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Starting a webshop a good idea?

donderdag, 24 december 2009 15:08 John Kokkelmans
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Starting a Webshop a good idea?
You would think so. No boss nagging you all the time, working from home on the time it suites you best. Buy some products and sell
them to your customers. Everyone can do that, right?
Looks like more people thought the same, looking at the numbers; in The Netherlands only in 2004 there were 2200 webshops, in 2007
there were 8700 and in 2009 there are over 20000 webshops. Most of these webshops are owned by single individuals, the so called
one-man businesses.
So let's see, we need to have something to sell (products and/or services with prices, descriptions and photos), someone to sell
it to, an URL, e-mail, webhosting, webshop software, an identity (a name, a logo, lettertype, slogan, etc), Chamber of commerce
subscription, VAT-number, accountant, shipping options, payment option, create and print invoices, marketing strategy, marketing
material, etc, etc, etc.
All these items are choices to make, it's up to you to make the right choices fitting your business, ideas and budget. As an owner
of a webshop in baby products (www.oliebeestje.nl) I have encountered all these topics. Some of my choices where not the best ones
and I learned the hard way. The most important topics are discussed below.
What to sell?
With the power of the internet every webshop selling the same product is competitor, so if you are the cheapest people will buy at
your shop, however if you are to cheap you will not make any profit...
A lot of products have to be seen and/or touched in real live, so try selling products that are well known to general public.
Stick to power brands which are trusted for their quality.
Customers
You can be the cheapest of them all, selling the most beautiful products, if no one can find you, you will earn zip. So you will
have to think about letting people know what you are offering. How? Do publish adds in local papers, think big, think targeting.
Who is buying your products? People who are on the internet, where do you advertise, on the internet. Lots of options here, forget
them all, stick to Google Adwords and don't pay more than 10 cents a click.
Organic Search Results
When you are searching something with Google, do you look further in your search results then the first page, most of the time
not. So getting a good position in Google is mucho importanto. Make a nice and clean site, stick to the rules of Google (yes,
Google rules the internet world).
Getting your page rank up is good for your organic search results, but his takes time. Google's Page rank is dependent on the
number of links pointing to your pages. The more links the more important your page is. The higher the page rank of the site
pointing at you, the better.
Shipping
Everything you sell will have to be shipped. The higher the order price the less impacting is the shipping fee. Try to make
shipping for free, if not possible for all orders then starting from a certain order amount. People hate to pay for shipping
costs.
Payment
If you are not yet a well knows webshop, people will hesitate giving you money. Try giving them confidence by putting an address
and a phone number (not a mobile number) on your website. Give them the choice of paying C.O.D. or upfront, f.i. with iDEAL (The
Netherlands), Mister Cash (Belgium) or GiroPay (Germany). More risk for you but your customers will love it: pay per invoice.

Starting a webshop a good idea?
You would think so. No boss nagging you all the time, working from home on the time it suites you best. Buy some products and sell 
them to your customers. Everyone can do that, right?
Looks like more people thought the same, looking at the numbers; in The Netherlands only in 2004 there were 2200 webshops, in 2007 there were 8700 and in 2009 there are over 20000 webshops. Most of these webshops are owned by single individuals, the so called one-man businesses.

 


What's needed
So let's see, we need to have something to sell (products and/or services with prices, descriptions and photos), someone to sell 
it to, an URL, e-mail, webhosting, webshop software, an identity (a name, a logo, lettertype, slogan, etc), Chamber of commerce 
subscription, VAT-number, accountant, shipping options, payment option, create and print invoices, marketing strategy, marketing 
material, etc, etc, etc. 


Choices
All these items are choices to make, it's up to you to make the right choices fitting your business, ideas and budget. As an owner 
of a webshop in baby products (Oliebeestje.nl) I have encountered all these topics. Some of my choices where not the best ones 
and I learned the hard way. The most important topics are discussed below.
What to sell?With the power of the internet every webshop selling the same product is competitor, so if you are the cheapest people will buy at 
your shop, however if you are to cheap you will not make any profit...A lot of products have to be seen and/or touched in real live, so try selling products that are well known to general public. 
Stick to power brands which are trusted for their quality.


Customers
You can be the cheapest of them all, selling the most beautiful products, if no one can find you, you will earn zip. So you will 
have to think about letting people know what you are offering. How? Do publish adds in local papers, think big, think targeting. 
Who is buying your products? People who are on the internet, where do you advertise, on the internet. Lots of options here, forget 
them all, stick to Google Adwords and don't pay more than 10 cents a click. 


Webshop Software
Lot's of choises to make here, create the webshop yourselves or hire a specialized company to do the work for you? All denpendant on your knowledge of the web, php or dotnet and lot's of other things. Builiding a webshop from scratch is not a good idea. Open source is cheap and flexible but requires some work to get it the way you want it. ocCommerce and Virtuemart are the best known, Virtuemart is the one to go for here. Since a few years there are companies specialised in SAAS webshops, choose your URL, pay per month, publish your products and off you go, examples of these are MijnWebWinkel.nl and One-Stop-Webshop.nl where the first one is my favorit.


Organic Search Results
When you are searching something with Google, do you look further in your search results then the first page, most of the time 
not. So getting a good position in Google is mucho importanto. Make a nice and clean site, stick to the rules of Google (yes, 
Google rules the internet world).Getting your page rank up is good for your organic search results, but his takes time. Google's Page rank is dependent on the 
number of links pointing to your pages. The more links the more important your page is. The higher the page rank of the site 
pointing at you, the better.


Shipping
Everything you sell will have to be shipped. The higher the order price the less impacting the shipping fee will be. Try to make 
shipping for free, if not possible for all orders then starting from a certain order amount. People hate to pay for shipping 
costs.


Payment
If you are not yet a well knows webshop, people will hesitate giving you money. Try giving them confidence by putting an address 
and a phone number (not a mobile number) on your website. Give them the choice of paying C.O.D. or upfront, f.i. with iDEAL (The 
Netherlands), Mister Cash (Belgium), GiroPay (Germany) or credit card. More risk for you but your customers will love it: pay per invoice.

So Yes, of course you  should try it, whether you will be successfull depends on the choices you make.

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