Ecommerce web site design by The Wee Guy

ecommerce

For a living, I build ecommerce websites and run ecommerce businesses for clients. I mainly use Goodbarry ecommerce platform; now acquired by Adobe.

I am qualified as a traditional marketer having worked for large fmcg brands like Reebok, Dunlop and ntl and I would have the Google Adwords Professional qualification if I ever got round to sitting the exam.

This section provides you with everything you need to know about starting an ecommerce website or migrating from your existing solution.

Step 1 : How much will it cost ? »»

Step 2 : What you need before you get started ? »»

Step 3 : Your product stock file and photography »»

Step 4 : How are you going to ship products to customers ? »»

Step 5 : What will your ecommerce web site look like ? »»

Step 6 : How will people shop and buy at your shop ? »»

Step 7 : Building the ecommerce site »»

Step 8 : How orders are processed and how you get your money »»

Step 9 : Testing it and making it go live »»

Step 10 : How you get orders and customer details »»

Step 11: Getting people to the shop »»

To view some examples of ecommerce web sites I have designed, built and managed, you can view the portfolio here

Finishing Stuff

I read that 80% of Twitter accounts lie dormant. According to sources, there are 6 million unique visitors to Twitter each month.

The exact numbers don't matter. If 80% of people start something and don't follow through, I think we have a human condition problem and not a Twitter problem.

It is so easy to start things online.

2 minutes to set up a blog on Typepad
2 minutes to set up Facebook and Twitter

I am as guilty as the next person of starting and not finishing stuff. I've purchased marketing books and ebooks and never finished them. I currently have a project for a client which has been dragging on since November.

So here is the solution; well one of them:

You get paid when you finish.

In my web work, I don't start something until I get a percentage deposit and I get paid until I finish the work to the client's satisfaction.

That's the thing about why people start Twitter and leave it dormant. There is no barrier to getting started and no end result, no finish.

Another way to look at finishing stuff is to look at professional golfers and amateur golfers.

If you have a look at monthly golf club competitions, you will see a high percentage of amateur golfers who do not fully complete the full 18 holes. They walk the 18 holes but the do not finish out every single hole.

This very rarely happens with professional or tournament golfers. They finish, 99% of the time, no matter what the end result.

I can remember a round of golf, a club championship qualifier, a couple of years ago. I was all psyched up for this game. And I started the easy holes dreadfully - bogey, bogey, bogey, bogey and then at the fifth hole, a par three, I wasn't even on the green in two.

I was 40 yards from tearing up my card and walking in. No chance of being in the top 8.

Then I holed a 40 yard putt from off the green for a par. Walked to the par 5 6th hole and holed a wedge for an eagle. Then birdied the 8th hole to get back to 1 over par. I eventually finished 3 over for a 74 and had the best score of the day.

I still to this day can't fathom how I went from nearly quitting on the 5th hole to being back on track after the 6th hole. Maybe because I was so determined to get a result someone up there was testing my resolve.

Maybe as Seth says in The Dip, just quit the wrong stuff and finish the right stuff.

Rob's advice for the young at heart

I used to work in a freelance/contract basis for another ecommerce company who have gone on to bigger and better things.

I would get paid for my endeavours and gain a little slice of the initial fee. I would never gain any of the ongoing revenue from the client acquired.

Getting to the age of 40, I simply had no stake in the ground, simply hawking my skills to someone willing to pay.

Sure I have provided a client with a website or shop and gained some ad hoc ongoing work from them.

Now I know this goes against the ethos of the internet pioneers who say the internet is all about sharing. But I come from a business background and my accountancy and business friends have always recommended I have:

Control of the deal

I am now in a position where I pay for design, coding, hosting for a client's business online.

The whole point of having control of the deal is so that you can set yourself up with a portfolio of clients with a recurring revenue stream.

Years ago, Rob Frankel gave me this advice.

Time has come for you to really commit to becoming an authority at what you do. Not just providing a service in which you have no stake. You have to create a situation in which you not only have authority but control of the deal. For example, it's no longer viable to try and broker a deal; you have to buy into the deal yourself. By doing that, you'll work harder, act more authoritatively and garner genuine respect from clients, partners and peers.

