Starting my very first website?

[truereddevil]

Good morning all.

I have been on eBay for quite a while now, and I am averaging sales turnover of around £800-£1000 a week. I have a lot of repeat customers, with my emphasis on a great service, great communication, and items fully described with individual pictures. I offer a no quibble money back return, and have many, many repeat customers that buy product after product.

My current business model is not a traditional one in any sense. I buy from eBay and sell back on eBay, often with margins reaching 60%. Therefore a large percentage of my products are used items.

I do also source some products from wholesalers, and suppliers, and although I enjoy this, and prefer this method, the margins are not great, but realise I am going to have to concentrate on this more from an ecommerce store perspective.

I have been toying with the idea of my own ecommerce store for a while now, and have finally taken the decision to go for it. By august/september 2012, I hope to have a fully loaded ecommerce store live, which will work in conjunction with my eBay store for the initial traffic.

This months fees for eBay was £312, and looking back, over the last 6 months alone, I have generated £1300 in fees for ebay. For this reason, I believe an ecommerce store would be more cost effective, and more of the profit would be mine, and not eBays. I would be looking to get my repeat customers from my eBay store and into my ecommerce store in the first instance.

Before anyone points it out, I realise eBay is a superb platform with millions of potential customers and potential exposure, but I now feel i need to branch out.

During the time from now until late February, when I hope to pay someone to complete a store for me, I am going to redraft a business plan, and make all the necessary arrangements to ensure I am confident enough and equipped to go into such a venture. I will have around £1200 budget for this to complete. The only one major stumbling block is:

I have no experience whatsover of ecommerce stores, how they work, what costs are involved, editing new products into the store, hosting or anything like that. terms like CubeCart, this cart, that cart mean nothing to me. Hosting and domain registration, Search engine optimization everything to do with it I have very little understanding of it.

This is where you come in, and I hope to draw attention of some of the more experienced people on these forums.

My questions:

1) Can anyone recommend any books or literature that is in depth, and explains the inner workings of an online ecommerce store? Or indeed, any links that would help me?

2) Is my budget sufficient to buy and have someone build a website from scratch, including a domain, and hosting?

3) What knowledge of coding do i need if any? For instance, how easy is it to upload new products to your site? This is what worries me the most.

4) I will be primarily looking at using Paypal as the only payment option, but what are the most cost effective, efficient and safe modes of taking card payments online, and their costs? Again links appreciated.

5) What are the running costs of a website per month.

As you can see from my questions, I have an enormous amount to learn, but am willing to do that in the time I have stated.

Any advice, guidance, links will, as usual, be greatly appreciated. I will not jump into this cold, before anyone points out I am not experienced, or if my budget is not up to scratch etc, if I am not ready by late February, then I will simply delay it for another 6 months or so, or until I feel I am ready.

Cheers,
Rick.

 

[Websitehandyman]

Firstly it may not be a hard as you think so don't fret.

1) Can anyone recommend any books or literature that is in depth, and explains the inner workings of an online ecommerce store? Or indeed, any links that would help me?

It's all on the internet, decide what cart you want to use and join their forum, if it's a busy one you'll get plenty of help

2) Is my budget sufficient to buy and have someone build a website from scratch, including a domain, and hosting?

For the site and cart sure that's enough for a basic site even if you get someone else to do it. You'll need to add the products and content but you should find you have enough. You can spend more should you want as always.

3) What knowledge of coding do i need if any? For instance, how easy is it to upload new products to your site? This is what worries me the most.

None with most carts, you will need to follow instructions on entering details and that may mean you have to edit code to get what you want but you shouldn't need to invent anything.

4) I will be primarily looking at using Paypal as the only payment option, but what are the most cost effective, efficient and safe modes of taking card payments online, and their costs? Again links appreciated.

Paypal is fine and as it's a 3rd party payment the is no security you need to take but most do a secure certificate for people filling forms on their site. That sounds more involved then it is again it's copy and paste mostly and you can start without it.

5) What are the running costs of a website per month.

You can get decent webspace for £17 a year to do what you need.

As for moving from ebay to your own site, concider the benifit you do get from ebay is they provide the traffic so a large slice of your profit which went to ebay must still go to drive traffic. Also those repeat buyers ? I would make sure you set them up on a discount if you want to keep them. Part of the reason people use ebay is the run of the chase. You'll need to make them feel they are getting the same bargain.

Good luck, feel free to PM if you want your hand holding.

 

[optik]

Hi Rick

What about using the eBay API?

