How to start an ecommerce site?
Discussion
I wish to start dropship of products, I have access to a market around 25% off RRP, maybe more once things get going. I need to start a ecommerce site, but not sure how to go about it. I'm ok at formatting and a little bit of website editing, but I'm not sure how to get things up and running in the first place. I'm aware I need to register the domain (go daddy?)
The web shop but have facilities to have several product categories, different options per item (I.e. Colour/size) as well as related parts, I would also like to run a news/blog feature and gallery.
Does anyone have suggestions of where I can start.
Many thanks.
The web shop but have facilities to have several product categories, different options per item (I.e. Colour/size) as well as related parts, I would also like to run a news/blog feature and gallery.
Does anyone have suggestions of where I can start.
Many thanks.
jammy_basturd said:
I'd agree with going down the eBay/Amazon route first. Least you have captive audience then and if you can't make an eBay/Amazon shop work then there's no way you'd do it was a standalone website where you have to market it and get people to your (digital) door yourself.
Thing is, I'd much rather prefer a standalone site and do the legwork of getting customers in. I'm capable of approaching the potential market online (mainly forums) as this is not a million miles from my current work. I will take a look at Wordpress and big commerce, I had not heard of these before. Thanks!
yes - Wordpress and plugins is probably easiest. don't underestimate the effort taken to get customers to a site ....and buy though!
I sell a lot of stuff through Amazon and standalone site, and used to a lot through Ebay and the 1 thing that stands out from your first post is '25% off RRP' - I buy at 60% of rrp and can struggle to turn a decent profit on many items.
I guess it depends on the product, the market and the saturation of sellers but there are very few products (imo) that actually retail at RRP (ignoring Apple et al who stipulate it). As i said, i buy at 60% of RRP and once you add VAT, shipping costs, selling fees and costs, advertising, returns etc etc there isn't much left.
I would recommend a lot of research into the competition before setting up a site.
I sell a lot of stuff through Amazon and standalone site, and used to a lot through Ebay and the 1 thing that stands out from your first post is '25% off RRP' - I buy at 60% of rrp and can struggle to turn a decent profit on many items.
I guess it depends on the product, the market and the saturation of sellers but there are very few products (imo) that actually retail at RRP (ignoring Apple et al who stipulate it). As i said, i buy at 60% of RRP and once you add VAT, shipping costs, selling fees and costs, advertising, returns etc etc there isn't much left.
I would recommend a lot of research into the competition before setting up a site.
don't use magento - they have just dropped their SaaS offering for small businesses...
Big Commerce / Shopify are both good options...
but def. do the maths - 25% is scarily small
£100
you buy at £75
assuming you can reclaim, but have to charge VAT then it costs you £62.50, but you sell that back at £75, so every pound over costs 16.7p in VAT
so selling at £100 inc. of VAT you only make £20.83
you have financial transaction costs of poss. 3-4% so you now have a profit of £16.83
you presumably have other costs such as marketing / etc. - what %?
assuming £16.83 profit you have to pay tax at 20%+ = £13.46 profit
and that is ignoring all your overheads etc.
depends whether you can shift the items at 100% value / how many you can shift...
could work, but thin margins
Big Commerce / Shopify are both good options...
but def. do the maths - 25% is scarily small
£100
you buy at £75
assuming you can reclaim, but have to charge VAT then it costs you £62.50, but you sell that back at £75, so every pound over costs 16.7p in VAT
so selling at £100 inc. of VAT you only make £20.83
you have financial transaction costs of poss. 3-4% so you now have a profit of £16.83
you presumably have other costs such as marketing / etc. - what %?
assuming £16.83 profit you have to pay tax at 20%+ = £13.46 profit
and that is ignoring all your overheads etc.
depends whether you can shift the items at 100% value / how many you can shift...
could work, but thin margins
if u do use bigcommerce be nice and sign up through my link! - costs u no more! happy to answer any questions on it http://antmedia.bigcommerce.com/
As akirk said, that does't sound like a very exciting margin to me, though obviously it depends on the product, and the likely volumes.
You certainly need to be very confident that nobody else is selling below the RRP< or selling similar products cheaper, as you'll have no room to discount.
You certainly need to be very confident that nobody else is selling below the RRP< or selling similar products cheaper, as you'll have no room to discount.
£100 is bottom of range of products, top ones will be around £1000, average sale should be around £250. Lowest margins are 25% up to around 40%. Normal discount is 10% which I'm happy to stick to as I have an idea to help promote a sale (free stuff with part) il check out the website mentioned above tommorow.
Thanks for all the help guys!
Thanks for all the help guys!
A few people on here recommended EKM to me last year & we have our website with them. Pretty easy to set up & get going and there are loads of templates to choose from. The only problem with Amazon & Ebay with regards to dropshipping are daft things like dispatch time & how to deal with returns etc.
callmedave said:
Wordpress seems like a pretty good option, But one thing that is not clear is, can i get an email matching the domain?
i.e. tom@<mywebsite>.com
or is it more like <mywebsite>@worpress.com?
Does anyone know?
You can always buy your domain and use that email preferentially if you are going to be given a "wordpress" email.i.e. tom@<mywebsite>.com
or is it more like <mywebsite>@worpress.com?
Does anyone know?
If you haven't already, make sure you can get the domain you want, as it's not going to be fun having a brand if you find the .com or .co.uk is owned by someone else.
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