Among your documents are resumes and proposals. You should immediately trash every resume you have unless you want to be an employee. If that's what you want, we're done. However I sense that is the last thing you want. You want your own gig. The trouble is that you're still not sure you can handle it because it means getting real; really commiting and take some risk.

You're no dope. You've got alot on the ball. What you need to do at this point is drive a stake into the ground and devise a real tangible strategy that allows you to leverage your skills in an authoritative manner. Until you do so, you will always have self doubt.

Rob gave me this advice in March 2003. 7 years to get from there to here and I'm only at the foot of the ladder.

Thanks Rob.

14 months to make a purchase

If you knew it took a customers 14 months to make their first purchase with you, how would you go about cultivating that person and turning them into a customers ?

• What you fire sales offers at them every month?
• Would you bombard their letterbox with catalogues?
• Would your sales guy be all pushy to have a meeting or sell them down the telephone line?

Of course, I know this isn't the approach.

What would you do ?

Plodding the streets or pissing about

If you work in marketing, advertising or the digital arena, now has never been a better time to actually get out there in person and sell yourself and what you company has to offer.

All the marketing agencies and customer facing staff seem to have hidden under the Facebook and Twitter stone trying to connect with other people and be all sociable.

Have you ever noticed or wondered why Twitter is so busy Monday to Friday 9 till 5 ? Everyone who should be working is "gossiping".

I have a client who pounds the streets. He is 25 years of age and in all honesty whilst you piss about and try to experiment with social media and make it pay, he is taking your business away.

There is a huge opportunity for walking up to a prospect in the cold light of day, asking him if he wants a website or more traffic to his website/business and offering him your business card and brochure.

If someone can show me some real tangible business results caused by social media, I'll gladly eat some bumble pie.

Songs for building a web application

These aren't really songs you can mix together in Mixmeister. So I'll just share the songs I purchased last night from ITunes to get me inspired to build a web application in Business Catalyst for a client.

They are a sport client who want a search database of people which they can self manage in the backend of the system.

Probably took me about 3 hours. Just needs a little bit design clean up and it's good to go live.

What do you do if you are late to the party ?

I have to be rather arrogant and say my time keeping is excellent. I guess it was military and golf experience in my formative years; if you are late you suffer or don't play.

When I was married and we would go out, we generally were never late.

If you are late you can normally get away with a little excuse like the babysitter was late or we couldn't get the kids to settle.

But when it comes to internet marketing, I have to deal with alot of clients who are late to the party.

I am talking about registering their first domain and going online for the first time.

When you are up against competitors who have 10-15 years advantage over you, the internet won't listen to your excuses. But there are a number of ways in which you can fast track your success.

1. Come up with a compelling site design & share it with everyone you know

2. Offer something your competitors don't offer; that can be as simple as selling your product/service online at a fixed rate when previously you only gave out quotes.

3. In the real world, share your domain name on every single piece of real estate you have; your car, business card, stationery, building signage etc

4. Use modern online tools to be smarter than all the static un-managed web sites out there ie: web forms which prospects fill in and you acknowledge their enquiries.

5. Find the gossip in your company, give them a little more each month and get them to run all the Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and blogging accounts.

Read here how to integrate them and make it easy >>

6. Learn and spend a few hundred quid on Google Adwords. You need to know how to turn the tap on when the sales director comes chapping the door at the end of the month.

7. Find a big non compete partner. They do an emailing about you and your stuff to their prospects. You do one to your customers online or offline.

8. If you receive alot of incoming phone calls or alot of traffic to your office or shop, again mention the website address on your ivr or hand out a voucher card to those who visit but don't purchase.

9. Basic on page optimisation - make sure you get your title tags, page descriptions, header tags and body copy of each page properly optimised. It will improve your rankings on the research engines dramatically.

10. Have a god damn goal. Nothing is as futile as not nothing where you are going. Set your web site a goal. Say you want to get 10 brand new enquiries a month. Or say you want to generate 500 new visitors to your website. This will get you focused to work out  plan of how to get from where you are now to where you wanna be.

