One of the greatest things we get to do online is doing business differently than how our parents did their businesses. Once upon a time, you must get face to face with the other party to make a dealing. You don't even think a person a friend unless you are well-acquainted with them often and regularly, face to face. Right now, by just a click of a mouse you get to friend or unfriend someone. Even the term used to befriend someone is much different. Have you ever said that that we start to requesting to "add me" and you "follow" a friend or a person to befriend them online and break off the friendship via removing them from your timeline. This is also beneficial to businesses as the costs of networking through social media is often free.
With the advent of technology, we can even conclude deals through online chat and followed by some formalities (i.e agreement etc) through emails and perhaps the only thing you need to do is send a hard copy agreement to seal the business arrangement.
You can accept payment via some online instructions and most online shop-owners never deal directly or ever met their customers. Great for the introverts who want to do business but lacking in savoir faire.
There are a number of very successful businesses that runs entirely online; get an idea of the best e-commerce retailing companies at here
Some of these companies are brick and mortar businesses which extended their services online through the online stores. There are a number which are purely operating through entirely online shop. Amazon and Zappos are good examples of very successful online retailers. Read the inspiring stories of these two giants; Zappos history and Amazon.
There are a lot of benefits to online business compared to the conventional means.
You save a lot on setting up and operation costs such as paying for sales assistant who sometimes does not function as he/she is supposed to be. The cost of renting a shop is most often high in hot commercial areas. You can get cheaper lots but either they are facing the back lane or at the upper floor and is located in dead areas. In my experience in doing both ( online selling and a commercial office/shop outlet) it is also more time saving compared to as you do not have to attend to too many sales queries as there are already answers on the websites and even some do not materialize as a sale. It is best that you maintain your current or biggest customers in order to sustain your business and minimize the cost of selling when there you know about the 80/20 principle in selling or marketing. Read about it here). In doing business, a small deal or a big deal, you still have to put attention as if they are of the same value. In reality, as a person who wants to start and maintain and grow a business you will have to know your priority too.
By integrating a payment system with your stock, you can also close the deal faster and lower the costs of processing the order as customers can handle this part on their own through the website. Saves you plenty of time from having to repetitively follow up or check on payments when they can do this automatically once they confirmed the orders.
If your business is dealing with products which can be marketed globally, your potential of revenue generation increases too.
The availability of your online store being 24 x 7, can add convenience to your customer to make order anytime any day from anywhere too ( as long as they have computer, internet access and the payment mode you incorporate )
Most of the shopping cart systems have built-in functions and allow you to track the databases which can be used to make informed decisions on your next step or promotional strategy.
Instead of printing out and spend money on flyers and promotional catalogue, your online shop is also a readily made catalogue which can be updated easily at the click of the mouse!
What kind of products can be sold online? Here are some ideas if you haven't started thinking yet.
- Think about services or products that can be repetitively quoted and priced specifically - the only difference is dealing with different customers, then, online selling is suitable. Think about services which can be categorized in this; for example cookies, books, t-shirts, web packages, jewelleries, clothings, bags... there are so many. Just search and you will get more idea. You can also look at the listing I mentioned earlier on about the most successful internet retailers.
In doing this, you have to think about selling it with the least intervention from you as the store owner. In other words, automate your shop!
The pricing for each of these items should be pretty much fixed and have no variances..if you allow for this e.g. in web packages, you will have to deal with a customised solution for the particular enqury. This is OK if you are prepared to deal with many enquiries which may not be converted to sales anyway.
- In most shopping cart system, you will need to specify the delivery time for the item. Here you will have to know a bit about the logistics. Especially if your products are tangible items which are supplied by another party or delivered by a logistic company.. This is not very complex if you are just starting up a cookie online store. But gets more complex if you planned to sell furniture online.
Stocks can be costly too you. If you planned to buy stocks and keep them, make sure you have some idea how to "dispose" them without much losses if the stocks are not moving for a few months. If the product you are selling is your very own making, you need to figure out if you are keeping stocks, or if not, how long you need to make it, and send it over. If it comes from a supplier, you will have to make sure you have some clauses in your website about situation when stocks are not readily available immediately. With regards to stocking items, you may not even have to do it if your store is selling a physical product such as a t-shirt or a book or a quilt,and you have a good connection with the suppliers.
You will need to decide also on how this is done for intangible items which are dealing with design and creative field ( e.g, web design services). Package them well so you will not have to answer to too many repetitive queries on the packages.
When setting up an online shop, it is best to think of yourself as the customer and emphathize on the experience they will encounter dealing with the website navigation, interaction and information readily available.
These are some of the most important considerations in starting your own online shop.
1. What are the equipment and facilities you'll need - computer and internet access. Check out the best packages and review the options before buying or choosing.