This way you could control the content of your site using EBAY but factor in your own payment system see http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/X.../html/wwhelp.htm?href=ConfiguringAStore-.html

I think I could develop such a store within your budget, maybe using Paypoint.net for credit card transactions if you want a better rate, or a mix of Paypal and Paypoint which I have done in the past.

Seems better than having to separate stores to manage.

Thanks

Lewis

 

[truereddevil]

Cheers guys for your replies

What i am mainly wanting with this website is also that it is compatible with my ebay/amazon business and any other platforms i deal on so i can either bulk upload all my products straight across to each one and also if something sells on one site it will automatically update the stock levels across all sites, i am guessing this will be an extra piece of software i would have to use in your opinions whats the best out there at the min

Rick

 

[LoyaltyCardNetwork]

1) Can anyone recommend any books or literature that is in depth, and explains the inner workings of an online ecommerce store? Or indeed, any links that would help me?

You don't need that, nowadays making websites is so easy you just grab a paid or free template, modify it, add bits to it, and it will look unique and professional.

2) Is my budget sufficient to buy and have someone build a website from scratch, including a domain, and hosting?

Yes, a domain is only £5, a years hosting is $90. For both of those you can also use affiliate links to get money back. For example daily.co.uk are on quidco which gives you cashback. Hostgater (best hosting we have worked with, go for their baby plan) you can use affiliate link to get $100 back making it effectively free. What's next is the actual website files, Joomla is a great website software and plenty of great templates out there, here is a good source Joomlart.com. They have ecommerce templates you can pick up and use and you can get a programmer involved to help you out by hiring on a website such as elance or vworker.com.

3) What knowledge of coding do i need if any? For instance, how easy is it to upload new products to your site? This is what worries me the most.

With Joomla, anyone can edit their website without any programming knowledge. You might need someone to show you where to click etc but after that it's easier to use than ebay.

4) I will be primarily looking at using Paypal as the only payment option, but what are the most cost effective, efficient and safe modes of taking card payments online, and their costs? Again links appreciated.

I would say stick to paypal, most people prefer paypal over websites standalone payment methods, and you don't have the hassle of getting secure SSL certficates etc.

5) What are the running costs of a website per month.

Once you've paid for domain and hosting for a year and set up your website then £0. Until the following year where you have to pay for domain and hosting again.



Hope this helps. You can set up a website with £100, don't let any one over charge you. It's the marketing that will cost you a lot.

 

[optik]

That is why you should use the Ebay API, then you will have one central upload system for your site and eBay.

If you want to include other retailers then that could get pretty complicated, either you would need to find software that could upload to all services (providing they have an API like eBay) or you would create your own uploading script that could talk to the API's.

Have a look at linnworks.com which provide software for uploading to the major players such as Ebay and Amazon and integrates with popular cart software too.

 

[DesignerNick]

I have put a few answers together for you also:

1) Can anyone recommend any books or literature that is in depth, and explains the inner workings of an online ecommerce store? Or indeed, any links that would help me?

I purchased a book about Magento when I first started playing about with it and it really did help. I know there are guides on the internet and massive forums but it was nice to have a read through it and have it there as a reference. It is called the Magento User Guide and it looks like you might be able to download a free one here

2) Is my budget sufficient to buy and have someone build a website from scratch, including a domain, and hosting?

If you were to use something like Magento you wouldn't have to have it built from scratch. You could get PCI Compliant Business hosting from 34SP here and they will install Magento for you. All you need to do is buy the domain name.

Once it is then installed you can look into making it how you want it, looks wise and functionality wise. There are thousands of plugins so if you wanted it to do something it will more than likely have a plugin that will do it.

I would say you could get a basic Magento install with a simple design within your 1200 budget.

3) What knowledge of coding do i need if any? For instance, how easy is it to upload new products to your site? This is what worries me the most.

You really don't need any coding knowledge, pretty much all shopping cart systems are just forms you fill in so if you can use this forum you can pretty much use a shopping cart. There will be things you will pickup along the way but most of it is just by giving yourself a few hours to sit down and play around with the software. Add products, add categories, add images etc. If you have a guide you can refer to it or put a post up online and people will help.


4) I will be primarily looking at using Paypal as the only payment option, but what are the most cost effective, efficient and safe modes of taking card payments online, and their costs? Again links appreciated.

You can use paypal but there are a fair few payment processors that may work out cheaper for you. You will need to work out how many transactions, the value of them, is it on credit card or debit card etc and compare the rates.

5) What are the running costs of a website per month.

With the hosting I linked to it is 15 per month which is the basic running cost (other than your time), if you want to get a payment processor you then have additional costs.

