There is a predictable transition when one owns' a website. It starts out just being an online marketing brochure and often becomes a full ecommerce website with an online shopping cart.
With so many choices available, it is not surprising to me, I am repeatedly asked the same questions and unfortunately also hear the same unsuccessful attempts with shopping carts such as:
Questions:
A. With so many different shopping carts, how do I choose one that is right one?
B. Do I really need a separate Secure Certificate, SSL?
C. How can I encourage shoppers to buy from my online store?
D. What will all this cost me now and/or monthly?
Unsuccessful shopping cart attempts included one or several of the following items and were costing more than the total profit from the items sold:
+ Programming to keep the shopping cart inventory current.
+ Cost per month was based upon quantity of items in shopping cart.
+ Increased monthly and per item merchant fees.
+ Product and/or Shipping dispute costs were a burden.
With questions and comments like those stated above, it made my job real easy to determine what information to provide for this article. I will try to explain the different types of shopping carts and key questions you should ask yourself and others before you consider adding a shopping cart to your website and selling online.
In order to provide “Practical Business and Internet Technology Tips”TM it is important for you to understand the key elements needed to sell your finished Art Glass and what questions your should answer before setting up a shopping cart.
Answer these shopping cart criteria questions:
A. Who is your target audience and where are they located?
B. Is what you are selling unique and/or is in demand enough to compete online?
C. How will you process the purchaser’s payments?
D. Is the shopping cart secure enough to ensure people will buy my products online?
E. Are you selecting a propriety Shopping Cart that may require me to start over if I move my website to a different Hosting service? (Very critical question)
F. Will the cart and selling costs leave enough room for profit from the items you want to sell online?
Shopping Cart Key Elements:
Your Website Shopping cart
Inventory Maintenance Shipping Options
Merchant Account Secure Payment Processing Gateway
“Minimum” considerations:
Your Web site: Your shopping cart should generate a professional-looking storefront that matches your website and your current marketing materials including use of your logo. The address bar should not change from your website name.
Your Merchant Account:
Check with your merchant provider before using them to process your buyer’s purchases thru your shopping cart. FAIR WARNING: A.) Banks watch how many entries are made manually or by phone instead of card swipes, your original terms, and likely will increase your rates. B.) Legally you can not charge a buyer’s credit card immediately thru your website until the items have been shipped. C.) Understand your rates clearly, if you have a separate Internet merchant account.
Secure Payment Gateway/Payment Transaction Software:
This is the software that actually processes a customer’s credit card information real-time and performs address verification via an authorization network. If takes more than 24 hours for you to ship orders, then you should consider processing the credit card transactions offline/in-house manually. This software works in combination with a Secure Certificate, normally applied to your unique web address.
Shopping Cart:
Online shopping carts are electronic order forms used to purchase a merchant's inventory for sale. It automatically calculates and totals your customers' orders, including tax and shipping, handling and/or insurance fees.
Different types of shopping carts:
A. Vendor Specific Carts: The shopping cart software that must be installed on the server that hosts your Web site or one of their secure servers to accept sensitive ordering information. You are charged by the number of items in your shopping cart/month and/or may increase your monthly hosting too. You may be sharing a secured certificate and/or be sent away from your website address to process orders/payments. Basically you are renting the shopping cart and you have very little options to customize it. You may not be able to make it look like your website and may not have options beyond the quantity and price such as size, colors, etc.
B. Portable versus Proprietary Shopping Carts: Some developers offer custom or packaged shopping carts. These should be built to be attached to your existing website so they can be moved with your website regardless of the hosting service or merchant account. Traditional Vendor Specific carts often can not move with your website and some are proprietary only to that vendor’s servers.
Custom shopping carts should allow you to make the cart look like your website, use your website address without redirection to someone else’s website address and provide additional options beyond quantity and price, sales prices, discount coupons, gift certificates, etc.
C. Credit Card Processor Carts: Many of these are considered a one-stop shop for e-commerce where you can get started with all six Key Elements but they too can have their draw backs because if you ever decide to shop for a more competitive merchant account rate and sometimes if you change hosting services for your website (a different form of proprietary), you have to start from scratch on building a new cart and bear the expenses a second time for reloading your inventory and/or application fees.
D. Pay Pal Cart: Now this is a totally different cart and clientele. Be aware that even though Pay Pal’s popularity has grown over the last few years, you are limiting your buying audience to only those who currently have a Pay Pal account or those that may feel comfortable in using Pay Pal. There are some Carts where you can add Pay Pal as an option along with traditional forms of payment but few that allow you to easily maintain this addition.
