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Athena House
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Telford
Shropshire
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Online Shops

You have decided to set up shop online. You have your payment method sorted out and are confident you can make a go of it. Which shopping system or cart should you choose? Well, we're not going to recommend one solution over another, we'll leave the decision up to you. What we can do, is arm you with the questions to ask your supplier or developer to decide which solution is best for your particular requirements.

 Will it be bespoke or off the shelf?
There is no shame in not having your shopping system built just for you. There are many benefits in using tried and tested software. It will be robust, secure (probably!) and well polished. If there are many people using it, then the checkout process will be well honed and there will be no surprises for your customers. It is likely to be cheaper, although you will not own any of the code (despite what the web company may tell you!). Just like you don't actually own Microsoft Office, you just have a licence to use it.

http://www.engineworks.co.uk
 If your product is a little more specialised, or you have some customisation availabale for your products, it may be that bespoke is the only way to go. Some carts will allow a fair bit of customisation, some will be very rigid in what you can actually make it look like. For example, www.EngineWorks.co.uk is built using our version of a popular shopping system. We have tweaked it to make it more search engine friendly and made one or two other modifications. Most shops built with the most popular shopping cart, Actinic, can be spotted a mile off, and tend to look very 'samey'. One of the benefits of Actinic is that most people who have bought on the internet will have used this at some stage.
Bespoke System
An example of a bespoke shopping system was built by us in July 2003 to allow visitors to order buffets online. www.ErcallCatering.co.uk had some very unique requirements, including selecting 8 items from a list of 16 possible menu choices. This would not have been feasible in any shopping cart we have seen.
Can you update it yourself?
Make sure you are able to update prices, product pictures and descriptions yourself. Having a great looking bespoke built shopping system that fits your product or service can become a millstone if you are chained to you web developer for updates. Not only will this be expensive, but you will be frustrated waiting for the changes to take place.

Make sure also that you get some proper one-to-one coaching and also some documentation to go with it. Its fine to claim 'Easy to Use', but just how easy is it? Try to get a demo or even a trial before committing.

Whats the Total Cost of Ownership?
You can buy an off the shelf shopping cart for about £400.00. Add in annual support, hosting, other bits and pieces and you can soon notch up the best part of £1000.00. You probably don't value your time as you should, so lets say you spend about a week solid getting your shop up and running.

A week solid, is about 3 months in real elapsed time, because there are loads of other things to do in your business isn't there? You'll get a pretty standard looking shop with template based graphics and some teething troubles that you'll never sort out because you felt that calling an 0906 number for support seems extravagant. How much would you have paid to get your shop up and trading in 3 weeks?

Online Shop Budget
According to Actinic, businesses that spend less than £1000 on their online store are less likely to be profitable than those spending more than £1000. We have found that those blowing all their budget on the shop and having nothing left for marketing are rarely successful. Don't forget that you can't just build a shop and wait. You may be waiting for a long time.

Other questions you should ask...

  • What statistics can I view?
  • Are there any marketing add-ons?
  • Is there an Order Tracking facility?
  • Is it search engine friendly?
  • Will it work with my payment provider?

Would you like to talk to us about your project? We don't charge for advice, and if we get some business out of it - great. If we don't, we wish you well and hope you got some benefit out of our discussion.

If after reading these articles you would like to let us know what you thought of them, we'll be happy to hear from you.

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18/05/2008 14:03:51 | Shropshire Business Web Directory | Free Business Tips | SEO Workshops