How does the online store of chandeliers, LEDs and lamps
This application article will allow you to get an idea about the work of online stores of lighting and lighting equipment. It is aimed at startups who are interested in this line of business from the point of view of business logic and implementation techniques. The article is written based on the experience of developing online stores, which started in 2008, and are now among the leaders in terms of visibility of sites in Yandex search results and presence in contextual advertising in Moscow and Moscow Region.
- Individuals who buy light to the apartment or to the country;
- Legal entities for the office;
- Designers (here you need to understand that it is necessary to look for interior designers, but it’s harder with them, because they usually buy in stores, it’s easier and less of a headache).
All calculations are in rubles at 2014 prices. The margin is 30-60%, minus logistics, accounting and marketing. The average price of a check is 10 thousand rubles, this includes the lamp itself, including related consumables (energy-saving light bulbs, ceiling lamps) and delivery. Orders may be 100-200 thousand rubles. So maybe, for example, if you need lamps, poles, lights to illuminate the entire perimeter. In this case, the volume of the order will be the whole car, plus the light on 30-40 thousand. The order may be on several chandeliers, but expensive.
Light is a seasonal commodity. In autumn there is a peak, from September to the end of December, there is an active sales season. There are many wholesale and retail deals. Even with a small advertising budget, you can get a good profit. From January to March there is a slight rise, then a time of stagnation. Thus, it turns out that in the fall a huge company is needed, which should ensure large volumes of sales. The team should have a sufficient number of logisticians, more precisely couriers, managers, an expanded marketing department, which will increase all kinds of advertising. It turns out that in one period of time we need a huge department, and at another stage we need a small department. I think many are faced with such problems. This situation is solved by dismissal. The main thing - it does not inflate the state, if you inflated the state, get too big expenses. It is always necessary to keep the staff at a minimum, and only in the case when employees are overloaded by 200%, then hire additional people.
')
To neutralize seasonal fluctuations, large companies usually increase their staff by the end of the summer, and reduce it in the spring. As a rule, this applies to the departments of marketing and logistics. It is necessary to draw up an employment contract at the stage of recruitment in order to reduce the number of employees by the time of a decline in demand. When applying for a job, it is better to immediately agree on piecework wages, and on urgent labor relations.
With a turnover of 2 million or 6 orders a day, a team of 4 people is required:
- The head, who controls all, is looking for reliable suppliers, negotiates discounts, monitors SEO and container manager;
- The content worker who places the new product, works with the base, finds errors, etc., updates the balances and prices. Balances change every day, prices also change every day due to the dollar rate;
- Well-savvy manager who will answer calls, control the purchase of products and logistics;
- Logistics department, 4 drivers are required here, but third-party organization can also be used.
From the outside it may seem simple, but maybe the situation is that one driver is sick, the other is missing with money, the third is returning the marriage, etc. It happens that there are a lot of cases, my head is spinning, but it is quite possible to cope.
Major players have up to 120 orders per day:
- CEO. Agrees with suppliers about discounts, is responsible for sales and financial performance, if there is no financial director. All other key employees are subordinate to him;
- Marketer. Supervises website developers, contextual and display advertising, SEO-company or full-time employee, copywriters, content managers, etc .;
- Accountant. Responsible for the absence of tax claims;
- Head of Logistics Department. Prepares a plan for shipment of goods from suppliers and delivery to customers;
- Client manager. Accepts orders from customers and informs customers about the delivery time of orders, and also works with reclamations.
- How to approach the site development process?
- Every day there are new players, although they are small, but nevertheless, they compete with each other. How do we make an online store that will help compete with experienced companies and newly formed ones?
- We came to the market, everything is there for work, but it is necessary to choose a specialization, how to do it - from a technical or marketing point of view?
There are several main suppliers from whom the goods are usually purchased. They unload the balances, and the prices, once in one or several days, we put them on our website. As soon as an order is formed with us, we reserve the goods from these suppliers, and ship them, or they ship them directly, to the final consumer. The scheme bought-sold, that is, it is not necessary to immediately have a lot of money in order to start selling lamps. In the case when we first buy the goods from the supplier ourselves, we arrive and pay for the goods we want to buy. Suppliers may have a minimum balance on their account, say 30 thousand, and some 100 thousand, and money is already written off from this balance. But, the majority of suppliers work in the usual way, that is, he arrived, gave his order and paid.
