Making Money the E-Commerce Way
Tapping into the web to sell goods and services is a competitive advantage that not many small businesses possess. It's a market that is available 24/7, 365 days out of the year and yet most small businesses don't sell online. The reason many don't is that they lack the technical expertise to get set up and can't afford the services of any web development company that specializes in E-Commerce.
Back to the Future
Imagine that it's Friday morning. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. You roll out of bed, go downstairs, make your coffee, and check your email. You recieved two messages from your internet site. They tell you that last night, at 9:45PM and 2:30AM, two people bought your Widget 2200 product for a total sell of $407.00. One customer lives in Norway and the other is a night owl who lives on the other side of town.
Pleased, you have breakfast and head off to work. Five minutes after opening up shop you get a phone call from one of your suppliers. They tell you that the Widget 2200 is being phased out in favor of the Widget 3000, which is being released in two weeks. When you look at your shelves, you see that you've got 50 Widget 2200's that are going to be rendered obsolete in fourteen days.
You figure, "No problem." You log on to your website and reduce the cost of the Widget 2200 by 20%. Then you put a flyer on your main page highlighting the sell. After that, you write a short newsletter telling all your subscribers that for the next 14 days they will have the opportunity to buy your widgets %20 cheaper than anywhere else. In all, it takes about 15 minutes to do, and by the time you get around to sending out the first two Widgets, five others have joined them.
This scenario isn't some rose colored view of tomorrow, it is something that is already ocurring all over the world and made possible by a piece of software called the shopping cart.
The Shopping Cart
When thinking about entering the online marketplace, many small businesses think they need a site and, "Oh, yeah... a shopping cart to." The name is a little misleading, because it implies that the shopping cart is just something that you tack onto the side of the site. In reality, most good shopping carts ARE the site. They catalog your merchandise, arrange it, display it, search it, sell it, and allow you to easily administer all of it. They also manage the content of the surrounding pages: about us, contact us, the landing page, and more. In many ways they are a content management system, just one that is oriented around selling products.
So Why Aren't There More Small Business's Selling Online?
The price tag is more than many small business's can justify. There are lots of people who recognize the importance of getting their store online with a shopping cart, but there aren't as many developers who specialize in shopping carts. Besides implementing the shopping cart, there are also other fees to maintain an online store(Dedicated IP, SSL Certificate, Merchant Services).
To combat these costs, we do our best to work within your budget and come out with a solution that maximizes your investment. We use open source software that is free to the public, we provide several options to cut costs, and we plan your site with your future success in mind.
Our Shopping Cart Software: Magento and Virtuemart
Depending upon your situation, we will probably recommend either Magento or Joomla, with the Virtuemart Extension. Magento is a cutting edge shopping cart that has nerds all over the world drooling. It is the forerunner in open source E-Commerce. It is best suited for true online stores, where the goal of the website owner is to sell a product or products. An example of this type of store might be a store that specializes in selling fan paraphanelia for 80's movies. The merchant's niche is well defined and the merchant simply wants to make their store available globally. They don't want more than a handful of pages that aren't dedicated to selling merchandise.
Virtuemart is a good option for website owners who want to have a website that represents their business, but only want to sell a few items, and don't want those sells to be the central goal of the site. For example, perhaps your small business is a local coffee shop. You want to enhance your coffee shop's image by having a website with a map, witty content, a newsletter, and a contact form for comments. However, you think it would also be great to be able to sell hats, shirts, and coffee mugs with your business's logo emblazoned on them. In this scenario, Joomla with Virtuemart may be a better choice.
Both Magento and Joomla with Virtuemart are excellent software and ones that we provide training for once your site is up and running. If you think you're ready to make the leap into the online marketplace, and would like to set up an appointment to discuss your goals, your challenges, and how Blue Bridge can best help you, please: