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Online Ordering Sites (e-commerce) | Static-content sites |
Database-driven content
For all sites, I need the following:
Most small businesses need online-ordering to supplement their business.
Online Ordering Sites (e-commerce)
What you need to think about in terms of your business strategy:
- If you haven't already, you need to think like a mail-order catalog
business.
- Your existing merchant account (if you have one)
probably isn't internet-enabled. That is something they charge extra
for. Paypal is very inexpensive option.
- A return policy.
- Bulk orders: Do you offer a price
discount for orders of a certain quantity? Price breaks are often at
the 1, 25, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000. Are your prices going to how
different will shipping and pricing be if a customer orders in bulk?
- Is shipping all a flat rate regardless of quantity, or does shipping disappear after a certain quantity?
- Will shipping and
handling costs be folded into the product pricing?
- Do you have the
appropriate packaging boxes and materials for bulk ordering?
- Quotas for order quantities above a specified limit. For
example, If you can only handle 150 orders in a week, any order above 150
will be handled specially. If a large company orders 10,000 as gifts
to their employees. If they do, it would be a good idea to communicate your lead time.
- If you do receive a sudden large order, do you have a
relationship with a manufacturer who has the capacity you
require?
- Merchant accounts often have a startup fee (grand-totals about
$700-$1000), monthly report fee ($10?), in addition to
percentage-of-sales fees (2%) and per-transaction fees ($0.30). If
your product is less than $1, there probably won't be a profit margin
unless you require a minimum order and package in bulk.
- Do you have professional-quality pictures or image files of your products?
- Brief and long product descriptions
- Do you have the text you require on a word processor for the main page
- Company logo in a file (not in print)?
- Images for any animations?
- Product categories
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- Who is the audience for your site? Who are your customers, if you have a specific target?
Please consider that an e-commerce site takes several weeks to put up. Site look-and-feel changes, textual changes, order/setup/verification of SSL, link editing all require time. Figure 1 week for SSL, 1 week web hosting setup, and site design is minimum 1 week simultaneous with the previous 2 items.
Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) charges include your hosting, SSL, merchant accounts, domain name registration, any associated setup fees for these items.
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Copyright©2001,2002,2003 Jim Michaels