Other Notes

With a fair few shopping carts including Magento you can link it in to eBay, so if you add a product it will then fire it out and make an eBay listing also.

Is everything you sell in the same niche with many repeat customers? Get some flyers printed off to try and make people use your site rather than eBay, saving you listing fees and increasing traffic.

 

[Rosco1112]

Rick,

I am in a similar situation to you and did all my research on carts. I am going to use nventree from just applications. They are a good bunch of people there and will easily fit the budget you have. Also the cart is very SEO friendly so you have more chance of people stumbling onto your website from google searches

 

[IzzoNet]

My questions:

1) Can anyone recommend any books or literature that is in depth, and explains the inner workings of an online ecommerce store? Or indeed, any links that would help me?


2) Is my budget sufficient to buy and have someone build a website from scratch, including a domain, and hosting?

3) What knowledge of coding do i need if any? For instance, how easy is it to upload new products to your site? This is what worries me the most.

4) I will be primarily looking at using Paypal as the only payment option, but what are the most cost effective, efficient and safe modes of taking card payments online, and their costs? Again links appreciated.

5) What are the running costs of a website per month.

As you can see from my questions, I have an enormous amount to learn, but am willing to do that in the time I have stated.

Any advice, guidance, links will, as usual, be greatly appreciated. I will not jump into this cold, before anyone points out I am not experienced, or if my budget is not up to scratch etc, if I am not ready by late February, then I will simply delay it for another 6 months or so, or until I feel I am ready.

Cheers,
Rick.

Hello rick,

First of all, i'm wishing you good luck !
I would like to answer on your questions:
1) You dont need books, because everything is already in the internet. you can type "ecommerce" in google and you will find many tutorials on how to build your own ecommerce business
2) About the budget. it depends in the site you want, how it would look like and what do you want to be the final work. think about it, dont rush.
3) You need basic knowledge in coding. about the products, i dont think it's a problem. if you do have problems, get a service. it's doesnt cost much and sometimes worth it.
4) Paypal is a great way to transfer and get payments. Use it. it's friendly and everyone knows how to use it.
5) Running costs - depends if you pay on SEO services, Hosting and etc.

Good luck!

 

[Cream2cream]

Hello, i was in a similar situation, but sellin 10-15k worth of products amonth over the bay then started to get my site built, due to ripoff fees, its taken almost a yr to complete, in design and new warehouse/ rackin etc...

the best thing to do is design or get a idea of what you want the site to look like and how you want it to work, colours/ features as its these that take the longest.

running managing the site is very very easy and basic if you drop me a pm I can advise and recommend a company im using and several who =m i would use in the future, as there re ALOT of scammers when it comes to website design ive had plenty of experiencing with website design companies trying to rip me off so you will defo have good advice of someone who's been through all this, and is about to have there own site launched very very soon

 

[seoswat]

Good afternoon,

i saw your thread and thought i could offer some half decent advise here.

The main concern here is that your new website (when ever you decide to create it) is not going to be getting anywhere near the volume of traffic to your products as your current ebay products are doing, so with that in mind you need to keep your things running smoothly with Ebay.

Now whilst you should also look to invest in SEO, one of the biggest things that will make your new website succeed is by getting some cheap printed business cards (i recommend got print uk).

Get the cards printed with your new domain and advertising you and looking all nice and pretty etc.

But send these out with every sale you do via Ebay.

That way after a very short while, especially from your repeat business - people will start coming to your site directly and buying from you there.

And whilst this is happening and working for you, you can work on SEO and PPC if applicable for your new site.

But the key here in the first few months is getting those business cards made and sent out with your general ebay sales.

Hope this is of help to you

 

[tsbf]

Another vote here for Magento!

 

[Linn Systems]

Cheers guys for your replies

What i am mainly wanting with this website is also that it is compatible with my ebay/amazon business and any other platforms i deal on so i can either bulk upload all my products straight across to each one and also if something sells on one site it will automatically update the stock levels across all sites, i am guessing this will be an extra piece of software i would have to use in your opinions whats the best out there at the min

Rick

Hi Rick,

It's Artem from Linn Systems here, the company behind Linnworks system.

I believe our Linnworks Anywhere Entry package alongside Magento GO "Get going" web-site cart solution will help you achieve your requirements.

