Online store from scratch. Part 1: Getting Started
First of all, this article is intended for those who are planning or are only considering the option of starting their own business.
Looking back over 15 years experience in IT with business processes, I decided to write this manual. This will be a series of articles, as the material goes voluminous.
The article aims to warn beginner businessmen and, perhaps, will be useful to those who have long been working in the field of Internet commerce, since the proposed model is easily scaled with minor changes and amendments to the volume of trade.
')
Open to constructive criticism and will be happy to assist if you need it.
The article contains the names of some products and companies, I do not give links as it can be perceived as an advertisement. All products that I specify are work experience and are not advertising.
I would be glad if you share your work with these or other services.
I will not touch on what product you should sell or what services are worth providing. This choice is yours. We take the axiom that the product is already selected and the profit (initial) is calculated.
Choosing a CMS for an online store
I will give some tips on choosing the engine for the store. I personally like PrestaShop, but it is difficult for beginners, and it has a big disadvantage, there is no normal bundle with 1C for, I stress, acceptable money.
Working solutions are very expensive for starting a business. Therefore, be sure to choose a CMS for your store with a working bundle with 1C or other accounting systems. Before launching, be sure to test the upload and download of data.
The most common ERP we have 1C, so I am building this article to work with it, but, in principle, everything is relevant for other systems.
In addition to the functionality when choosing a CMS, pay attention to the availability of responsive design for mobile platforms.
Let's start with the necessary and approximate calculation of the purchase \ ownership
CMS: price depends on your choice.
Hosting: even for the initial level it’s better to use VDS, that is, your server, in one of the parts I’ll tell you step by step how to set up, here or on your blog (there are a lot of articles on the network with how to set up your server and I’m not sure what Habré needs another one, but on his blog will not be superfluous).
On the server, we will have a web server and an IP PBX based on Asterisk (for security, it is better to divide it into two servers), since we cannot do without telephony and our micro call center. We will register the customer’s call, make a greeting and set up an IVR (voice menu).
The cost of VDS for initial needs varies from 1000 to 1500 rubles per month.
Telephony: the telephone number of your city can be cheaply purchased at zadarma; the price varies from 120r to 1000r a month depending on the region, it is also worthwhile to have a Moscow number, as it is more convenient for buyers from other cities to call to Moscow. We will proceed from 240r per month for two numbers.
We need a number for incoming calls, for outgoing, at the initial level, the cheapest way to use a trunk from Megaphone. Consider that the overwhelming majority of buyers specify their mobile number when buying, we must proceed from this when choosing an operator for outgoing communication. At the Megaphone on the Multiphone it is 1.5p minute to any number of the country. For more details, look at the profile site of the Multifone. By the way, on Megaphone, you can also have a city number, the cost is 150 rubles. month. The rest of the operators, unfortunately, do not provide such an opportunity for an entry level, if I'm wrong, correct it in the comments.
To work with it, you need to buy a sim card with any tariff (preferably without a subscription fee), activate and configure the Multifon service, and then connect the trunk to your PBX. More technical side, we consider below.
Alert customers
SMS: Any self-respecting store keeps its customers informed about the order stages via e-mal, SMS and telephone.
We will have an SMS notification from the CMS store, when ordering, and also from 1C with further changes to the order (order is issued, payment received, transferred to the transport company (sent), arrived at the place of delivery, etc.) order status, and We will also look at the alert scripts in detail.
Email: the easiest way to use one of the free mail providers: Yandex or Google. You should bind your domain to one of them and create the required number of mailboxes. It's free. Detailed instructions are on their sites.
Calculate Shipping Cost
One of the difficulties in online trading, it is correct to calculate the full cost of delivery based on the customer's order, the price includes: insurance for the purchased goods; shipping cost from the transport company itself or, more often, Russian Post (calculated on the basis of the weight and size of the parcel, as well as the delivery address); the cost of packaging materials (cardboard, bubble film and others); the cost of the packaging work (man-hours spent on packaging); delivery of parcels to the terminal of the transport company or post office.
We impose all this cost on the buyer directly, that is, he sees the cost of delivery when ordering or indirectly lays in the price of the goods in full (free shipping) or in part.
When choosing, we look at the availability of a module for our CMS and on the tariff.
edost
Yandex.Delivery
Checkout
Delivia
Apiship
ERP or accounting system
I assume that we use 1C, we are suitable "Trade Management". The cost is 17,400 rubles, but to buy it or take it somewhere for free, it is on your conscience), I am personally for the purchase, so it is quieter. There is another option more interesting: "Trade and customer relationship management (CRM). 2.0 "from Rarus, price: 23,600 rubles. From the pros: integration with telephony and an easy way to build business processes, but you personally need it at the initial stage or not, decide for yourself.
Work with Russian Post
Most of the orders are sent through this company, and it is better to conclude an agreement and connect the "Party mail", this is a separate topic and you will have to take grief when working with this company. I will separately describe, step by step, my work experience and try to warn against mistakes and possible complications.
Online chat
For online communication with customers, it is convenient to use chat, there are now a lot of available services, I like jivosite and it is not necessary to pay for it. Free features are enough.
Payment systems
There are a lot of them now, I tried almost everything, while I stopped at moneta
In any case, it is better to work with several aggregators, as there are failures, and in this case you need to be able to quickly switch to backup. Yes, and distribute different payments (one less commission for payment through the card, the other through Webmoney, etc.) no one forbids. And this is despite the fact that everyone will lure you with a smaller percentage, provided that you are solely present on your site. Resilience in this case is more expensive.
If you plan to send goods abroad (and why not), it is better to connect PayPal.
And I almost forgot ...
Legal status
At the initial stage, of course, the SP and the STS as taxation. It is also possible to start an LLC, but, here it is more difficult with accounting and registration. Although if you start a business with a colleague, for a normal profit sharing it is better to register an LLC. So that there were no problems later.
Without legal registration, your way to online payment systems (I mean normal ones) and the impossibility of entering into an agreement with companies are closed to you. And of course, no one has repealed the violation of the law “On Underground Commerce”.
All this toolkit is enough for us to start. I want to warn against connecting any services, such as a chime for five seconds, spying on users and getting them in social networks, hard spam with a call to return and place an order, etc.
Most often it is annoying and does not work, but it costs a lot. It is better not to scatter your resources and invest them in a quality launch, but whether you need these “mega services” or not, you decide later in the process of studying them thoughtfully and on the basis of your work experience.
Next, we will deal with the construction of a business model and a detailed calculation of value added, that is, our costs. After a detailed description of the process, we proceed to the implementation of the project. Consider the IT component (even if you do not intend to administer your VDS, you must understand how it looks and how much the admin should pay). Commerce, marketing, advertising, maintenance of goods and materials (accounting of goods and other values), cash discipline (working with financial instruments), working with transport companies (including self-pickup, courier delivery in your city), etc.
To be continued….
UD
Updated the article, thanks to all for the comments and criticism.
Looking back over 15 years experience in IT with business processes, I decided to write this manual. This will be a series of articles, as the material goes voluminous.
The article aims to warn beginner businessmen and, perhaps, will be useful to those who have long been working in the field of Internet commerce, since the proposed model is easily scaled with minor changes and amendments to the volume of trade.
')
Open to constructive criticism and will be happy to assist if you need it.
The article contains the names of some products and companies, I do not give links as it can be perceived as an advertisement. All products that I specify are work experience and are not advertising.
I would be glad if you share your work with these or other services.
I will not touch on what product you should sell or what services are worth providing. This choice is yours. We take the axiom that the product is already selected and the profit (initial) is calculated.
Choosing a CMS for an online store
I will give some tips on choosing the engine for the store. I personally like PrestaShop, but it is difficult for beginners, and it has a big disadvantage, there is no normal bundle with 1C for, I stress, acceptable money.
There is a fraudulent module 1c-prestashop (they have several sites), beware of these guys, read the reviews.
Working solutions are very expensive for starting a business. Therefore, be sure to choose a CMS for your store with a working bundle with 1C or other accounting systems. Before launching, be sure to test the upload and download of data.
The most common ERP we have 1C, so I am building this article to work with it, but, in principle, everything is relevant for other systems.
In addition to the functionality when choosing a CMS, pay attention to the availability of responsive design for mobile platforms.
Let's start with the necessary and approximate calculation of the purchase \ ownership
CMS: price depends on your choice.
Hosting: even for the initial level it’s better to use VDS, that is, your server, in one of the parts I’ll tell you step by step how to set up, here or on your blog (there are a lot of articles on the network with how to set up your server and I’m not sure what Habré needs another one, but on his blog will not be superfluous).
On the server, we will have a web server and an IP PBX based on Asterisk (for security, it is better to divide it into two servers), since we cannot do without telephony and our micro call center. We will register the customer’s call, make a greeting and set up an IVR (voice menu).
The cost of VDS for initial needs varies from 1000 to 1500 rubles per month.
Telephony: the telephone number of your city can be cheaply purchased at zadarma; the price varies from 120r to 1000r a month depending on the region, it is also worthwhile to have a Moscow number, as it is more convenient for buyers from other cities to call to Moscow. We will proceed from 240r per month for two numbers.
