Could someone help me

[dbaker89]

As I posted in my introductory post on the forum here, I have a small internet business selling clothing products. I am doing ok but I want to expand my business and get more and more out of eBay's hair.

I need to start an ecommerce store. I want everything to be automated from how many of x item we have in stock to what sizes we have in stock etc. Obviously this will be my job to keep the inventory updated because I will be holding it. I want an automated checkout etc.

How is the best way to go about doing this? I know www.prostore.com has something but keep in mind i'm very new to web design (www.FerrariStory.com) is my first website.

Also, if anyone runs an ecommerce store themselves I would love to talk to them via PM or on the phone. Let me know.

Thanks,

Dan Baker

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[GoldenEggs]

We have an ecommerce store but will be doing an upgrade to the site. We have zero advertising and we somehow still get traffic and buyers! That part always amazed me.

Biophase, psynapse and others here have run successful ecommerce sites so they may be able to help you more than me. When I came on board, everything was all ready set up so I don't know much about how to start from scratch.

 

[DylanO]

A couple of suggestions. You can post a project on elance.com, guru.com, or getafreelancer.com for help and outsource the work. A lot of people are finding some great help that way. There was a great article in BusinessWeek yesterday on this very topic:

Sorry - can't post the link (too new, I guess). Search on google for the name: "Mom-and-Pop Multinationals". Article was written by Pete Engardio.

Dylan

 

[CactusWren]

Open source programs that should be (not that I know!) fairly straightforward are osCommerce and zen cart. It's a cheap way to start. If you have $2000-3000 you can have something custom made.

Good luck!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[rxcknrxll]

You can get a custom ecommerce piece built for $3k? idk.

 

[Justin]

I run several online stores, and can help you get up and running.

If you are interested, PM me and we can talk about it.

 

[PEERless]

You can get a custom ecommerce piece built for $3k? idk.

What would a good starter budget be?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[dbaker89]

I run several online stores, and can help you get up and running.

If you are interested, PM me and we can talk about it.

I appreciate as much help as I can get so I will take you up on your offer. I'm leaving my vacation spot (Croatia) in 2 days and will need a few days to settle in once I am back in the states.

I will give you a PM then. Maybe there is something that I know that I can give back to you and help you with. We shall talk.

Thanks,

Dan Baker

 

[PEERless]

Trying to expand your business AND vacationing in Eastern Europe? Tsk tsk.

 

[hakrjak]

I use ProStores.com for my e-store, and it's pretty simple to use. I pay $30 a month and get inventory management, the web store, shopping cart, etc for that... Then I pay another $30 a month to paypal for my CC processing. Saved me a lot of trouble since I didn't have to learn web programming, or hire someone to set it all up, and deal with the bugs that come along with that.

Good luck!

-Hakrjak

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PEERless]

Thanks for the resource! Rep+

 

[rxcknrxll]

What would a good starter budget be?

You can get an ecommerce site going for very little money. After you get up and running and require a custom solution built specifically for your business, $20k+ is easy to spend for a website. My point in saying that is only that an upstart really doesn't have any need for this. Just get online and start getting customers. If you're business model is solid, you will be able to afford a kickass site later on.

 

[dbaker89]

Finally got an online store up! I never knew it would be so easy! I went with yahoo small business to get my start and for the love of god it couildnt be easier.

www.FerrariClothesOnline.com

I am still adding products and I hope to find wholsalers for other ferrari products to add, but so far 114 dollars profit in 5 days and I haven't even been indexed by google!

dAN

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PEERless]

Does Google offer a similar service? I use the Big G for almost everything, and I like to keep my back-end integration tight.

 

[dbaker89]

Does Google offer a similar service? I use the Big G for almost everything, and I like to keep my back-end integration tight.

I truthfully don't know, Peerless. I know they offer a shopping cart at attractive merchant percentages, but as far as no-brainer website building like yahoo I am really not sure at this moment.

Dan

 

[dbaker89]

Btw, all fastlaners get 10% off on my site for their help.

Coupon: fltm

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[djs13]

I've been thinking about starting an e-commerce store as well. My biggest issue is that I can't store inventory in the dorm that I'll be moving into soon. Has anyone taken similar advice given in this thread and put a dropshipping spin on things?

I've heard Volusion is good for web design and shopping carts but they have somewhat high monthly payments. How is Yahoo Small Business? The site looks pretty good.

 

[THEKID105]

I can understand that it is a pain to run an online business. Here are some ideas that may help. Paypal is a service that for a small percentage of each transaction will offer you the ability to take credit cards and EFT,s online. They also provide you with a check out car program. I hope this helped. Good luck to you.

 

[PEERless]

PayPal is all I've used so far, and it's basic enough to set up in no time. At some point, I hope to find a fully-integrated solution.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[dbaker89]

Finally got an online store up! I never knew it would be so easy! I went with yahoo small business to get my start and for the love of god it couildnt be easier.

www.FerrariClothesOnline.com

I am still adding products and I hope to find wholsalers for other ferrari products to add, but so far 114 dollars profit in 5 days and I haven't even been indexed by google!

dAN

Just completely overhalled the layout and color scheme. In some spots the text is hard to read because of the steering wheel but I am looking for solutions.