2. What you need to create - email account ( easily obtained through free email such as gmail or yahoo) and most importantly a website ( may be your special domain or using some free web spaces) with internet merchant account.
At this juncture, think also about who will build the site for you? Are you using a blog as a shop which looks easy to set up but difficult to manage as compared to a shopping cart system which looks harder to set up but easier to manage.
Also, the differences between one online stores to the others even if they carry similar product lines, can be due to this important element of websites; Users may have difficulty navigating the product catalogues , the ease and simplicity in order and paying options and the looks and concept of your website/online store. You, as the owner of the online store, may also want to know how to update your shopping cart inventories and pricings. A web shop with pages that loads quickly with easy navigation, integrated with a reliable and globally accepted payment system with simple administrative features and functions for ease of maintenance are the ingredients of a good shopping cart system.
3. Where to host the website - e.g. web hosting. There are many type of hosting package and varying quality of service you may encounter. Find out more about this as it may also break your business later if the service is poor and downtime is high. Never contract the hosting for more than 12 months at one time as you may be stuck with a lousy hosting provider and at the losing end if you decide to terminate it.
4. How to market the online store? Learn about search engine optimisation. Get into social media and online ad campaigns such as facebook ad campaigns or adwords. There are plenty of new ways but you just have to think about this as it is useless to have a pretty looking site and amazing products but no visitor too.
5. Other? a camera to capture the images of your product/items if it is tangible.
6. Extras : learning about editing images and computer basic security such as firewall for your computer with internet access.
If you think this is tedious, try building a brick and mortar business..It is way easier to start and try starting to sell cakes or bakery online than starting up a brick-and-mortar cake house. To give you an idea, if you feel like having a successful farm , don't jump into buying up agriculture land to start plowing. Testing it out on online can give you an idea - Farmville is much less tiring than the real farm, but you still will need to have the effort, the determination, the consistency and the passion to complete and upgrade your farm. You get the drift.. there is no shortcut to building a business. Just that it gets simpler doing it online.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Starting Point
It has been almost two months since my first book " PrestaShop 1.3 Theming Beginner's Guide" was published. This is the first time I am able to write about it here due to some other work and personal committments.
I am not a full time writer as are most authors I know, but after years of doing business and using variety of softwares and programs, I felt that I needed to document the knowledge and experience I acquired throughout using the programs in various applications and figure out a means to share them with others. My work also involved training college graduates for hands-on knowledge about applying the relevant programs to meet organisational objectives. Eventually, I have started to document most of the stuff I covered in my daily routines of training them. Takes time but it becomes handy when the need arises. As newer programs cropped up more and more of these are necessary and kept updated.
Writing it out is useful to record and communicate the information and diseminate knowledge; whether the writings are scribed on stone, a papyrus, a paper or a digital book (e-books) and distributed in variety of ways. Writing a book on the topics will also help more people to benefit from our experiences.
This book on PrestaShop was started while I was working on another e-commerce site project as a client was figuring out how to migrate their existing blog to a shopping cart and integrating it with a payment system. One of the options we considered was PrestaShop as someone pointed out the upward trending of this open source e-commerce cart. I found PrestaShop quite easy to handle and manage. It uses the smarty templating system that enables changing theming it without bothering with core files unless really drastic modifications are required.
A little bit about me, my academic background is bent towards designing but of course as internet and the new media are now almost second nature to the human being, the newer career paths, skills and fields or courses are developed. Since 1999, I have started to self-learn and explore a number of graphics and multimedia tools. Then I got the opportunity to be involved with multimedia contents, e-learning and various web development projects. As my interest became my job, I took up a post graduate degree to formalize my experiences as paper qualifications are still necessary in most part of the world. It took me two years to complete it and it wasn't very easy too as I was juggling a few things at the same time.
Anyway, Internet has changed so many things including the way people do business and entertaining themselves. No one in the previous decade would ever consider learning through their mobile gadgets, or blogging as a full time job.. or even do business in their pyjamas, but now there are plenty that make money online without getting out of their homes. It has also changed how people connects and socialize, how they learn and play - it has certainly changed the landscape of careers and professions and how people carry out businesses and transactions.
More and more people are setting up their part time or full time businesses with low starting up costs and almost zero overheads using various shopping cart systems. PrestaShop is one of the platforms that can be considered the enablers for this changing lifestyle where anyone can start their own virtual stores and become entrepreneurs!