We need a number for incoming calls, for outgoing, at the initial level, the cheapest way to use a trunk from Megaphone. Consider that the overwhelming majority of buyers specify their mobile number when buying, we must proceed from this when choosing an operator for outgoing communication. At the Megaphone on the Multiphone it is 1.5p minute to any number of the country. For more details, look at the profile site of the Multifone. By the way, on Megaphone, you can also have a city number, the cost is 150 rubles. month. The rest of the operators, unfortunately, do not provide such an opportunity for an entry level, if I'm wrong, correct it in the comments.
To work with it, you need to buy a sim card with any tariff (preferably without a subscription fee), activate and configure the Multifon service, and then connect the trunk to your PBX. More technical side, we consider below.
Alert customers
SMS: Any self-respecting store keeps its customers informed about the order stages via e-mal, SMS and telephone.
We will have an SMS notification from the CMS store, when ordering, and also from 1C with further changes to the order (order is issued, payment received, transferred to the transport company (sent), arrived at the place of delivery, etc.) order status, and We will also look at the alert scripts in detail.
Email: the easiest way to use one of the free mail providers: Yandex or Google. You should bind your domain to one of them and create the required number of mailboxes. It's free. Detailed instructions are on their sites.
Calculate Shipping Cost
One of the difficulties in online trading, it is correct to calculate the full cost of delivery based on the customer's order, the price includes: insurance for the purchased goods; shipping cost from the transport company itself or, more often, Russian Post (calculated on the basis of the weight and size of the parcel, as well as the delivery address); the cost of packaging materials (cardboard, bubble film and others); the cost of the packaging work (man-hours spent on packaging); delivery of parcels to the terminal of the transport company or post office.
We impose all this cost on the buyer directly, that is, he sees the cost of delivery when ordering or indirectly lays in the price of the goods in full (free shipping) or in part.
We must measure and weigh each item. Otherwise, you can not calculate the shipping cost.
When choosing, we look at the availability of a module for our CMS and on the tariff.
edost
Yandex.Delivery
Checkout
Delivia
Apiship
ERP or accounting system
I assume that we use 1C, we are suitable "Trade Management". The cost is 17,400 rubles, but to buy it or take it somewhere for free, it is on your conscience), I am personally for the purchase, so it is quieter. There is another option more interesting: "Trade and customer relationship management (CRM). 2.0 "from Rarus, price: 23,600 rubles. From the pros: integration with telephony and an easy way to build business processes, but you personally need it at the initial stage or not, decide for yourself.
Work with Russian Post
Most of the orders are sent through this company, and it is better to conclude an agreement and connect the "Party mail", this is a separate topic and you will have to take grief when working with this company. I will separately describe, step by step, my work experience and try to warn against mistakes and possible complications.
Online chat
For online communication with customers, it is convenient to use chat, there are now a lot of available services, I like jivosite and it is not necessary to pay for it. Free features are enough.
Payment systems
There are a lot of them now, I tried almost everything, while I stopped at moneta
In any case, it is better to work with several aggregators, as there are failures, and in this case you need to be able to quickly switch to backup. Yes, and distribute different payments (one less commission for payment through the card, the other through Webmoney, etc.) no one forbids. And this is despite the fact that everyone will lure you with a smaller percentage, provided that you are solely present on your site. Resilience in this case is more expensive.
If you plan to send goods abroad (and why not), it is better to connect PayPal.
And I almost forgot ...
Legal status
At the initial stage, of course, the SP and the STS as taxation. It is also possible to start an LLC, but, here it is more difficult with accounting and registration. Although if you start a business with a colleague, for a normal profit sharing it is better to register an LLC. So that there were no problems later.
Without legal registration, your way to online payment systems (I mean normal ones) and the impossibility of entering into an agreement with companies are closed to you. And of course, no one has repealed the violation of the law “On Underground Commerce”.
Decryption
Article 171 of the Criminal Code. Illegal business
All this toolkit is enough for us to start. I want to warn against connecting any services, such as a chime for five seconds, spying on users and getting them in social networks, hard spam with a call to return and place an order, etc.
Most often it is annoying and does not work, but it costs a lot. It is better not to scatter your resources and invest them in a quality launch, but whether you need these “mega services” or not, you decide later in the process of studying them thoughtfully and on the basis of your work experience.
Next, we will deal with the construction of a business model and a detailed calculation of value added, that is, our costs. After a detailed description of the process, we proceed to the implementation of the project. Consider the IT component (even if you do not intend to administer your VDS, you must understand how it looks and how much the admin should pay). Commerce, marketing, advertising, maintenance of goods and materials (accounting of goods and other values), cash discipline (working with financial instruments), working with transport companies (including self-pickup, courier delivery in your city), etc.
To be continued….
UD
Updated the article, thanks to all for the comments and criticism.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/299846/
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