All lamps are Chinese, even those which indicate that they are Italian. In another case, the lamps cost cosmic money. It should be understood that China is different. There are firms that monitor production, they control every step of Chinese manufacturers. And there are those who work according to the "arrived-bought-left" scheme. This product is sold very cheap.
Crystal products, though it is not the most popular, but sometimes it makes a profit.
LED and technical lighting.
Lamps for the cottage, usually at the country order expensive models.
There are cheap lamps and expensive lamps.
You can use logistics companies, but they can make mistakes, for example, do not check the goods with the supplier, thus, it turns out that we pay for the repeated delivery to the customer and returning the goods to the supplier.
The logistics department, it is quite small, that is, the main thing is to recruit responsible drivers who will not be lost, because they are enough, they carry big money.
And you can also use foot couriers, especially they will be very helpful during rush hour. By car, you can deliver several orders, and in your hands you can take only 2 boxes, i.e. 1 order.
By car, a person receives 500 rubles, and a courier on foot receives about 250 rubles. A walking courier costs less, but the number of people who need to be controlled increases.
It is better to throw money at the supplier’s balance, of course, the driver comes to everyone, loads this money into the account. Inevitably, it turns out that the client must give the money to your driver, and here we must count, for the first time, at least, so that the amounts they have are not so large.
An intermediate warehouse is necessarily needed, that is, one point somewhere is needed, through which all goods will pass: today you collect, and tomorrow you deliver. It is very difficult to ship everything in one day, so that the driver takes the goods from one end of Moscow, and then takes them to the other, that is, it is easiest to collect all orders from suppliers, to drive them to the warehouse, and the next day to group and dilute them along the optimal route.
Under the minimum stock of a fairly small office. At first, there will not be so many orders, everyone starts with 3-5 orders per day.
More than 10 orders a day, other technologies will already be required, and the warehouse is good, then you need a person who will take the goods, you must make the drivers check for a marriage, because very often they don’t look, and when they bring the end customer, he clini, refuses.
It turns out that you pay for the trip, and for the fence, and again for the second delivery, that is, the easiest to check. While a small number of orders, it is easiest to check the driver, and when there will already be a lot of them, it is better to check in the warehouse so that the driver has time to dissolve all.
The schemes are all very similar, brought-sold, brought-sold, however, there is another scheme. There are suppliers who first try to buy products, and then sell them, but this is very monetary. Buy a container, bring and sell. Much cheaper, it turns out, at cost, but you need good capital, you need to understand that this product may not be bought, it may not like it. In general, all the major suppliers copy each other goods. That is, they order a top model of competitors directly at the factories, there is enough pictures and a minimum description.
In the regions there is a prepayment, usually 100%, this is normal.
In Moscow, the payment in fact, that is, arrived, looked. Moscow buyers need everything at once.
If you automate payment from the regions, the site should be able to calculate the cost of delivery, to form invoices, to accept payment by plastic cards.
If the direction is technical lighting, consumer lighting (chandeliers for residential use, for apartments, residential buildings, for example), industrial equipment (for example, for lighting stadiums, car services, etc.), how will such sites differ from a technical point of view, and which technical points we could designate here?
In order to increase the average check, it is imperative to offer a related product, for this you need to offer peripherals.
Also technically difficult is the big filter. It has a lot of parameters, and the columns are small, so the site should be quite productive. The filter can have from 10 to 20 parameters. It is better to take a separate dedicated server for this load.
There are two standard structures: the menu of the catalog on the left (1st screenshot), the menu of the catalog above (2nd screenshot).
Above it is more convenient, because the site is much more compact.
With the menu on the left, the filters have to be placed somewhere, and therefore it is best to display and make 4 positions of the adaptive site (3rd screenshot) in order to be convenient to use on all devices.
Also, the structure of the site depends on the frequency of use of the filter by visitors. Usually the filter is claimed, therefore, hiding it on the left under the catalog is not the most correct solution in terms of usability. Placing it on the top is also not very correct, because it is large in itself, and on the left we have navigation in the catalog, and the showcase will not be visible. Therefore, the best placement is on the right, or make a horizontal menu, and then position it on the left, or on the right, as convenient.
Catalog menu on the left
Catalog menu on top
Adaptive design
The most important thing in an online store is automation. That is, balances and prices should be updated automatically.
