make a smaller version of ebay.

If it was easy, everyone on ebay would have their own sites, right?

Do a little research and see how the other guys in your chosen niche are doing. Remember, just because something is in someone's store doesn't mean it sells. 70% of my sales come from 20% of my products - I've got a lot of old-maid designs that sell only 2 or 4 units a year. It's a numbers game though... 30 low volume products like that make 30 to 60 sales. My best sellers ship 2 or 3 units each per week.

A really cool looking style of lamp (Art Deco for instance) in your competitor's shop might actually sell only 5 units a year. Going after that market would be foolish. Building a website to sell them would be a colosal waste of time.

I stopped making all of my lamps 7 years ago. Not enough volume to bother, about 12/yr. It took 3 years to figure it out, but I tried.

[Dylan Smith]

HTML is on it's way out. CSS, ASPX, etc. are coming up strong. Stay away from PHP based sites ...

What?!?

HTML is what the Internet runs on. Not only is it not going away, the W3C is in the process of issuing the latest spec.

CSS control the visual display of markup, but they don't have anything to do with content.

ASPX files contain HTML and proprietary M$ code. You need to run buggy M$ server packages to use it. For me, I'll stick with the basis of of the Internet: open-source software. LinuxApacheMySQLPHP serving HTML/CSS.

Why spend money for a Yugo, when you can get a Lexus for free?

[Constant Laubscher]

Hi George

I use ECT http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/ have been using there
website templates for a couple of years now and it works great!
They have excellent support and you can accept ccards.
I use paypal and never have any problems getting my money.
You can sent me a pm and I will help you get setup If you would like.
It will give you lot of joy and won't cost you a arm and a leg

Kind regards
Constant Laubscher
www.lazerlinez.com

[George Beck]

Thank you Mitchell and Thank you Constant. This is going to be a fun journey. I am sure I will be leaning on both of you in the future. By the way, Nice websites for both.

George

[Mitchell Andrus]

Yea... just to clarify - I didn't mean that HTML is going away, just in a rapid state of change. Higher level websites use Flash, Java, ASPX, etc... not HTML as the first level code. Even XHTML is fast becoming outdated.

Learn HTML, but also learn how to use the tools that write it out to the browser.

[Reed Wells]

Hmmm, Maybe I got lucky or something but both of my websites were done by myself with a free program. Both are on the second page of Goog for very competitive key words. Read the SEO forums to get insight into the structure of a website and ask questions like you have here. George don't be intimidated by it, go for it. I make a good living off those two websites that cost me only the time I spend on them to keep Google happy. Reed

[Dylan Smith]

I'll just say that 'friends don't let friends use font tags' and leave it at that.