Aiming too high ???

[Hedgehog Toys]

I am aiming to become on of the largest independent traditional toy stockists in the northwest, do you think i am aiming to high? I have already taken on board a range of around 900 products (which are taking forever to load on the site..lol..) and am aiming to stock others as i come across good manufacturers.
Do you think i should just stick with a few and build up or just go for it by stocking loads of products?

:roll: :roll:

[Cornish Steve]

There is nothing wrong with aiming high. Just be sure you have a strategy that will get you there. As one well-known book title reads, "hope is not a strategy".

[Sarah-Ink Promotions]

I think that if you put them all on you should make sure you categorise them well or people may get bored of trawling through them all to find what they are looking for. Personally I would put them all on as it makes you look like a big company, Nothing wrong with aiming high!

:)

[cqueen]

Yeah I do'nt think there is anything wrong with aiming high aslong as you think you know how to get there.

[DuaneJackson]

Better to aim high and fall short than to aim low and fall short.

Good point by Sarah above about classifying them.

Also, you might find it a lot quicker to enter them into a spreadsheet and have your developers import them into your site.

d

[Hedgehog Toys]

Another factor is should i just build it up as an online business or should i go for premises aswell....eventually :?

[WakingDragon]

It depends on your business model. The idea sounds good to me but I would be concerned about managing both stock levels and data.

Managing your stocks you must already have covered. But have you given thought as to how you will track your customers through the site and see how they are shopping? How effective is your tracking of user preferences and product purchasing habits? This kind of stuff will a) help you to improve your site over time and b) help you in future product selection.

I would advise selecting a few choice areas to start with and having a decent population of exciting products in each. Then you can really push your sales and marketing around that.

It also leaves you with hundreds more products so that you can get people to sign up for a newsletter and regularly tell them about a new product/line to keep communicating with them.

[Hedgehog Toys]

I have set up an excel spredsheet to keep track of products and suppliers for the time being until i can have a bespoke system made (not sure of the cost of that one) As for tracking buyers, the shopping cart gives the option of asking the buyer how they came to us. So far all buyers have filled this in so i am building up a picture of were the sales are coming from.

[WakingDragon]

The only other thing I would suggest at this early stage is that you check to see if you can get stats on the number of visits to each page.

We found that very useful for seeing where people were most attracted to to in the site. Compare that with which products sell the best and you get some very interesting results.

We had a beautiful product (CD player) that was very desireable but a little out of many clients' budgets. It got loads of hits but few sales, so we put up some links to some similar looking mini radios and some matching CD cases. The boost to sales of those two alternatives was pretty much instant. Actually sales dropped off for the CD player, but the overall effect was increased revs.

Most hosting companies provide page stats as a matter of course although they can be a little turgid to read through. We just periodically copied the stats across to a spreadsheet and made some guesses based upon the data. A bit hokey perhaps, but usually reliable enough.

EDITED TO SAY: Also very useful for checking how effective home page "featured products" are and that sort of thing.

[Cornish Steve]

I have set up an excel spredsheet to keep track of products and suppliers for the time being until i can have a bespoke system made (not sure of the cost of that one) As for tracking buyers, the shopping cart gives the option of asking the buyer how they came to us. So far all buyers have filled this in so i am building up a picture of were the sales are coming from.
Again, your decision should be driven by your strategy. Let me invent one for sake of argument.

You seek to be a "caring online store". In other words, you want to be an online store because of the low cost structure and high reach; however, you want your customers to feel safe and comfortable. One major concern of online shoppers is likely to be returns policy. How would you handle this given your strategy?

Well, you could open up stores yourself, but this would undermine your low cost structure. Alternatively, you could forge an agreement with an existing retailer with a strong local presence. With such an agreement in place, you could tell your customers to visit that retailer if they want to return a product. This policy is in line with your strategy, it's less expensive than purchasing bricks and mortar, and it reassures your customers.

I don't know whether this example is valid or not, but the point I'm trying to make is that your decision about becoming a "click and mortar" store must be aligned with your fundamental strategy. Without a strategy in place, you'll be making decisions in isolation and be relying on hope.

[UKRobin]

Aim to be the biggest in the Country, then when you are third biggest you have made it.