In principle, it is difficult to come up with something new in technical terms, except for some highly specialized services. The most difficult thing is to form the base of goods. For example, we have three suppliers. We work with each of them, and we get information from them, we need to bring the received data (files) to a single view. You can write an intermediate program or a macro that will work until the provider changes the file format.
You need to understand that 1C turns out very expensive for a startup. Sometimes integration with 1C is done, because there is a large nomenclature in the database, or you can integrate and update files via CSV.
At first, you do not need to strive for 1C - this is a separate specialist. The average hour of 1Snik is 2 thousand rubles. In developing the site the average rate is 900 rubles per hour. Therefore, costs increase 2 times. 1C-nicknames are some kind of gurus who either cannot do anything at all, or they are so meticulous that it’s difficult to communicate with them
In fact, they are all very nice and cute guys, but just 2 times the costs increase if you enter 1C. And the web has already written a lot of things, and there are ready-made tools for pouring goods, for updating residuals, and the like.
If the suppliers do not give pictures, then it is difficult to find photos, and it is very expensive to take photos themselves, especially since the stock may not have the desired position to be photographed.
As an identifier, the best is the brand and article. It turns out that we have a certain unique field in which we relate what we have on the site and what the supplier has. When we spill the remnants, we bring all the articles of goods on the site to one type.
The output will be matrices containing the nomenclature, number, links to pictures. Not all suppliers provide leftovers, some indicate only the goods that are. Here the quantity is important only when there is an own warehouse. Accordingly, you can make what we have in the remnants, but which is not on the site.
There are suppliers who make uncomfortable moments for further work in Excel, for example, the article starts from scratch, or indicate a hundred different colors. This all leads to confusion and errors. We have to make matching files in order to somehow uniquely identify this article, in general, this is inconvenient. Therefore it is necessary to choose good suppliers.
Updating the product catalog is easier than doing the initial content. Usually a parser is written on one of the two sites of industry leaders. For a start, it’s better to parse these two sites, including photos, all textual and tabular content, place it all onto your site, and then launch your content providers, who will check the remnants of what is and has already been done, and load the goods.
Be sure to need a content manager who will monitor new items, photos and current prices.
The presence of a project manager in the development team is necessary, because the designer, layout designer, programmer will not agree with each other. What does 4 different people mean? That is, if we calculate at least 40 thousand wages, it is 160 thousand per month.
Minimum site will be created 3 months. That is, it turns out that 160 is multiplied by 3 and we get 480 thousand. Thus, you will give this amount for the development of a regular online store that will not be specialized under the light. You will not separately search for a designer and a project manager with specialized expertise.
In turn, there are studios that have already done a bunch of lighting projects. It is better to watch those who have successfully implemented projects in the portfolio.
Due to what, one store can catch up with another? Very important is the age of the domain. SEO is affected by trading matrices, the more brands the better. The average size of the catalog for large players is 20 thousand SKU.
The more commodity cards, the more labor content manager. It is very difficult to maintain, because you need to fill in all the new items on time, prices, characteristics, for example, styles - this is a characteristic floating, for someone a chandelier will be one style, for someone else. So, in order to score one card, the content manager takes a lot of time, and if we add some additional characteristics, it will complicate the work. To maintain the base, you need a lot of people to say the same thing in different words.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find good SEO in the market now.
No one, as always, is responsible for anything. Any contract is fraught with something. In any contract you pay money and you will be wrong. Do not believe anyone. With the choice of seo companies must be very careful.
If a large company has advanced projects, it’s not a fact that it will also be possible to pump a young project. Search engines have a lot of filters on young projects. Not the fact that the specialist who promoted a cool website will promote your project. For your project can put a student who does nothing and always argues.
Alternatively, work with an SEO company for the result. But it is very necessary to carefully select the semantic core. They have very vague plans, a lot of excuses. You think “a, everything, hired, everything, gave these there, millions and everything will be cool”, but it turns out wrong, it must be controlled much more. And it is very difficult to get information from them, because you called, and one on vacation, the other got sick, they start throwing everything in, respond with common phrases. Several people are responsible for your project, and in the case of their own SEO, he sits right in front of you.
If we watch freelancing, then everything is still worse, less predictable. A lot of bloggers, a lot of smart people who only know how to write articles.
In no case can not take freelancers, this is a taboo! Because even if a specialist gets a good one, he can leave, he can get sick, he can just move on to another project.
