Tips before you start a ecommerce website
Proven models like Amazon, eBay, Groupon, Kayak, Flipkart etc have triggered a rise in clones and other niche ecommerce websites. Technically these sites are easy to setup with open source tools and frameworks. But what people tend to forget is the business model and the day to day operational issues like order fulfillment, inventory, accounting, customer retention, customer service etc of the company.
It is important to understand that technology is just an enabler and not the business itself.
Some of the questions you might want to solve before you start off are
Customers:
Who are my customers and where are they ? How do I get my customers? How do I retain my existing customer ? Do I need to spend a lot on Google Adwords ? or SEO ? Where do I buy user mailing lists ? Do I need them ? Do I need to have a newsletter ?
What is my value proposition ?
Business Model:
Am I a marketplace or I am focused on something niche ?
Do you need to follow a B2B model also? Do I support backorders ? What is the cost of defaulters ?
Payments:
Does your customer have a Paypal account? Do you need cash on delivery? What is the best credit card/ bank gateway ? Can I accept multi currency ?
Order fulfillment/Operations:
Do I really need inventory ? How do I get inventory commitments from suppliers ? How do I handle inventory ?
How do I do order tracking ? How do I so shipping ? Do I have the right partners ? Is the shipping a flat fee or based on attributes like weight/ dimensions etc? How do I do my accounting ? Am I legally complaint ? Do I need an ERP system from day one ?
Your answer will be different in different markets. Trust me there will be many surprises when you ask yourself, your suppliers and your customers all these questions.
I have consulted a couple of websites using Magento and to me it looks like a good start point, specially since it comes with a pretty decent template and also all the wish list features of a ecommerce site. Once tweaked the right way it can handle up to a million products with compromise in performance.
*ecommerce platforms – Prestashop/Magento/Uberkart/OS Commerce/Spree ecommerce etc
*ERP – OpenERP, OpenBravo
*CRM – Sugar CRM
This is in short what I could jot down in the last couple of minutes. The biggest question of course is
IS THE MARKET READY?
