eCommerce Lingerie business

[Olivia K]

Hi again everyone! I am after advice from you guys again please.
I am wanting to set up a lingerie business (as stated in previous post) and I am wanting it to be an eCommerce business. I want a website to sell my products on.
I am wanting to know if to know if anyone can suggest what the best program/site would be to make this work and to sell on. I am thinking of modelling myself and as my bf is a very good photographer we have this covered. I just need a site to be able to put the products and photos on and then a means to sell them online.
I am totally new to eCommerce so any advice would be awesome. Thanks, Olivia xx

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Morning Olivia,

Congrats on taking the big step of starting your own business. You're in for an exciting ride!
I actually have a lot of experience with women's underwear (selling it, not wearing it!).

Your best bet would be a Shopify store because its super-easy to use and quick to set up. It also ticks all the right boxes with Google with regards to speed (because Google likes fast sites) and it also generally mobile-friendly.

My advice on the marketing and content front would be as follows:

- Before you start your store, make your unique selling point clear (why should people buy your products? what need are you fulfilling? - Just because it looks nice is not good enough!)
- Market to your customer's pain points (How will your underwear change their life or make it better?)
- Think about what your customers want (This is not your pet project. Knowing what makes your customers tick is vital).
- Collect email addresses at every opportunity (this is what will drive sales and grow your business)
- Do go all-guns-blazing on social (social media looks great but, in reality, doesn't convert into sales. Email is 40 times more effective).
- Make your website a cool place to hang out - You don't want just a shop, you want an experience. Why would someone come back to your site even when they don't want to buy? How can you keep them on their longer? (Video, lookbooks, blog, interviews, design info, etc)

On the products / sales side of things:

- Make sure your sizing is clear and concise (this will limit your returns)
- Write product descriptions around the benefits of the product, not just the features
- Make shipping charges clear on the product page
- Make shipping timescales clear on the product page
- Use live chat on the site (this helps people out with little questions)
- Use Yotpo customers reviews (social proof converts more sales)
- Photograph the real details of the product (details sell - even nice labels)
- Invest time in packaging (Make the out-of-the-box-experience something special - think Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually when he's adding all the nice touches).
- Give your site a personality, don't just be a shop. Shops are boring!
- Tell your story. Be a personable brand. People buy from people.

I hope that helps. I'm here, there and some other places if you need any more advice.

Cheers

Matt

 

[deepvyas]

Hi Olivia,
I would to share my opinion for choosing an eCommerce platform for your dream store.
Yes today Shopify has been into demand and mostly used by many of the upcoming business person, again it has limitation also firstly code is not shared with you incase you need to switch to other server you can't even specific requirement can't be matched due to limited access. The monthly subscription is at higher level

Whereas, If you want to look Opencart as a platform for your dream store it has versatility. You can migrate, design and budget too is affordable comparatively. In case you need to discuss further let me know in personal

Have a nice day !!!

 

[antropy]

I am wanting to know if to know if anyone can suggest what the best program/site would be to make this work and to sell on.

This is probably the most commonly asked question on these forums.

Try out the demo of OpenCart - you can see the shop front here:
http://opencart.antropy.co.uk/

And this is how you add / edit / remove products here:
http://opencart.antropy.co.uk/admin

OpenCart itself is free but you will need web hosting.

You can install themes for it to get it looking nice and you can buy extensions that do different things.

You can find out more at opencart.com

Alternatively, if you wanted to get something online initially very quickly to test the idea you could have a look at Shopify.

Disclaimers: I run an OpenCart web agency and I'm a shareholder in Shopify Inc.

 

[Nochexman]

I am wanting to set up a lingerie business (as stated in previous post)

Sorry, I missed your previous post - what are doing - are you designing, manufacturing, retailing or what?

 

[fisicx]

I am wanting to set up a lingerie business (as stated in previous post) and I am wanting it to be an eCommerce business.

How much money have you got? The website is the easy bit. What will cost you and arm and a leg each is the marketing. Probably thousands. You will be competing with lots of big brand who have huge budgets.

You may get lucky and find a following but the chances of making any money for the first couple of years is very slim.