SEO is such a thing that requires constant attention. Some results can be seen only after 4-8 months, as they say now. For a full-fledged SEO you need a year or two. Therefore, firms and many freelancers use this, they say that the result will be only after 8 months, respectively, pay us these 8 months, and you will not know whether the result will be or not.
The best SEO is to find your person. It is justified, and it turns out not so expensive. Light is already a big project, you just can’t jump up there, just like in 2008.
SEO should be controlled. At the stage of a startup, a plan is drawn up, and the manager who oversees all departments should understand SEO. According to the plan, he should ask every week what results have been achieved. It is necessary to monitor the person so that he does not do other work - very often, when SEO is led by companies, they have a lot of free time left. In a month it will be clear if a person does nothing. Everything is bad: Yandex and Google are constantly changing their algorithms, and the whole world is against it. We must immediately dismiss such a person.
In this industry, large players manage to save several satellites (affiliates), which make it possible to cover up to 70% of traffic for some search queries. Most of the sites in question operate on a single CMS.
Well-tuned contextual RK, it will still tend to zero or a small profit, very small. The main part, of course, brings SEO. Also, e-mail newsletters and Yandex.Market work well.
For ease of calculation, let's agree that one customer makes one single order. In a number of cases known to us, on average, the combination of advertising sources is 1/4 on the Market, 1/4 - Direct, and 2/4 SEO.
The average cost of SEO for the year is 90 thousand rubles. Suppose 1000 people with SEO and 1000 with Direct in general give about 15 orders per day. At the same time, Yandex.Direct gives more conversion traffic.
Potential clients
- Individuals who buy light to the apartment or to the country;
- Legal entities for the office;
- Designers (here you need to understand that it is necessary to look for interior designers, but it’s harder with them, because they usually buy in stores, it’s easier and less of a headache).
Average check, margin and cost of goods
All calculations are in rubles at 2014 prices. The margin is 30-60%, minus logistics, accounting and marketing. The average price of a check is 10 thousand rubles, this includes the lamp itself, including related consumables (energy-saving light bulbs, ceiling lamps) and delivery. Orders may be 100-200 thousand rubles. So maybe, for example, if you need lamps, poles, lights to illuminate the entire perimeter. In this case, the volume of the order will be the whole car, plus the light on 30-40 thousand. The order may be on several chandeliers, but expensive.
Seasonal business model
Light is a seasonal commodity. In autumn there is a peak, from September to the end of December, there is an active sales season. There are many wholesale and retail deals. Even with a small advertising budget, you can get a good profit. From January to March there is a slight rise, then a time of stagnation. Thus, it turns out that in the fall a huge company is needed, which should ensure large volumes of sales. The team should have a sufficient number of logisticians, more precisely couriers, managers, an expanded marketing department, which will increase all kinds of advertising. It turns out that in one period of time we need a huge department, and at another stage we need a small department. I think many are faced with such problems. This situation is solved by dismissal. The main thing - it does not inflate the state, if you inflated the state, get too big expenses. It is always necessary to keep the staff at a minimum, and only in the case when employees are overloaded by 200%, then hire additional people.
')
Seasonal personnel policy
To neutralize seasonal fluctuations, large companies usually increase their staff by the end of the summer, and reduce it in the spring. As a rule, this applies to the departments of marketing and logistics. It is necessary to draw up an employment contract at the stage of recruitment in order to reduce the number of employees by the time of a decline in demand. When applying for a job, it is better to immediately agree on piecework wages, and on urgent labor relations.
Company structure for a startup
With a turnover of 2 million or 6 orders a day, a team of 4 people is required:
- The head, who controls all, is looking for reliable suppliers, negotiates discounts, monitors SEO and container manager;
- The content worker who places the new product, works with the base, finds errors, etc., updates the balances and prices. Balances change every day, prices also change every day due to the dollar rate;
- Well-savvy manager who will answer calls, control the purchase of products and logistics;
- Logistics department, 4 drivers are required here, but third-party organization can also be used.
From the outside it may seem simple, but maybe the situation is that one driver is sick, the other is missing with money, the third is returning the marriage, etc. It happens that there are a lot of cases, my head is spinning, but it is quite possible to cope.