Key requirements
- Affordable web-site cart platform, preferably hosted
- Affordable web-site design
- Stock control system which can manage and simultaneously adjust stock levels across different selling venues
- Listing management tool to bulk upload products on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon

Solutions:

1) Magento GO "Get Going" Cloud Hosted Solution (£10/month)
- Hosted solution
- Very affordable
- FREE templates to choose from. Our partners (web-design agencies) can provide a professional web-design template for Magento GO platform at a very affordable price, please contact for details.

2) Linnworks Anywhere Entry package (£48/month, VAT inclusive)
- Desktop application
- Cloud-based & hosted, accessible from anywhere in the world
- Order consolidation into one place
- Multi-channel order management across eBay, Amazon and Magento GO platforms
- Stock control solution with stock adjustments across three marketplaces, thus protecting your business from overselling
- LinnLive 2 (web-based) bulk listing tool for eBay, Amazon and Magento Go platforms

For further information or consultation, please visit Linnworks.com

Best,

Artem
Linn Systems

 

[truereddevil]

Can i just say this is what i love about this forum and a great BIG THANKYOU to each and every one of you who has contributed in this thread you have all definitely given me alot to think about.

 

[truereddevil]

What are peoples opinions on zencart?

I have been offered a full ebay shop design and also a website with zencart for an excellent price and from a very good designer after checking out the reviews and seeing his work

Rick

 

[bargainmania]

Hi Rick

Zencart is spot on mate, what price have you been offered and what are you getting for it?

ali

 

[truereddevil]

Fully customized ebay shop and website for £149 now people might see this price and think god thats cheap in my opinion but trust me i have done my homework on the company

 

[bargainmania]

lol, and i know exactly who has the offer, For what you are getting £149
is ok if you dont mind the sites he produces

Alistair

 

[truereddevil]

lol, and i know exactly who has the offer, For what you are getting £149
is ok if you dont mind the sites he produces

Alistair

I thought i recognized the name lol i have pm-d you

 

[DesignerNick]

Fully customized ebay shop and website for £149 now people might see this price and think god thats cheap in my opinion but trust me i have done my homework on the company

Ouch! Either he does it out of love and its a great site or the site will be dire.

Any examples or links?

 

[Cream2cream]

thats bloody cheap, i thought mine was but that wil take some beating on price

 

[bargainmania]

Lol not really, you get what you pay for
could put out 10 a day at that price the way there being put together

ali

 

[PlecPicker]

Hey,
I'm starting my first website too. Doing the crazy of designing it myself. It's a daunting task being unexperienced but hopefully i won't run into the kind of problems I'm hearing about on this thread.

Have a link to my top 10 hellbound hackers article about web design somewhere if your interested?

 

[Jet Virtual]

I must say you are brave to do the move. Quite amazing to hear that you generate a very decent amount by buying and selling on ebay. VERY cool!

I have managed to get my website to the top of Google in a very competitive industry! Would be more than happy to give some helpful tips

Best of luck!

Daniel

 

[truereddevil]

Cheers guys for the info so far my favourite website is

1.http://www.sportsdirect.com/default.aspx

What i like about sports direct is it is just so easy for you to pick what you want then straight to checkout and i like the sort by drop down box where it lets you pick Price(low to high) or (high to low) also saving high to low can more be added to a box like this like newest items etc and the way you can get it to display 25 items or 100 items on 1 page can you get it to display more if i wanted
What cart does sports direct use and if i wanted my website to do similar how easy would it be to achieve

 

[Rogerims]

You will need a payment gateway that offers you great rates. If you let me know I can quote you the best rates for e commerce as Pay Pal wont be doing you any favours that's for sure. I am an independent Advisor who negotiates the best rates for my clients and passes them directly onto the merchant ie you.

I dont charge for my time or add a % to these low rates. I get a small retainer from the card provider but only use the best most reliable suppliers so that neither of us gets any grief.Happy to help if you give me more details.

 

[Cream2cream]

Cheers guys for the info so far my favourite website is

1.http://www.sportsdirect.com/default.aspx

What i like about sports direct is it is just so easy for you to pick what you want then straight to checkout and i like the sort by drop down box where it lets you pick Price(low to high) or (high to low) also saving high to low can more be added to a box like this like newest items etc and the way you can get it to display 25 items or 100 items on 1 page can you get it to display more if i wanted
What cart does sports direct use and if i wanted my website to do similar how easy would it be to achieve

most shopping carts do this feature, its nothing special. You can use prestashop the one use for my site, and its very very simple to use with loads of add ons, first get the layout and like you've done features selected then approach a website designer to put it all together, you dont need to worry abt payment gateway's yet, your well away from that stage.

I use worldpay very cheap if you do it throu fsb and no agents tryin to clockin wth special offers etc...