Marketingweb : has some excellent advice. The big one is a merchant account from a bank. That will take a while, you'll need to do a plan, look organise.
It is easy to do something cheap and easy but to get real results and returns you have to do it right. I think the gold rush age is over, it is just not good enough to have something cheap online. Buyers are savvy now.
Everything is dependent on the industry and what you are selling. My experience is in selling something physical.
Distributors: Most are ok to deal with. It is their job to sell stuff to resellers. Some like to only deal with the big boys, most will take on small accounts. You have to have your businesses sorted by the time you approach them. It is all about appearances. You need a phone number, an address. Use a virtual office to get these. If they want a meeting, make sure you can hire a meeting room.
Drop shipping from a distributors warehouse is low margin and full of problems. The easiest way to get a sale is to have it in stock. Online shoppers love that, in stock, fast shipping. Done.
So you have to have stock. Only stock what you need. Only stock the best selling items. Forget what you like, what sells? Usually there is a few products that sell the most. Do those. You want meat off the carcass. Expand out the range later. Use distributors that ship fast. If you have low stock you will sell out quickly, you want new stock fast. As you grow, make sure you have a pick up option. Customers love that.
Merchant Account. Go through the banks. St George is probably the best. They usually charge a smaller transaction fee but a bigger margin. If you sell online they will want a bigger margin. It is still all negotiable. (play two banks off each other) You want the option to use their API. Forget going through a gateway. Your website direct to banks website. Keep it simple. A web programmer can whip up something quick. Bank gives you all the specs.
Paypal is crap in Australia. They dont let you use their api.
Make sure the bank has a online website you can charge credit cards, to do telephone orders.
If you expand and get a retail presence or office, then get an extension on your merchant account to do physical transactions only. If you are selling a bit you usually can get it for free with a swipe terminal. The fee will be a lot less , like 1.5%, as opposed to your 2.5% to 3% for your online. Makes doing phone orders cheaper.
Software: The best I have used is xcart. The other ones like os commerce have a good reputation. The thing to stress here is security. All these programs have an open source component. Security flaws are found regularly so you have to update the security or else you will be hacked quickly. Never store customers credit card numbers. never. ever. ever. Store them online, in a file, on a piece of paper you will have a security breach. It is poison get rid of them quick. Eccomerce program should have an option never to store - use it. This is the next learning curve for eccommerce, expect a lot of businesses to get put out of business. Note all the change in terms and conditions with the CC companies and banks. They are not going to take losses for much longer, they are making merchants liable. This is cost of stealing cards not fraud orders, banks still make you pay if you charge a stolen card.
Phone ordering system is important. We designed our own that helps staff type in details, check credit card with out charging. Xcart software has a 3rd party module called POS that allows you to type in an order.
There are a few good simple software around. Ecwid is a new one. Adds eccomerce to blogs and non eccomerce programs. No add on for australian credit card processing yet.
Eccomerce is all about conversions. In a tough market you'll convert 0.5% to 1% of traffic to sale. In a good market with a good website you'll do 3%.
Think of your website as a mouse trap. Make it too complicated and you'll catch less.
Competition: If there is a big competitor forget it. Say someone like ebay. I have seen so many people go OB (out of business) trying to beat ebay. However some big competitors are ripe for the picking. I have some big websites and it is hard to stop a new player coming in and stealing business. All you can do is drive up costs so there is less profit. As a small player, stealing business is fun. The big guy will start paying more for ads to keep traffic, but if you do it right you can get a slice of the pie. The big guy or established player has the type ins on his side. The older the website the more referral business and typeins you get. This helps steady the profit when a new competitor shows up.
If there is no competitor, that can be just as bad. It is nice to have someone to compete with, makes your job easy. One lawyer in town = he goes broke. Two lawyers in town = both make money.
Pick on the competitors weakness not strength. This all goes back to making it simple. Free shipping, guarantees, making it easy, lots of testimonials. It is scarey buying on the internet, make it look like nothing will go wrong, nothing to fear, if there is a problem it will be resolved quickly. Some people will never buy on the internet so make it easy to phone in an order. Have a real address, even if it is a virtual one, customers like to check that. PO Box ring alarm bells.
Ship quickly. Send emails every step of the way. Pay more for shipping to get a tracking number, then email the tracking number with links to couriers websites. This will save on phone calls asking where is my package.
SEO: Make sure your software can seo. Make sure your server or hosting package can do what the seo programs needs to do. Most seo software addons like linx and apache. To start, do your own seo. The hardest part of seo is the keywords. No seo expert can help you there. They only pick the wrong ones. This is more important than your business plan. If you research seo and keywords, you'll learn more about your business and will have a 90% of succeeding because you will know your market. If you do this in a day, you have done it wrong. It takes weeks.
If you have a competitor that can seo, then you are in luck. Just copy what they are doing, and copy their keywords.