Medium company structure
Major players have up to 120 orders per day:
- CEO. Agrees with suppliers about discounts, is responsible for sales and financial performance, if there is no financial director. All other key employees are subordinate to him;
- Marketer. Supervises website developers, contextual and display advertising, SEO-company or full-time employee, copywriters, content managers, etc .;
- Accountant. Responsible for the absence of tax claims;
- Head of Logistics Department. Prepares a plan for shipment of goods from suppliers and delivery to customers;
- Client manager. Accepts orders from customers and informs customers about the delivery time of orders, and also works with reclamations.
Questions that are usually asked at startup
- How to approach the site development process?
- Every day there are new players, although they are small, but nevertheless, they compete with each other. How do we make an online store that will help compete with experienced companies and newly formed ones?
- We came to the market, everything is there for work, but it is necessary to choose a specialization, how to do it - from a technical or marketing point of view?
Suppliers and cross docking
Cross-docking (eng. Cross - directly, cross, eng. Dock - dock, loading platform, docking) - the process of receiving and shipment of goods and cargo through the warehouse directly, without placing in the zone of long-term storage. Cross-docking is a set of logistic operations within the supply chain, due to which shipment from the warehouse and delivery of goods as accurately as possible are coordinated in time. As a result, products are delivered in the shortest possible time.
There are several main suppliers from whom the goods are usually purchased. They unload the balances, and the prices, once in one or several days, we put them on our website. As soon as an order is formed with us, we reserve the goods from these suppliers, and ship them, or they ship them directly, to the final consumer. The scheme bought-sold, that is, it is not necessary to immediately have a lot of money in order to start selling lamps. In the case when we first buy the goods from the supplier ourselves, we arrive and pay for the goods we want to buy. Suppliers may have a minimum balance on their account, say 30 thousand, and some 100 thousand, and money is already written off from this balance. But, the majority of suppliers work in the usual way, that is, he arrived, gave his order and paid.
Most active suppliers we can list
- Sonex Sonex-light
- "Rosstyle" Rosstyle
- Citilux Citilux
- "Mantra" Mantra-opt - designer light
- And about 8 wholesalers
Range
All lamps are Chinese, even those which indicate that they are Italian. In another case, the lamps cost cosmic money. It should be understood that China is different. There are firms that monitor production, they control every step of Chinese manufacturers. And there are those who work according to the "arrived-bought-left" scheme. This product is sold very cheap.
Crystal products, though it is not the most popular, but sometimes it makes a profit.
LED and technical lighting.
Lamps for the cottage, usually at the country order expensive models.
There are cheap lamps and expensive lamps.
Logistics
You can use logistics companies, but they can make mistakes, for example, do not check the goods with the supplier, thus, it turns out that we pay for the repeated delivery to the customer and returning the goods to the supplier.
The logistics department, it is quite small, that is, the main thing is to recruit responsible drivers who will not be lost, because they are enough, they carry big money.
And you can also use foot couriers, especially they will be very helpful during rush hour. By car, you can deliver several orders, and in your hands you can take only 2 boxes, i.e. 1 order.
By car, a person receives 500 rubles, and a courier on foot receives about 250 rubles. A walking courier costs less, but the number of people who need to be controlled increases.
It is better to throw money at the supplier’s balance, of course, the driver comes to everyone, loads this money into the account. Inevitably, it turns out that the client must give the money to your driver, and here we must count, for the first time, at least, so that the amounts they have are not so large.
An intermediate warehouse is necessarily needed, that is, one point somewhere is needed, through which all goods will pass: today you collect, and tomorrow you deliver. It is very difficult to ship everything in one day, so that the driver takes the goods from one end of Moscow, and then takes them to the other, that is, it is easiest to collect all orders from suppliers, to drive them to the warehouse, and the next day to group and dilute them along the optimal route.
Under the minimum stock of a fairly small office. At first, there will not be so many orders, everyone starts with 3-5 orders per day.
More than 10 orders a day, other technologies will already be required, and the warehouse is good, then you need a person who will take the goods, you must make the drivers check for a marriage, because very often they don’t look, and when they bring the end customer, he clini, refuses.
It turns out that you pay for the trip, and for the fence, and again for the second delivery, that is, the easiest to check. While a small number of orders, it is easiest to check the driver, and when there will already be a lot of them, it is better to check in the warehouse so that the driver has time to dissolve all.
