Online Shop Decisions

saverstar

Hi all,

I was hoping for some advice, i'm planning to start an online business in the near future selling goods online.

I have been looking around at websites that let you create your own online shop but I really wanted some opinions on whether this is a good idea or if it's best to make the investment straight away into a properly designed online shop by a web designer.

I'm currently stuck between whether to go all out and expect to pay a few £k for a properly designed site that looks professional and gets the right amount of business or if I should pay less money and make a less professional site until the business takes off which would proberly not generate as much business due to not as good search engine optimisation etc.

Your views would be very much appreciated as I feel a bit stuck with this at the moment.

Thank you

InsideInsurance

Having previous done web design I am clearly not from a 100% unbiased opinion.

Ultimately, if you dont have enough faith in your business to spend money why do you think your customers should?

The issue with "test" websites is that if the results are not as good as you expect you wont know if it is because the business is a bad idea or if it is a bad implementation of a good idea.

Depending on the complexity of the site it may be possible to build the core functionality initially and only build out the secondary functions at a later date to mitigate your initial outlay. The reality for a webstore however is that your designer will use an off the shelf solution like Magento and so unless you are also wanting blogs or forums etc it is pretty much a one click install anyway.

saverstar

Thanks for your comment, it's not that I don't have faith in the business idea it's just that online selling is always such a competative market that I believe quite a high proportion of failure can be due to overspends initially which could possibly be hard to recover due to barriers within the market itself.

I wouldn't need secondary functionality such as forum's etc so i'm guessing this would reduce the price and would possibly give me the best advantage as far as gaining market sales.

I want a site that looks professional and I also want it to be somewhere that I would want to spend my money, and I guess this is why my inital question comes from because i'm not sure on the quality of site I would get by using a package to build my own.

If anyone has any experience of using such sites I would be really greatful if you could let me know your thoughts.

InsideInsurance

Online selling certainly is a very competitive market but that is why business plans are so important so you do properly estimate marketing costs etc.

On the flip side, I would say most fail not because they spent too much on their site but simply because they didnt have a plan. I've seen hundreds of sites set up for under £50 with either minimal stock or just drop shipping. They've then come complaining that they're getting no traffic, no sales etc but when you ask them what their marketing budget was, how that was split between long tail, short tail and brand their response was "I submitted it to google".

If you do want to look at the DIY option then I have known a few who've used EKM Powershop and many were pleased with the results plus they have lots of big clients named. With prices starting at £240 a year they arent the cheapest option though.

paulwf

Have you used Ebay and similar yet OP? While maybe not the best long term solution it is a brilliant way to test the market. Although their fees as a percentage may seem high there is next to no initial outlay and they are providing you with a familiar website design and a heck of a lot of traffic. It might be worth using Ebay for a trial for a couple of months before splashing a few thousand on your own site.

patman99

Depending how savvy you are, it is actually feasible to build your own site using Drupal/Ubercart. It is free and massively-scalable. However, it is also very complex to get set up just right.
The trick is to make it look nothing like what people expect when visiting a Drupal-powered site.

Ebay/eBid can be used to drive traffic to your own site by including links within your listings and by promoting your site via flyers included in every item you sell.

khublaikhan

I would advise you to pay someone - but since this is a global business a few £££ in the US, for example, would be a few more $$$ - which should give you more options on design. There are reputable sites in the US, China and India (to name but few) who will give you a much better site than what your pounds would get in the UK.

Drupal/Ubercart/Joomla are good to get you going quickly but you will have a theme on the site that is possibly being used by possibly hundreds of other sites.

A middle of the road option is to install and set up a Drupal/Ubercart/Joomla site yourself and then get someone to design a theme for it.

Horses for courses - goodluck!!

saverstar

Thanks all for your responses, it has definitley given me things to think about.

I have had a look at EKM Powershop and I was impressed with their site and the templates they were showing. I think that I might be best to pay someone to do it as I am quickly learning that SEO will be a major part in getting traffic to my site and I don't know if this is something I could do successfully and I wouldn't want to create a site that just doesn't work and then have to try and get my errors corrected.

Anyone have any recommendations on where to begin on the SEO route or if this is something that EKM can do for you ??

Thanks

InsideInsurance

SEO (and the wider SEM) is made up of multiple parts.

For SEO part of it is what is done on the site but a larger part is what is done off the site (namely inbound links). Someone needs to identify your long and short tail keywords and these need to be liberally inserted into your site.

A developer will typically take the words you give them and insert them for you in the behind the scenes tags etc but leave you to ensure your visitor visible text is rich in them too.

What I know of EKM, their code is clean and they allow you to do the behind the scenes element yourself without expert knowledge.

If you decide to use an SEO/SEM service then make sure the people know what they are talking about. Even more than web design are the number of people claiming to be experts but dont know their white from black hat techniques. Also, just because someone is a great designer it doesnt mean they are great at SEO/SEM.

Back in my day we would deal with onsite aspects for both but wouldnt offer Keyword services nor offsite elements.

saverstar

Thanks InsideInsurance for all your posts, i'm finding them really helpful.

I was just coming back to add to my post that SEO and web design don't necessarily go together.

So am I right in thinking that I could build my own site using for example EKM and then either attempt the SEO myself or pay someone who would know what they are doing to do this for me.

Sorry for all the questions but this really is not my field of expertise, i'm an accountant by trade !!:eek:

InsideInsurance

No problem, I am a project manager by trade so fairly good at lots of things but an expert at fairly little. Needless to say over the last 10 years lots of companies have increasingly focused on websites and evolving them as understanding of customer behaviour improves - results in lots of projects and so work for me.

Yes you could launch the site and then go back and do the SEO, it requires rework but if you are doing the initial work yourself then it is time rather than hard cash that is lost.

The only caveat to it is the site directory structure and the core template of the pages themselves. These ideally should be right from day one as it is potentially a LOT of rework to go back and fix these. That said, if you are using a good engine with a good template then these should be handled for you.

The other point to remember is that SEO is a black art rather than an exact science. No one outside of Google knows exactly how its ranking system works. Always be a little cautious of what some say is needed as some will be giving an honest opinion but are misguided and others will be dishonest and just creating work to generate income.