SEM: adwords. Google owns search so if you are limited in time (your not? you will soon) just concentrate on google. This means adwords. Adwords is the most important part of a new ecommerce venture. Takes 3 months to get in real search results in the meantime you will be paying via adwords. Adwords also helps you find important keywords. It is good for market research. Dont believe the traffic estimates of their keyword tool. If you need some numbers to see if business is viable, then do a small ad use those numbers. For your business plan uses the ones. 1% click through, 1% conversion. (looks hard?) then use 2% CTR and 3% conversion. (stuff of dreams). In a low competitor market you'll get 5%CTR and 3 or 4% conversion. But the traffic numbers will be lower. trust me, I prefer 1% CTR on 100,000 impressions than 10% on 1000 impressions.
You want your business to be in an area of lots of traffic, makes it easier.
Get the sale conversion working. Keep adding keywords, look at good traffic and conversions. You'll find keywords your competitors is not using. Read the fine print. There are 3 types of keywords in adwords. Broad match is what most people use. Then there is phrase or exact match. Broad match fine print = google has the right to show your ad on any keyword they think is appropiate. Any keyword!! The only way to find them is to do a Daily Search Keyword Report. It shows all the weird keywords google smacks you with in a broad match. Think 10%. You then have to add the words to your negative keyword list or google will keep doing it. Think 10% of all their business, that is too much money to stop doing it.
Avoid big keywords. computer is an expensive word. You compete with dell, harris, etc. So if you sell "computer mice" you are in trouble. So you have to do a phrase match or exact match. This means you still compete with the big boys but at least it is worth competing for. If you do broad match on "computer mice" google will give you any computer related keyword.
Analytics: Sign up, add the ecommerce section. Analytics is made in google's favour. As they do no evil, this is all by accident. The keywords that come from adwords is the word you bid on not the keyword the customers types. So if someone types "mouse" and shows your ad for keyword is "mice", google records this in analytics as "mice". Makes it impossible to find all the negative keywords google smacks your account with (remember the 10%). Also dont believe how many "mice" keywords are in your reports. Google wants you to keep bidding up that "mice" keyword not find the "mouse" one.
Analytics is way too big, and is the siren of eccomerce. Dont get sucked into her song, it will waste your whole day. Just look at numbers and conversions.
When you sign up, get the time zone right. It can never be changed. Google can change the world with its software but it is impossible to change a time zone in their software. Probably no money in it.
You will spend a lot of money on keywords. This is the only way the big guys get traffic so it is now expensive. If you keep bumping up the dollars only google wins. It gets to a point that you spend $1 to make $1. So keep playing with $. Lower it, stop the campaign. Increase $ for one keyword, lower the other. You will find a sweet point - usually in the first 25% of the range.
Consumers in Australia love free stuff and are willing to pay a higher price to get free stuff.
Ecommerce has two secrets. Regional and late night buyer. Make sure your shipping targets regional Australia. You get a lot of sales from these areas. They dont have the variety of shops and shop online. Late night shopper is gold. They come home, have dinner, a few drinks and then buy online. So make sure even a drunk person can find it easy to buy on your website.
Fraud: Ask for the CSV number or you'll get charge backs. Also ask another question helps. If you sell computer mice, ask what computer it is for. A real customer will tell you, a fraud person starts to worry and put in teh goofiest answers...like my computer is black.
Ignore all bulk orders. Or be very suspicious. It is the fools gold. You spent all this money developing the business and guess what, you wake up and someone from Havabadday has order 1000 mice. It is fraud and the bank will make you pay if you ship it.
Eccommerce conundrum. Make it easy for your customers, will get lots of sales but it will be hard work for you. Make it hard work for your customers, less sales but it will be easier for you.
Takes 12 months to make money. Very rarely a business starts, and sales take off. It is a gradual thing. So if you have no job, 12 months is a long time without money.
Ecommerce is all about numbers. Traffic and conversions. Conversion to sale is what you focus on. Get that right and your costs go down and you make money. Play with the numbers you see what I mean. Increase conversion rate from 1% to 2% and you double your sales without having to increase your traffic.
At the end of the day standard business practices rule. Control cost and you make money. The most sucessful person I know, that is all he does, controls costs.
30-30-30-10 rule. Split profit = 30% tax, 30% you, 30% for future, 10% for a rainy day. If I have to pay a million dollars in tax, I'm the happiest guy in the world.
Online is only a small part of the market. Dont believe the hype. Online for most things is only 5% of market. The physical retail shop network out there is hard to compete with. Most people live in cities and research online but go to the shops to buy it.
An online business is a mistress. She can be warm, cuddly, inspiring, exciting and beautiful. And she can get out the whip and spank you a good one. Other days she just handcuffs you to the bed and wont let you play. Other days she has snakes on her head and an evil face. She'll whisper evil words in your wife/husband/family's ear. She can give you a good life or she can kill you. If she kills you, you usually die with a smile on your face, if you remember that life is about the journey. Everyone has to start a business once in their life, just to know what that pain tastes like. And so we all have good stories to tell each other in the old people's home.
gotta go, my mistresses are calling me