The schemes are all very similar, brought-sold, brought-sold, however, there is another scheme. There are suppliers who first try to buy products, and then sell them, but this is very monetary. Buy a container, bring and sell. Much cheaper, it turns out, at cost, but you need good capital, you need to understand that this product may not be bought, it may not like it. In general, all the major suppliers copy each other goods. That is, they order a top model of competitors directly at the factories, there is enough pictures and a minimum description.
List of some logistics companies that deliver in Moscow and Moscow Region
- City express
- Picpoint
- Lees Courier
- DeliveryHouse
- Major express
- TopDelivery
- DIMEX
- Pegasus Express
- PROF-POST
In the regions there is a prepayment, usually 100%, this is normal.
In Moscow, the payment in fact, that is, arrived, looked. Moscow buyers need everything at once.
If you automate payment from the regions, the site should be able to calculate the cost of delivery, to form invoices, to accept payment by plastic cards.
List of logistics companies that deliver to the regions
- Dhl
- DPD
- EMS Russian Post
- PonyExpress
- Auto Trading
- Baikal Service
- Gruzovozoff
- Business Line
- ZhelDorEkspeditsiya
- Peck
- Pickpoint
- SPSR
Niche selection
If the direction is technical lighting, consumer lighting (chandeliers for residential use, for apartments, residential buildings, for example), industrial equipment (for example, for lighting stadiums, car services, etc.), how will such sites differ from a technical point of view, and which technical points we could designate here?
In order to increase the average check, it is imperative to offer a related product, for this you need to offer peripherals.
Product Filter and Usability
Also technically difficult is the big filter. It has a lot of parameters, and the columns are small, so the site should be quite productive. The filter can have from 10 to 20 parameters. It is better to take a separate dedicated server for this load.
There are two standard structures: the menu of the catalog on the left (1st screenshot), the menu of the catalog above (2nd screenshot).
Above it is more convenient, because the site is much more compact.
With the menu on the left, the filters have to be placed somewhere, and therefore it is best to display and make 4 positions of the adaptive site (3rd screenshot) in order to be convenient to use on all devices.
Also, the structure of the site depends on the frequency of use of the filter by visitors. Usually the filter is claimed, therefore, hiding it on the left under the catalog is not the most correct solution in terms of usability. Placing it on the top is also not very correct, because it is large in itself, and on the left we have navigation in the catalog, and the showcase will not be visible. Therefore, the best placement is on the right, or make a horizontal menu, and then position it on the left, or on the right, as convenient.
Catalog menu on the left
Catalog menu on top
Adaptive design
Automation and 1C
The most important thing in an online store is automation. That is, balances and prices should be updated automatically.
In principle, it is difficult to come up with something new in technical terms, except for some highly specialized services. The most difficult thing is to form the base of goods. For example, we have three suppliers. We work with each of them, and we get information from them, we need to bring the received data (files) to a single view. You can write an intermediate program or a macro that will work until the provider changes the file format.
You need to understand that 1C turns out very expensive for a startup. Sometimes integration with 1C is done, because there is a large nomenclature in the database, or you can integrate and update files via CSV.
At first, you do not need to strive for 1C - this is a separate specialist. The average hour of 1Snik is 2 thousand rubles. In developing the site the average rate is 900 rubles per hour. Therefore, costs increase 2 times. 1C-nicknames are some kind of gurus who either cannot do anything at all, or they are so meticulous that it’s difficult to communicate with them
In fact, they are all very nice and cute guys, but just 2 times the costs increase if you enter 1C. And the web has already written a lot of things, and there are ready-made tools for pouring goods, for updating residuals, and the like.
Primary filling of the trading catalog with content
If the suppliers do not give pictures, then it is difficult to find photos, and it is very expensive to take photos themselves, especially since the stock may not have the desired position to be photographed.
As an identifier, the best is the brand and article. It turns out that we have a certain unique field in which we relate what we have on the site and what the supplier has. When we spill the remnants, we bring all the articles of goods on the site to one type.
The output will be matrices containing the nomenclature, number, links to pictures. Not all suppliers provide leftovers, some indicate only the goods that are. Here the quantity is important only when there is an own warehouse. Accordingly, you can make what we have in the remnants, but which is not on the site.
There are suppliers who make uncomfortable moments for further work in Excel, for example, the article starts from scratch, or indicate a hundred different colors. This all leads to confusion and errors. We have to make matching files in order to somehow uniquely identify this article, in general, this is inconvenient. Therefore it is necessary to choose good suppliers.