 

[Olivia K]

Sorry, I missed your previous post - what are doing - are you designing, manufacturing, retailing or what?

Hi I will be retailing and I am currently looking for a lingerie company to make designs for me to sell. xx

 

[Olivia K]

How much money have you got? The website is the easy bit. What will cost you and arm and a leg each is the marketing. Probably thousands. You will be competing with lots of big brand who have huge budgets.

You may get lucky and find a following but the chances of making any money for the first couple of years is very slim.

Thanks for your honesty I need that! xx

 

[iwebsitez]

I agree, the website is the easy part. We would suggest a WordPress Woocommerce rather than Opencart. I guess its personal choice though. The SEO and marketing would be a long haul, but it is an investment so the ROI juice could be worth the squeeze.

 

[antropy]

We would suggest a WordPress Woocommerce rather than Opencart.

Why?

WordPress is a blogging platform and WooCommerce is a plugin for it.

OpenCart is an ecommerce platform that's been designed from the ground-up as an ecommerce platform.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Does Opencart and Woo have fast online chat support?

 

[antropy]

Does Opencart and Woo have fast online chat support?

You mean from the companies that produce them? Well they're free platforms, so no.

But there are plenty of partners for both platforms that could provide that if you take out a support agreement with them.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Right, well we have been doing this for a few years now and we are still not comfortable with no support. That's why we stick with shopify. We are regularly tempted away by web companies to Woo or Magento. But we'd end up paying for changes all the time. Or not getting changes done.

We are on shopify support still maybe 3 times a week. If they were not there, half the changes we want to make would not get done. When the going gets tough, the support staff go into our store and make the changes for us. Open source forum help is no way as quick or incisive as paid staff that have access to your store.

I have had a wordpress site and I could not use it. So I had a web guy do all my changes. That also makes me wary of Magento.

I really can't see how open source stuff is going to work for the OP unless she states she has built websites before. And because she is here asking a fundamental question, I suspect she has not. If she has not, Shopify, Big Commerce and Weebly are more likely to help her get going. I have used all 3. Shopify wins on support. It is the best of the 3 by a long way.

Surely most new companies do not want to be immediately bogged down with building their first site unsupported, particularly when they learn that ebay and amazon are going to generate much more revenue, ie your site is normally not your key channel.

 

[fisicx]

Use what works for you. Doesn't mean it will work for everyone.

A huge number of people are quite happy with woo:
https://blog.aheadworks.com/ecommerce-market-2017/
https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/e-commerce-platforms/
https://industryanalyses.com/ecommerce/ecommerce-platform-market-share/

 

[antropy]

It's very interesting for me to hear these concerns 1. as the MD of an OpenCart gold partner web agency and 2. as a Shopify shareholder because I think both platforms are great, so I'll add some thoughts below ...

Right, well we have been doing this for a few years now and we are still not comfortable with no support. That's why we stick with shopify.

Well it's not true to say "no support", you just have to pay for it in a different way. With Shopify you'll pay through the monthly fees and transaction charges. With OpenCart you'd have to find a freelancer or agency but no company could afford to supply fully free support as the time of good technical staff isn't free.

We are regularly tempted away by web companies to Woo or Magento. But we'd end up paying for changes all the time. Or not getting changes done.

Well don't go for Magento as changes are very hard to make and Magento developers are very expensive - it's not suitable for SMEs. OpenCart 3 has a template system so you can actually make changes through the admin area just like Shopify. We build Shopify sites too and developing a Shopify theme is similar in difficulty to building an OpenCart theme. However, it's true of course that you would have to pay if you wanted help with that.

We are on shopify support still maybe 3 times a week. If they were not there, half the changes we want to make would not get done. When the going gets tough, the support staff go into our store and make the changes for us. Open source forum help is no way as quick or incisive as paid staff that have access to your store.

Good to hear they're providing good support. You will find with Shopify though that only the theme can be modified. If you want to change how the system works, you'll find many things simply cannot be done with Shopify because the core code cannot be modified. For example if you wanted to add a field to the checkout (or modify it in any way) you can't (you can modify the checkout if you have Shopify Plus but that's a another matter).

I have had a wordpress site and I could not use it. So I had a web guy do all my changes. That also makes me wary of Magento.

