Website Design | Shopping Carts | Examples
Web Design with Guardian Online Development

BUILDING A SHOPPING CART

Common Problems

There are a lot of things to consider before you begin running an Online Store. "A collaborative research project completed by Forbes, Huffington Post, and Marketing Signals, found 90% of all eCommerce (online only) businesses fail within the first 120 days of launch" (Comma Consulting)*1. The reasons given were:

  1. Poor online marketing - 37%
  2. Lack of online search visibility - 35%
  3. Little to no market for their products or services - 35%
  4. Running out of cash - 32%
  5. Price and costing issues - 29%
  6. Got out-competed - 23%
  7. Retail giants dominating a large share of the market - 19%
  8. Lack customer service - 16%
  9. Poor team around them - 14%
  10. Product mistiming - 11%

We have found the following issues contribute to failure as well and should be considered before taking on a project.

  • Can you afford the monthly or yearly fees?
  • Can your product be sold with enough mark up to be profitable?
  • Can you afford to pay for advertising to get customers on the site?
  • Do you have the time or resources to add product listings to the site?
  • How expensive is it to ship your items?

Ongoing Fees

Investing in an Online Store is not a one off payment, each year you need to pay fees to keep the site running, called hosting fees. On average you will have to pay around $300 or more for website hosting. Shopping carts like Shopify charge a monthly fee based upon how many features you need. This can range from around $50 per month to $1000's per month. This does not include updates to your Website, that if you are uncomfortable doing yourself will need to be done by a trained professional.

Enough Markup

Each year or month you will need to factor in the above fees into your pricing structure. On top of this are credit card fees, if you accept credit card payments this can be as high a 3% of a transaction. All these things will need to be considered when dealing with markup, and prices.

Paid Advertising

Although good SEO can help you be found on Google, it often in the early stages does not result in free customers. It is usually a fact that you will have to pay to get people to visit your site. This can be very expensive, i.e. on average to get one customer on your site, at the time of writing will cost between $1 and $2 per visitor. Some of these visitors result from accidental clicks, so in reality you are paying more than that per visitor.

Time or Resources to Add Product Listings

One thing that most people do not consider is it takes a lot of time to add product listings, to price, format images, and generate descriptions can take between 15 min - 1 hour per product. That may seem a little steep, but it is not. Consider how many products you will need to add to your site, then calculate the time cost for adding them. This can blow out your project.

Shipping Expenses

Shipping for large and bulky items can be very expensive, you may want to sell an item cheaply, but if your shipping is not taken care of you could stumble, you will have to factor shipping into the pricing structure before you begin.

OUR SHOPPING CARTS

After reading the risks associated with online selling, if you still want to try, we will do our best to mitigate the problems, but we can not guarantee success. Below are our inclusions and exclusions.

What We Include

Site Configuration

We will set up the site to the stage that it is both able to add products, and process payments. This includes setting up payment processors like PayPal. We will investigate the best payment methods for you to use.

Site Content

We will set up advertising banners and text, and any text descriptions that you want on your site, basically your promotional text describing your company. We do not however generate sales and returns policies, or any other policy document, although we can guide you through the creation process. After you have created your policies we add them to the site.

What We Exclude

We Only Add 10 Product Listings

We will work on your first 10 products, images, and descriptions. But we do not add more than 10 product listings to the site, this includes uploading images for the additional listings, or creating product descriptions. This is due to the large amount of time it takes to add the listings to a store, usually 30 mins - 1 hour each. We can hire someone to add any additional listings, but it would be at an additional hourly cost (above our standard rate).

We Do Not Calculate Your Markup or Prices

We do not calculate your pricing, shipping, or markup, this is a mission critical task that we are not trained in, however if you are unable to do it we can assist with basic formulas. We do however set up any shipping calculators you wish to use. Some stores can not calculate shipping (often the cheaper ones) and require you to add shipping into your prices. We also configure selectable pricing options in the store for the first 10 products, and make recommendations on the best way to use them; these options may add additional price to your product for installation as an example, or add extra price to a product for additional components.

PLAN YOUR SITE

*prices include GST in the cost.

References

*1 - THE TOP 10 REASONS WHY 90% OF ALL ECOMMERCE STARTUPS FAIL WITHIN THE FIRST 120 DAYS, Comma Consulting, viewed 20 October 2022 at <https://www.commaconsulting.com.au/articles/the-top-10-reasons-why-90-of-all-ecommerce-startups-fail-within-the-first-120-days>

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Contacts

Name: Guardian Online Development

Professional Website Development for all your Internet Programming and marketing needs.

Mobile: 04 0323 6109

Address:

14 Driftwood Place, Springfield Lakes, Queensland, 4300

ABN: 43 657 081 819