Having a great looking site is imperative to make you stand out from the crowd as more people are venturing into online businesses. You can find t-shirts, premium items, baby and maternity stuff as amongst the most popular products people sell online. A lot of these people do not have the time to worry about designing as businesses are meant to be profitable and there are a lot of marketing, selling, promoting activities are involved. If you are a solo player it will be tough to be "everything" to your business. No one has ALL the traits required and many have difficulty to grasp the fact that it is not very easy to build a successful business, virtually or brick-n- mortar. For an online business, acquiring some knowledge about how to promote your services and products and get site visitors and attracting repeat ones who then are converted to buyers are fundamental. There are of course the administrative aspects of a business you needed to take care of, stuff such as inventory if you are purchasing the stocks, plus how to make sure your store front or display looks nice to the passers by. Those in the field of retailing would understand how creative displays attract people to visit stores. Then there is the technical aspect which you will need to cover for online store. Some people are turned off by the fact that they needed to learn a new platform before they can launch their online stores.
PrestaShop is one shopping cart with the easiest installation. You can have a look at the video tutorials in our Prestapoint.com website on how to install your first PrestaShop store within less than 10 minutes.
You will definitely need to configure and add products to your store. Even with a website designed by someone else you will still need to do that unless you planned to outsource the entire setting up and maintaining the website to another party. If you are just starting out, it will be too much to pay for since you have not even made any profit. Moreover, updating inventories and products lists in your catalogue can be done quite easily once you have configured the store.
The learning curve for PrestaShop is not as steep as some shopping cart system that require indepth knowledge of web programing as the Back Office user interface is user friendly.
Another important consideration is after you completed your installation, you will need to give the store a unique look. However, life has been easier now as there are many ready-made templates that you can use to start off. There are free ones but lately there are more premium themes developed for certain prices. A lot of time these templates or themes come with their own instructions. If you do not have anyone to help you out, how do you modify them to customize it as your own? These are questions that many newbies want to know fast and speedily.
PrestaShop forum is one place you can visit to gain some information or find solution from the community which is very friendly and quite active. The technical reviewers of this book are active contributors to the community in PrestaShop forums.
If you do not want to scrub through the forums and google information, save time by using this step by step guide. These are the main problems/questions the book attempts to solve. Problems in modifying themes and creating new ones. You don't want your shop to look like someone else's. You can pick and choose areas that you want to cover or simply learn sequentially to complete the entire book and "graduate" in making up a theme for your store. It doesn't answer to everything as the CSS file of PrestaShop controls many aspects and elements of your PrestaShop store, but just like the old saying
Even if this beginner guide let's you the step by step processes to acheive specific outcomes, it also covers how you can apply the knowledge to make changes in the other elements, using free tools such as notepad, Firebug and some web development tools in Firefox. There are various free online resources which are listed to simplify your tasks as well.
I have created the website www.Prestapoint.com which is the support site for this book. I deliberately separate the blog and the website for some reasons. More contents are being worked on and some are still in the pipeline but it definitely will take sometime to put them up here - moreover, as PrestaShop is also progressively changing and updated, I am sure the topics we can cover will also be as dynamic.
This book is suitable for less techie person or non-technical designer to create great looking shopping cart for their online stores. Theme modification can be done through "playing" around with one or two files which are covered pretty extensively in the PrestaShop Theming Beginner's Guide book. Built in modules can be configured to most store needs.
You may also want to communicate your queries and thoughts on this site and there are various ways to do just that ( facebook and google connection) or send them directly to via my email.
In this blog I may be talking about many topics, mostly will be related to the book but it may also cover my other interests. I hope you will join me here often.
That's all as a starting point. Let me know what you would like to see included in the Prestapoint site. If you have created a new look for your online store or site please feel free to share with us what you have done.
I am not a full time writer as are most authors I know, but after years of doing business and using variety of softwares and programs, I felt that I needed to document the knowledge and experience I acquired throughout using the programs in various applications and figure out a means to share them with others. My work also involved training college graduates for hands-on knowledge about applying the relevant programs to meet organisational objectives. Eventually, I have started to document most of the stuff I covered in my daily routines of training them. Takes time but it becomes handy when the need arises. As newer programs cropped up more and more of these are necessary and kept updated.
Writing it out is useful to record and communicate the information and diseminate knowledge; whether the writings are scribed on stone, a papyrus, a paper or a digital book (e-books) and distributed in variety of ways. Writing a book on the topics will also help more people to benefit from our experiences.
This book on PrestaShop was started while I was working on another e-commerce site project as a client was figuring out how to migrate their existing blog to a shopping cart and integrating it with a payment system. One of the options we considered was PrestaShop as someone pointed out the upward trending of this open source e-commerce cart. I found PrestaShop quite easy to handle and manage. It uses the smarty templating system that enables changing theming it without bothering with core files unless really drastic modifications are required.
