First time in business (ecommerce)

[DavP72]

Hello everyone,

My name is Dave and I have just set up a website selling outdoor leisure products (umbrellas, wellies, kites, eco gadgets). The website is called Future DayDreams and I am mainly targeting music festival goers.

I decided to set up in November last year and I have been doing lots of research (planning, building a website, finding suppliers and lots and lots of learning!) Things are a bit slow at the moment as I set up the business from scratch but I am hoping the weather might encourage people to visit the site.

I work in a furniture shop during the day and run the Future DayDreams website from home in my spare time. I would love to dedicate a lot more of my time to running the business but I have a mortgage to pay, so I have a full time job that pays the bills. I am working entirely on my own which means doing everything myself as I cannot afford to pay anyone.

This looks like a great forum. Hope to speak to some of you soon.

Dave

 

[DanMartin]

Welcome Dave. You'll find our E-Commerce Forum useful. I see you've embraced the social networking websites. Are you getting many enquiries via them?

 

[DavP72]

Thanks Dan, I will have a look later on.

 

[Paula Barrett]

Hi Dave, welcome to the forum!

Sounds like a great business. Do you have a stall at festivals? I go to quite a lot of festivals and it can really make a difference if you have a good kit with you (good wellies, inflatable mattress, lamp etc). So many people turn up with nothing! I like the idea of your phone charger - the amount of times I've lost all my friends at a festival just as my phone dies!

Anyway I hope you enjoy the forum, let me know if you have any questions.

Paula

 

[DavP72]

Sounds like a great business. Do you have a stall at festivals? I go to quite a lot of festivals and it can really make a difference if you have a good kit with you (good wellies, inflatable mattress, lamp etc). So many people turn up with nothing! I like the idea of your phone charger - the amount of times I've lost all my friends at a festival just as my phone dies!

Thanks Paula, I am thinking about renting a stall - I am looking at all the different rates. There are so many great music festivals to choose from these days and that was one of the reasons for starting the Future DayDreams website.

I have spent so much of my limited budget on things like advertising, stock and storage that I have to be really careful how I spend the remaining budget. The orders are not exactly coming in thick and fast, most of the sales I am doing face to face.

 

[Paula Barrett]

How about doing a 'festivals essentials' pack - lamp, wellies, anorak and phone charger or something?

Also looking at your website - I might find it a bit confusing if I was looking for festival stuff as I don't really want kites or cowboys hats.

Maybe really focus on festival stuff - torches, tents, wellies and stuff and also toiletries and girly stuff - I'd really like a light up portable mirror (is there such a thing) to do my makeup in a dark tent, facewipes, dry shampoo - if you talk to lots of people and cover everything you might want at a festival I think you could become very popular. You could even include things like eye masks and ear plugs, and even 'she pees' (I'm not going to explain this - ask someone!).

 

[DavP72]

How about doing a 'festivals essentials' pack - lamp, wellies, anorak and phone charger or something?

Also looking at your website - I might find it a bit confusing if I was looking for festival stuff as I don't really want kites or cowboys hats.

Maybe really focus on festival stuff - torches, tents, wellies and stuff and also toiletries and girly stuff - I'd really like a light up portable mirror (is there such a thing) to do my makeup in a dark tent, facewipes, dry shampoo - if you talk to lots of people and cover everything you might want at a festival I think you could become very popular. You could even include things like eye masks and ear plugs, and even 'she pees' (I'm not going to explain this - ask someone!).

Other people I have spoken to have mentioned offering a festival essentials pack. I think it is a really good idea.

I like the idea of the illuminated mirror and the she pee has got to be better than using those dreaded blue porta-loos

 

[Kajal Shrivastava]

HI Dave,

Welcome to UKBF. Considering that you website is new, what efforts are you making to get the attention of your target audience. We will be more than willing to help you in this regard.

All the best,

Kajal

 

[DanMartin]

I have spent so much of my limited budget on things like advertising, stock and storage that I have to be really careful how I spend the remaining budget. The orders are not exactly coming in thick and fast, most of the sales I am doing face to face.

If you're on a limited budget there are lot of ways to market your business very cheaply or even for free. Our article 30 ways to market your business on the cheap will be useful.

 

[GarethG]

Hi Dave,

Like the website - I just tried to buy one of your butterfly kites but got the following when clicking on "View Basket":

There is a problem with this website's security certificate. The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority. Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

It put me off a little bit!

Gareth.

 

[DavP72]

Hi Dave,

Like the website - I just tried to buy one of your butterfly kites but got the following when clicking on "View Basket":

There is a problem with this website's security certificate. The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority. Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

It put me off a little bit!

Gareth.

Hi Gareth,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I feared that this might have been happening. I am using a security certificate supplied by CACert, which is probably not recognised by your internet browser. I get exactly the same error message in my browser whenever I login to Google's log in area.

CACert is an opensource project of programmers that have developed a way of producing and offering security certificates that are completely free of charge. There is nothing actually wrong with the security of the website, in fact it will encrypt all data in the cart and login area (passwords, email addresses, credit card details), the certificate needs to be installed into the browser first.

I might have to remove the certificate all together until I can work out a way round this.

 

[websnail]

I might have to remove the certificate all together until I can work out a way round this.

I'd seriously spend the necessary £9 or whatever (found this on one of the other forums) and get something that tackles at least most of the browsers without warnings.

As to the "slow going" aspect of things... Have you considered sending complimentary packs to a few student union marketing folks? That might help you get the word out to students who will undoubtedly be amongst those flocking in.

I'd definitely consider trying for a stall though... You're going to find so many folks who simply aren't prepared. Whatever you do though I'd think about getting the name out there... perhaps invest in some silk screen printed wellies or similar to get the word out so that next year you can make a killing

Best of luck with it...