Dan

 

[servicefly]

eCommerce expansion Advice

I am a Web Developer by trade and recently fell back into freelancing after the losing my Internet Technologies company. We use to build eCommerce solutions as well as other Internet technologies. Our solutions were high dollar. Now that you have the back story I will explain why a good eCommerce website costs $20,000+:

A true eCommerce website built or reconfigured for expansion should be designed to support affiliate and reseller programs. Such programs help you market and recruit resellers who will usually pay you to become a reseller for your business. This adds a whole new world of expansion and growth to your online organization. All websites built today should have a strong Content Management System where you can easily modify your website with speed. The best CMS's are free these days, Joomla, Drupal, Mambo (older), SilverStripe; all of which will force you to higher a programmer who understands how to configure such CMS's for your specific need, but this does bring the costs down. Yes you can learn how to modify the CMS yourself but you shouldn't have the time if your business is at the growth stage.

To summarize, the Web Developer (designers usually don't know backend programming) should build you a front end (public and member areas) and a backend (website change administration area, invoicing and accounting applications, inventory control applications, even shipping control applications). Your proper website can do a lot more than most think and literally save you thousands on physical office overhead!

My advice is to investigate Web Developers with experience in the above areas and Web Presence Marketing, they are worth the money. I hope this helps.

 

[dbaker89]

Re: eCommerce expansion Advice

I am a Web Developer by trade and recently fell back into freelancing after the losing my Internet Technologies company. We use to build eCommerce solutions as well as other Internet technologies. Our solutions were high dollar. Now that you have the back story I will explain why a good eCommerce website costs $20,000+:

A true eCommerce website built or reconfigured for expansion should be designed to support affiliate and reseller programs. Such programs help you market and recruit resellers who will usually pay you to become a reseller for your business. This adds a whole new world of expansion and growth to your online organization. All websites built today should have a strong Content Management System where you can easily modify your website with speed. The best CMS's are free these days, Joomla, Drupal, Mambo (older), SilverStripe; all of which will force you to higher a programmer who understands how to configure such CMS's for your specific need, but this does bring the costs down. Yes you can learn how to modify the CMS yourself but you shouldn't have the time if your business is at the growth stage.

To summarize, the Web Developer (designers usually don't know backend programming) should build you a front end (public and member areas) and a backend (website change administration area, invoicing and accounting applications, inventory control applications, even shipping control applications). Your proper website can do a lot more than most think and literally save you thousands on physical office overhead!

My advice is to investigate Web Developers with experience in the above areas and Web Presence Marketing, they are worth the money. I hope this helps.

The yahoo ecommerce actually has a lot of what you mentioned up there, including the affiliate marketing. I am going to start gathering affiliates to sell my products in the near future.

Dan

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[servicefly]

Wow, fantastic... I'm glad that such solutions are out there to make it so easy. If a reseller section and the advanced stuff like accounting and invoicing services exist with Yahoo business then that is great for new eCommerce Entrepreneurs. I have always found such free services to be limiting but times are changing. I'm glad I have moved on to Web applications development rather than eCommerce solutions providing. Cheers to all.

 

[hakrjak]

Looks good man, I like it. Reminds me of that store I stop at in Vegas every time I'm there. They have all the exotic car clothes & stuff. Maybe you could branch out your product line and have products for Lambos and Lotus and other exotics?

How are your sales going? I've had my off-ebay site going for over a year now, and I'm still only generating maybe .50% (One half of one percent) of my business there, with 99.50% still coming from Ebay. It's a very difficult beast to break away from...

Best of luck,

- Hakrjak

 

[Jill]

Nice site.

I think it would make it easier to shop if the images blew up MUCH larger when you click on them. Might even want to shoot them on a mannequin or a live person.

When we were one of the larger menswear sellers on ebay, we found that people want to know exactly what they're getting, since they can't touch and feel.

My two cents.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Happy]

Finally got an online store up! I never knew it would be so easy! I went with yahoo small business to get my start and for the love of god it couildnt be easier.

www.FerrariClothesOnline.com

I am still adding products and I hope to find wholsalers for other ferrari products to add, but so far 114 dollars profit in 5 days and I haven't even been indexed by google!

dAN

Congratulations on the launch of the new site!

My two cents - so take it for what it is worth:
On just the "Product Description" pages could the background graphic be cropped, to cut out the center portion of the steering wheel? The yellow makes it rather hard to read the white letters.

I also found that accepting credit cards directly, instead of using just Paypal, increased sales dramatically.

Great effort - it looks like your well on your way!

Mike

 

[dbaker89]

Right now I am accepting credit cards directly through paypal (no account necessary).

Is there another merchant you recommend?

I scrapped the steering wheel background but still feel a picture of some sort for the background would do me well.

Any ideas?

Dan

 

[dkt91]

I would leave it the way it is now - in my opinion a neutral background looks more professional plus the site content is easyer to read.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[dbaker89]

I would leave it the way it is now - in my opinion a neutral background looks more professional plus the site content is easyer to read.

I decided to take your advice.

I just added some more content and items.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I should start marketing? I need a low cost preferably per click in areas where customers would desire my product. I cannot spend more then 200 a month at the moment on marketing.

www.FerrariClothesOnline.com - One stop shop for your Ferrari Apparel needs!

Ideas?

 

[Happy]

Is there another merchant you recommend?
Dan

We have been using Authorize.net for a number of years. We also have a Paypal payment option available.

I would also suggest that you tweak your site for the best SEO possible as this will lead to sales with little to no investment needed on your part.

Mike