Ecommerce Website Design
Bizresearch® helps retailers promote their brand name products in search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL) and in shopping search engines (Shopping.com, Yahoo Stores, Froogle, Bizrate, Kelkoo (UK), Dealtime UK, and Pricerunner (UK)).
We've put together a basic review of the issues retailers should consider before promoting their products on the web, including costs of running the online business.
If you are a small to medium sized retail business owner, you may already have an online store, or are in the process of considering an online store. This introductory online guide to Ecommerce Marketing is for you. In the past seven years, we have met many small business owners who want to expand presence on the Web but are unsure of how to get started.
If you have strong product inventory, or a niche product and can fulfill sharp business growth (40% or more per year), are competitively priced, and deliver excellent customer service and product fulfillment in a timely fashion, then you are likely to have opportunity to succeed on the Web.
Many small business owners wonder if they should build a custom designed web site and ecommerce shopping cart, or if they should license or purchase software that will do the same thing.
After having worked with some retailers who did the latter, and experienced major problems later, we recommend building a custom designed web site. If your store's product selection ranges between 100 - 1,000 items, and you have the capacity to fulfill 20-50 orders a day (may reach 200 - 300 orders per day during Christmas season). Once your site exceeds this type of inventory fulfillment, your business will have more sophisticated needs for data integration, bookkeeping and fulfillment. We will eventually write up recommendations in that area in mid-2004.
So, in the event you're immediately jumping to What's a custom designed web site going to cost me? - here are some prices as well as some things you should consider before getting started:
- Graphic Design Template
Includes the masthead image (top image of the site), navigational elements (buttons or tabs, drop-down or call-out menus, contact info, graphic icons)
Approximate Cost: $5,000 - $15,000 (depending on the size and capability of the graphic design agency you are working with).
Our Fees: We charge approximately $8,000 - $10,000. This would include two design concepts, two color copy comps, and one HTML template, and cascading style sheet. Royalty-free photos must be purchased for integrating into the web site design. Each image costs nearly $70 - $150 depending on how long the image has been on the market. Timeline for a design template can be 4-8 weeks, depending on your availability (email is fine) for input and approval.
- Ecommerce Strategy
May be included in the graphic design price, however, we often choose to work on a strategy based on the company's industry, business objectives, competitors, and current business capacity.
Our Fees: $5,000 to $15,000
Price depends on the complexity of your product offering, industry, and current business practices along with what's in place now to build upon, or whether the need exists to overwrite what's in place and start fresh.
- Database Integration and Automation
Includes: Integrating and automating your current store inventory system with the Web site. This is extremely attractive and scalable for small businesses. With every small business we work with, we observe the way they manage inventory on the Web and in their store. It is very time consuming to enter every product in your regular store, and again on your Web site. It becomes a major bottleneck at Christmas, and has cost all of our small business clients lost orders, customer service ratings, and potential repeat business. We have seen as much as 20% business loss, due to lack of data integration. When you learn about the costs of running a small Web business, you will learn that you cannot afford NOT to have data integration with your Web site and store's legacy or DOS or Windows-based inventory management system.
Approximate Cost: $5,000 - $10,000
- Photography or Product Pictures
If you are not setup to take high quality pictures, and cannot convince your manufacturers to do this, then invest in a photographer to take them or get some training to take them in-house with a nice digital camera. Look at your competitors' pictures. How are they doing it? Can you do better? Are they showing your product with one view (most products), or multiple views (clothing, jewelry, travel-related destinations)? At a minimum, your web site pictures should be of competitive quality at three different sizes; 1) a thumbnail picture, which is of the smallest size; 2) a regular product image; and 3) a larger zoom image. These are all important pictures on an ecommerce site. If you build your web site correctly, you will only need to create one picture (in most cases), and the programming will automatically size one picture into three pictures.
Cost: $85 - $125/hour plus development expenses - depends on the number of pictures and views.
Suggestions: If you're lucky, your manufacturer will provide high-quality picture standards for you, along with the inventory selection each year. We have, however, seen manufacturer-provided pictures that were not three-dimensional, and were poorly created. Only use their shots if they're good. If they're not, don't. It's a wonderful way to differentiate your product line on the Web.
If you have to take them yourself, depending on your photography skills, you may wish to hire someone who is good with a camera.
You do not necessarily need professional photographers or special lighting. You could take the pictures in your store's environment, as long as the lighting is appropriate.
Approximate Cost: $350 digital camera, or a quality analog camera for high-resolution pictures that costs around $500.