1983, aged 16, Lahinch, Ireland, me far right.

Two Strategies for throwing money off a bridge

Strategy Number One
If you are in business here is a strategy for throwing £75,000 off a bridge:

• Book space at a trade show
• Hire a company to design and build a branded booth
• Hire and pay staff to travel, stay over and dine for 4 days before and during the show
• Pay for order forms, lead generation forms, posters, brochures

I've staged a 3 day show and generate 400 leads at a cost of over £180 a lead

Alternative

• Find the people you are targeting.
• Yes, their email address is probably on their website or in an industry directory
• Get reception or a youngster to do this for you
• Put together a very basic site or mini website outline the problem your product solves, how it works, who uses it, the business case and how to get in touch.
• Send the people on the list a personalised plain text email like this:

Hi,
I was wondering if you could help me out or point in the right direction?
My name is Fraser and I was getting in touch to see if your company were open to ideas surrounding "insert solving what problem"
Any help pointing me in the right direction would be graciously appreciated"

(note this isn't spam, you are geniunely asking someone for help and showing some respect in your approach, no different from walking up to a stranger in the supermarket and asking if they have 2 x 50p for a £1 coin)

Go back to your previous list of leads with an email. Apologize to them that you haven't properly explained your product and was wondering if you were still open to learning more about "insert solving what problem"

Total cost £900, 12 people saying they are open to learning more by signing up. Cost per lead £75

Strategy Number Two
For an individual seeking a new job or opportunity:

• Create a cv
• Register with all the recruitment companies, job websites
• Go along to meet recruitment advisors
• Partake in psychometric tests
• Listen to what recruitment advisors say

The Alternative

• Put a simple blog up outlining what you do and what you have done. 
• Tie it in with Twitter
• Tie it in with Facebook
• Start connecting and interacting with those you follow and who follow you
• Be blatant, "I am looking for a new job or opportunity"
• Ask people if they know anyone

A Soft Porn Marketing Story and Twitter

Back in 1999/2000 when I was running marketing for ntl in Scotland marketing and promoting their telephone, internet and digital tv services, I got a telephone call routed through to me from the inbound call centre from a lady customer.

"This lady would like to speak to the person responsible for the recent tv channel promotion"

"Put her through"

"Hi, this is Fraser. How can I help you?"

"Hi, this is Mrs X (i really don't remember her name). Are you responsible for this direct mail campaign?"

"Yes I am"

"Well, it was a lovely designed brochure but I don't why you sent me a promotional offer to upgrade to the Playboy and Adult Channel "

Without really think, I replied

"Well, Mrs X, we only target those customers who have purchased those channels previously"

She then replied

"Well no one in my house watches those channels"

There was a long silence. I daren't say anything but I could almost read her her mind.

"Very well, thank you for your help. Can you please ensure I am removed from all future mailings. I have some talking to do in our household"

"Not a problem, you will be removed from the list. Thank you. Goodbye"

Well I put the phone down and told the story to the other guys in the department that some old lady doesn't know her husband or son is watching late night porn.

Fast forward 10 years and I ask myself "why is Twitter Free ?

I hate to be cynical but think about this for a minute. You sign up to Twitter and give them the following information:

Your Email Address
Your Web Address
Your Location
Your Language
What you do for a living
What you look like
Your mobile phone number

The Government don't even know this information about you.

Then, once you get tweeting, they know

What you talk about
What you like and dislike
Who your friends are
Who your friends are connected to
What other networks you are connected to

They say absolute power corrupts so what are Twitter doing with all this information ?

For now, all I can say is that there is always a price to pay for giving brands valuable information about yourself.

When should you give out a quotation or price ?

I am sure a prospective customer has asked you for a quotation during a meeting. It's an interesting dilemma.

If you can't give a ballpark estimate, the customer may think that you don't know your stuff. If you do give an estimate on the spot, are you undermining your professionalism and the price you will eventually propose ?

Scottish broadcaster Limmy points out in this short video one factor you may have overlooked. Watch and enjoy