A little bit about me, my academic background is bent towards designing but of course as internet and the new media are now almost second nature to the human being, the newer career paths, skills and fields or courses are developed. Since 1999, I have started to self-learn and explore a number of graphics and multimedia tools. Then I got the opportunity to be involved with multimedia contents, e-learning and various web development projects. As my interest became my job, I took up a post graduate degree to formalize my experiences as paper qualifications are still necessary in most part of the world. It took me two years to complete it and it wasn't very easy too as I was juggling a few things at the same time.
Anyway, Internet has changed so many things including the way people do business and entertaining themselves. No one in the previous decade would ever consider learning through their mobile gadgets, or blogging as a full time job.. or even do business in their pyjamas, but now there are plenty that make money online without getting out of their homes. It has also changed how people connects and socialize, how they learn and play - it has certainly changed the landscape of careers and professions and how people carry out businesses and transactions.
More and more people are setting up their part time or full time businesses with low starting up costs and almost zero overheads using various shopping cart systems. PrestaShop is one of the platforms that can be considered the enablers for this changing lifestyle where anyone can start their own virtual stores and become entrepreneurs!
Having a great looking site is imperative to make you stand out from the crowd as more people are venturing into online businesses. You can find t-shirts, premium items, baby and maternity stuff as amongst the most popular products people sell online. A lot of these people do not have the time to worry about designing as businesses are meant to be profitable and there are a lot of marketing, selling, promoting activities are involved. If you are a solo player it will be tough to be "everything" to your business. No one has ALL the traits required and many have difficulty to grasp the fact that it is not very easy to build a successful business, virtually or brick-n- mortar. For an online business, acquiring some knowledge about how to promote your services and products and get site visitors and attracting repeat ones who then are converted to buyers are fundamental. There are of course the administrative aspects of a business you needed to take care of, stuff such as inventory if you are purchasing the stocks, plus how to make sure your store front or display looks nice to the passers by. Those in the field of retailing would understand how creative displays attract people to visit stores. Then there is the technical aspect which you will need to cover for online store. Some people are turned off by the fact that they needed to learn a new platform before they can launch their online stores.
PrestaShop is one shopping cart with the easiest installation. You can have a look at the video tutorials in our Prestapoint.com website on how to install your first PrestaShop store within less than 10 minutes.
You will definitely need to configure and add products to your store. Even with a website designed by someone else you will still need to do that unless you planned to outsource the entire setting up and maintaining the website to another party. If you are just starting out, it will be too much to pay for since you have not even made any profit. Moreover, updating inventories and products lists in your catalogue can be done quite easily once you have configured the store.
The learning curve for PrestaShop is not as steep as some shopping cart system that require indepth knowledge of web programing as the Back Office user interface is user friendly.
Another important consideration is after you completed your installation, you will need to give the store a unique look. However, life has been easier now as there are many ready-made templates that you can use to start off. There are free ones but lately there are more premium themes developed for certain prices. A lot of time these templates or themes come with their own instructions. If you do not have anyone to help you out, how do you modify them to customize it as your own? These are questions that many newbies want to know fast and speedily.
PrestaShop forum is one place you can visit to gain some information or find solution from the community which is very friendly and quite active. The technical reviewers of this book are active contributors to the community in PrestaShop forums.
If you do not want to scrub through the forums and google information, save time by using this step by step guide. These are the main problems/questions the book attempts to solve. Problems in modifying themes and creating new ones. You don't want your shop to look like someone else's. You can pick and choose areas that you want to cover or simply learn sequentially to complete the entire book and "graduate" in making up a theme for your store. It doesn't answer to everything as the CSS file of PrestaShop controls many aspects and elements of your PrestaShop store, but just like the old saying
Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime
Even if this beginner guide let's you the step by step processes to acheive specific outcomes, it also covers how you can apply the knowledge to make changes in the other elements, using free tools such as notepad, Firebug and some web development tools in Firefox. There are various free online resources which are listed to simplify your tasks as well.
I have created the website www.Prestapoint.com which is the support site for this book. I deliberately separate the blog and the website for some reasons. More contents are being worked on and some are still in the pipeline but it definitely will take sometime to put them up here - moreover, as PrestaShop is also progressively changing and updated, I am sure the topics we can cover will also be as dynamic.
This book is suitable for less techie person or non-technical designer to create great looking shopping cart for their online stores. Theme modification can be done through "playing" around with one or two files which are covered pretty extensively in the PrestaShop Theming Beginner's Guide book. Built in modules can be configured to most store needs.
You may also want to communicate your queries and thoughts on this site and there are various ways to do just that ( facebook and google connection) or send them directly to via my email.
In this blog I may be talking about many topics, mostly will be related to the book but it may also cover my other interests. I hope you will join me here often.
That's all as a starting point. Let me know what you would like to see included in the Prestapoint site. If you have created a new look for your online store or site please feel free to share with us what you have done.
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