Online store. How to avoid elementary mistakes at the beginning and make life easier in the future

In my story I want to talk about my experience in the field of Internet commerce. On Habré already 5 years old, I learned a lot of useful things for myself during this time.

And, perhaps, it is my time to make a bit of good for others.
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The history of my experience in online commerce began in 2011, when I was “mature enough” to run a fairly labor-intensive project. The experience of creating and layout of business cards sites and sites on CMS-kah acquired in 2003, then he made clan sites for War3TFT a couple of times, after that he made another 5-6 sites on Joomla, mostly also for guilds and clans. Of course, this can not be called a full-fledged resource, but the minimum necessary knowledge, before opening its online store, already existed.

Initially, I shoveled the sea of ​​commerce literature on the Internet and I will say that in practice everything is not always as easy as in books. Having made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, in the future, he made his life more difficult for himself.

Under the cut I want to talk about how to avoid these errors.

To begin with, I did not make any investments other than hosting, domain and purchasing links, there was no warehouse, shipped from Moscow, brought to us to Cherepovets, took the goods and went to the client. Worked on IE okved "Retail."

The online store was selling highly specialized sports equipment, mainly for the equipment of sports schools and gyms, chose based on the competition, and underestimated it, more on that later.

First of all, I had a choice of CMS and hosting.
Originally planned to twist the online store on Joomla, the benefit of the sea templates, hosting took Sweb. Then there was a promotion domain for a year as a gift, plus the reviews were good.

I saw the online store for about a month, made an assembly with VirtueMart, prepared a catalog of products, original photos, texts, and so on. And everything would be fine, but VirtuaMart began to “fall off”, you could say it was done by textbooks, but the catalog flew out weekly, or it was just impossible to carry out the order normally, the order report simply did not come, the module constantly flew off and happened to take away another couple of three modules.

It was necessary to fasten anew, but in the end I realized that the free CMS was too unstable for commerce and decided to look for a good paid system, then the whole point began.

Difficult choice of CMS or how not to lose

When choosing a CMS I want to point out the main thing.

Often you need to focus not so much on the functionality (it is less satisfactory at all), but on the adequacy, efficiency and responsiveness of technical support. This, in my experience of using different platforms, is the key to quickly solving problems and subsequently the success of the project.

When I looked through the hundreds of pages of purchased reviews, a picture emerged that few people can really describe the functionality and all the charms or problems of the system. By and large, all ratings and reviews were from:

"Excellent CMS, functional chic, I use the year, I will soon buy the box" well, a lot like that. Therefore, in the end, bornet chose intuitively, unfortunately - this was a mistake. Initially, I was promised a quick response to questions, extensive editing capabilities of the leased system. In the future, all this was not there. Of course, I did not buy the box, at first thinking: “I will work - I will buy”, because of which I faced “woodness” in SEO, change of design and many other things.

In communication with technical support (not only in this company, by the way) you hear the same thing. An extremely languid voice answers you "hello, listen," when you finally set out the essence of the request and question, in such a dead voice, "consider, you need to wait." I do not mind waiting but 1-2 days, it turned out that I had to wait on average from 5 to 10 days, and the answer came to the mail and often the topic of my question was only 50% open. Had to call again and explain my question again, more aggressively. At the same time, it was not always possible to get through the phone, just did not pick up the phone.

The result is as follows:

First, consult with knowledgeable people who are already successfully trading.
Secondly, I recommend to immediately buy the box, so you will be able to saw the site when you want and almost as you want. When you rent a CMS, often answer questions have to wait for weeks. This is unacceptable.

There is safety in numbers. Create a team, or pitchfork

After long peripetias with the miracle described above (the inclusion of even an elementary adequate interface costs good surcharges in a third of the box price), I still achieved the result I wanted.

Here began the time of filling the online store with merchandise, photos, texts. At that time I was working on a 5/2 schedule and, in general, I sat and filled the whole evening, plus I was sewn up with work. The weekend, respectively, was completely spent on writing articles and editing prices, prices were loaded into Exel, and prices that were sent weekly by my supplier simply did not fit for direct download, we had to change everything with pens, sometimes it took a lot of time. When talking with technical support on this issue, they just threw up my hands and said “alas”.

But filling is still half the trouble, here at least there is no shamanism, only painstaking work. Next went the game with Google and Yandex. Google loved my writing and, according to many low-frequency queries, I came out in the first 3-ku. It was with these low-frequency queries that I started real sales. But Yandex didn’t want to skip my pages above the 10th to 20th positions, and these are low-frequency queries, for which competitors generally have irresponsible texts with wild keys in general.