Updating the product catalog is easier than doing the initial content. Usually a parser is written on one of the two sites of industry leaders. For a start, it’s better to parse these two sites, including photos, all textual and tabular content, place it all onto your site, and then launch your content providers, who will check the remnants of what is and has already been done, and load the goods.
Be sure to need a content manager who will monitor new items, photos and current prices.
You should not develop a site on your own
The presence of a project manager in the development team is necessary, because the designer, layout designer, programmer will not agree with each other. What does 4 different people mean? That is, if we calculate at least 40 thousand wages, it is 160 thousand per month.
Minimum site will be created 3 months. That is, it turns out that 160 is multiplied by 3 and we get 480 thousand. Thus, you will give this amount for the development of a regular online store that will not be specialized under the light. You will not separately search for a designer and a project manager with specialized expertise.
In turn, there are studios that have already done a bunch of lighting projects. It is better to watch those who have successfully implemented projects in the portfolio.
SEO competition
Due to what, one store can catch up with another? Very important is the age of the domain. SEO is affected by trading matrices, the more brands the better. The average size of the catalog for large players is 20 thousand SKU.
The more commodity cards, the more labor content manager. It is very difficult to maintain, because you need to fill in all the new items on time, prices, characteristics, for example, styles - this is a characteristic floating, for someone a chandelier will be one style, for someone else. So, in order to score one card, the content manager takes a lot of time, and if we add some additional characteristics, it will complicate the work. To maintain the base, you need a lot of people to say the same thing in different words.
Choosing an SEO company
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find good SEO in the market now.
No one, as always, is responsible for anything. Any contract is fraught with something. In any contract you pay money and you will be wrong. Do not believe anyone. With the choice of seo companies must be very careful.
If a large company has advanced projects, it’s not a fact that it will also be possible to pump a young project. Search engines have a lot of filters on young projects. Not the fact that the specialist who promoted a cool website will promote your project. For your project can put a student who does nothing and always argues.
Alternatively, work with an SEO company for the result. But it is very necessary to carefully select the semantic core. They have very vague plans, a lot of excuses. You think “a, everything, hired, everything, gave these there, millions and everything will be cool”, but it turns out wrong, it must be controlled much more. And it is very difficult to get information from them, because you called, and one on vacation, the other got sick, they start throwing everything in, respond with common phrases. Several people are responsible for your project, and in the case of their own SEO, he sits right in front of you.
If we watch freelancing, then everything is still worse, less predictable. A lot of bloggers, a lot of smart people who only know how to write articles.
In no case can not take freelancers, this is a taboo! Because even if a specialist gets a good one, he can leave, he can get sick, he can just move on to another project.
SEO is such a thing that requires constant attention. Some results can be seen only after 4-8 months, as they say now. For a full-fledged SEO you need a year or two. Therefore, firms and many freelancers use this, they say that the result will be only after 8 months, respectively, pay us these 8 months, and you will not know whether the result will be or not.
Full-time SEO
The best SEO is to find your person. It is justified, and it turns out not so expensive. Light is already a big project, you just can’t jump up there, just like in 2008.
SEO should be controlled. At the stage of a startup, a plan is drawn up, and the manager who oversees all departments should understand SEO. According to the plan, he should ask every week what results have been achieved. It is necessary to monitor the person so that he does not do other work - very often, when SEO is led by companies, they have a lot of free time left. In a month it will be clear if a person does nothing. Everything is bad: Yandex and Google are constantly changing their algorithms, and the whole world is against it. We must immediately dismiss such a person.
Conversion context, SEO, J.Market
In this industry, large players manage to save several satellites (affiliates), which make it possible to cover up to 70% of traffic for some search queries. Most of the sites in question operate on a single CMS.
Well-tuned contextual RK, it will still tend to zero or a small profit, very small. The main part, of course, brings SEO. Also, e-mail newsletters and Yandex.Market work well.
For ease of calculation, let's agree that one customer makes one single order. In a number of cases known to us, on average, the combination of advertising sources is 1/4 on the Market, 1/4 - Direct, and 2/4 SEO.
The average cost of SEO for the year is 90 thousand rubles. Suppose 1000 people with SEO and 1000 with Direct in general give about 15 orders per day. At the same time, Yandex.Direct gives more conversion traffic.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/288992/
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