Maintenance of your Inventory:
It is important for you to investigate up front how and if you can maintain your inventory. Do you need special software, can you setup categories and are there any charges involved each time you make a change? Don’t forget you must be willing to keep the inventory current. Perhaps the most important item, how protected is your inventory data and prices. It the data store in a file or database located with the rest of your web site program files or safely stored and only accessible thru server calls or access to the actual server? Data stored with your website files is most likely hackable and price changes, etc. can be made and/or visible to your competitors.
Shipping Options:
My best advise here is “To you own self be true” if you have a way that works for you on shipping, then make sure that your choice can be part of the shopping cart.
Bottom line, people want to save money and in general Internet shoppers are big bargain hunters. They look for deals with no tax, no handling fees and/or no shipping costs. Protect yourself with clear shipping and return policies stated on your website and insert links into your confirmation email to the buyer directly to your policies. If the items are breakable, perhaps you may want to insist that insurance costs be included in the shipping fee and not give the buyer a choice.
LASTLY - Show me the Money:
OK, so you ask, what is this entire cart going to cost? Take your answers from the above questions, your goals and a budget then determine what features fit that budget. Combine this list and determine your expectations for support of your shopping cart. Do you want to talk with someone over the phone, is emailing questions and answers or online FAQ technical support areas on their website are enough?
If you have done all of the above, you are now realistic in your expectations, educated and ready to develop a relationship with a trusted and experience hosting provider or web developer that can help you conduct e-commerce with your website securely, safely, quickly and effectively.
Now, even with a list and budget, keep an open mind, it may mean that you need to make some changes and decisions on how you will run your Internet business such as:
· How much of the shopping cart inventory is static (not changing regularly) versus regularly updated? (Fairly static inventory would translate into the creation of manually programmed pages or use of Buy Buttons per item versus a traditional shopping cart. It also means you will have more pages of readable content on your website for the search engines.)
· Can I host my web site and/or shopping cart with the same hosting provider?
· Is the secure server or secure payment gateway included in the cost?
· Is there a contract required and for how long you must be committed at what cost?
· Would I pay yearly or monthly?
· Is there a maintenance fee after the first year?
· Is there a real-time credit card processing interface? (This component usually costs extra and most of the time not needed.)
· Can I easily export the inventory once entered?
EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT TYPES of SHOPPING CARTS:
I encourage you to go visit these websites to help you gain a better understanding of different and unique ways to have a shopping cart on the Internet. These site are a few of my current clients and of course I am sure they won’t mind if you want to place a real order!
Musicalkidsclothes.com &
Jffstamps.com: Both sites are just plan fun! Both have Custom Shopping Carts: One sells products by Design Style and offers coordinated accessories. The other features projects base upon their products. Both sites focus on building a foundational/repeat business and incentives to thousands of “Preferred Customers” or “Club members”.
GlassArtPatterns.com:
Products: Pre-Cut Glass; Two Custom Shopping Carts: One for the general public to view inventory & retail prices and one via a login for resellers to shop and order items including quantity price breaks. Each Dealer also can keep their profile up to date and determine if they want to be listed on the web site’s “Find a Reseller” search.
Note: These custom websites and shopping carts have a back office administration via a browser, allowing the clients to be self-reliant to maintain key website pages, their inventory, images, client mailings, sales activation, process orders. These sites on require MS server based Hosting.
Glassartmagazine and
Armstrongglass.com are examples of Manually shopping carts with static inventory. Each item is a webpage and is search engine readable.
Personally, I am not a fan of shopping carts that charge by the quantity of items per month for many reasons but mostly because they can be difficult to make a profit or grow your business. By the time you read this article I should have a low cost, small shopping cart available to assist the average Glass Artist and encourage you to visit my home page for link to a demo.
In closing, make you list, determine what form of communication is most comfortable for you, and develop a working relationship with an experienced and honest web person or company. They will help you review your answers and goals and determine what will fit budget. Whatever you do, start with building a good foundational shopping cart with your customer in mind at all times and pick a cart that you know you can afford and lastly, promise to maintain regularly.
Keep those questions coming! See you in Portland at the Art Glass Show and the ISGB conference. Make sure you stop by our Booth, A. Sanborn Corporation, to Spin and Win some prizes!
Ann
Sanborn provides glass artist websites, full hosting
services (sanbornwebdesigns.com)
and an international online directory dedicated to
promoting the Art Glass Community (glassart.biz).
She has over 18 years' experience in the technology
business and specializes in start-up Internet companies.
Ann is also an art glass professional as well with her
own design studio and creates custom commissioned
pieces. Along with her many corporate and individual
clients, she the Webmaster for the Art
Glass Association. A
Sanborn Corporation, " Merging the beauty of
Glass Art with Practical Internet Technologies"TM.
Phone
(727)-397-3073 |