Suggestions: The biggest tip we have regarding taking pictures, is take your time! We have seen people who take quick shots and post them on the Web. They look terrible in some cases. Get good detail shots. Inexpensive digital cameras do not typically take nice close-up shots. They are often blurry. So you may want to consider buying an analog camera.
Remember the prospective Web customer will not be able to pick up your product and touch it, or be impulsively persuaded to buy it in the check-out aisle. You won't have the same power of an in-store's merchandising ability to get the customer to buy it. So invest in quality, high-resolution images of your product line. Please!
- Secure Administrative Console
Very important, as this will give you the ability to manage most of your web site without the ongoing need for programmers like us at $125/hour. It makes a lot of sense for a small business owner to spend the money up-front for a robust administrative tool to enable you to manage product inventory, run batches, change featured items on the home page and category or subcategory pages, change the content of your newsletter, and other pages as well. Your administrative tool should also have reporting features, such as traffic statistics, sales conversions and ROI.
Approximate Cost: $5,000 - $10,000.
Okay, so you're beginning to add up the high numbers, but I encourage you to add up the low end of the numbers. You're looking at just over $20,000 if you're on the low end. Pricing often depends on the agency you select, and the quality of the work to be provided. You could end up spending more if you piece-meal your investment and get stuck with a non-scalable solution as your company grows. It has the potential to be a major disruption to your company down the road, if you are not careful. We've seen it happen a number of times for our growing business clients.
Before we proceed to the second section of Ecommerce Marketing 101, let's recap some of the basic business principles that will feed your ability to succeed or fail in ecommerce:
- Ensure excellent product inventory
Don't promote what you don't have in-stock, or the ability to get in-stock within 2 days - unless you drop-ship. We'll write more about setting customer expectations in the coming weeks. But it gets down to a matter of selection on the Web, because your competitors are too close - too easy for your customers to turn to.
Example: If your online competitors show ten types of white diamond gold crosses, and you have three, don't advertise until you get these up on your web site. If they sell 500 different types of wedding bands, and you only have 50, then you have to expand inventory before you advertise online, unless you offer something else that they don't.
- Excellent customer service by phone and email
Always have someone who can answer the phone 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. If you service the international market, your hours should be extended.
- Competitive Pricing
You do not have to be the cheapest in town, and if you can't discount, that's okay too. But you have to be in the ballpark with your competitors, unless you offer a niche product that is very difficult to find elsewhere.
- Rapid Fulfillment - what's rapid fulfillment?
Ask yourself. If your order something from Amazon.com today, when do you expect it? Does Amazon.com tell you when you should expect delivery? Does Staples.com tell you when to expect delivery? Does 1-800Flowers.com tell you when you can expect delivery of that gift you're getting for your Mom or your client? That's what the leaders are doing in this industry. You will lose customers, guaranteed, and repeat business, if you do not properly set customer expectations and then meet them as you promised. Your competitors could beat you here, regardless of pricing. And they will get the repeat business. You won't if you don't do this right.
- Shipment or Order Tracking
UPS, FEDEX, they all have the ability to integrate with your web site in the area of online order tracking. Ask your programmer or design firm to make this possible on your web site. More on that in the sections under Shipping & Taxes.
- Willingness to do what it takes to compete online
Remember that your competitor is a click away. Therefore someone needs to be in charge of watching your online competitors, their marketing and advertising strategy, their pricing strategy, customer loyalty programs, site usability, and how you stack up against them.
- Team Strategy - All Hands On Deck
Willingness to get your marketing staff, your programmer and your product or store managers at the same table at the same time with you present is vital. This is no way to describe the value of everyone sitting at the table in a constructive strategy meeting to make everyone aware of what's at stake and listening to each person's issues and developing scalable, strategic work-arounds.
- Willingness to spend some money
Don't be a cheapskate. Sounds bold to say that, but it's true. Remember what it took you to open up your store. Did you have to take out a loan? How many employees and equipment did you have to take a risk on, wondering when it would be before you started earning the money back. Trying to spend $5,000 to open up a store (online) will be a mistake. An online store is another store, with all of the costs included. Budget for $20,000 to start up your store to do it right. You'll need another $20,000 for advertising and marketing per year, but we'll address that in another section. You're likely to make it back within two to three years, possibly sooner, if you follow all (not some) of the concepts above.
- In the event that you're beginning to think you can't do this - read our Board Games Case Study to see how they have benefited from our services over a two-year period.
- To get started with Bizresearch and to increase your online sales by 40% within the first year, call Bizresearch at 1-614-846-7560
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