I also find WordPress to be incredibly client-unfriendly, and Magento is an order of magnitude more difficult again so please don't let anyone talk you in to that!

I really can't see how open source stuff is going to work for the OP unless she states she has built websites before. And because she is here asking a fundamental question, I suspect she has not. If she has not, Shopify, Big Commerce and Weebly are more likely to help her get going. I have used all 3. Shopify wins on support. It is the best of the 3 by a long way.

Good to hear, I like to invest in winners And I would actually agree - to get started with your own online business Shopify is great. I would recommend it as a first step. When (and if) you get to the level where your sales comfortably cover the costs of customization and it would improve customer experience and increase your sales to modify how your store works in certain ways then open source is the best way forward.

Surely most new companies do not want to be immediately bogged down with building their first site unsupported, particularly when they learn that ebay and amazon are going to generate much more revenue, ie your site is normally not your key channel.

Again I would fully agree.

To sum it all up - testing the water with Shopify is great advice in my view and then moving to an open source solution if needed will allow you full control and flexibility over how your store works. We recommend OpenCart at that stage not because we're partners (we became partners long after we evaluated it as one of the best), but because it's the simplest, fastest and easiest to use of the open source PHP shopping cart platforms.

I'd be really interested to hear if there are any other criticisms you have of the open source self-hosted route as they will be things we can improve on, so far you've mentioned several things I understand your frustration with:

1. Lack of online chat support.
2. High cost of making changes.
3. Slow speed of making changes.
4. High initial cost of development.

Any others?

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Quite agree, fisicx. But that does not help the OP. She is / was looking for opinions. And there is mine.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Interestingly, on shopify now, trying to get SKU codes added to my listing.

 

[fisicx]

Interestingly, on shopify now, trying to get SKU codes added to my listing.

Easy peasy: https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization/products/features/show-sku-numbers

As an aside, It's even easier to do this on Woocommerce as SKUs are enabled by default.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Thanks, mate, the shopify staff are just doing that for me now. As soon as it is no longer drag and drop type stuff etc, I don't touch it.

 

[fisicx]

So you are paying for support just like people pay for support on woo or any other platform.

Many of my clients have now got the hang of woo and are quite happy to make the changes themselves. Their costs are now limited to paying for hosting.

As I said, if shopify works for you and the OP that's great. But everyone I know who moved away from shopify to either woo or a dedicated ecommerce platform have never looked back.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

Not paying any extra to shopify. It's part of my subscription of about $50 a month I think.

I am totally up for opensource but only when we can afford to employ someone. I have to choose the easiest option and go with that until it no longer works for us or is no longer cost-effective to pay the 1% on each transaction, ie it would be cheaper to employ someone.

I can't afford to spend time on it. I spend most of my time fixing listing problems on ebay and amazon, posting and packing, doing accounts etc etc..you know the drill methinks?

 

[Aileen B]

It has been a few years since I retailed lingerie through a stand alone ZenCart website (Just selling off stock on eBay for now) but hopefully I can contribute something.

Your budget definitely comes into play with regards to which shopping cart solution you choose. I plan to set up a OpenCart store in the next few years because it is free and extensions are cheap and fairly easy to install (but I have a Comp Sci degree so have some experience in fiddling about with such things).

I haven't used OpenCart or Shopify but what I gather from my experience with osCommerce and ZenCart installs is that you might want to employ a developer to make tweaks to Opencart to get it looking 100% the way you want if you haven't a scooby what to do (which is ok!).

Shopify , from what I gather, is much pricier in the long run but perhaps takes some of the difficulty in setting up your store with the trade-off being it's not so customisable.

With regards to the lingerie market, my experience is that it is much more competitive compared to a few years ago. My business focuses on reselling sexy lingerie from wholesalers and you will be making a brand of new products, so yes that's different but I think it still applies somewhat.

What type of lingerie will you be selling? You will need a lot of money to establish a new brand in any case. Getting people to visit your store on eBay is hard enough but achieving a good amount of traffic to a new eCommerce store selling a brand new brand is even more difficult.

Sorry if that sounds negative. I really wish you the best with your new venture. Best to go in with your eyes open.