I smoked the forums, I realized the difference between promotion under Google and Yandex. At Google, the main thing is a unique photo of goods with high quality, small texts with a low key entry of 2-3%, Yandex, at least for 2011-2012, liked capacious texts from 5-6 kiloznak, did not like large photos. By keys in Yandex, it was desirable to reach the level of 5-7%. Well, plus Yandex is very fond of when a thick link mass from serious resources, but the matter will not be limited to one link, they need at least several dozen, and even hundreds, I simply did not have money for that. Well, in the work was the "sandbox principle", domains under the age of 1 year were practically ignored, as a result of Yandex, I turned away until better times.

In general, I will not go into details, I worked in this mode.
In general, by inquiry, it turned out that only 15-20% of traffic should come to me from Google, but in the end it turned out to be the opposite; from there I received 80% of visitors.

The first buyers appeared, and just then the forks came in time.

(Work) + (work as content manager) + (work with suppliers and customers) + (website promotion) + (work as a courier) = nervous breakdown absolute lack of time, lack of sleep, depression and so on.

Total:

Initially, it was necessary to create a team, such an opportunity was. For an online store you need:

• 1-2 content managers;
• Courier;
• SEO specials

Thus, ideally, you should be working with suppliers and customers.

Postpay or prepay and payment options

Another important issue is the payment options and related difficulties. For me, the main types of payment are:

• Payment on the hands of the courier (that is, me);
• Webmoney;
• Yandex money.

There is a lot of discussion that “in the evening money is the morning chairs,” or vice versa.
I chose the opposite, firstly, after all, the people still have little faith in Internet commerce, especially in smaller unknown stores, and secondly, prepayment greatly reduces conversion and thereby affects the promotion of the online store. Although, on the phone, I voiced other options, of course, 80% of the customers chose "to the courier", the remaining 20% ​​chose Webmoney, Yandex.Money needed me only a few times.

By the way, in order to connect electronic money, you need to have a seller certificate and similar certificates. For the capital and major cities, it’s not a problem to receive these documents within a few days, but since I am from a rather miserable province, I didn’t have appraisers in the city, so I had to send notarized letters to testers to Moscow. The answer with the documents came in about 3 weeks, so consider this, I advise you to spend on express delivery, otherwise you can hang for 1.5 months.

Loss and start over

At the end of 2012, my online store, having worked for a year and, almost becoming the main source of income, ceased to function normally. I found 3 tumors, there were 2 surgeries, 2 years of treatment. Due to the fact that I had no partners, the store essentially remained on autopilot.

Clients had to explain that there was no product, etc. etc., I myself was ashamed of myself, but I could not do anything.

After the 1st operation in the hospital, I lay for 4 months until February 2013. The customers were melting away in front of their eyes, and those who called were often furious: “so, why did you even write a phone number !?”.

In the end, I found a person who could conduct my business, at that time I gave him almost all the profits, only to online store was floating. But my partner made a serious mistake. The fact is that when orders were from the owners of gyms and sports schools, I personally traveled and talked, looked at the room, how much it could accommodate equipment, plus it looked at the client, he really needs all this or he mumbles. In general, my partner did not go into such details. It cost me 400 tr. working capital, last money shop.

When the goods were delivered, the director of the Children’s Sports School simply said: “uh, guys, listen, we’ve climbed in the basement here, so it turns out that we have 10 more boxes. there are good bags, but the simulators have turned out to be at least old, but in general, now we will not take anything, there is simply no place. ” Here, I thought, my heart attack will happen, I don’t have money for orders for other clients, but there are 15 boxing bags, 2 power stations and the little things - gloves, pads, a helmet. I called the supplier, explained my situation, that if they did not take at least half of the goods back, then I would simply lose them, they refused me.

It is difficult to describe my feelings at this moment. The next day I went to sports schools and combat centers, but, unfortunately, I sold 5 boxing bags and several dozen sets of helmet covers for a week of such walking. In the future, the money went to my treatment, and the remaining goods at 300t.r. still lies in the garage.

After the 2nd operation and the treatment of forces, there was simply no way to do it. From this situation, made a couple of serious lessons. At the moment I plan to do the same again, the rake has already passed.

Summarizing

Unfortunately, he described only the tip of the iceberg; Nuances, of course, tens and hundreds.
I tried to note the main points for a start, but I could not describe them in one article.

The overall result:

• Analyze competitors in advance, it is better to choose a narrow niche, there really is to rise;
• Before creating an online store from scratch, read the technical subtleties of CMS and hosting;
• Create a team, let it be from 2-3 people, at the beginning it is enough;
• With large orders, be careful, work at least 30-50% prepaid + shipping;
• Work with suppliers yourself, with customers, too, it is necessary at the stage of becoming an online store.

I would be glad if I could help people who are still thinking about opening an online store.

Thanks for attention.