 

[fisicx]

Not paying any extra to shopify. It's part of my subscription of about $50 a month I think.

That's $600 a year every year. Start adding modules and other features and the costs rise rapidly.

A one off $600 bill would get you a very nice ecommerce site that allows you full control over everything, not just what shopify wants you to have. And you can move to your own server in your own country and choose the developers you want to work with. Once the site is fully functional the support needed is minimal. With shopify you are still paying $600/year (except it's probably $948/year)

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

don't forget the 1% on every transaction!

 

[fisicx]

It's only free if you use shopify payments. Anything else (which many people prefer to use) will cost you more: https://www.shopify.co.uk/pricing. And if you use the Shopify Card reader for POS tranaction it's 1.5%.

There are loads of payment providers and you can get some excellent deals at a lot less than 1% per transaction.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

My shopify website is based in Germany.....I think its a worse deal here than UK on shopify

 

[fisicx]

So.....

Why not investigate the alternatives? You say you struggled with woocommerce but maybe paying someone $100 for some help could save you a big chink of shopify fees.

 

[RSR Fulfillment (FR & DE)]

One massive job at a time! See my thread about listing / inventory/ order management.

This needs sorting first. because it doesn't work well and it costs a lot of money. At least shopify works well and is not that pricey compared to the listing software.

 

[Olivia K]

Wow thanks everyone lots of advice and tips here I appreciate them all! xxxx

 

[Christopher Day]

Check out Shopify. The best option for small e-commerce business. Provides a strong platform at relatively low cost.

 

[Alexander Sadlier]

I'd say get a domain for cheap and use wordpress. If it works then great, if not then you haven't spent a great deal of money either

 

[Samuel Wilkins]

Any way... a lot of talked had been talked The deal is, that whatever platform you choose it wont be enough... Go with wordpress or opencart you will still need to operate on shopify, etsy, and various other accounts. It is just the logical thing to do. I don't imagine that you have a super big budget, try your best, invest in small doses and sell on cross platforms. Good luck

 

[fisicx]

Go with wordpress or opencart you will still need to operate on shopify...

No you won't.

 

[Samuel Wilkins]

My point is that she won't be able to make good sales only on a freshly made ecommerse site... She will need accounts on multiple platforms like... Etsy, Depop, Folsky and so on. She can redirect customers to her site, from those platforms and make actual sales. It is promote and sell, all in one

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

It's only free if you use shopify payments. Anything else (which many people prefer to use) will cost you more: https://www.shopify.co.uk/pricing. And if you use the Shopify Card reader for POS tranaction it's 1.5%.

There are loads of payment providers and you can get some excellent deals at a lot less than 1% per transaction.

This. Shopify charge 'Transaction Fees' on top of any Gateway/merchant account fees when using a 3rd party Gateway even though they aren't doing the transaction processing. When challenged on this they basically said it was for handling the order processing, callback etc even though other platforms don't charge for this. Calling it 'Transaction Fees' in their pricing is very misleading.

 

[okanda]

What about ebay, Amazon and Aliexpress?

 

[iwebsitez]

As a partner of Opencart and a Shopify shareholder of course you are going to say that Antropy! As a dedicated ecom platform yes Open cart is ok, Magento is Gone, Big Commerce is ok, Shopify is good, but they are fairly limited in what you can do compared to WP.

As an out of the box solution, in my opinion, WP and Woo is a better way to go for startups as it is easier to learn and if there is something you need, there is usually a plugin.

 

[fisicx]

As an out of the box solution, in my opinion, WP and Woo is a better way to go for startups as it is easier to learn and if there is something you need, there is usually a plugin.

Woo is not easy to learn. I spend most of my day helping people getting woo to work properly. And all plugins do is slow down a site. so avoid plugins where possible.

 

[iwebsitez]

And all plugins do is slow down a site. so avoid plugins where possible.

That is quite a broad generalisation, for startups it is fine as long as the hosting is good!

 

[fisicx]

That is quite a broad generalisation, for startups it is fine as long as the hosting is good!

It may be a broad generalisation but more plugins mean reduced performance irrespective of the hosting package. A well constructed WP site doesn't need lots of plugins.