Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
|
|
|
|
E-Commerce Here We Come! If there has been one subject I've been queried about more than any other since I started this Help Desk series, it's getting an on-line commerce-generating site up and running. With a little gentle prodding by the editor, it's time to turn from mundane Y2K issues to the exciting world of e-commerce. In the next few months you're going to see how we go about deciding how to set up shop on the Internet, choose the equipment, design the site, arrange for money to roll in, and maintain our presence on the World Wide Web. Instead of making this an academic exercise of a fictional company selling widgets, we'll go real world here with a real site selling real products to lots of real people (we hope). The first thing to worry about when considering an e-commerce site is what are we going to sell? Simply creating a Web site and telling people you sell computer software and hardware will very rarely generate enough money to pay for the site itself. This leads to the first requirement for an e-commerce site: identify the product or service you will sell. What sells on an e-commerce site? There are a few simple criteria for successful sites. First, a Web product must be sold at a discount if customers can get it in a store. People will order over the Web to save a few bucks. Second, it may be a unique product. Maybe you've got something no one else has: the super-duper software that will be the next killer app; the hardware device that reads every type of disk known to man and costs only pennies, or the ability to customize software by sheer thought processes. None of these choices are very likely, but if you do have this sort of product or capability, you've got an excellent reason for an e-commerce site. Third, you could have something that's not easy for customers to find in local stores, either because the product is esoteric or not very popular. You don't find expensive RAID arrays, for example, in the local Computer City. If you can't meet any of these three criteria, you're not sunk. You just fall into the category of e-commerce sites that have to try to do things a little better and maybe a little cheaper than the next guy. The trick is to come up with a hook that makes our site the one people visit and buy from. OK, so we know we're selling complete systems, expertise, hardware or software on the Web. Now, we have to find out about our competition. (This sounds a lot like starting a real business, doesn't it? Just because you can get an e-commerce site up and running for a fraction of the cost of a storefront business is no reason to throw money away foolishly. Smart business principles apply just as much in cyberspace as in the real world.) Is location important? Does it matter if you sell your stuff only in the local area, or are you going world-wide? All of this affects the competition assessment. Find out who your direct competitors are and you'll know who you have to be better than. If you're up against a large corporation, you won't have the resources to compete in most niches. The world isn't ready for another Dell. There are a number of ways to determine the competition, but the easiest way is to get on the Web and find it yourself using search engines. Or do what I did: pay a kid to cruise the Web looking for anything to do with your subject and print them all out with impressions of the site and their services. I get the kid's assessment of the site's appearance, features, services, and overall professionalism (all of which are very important in e-commerce) and heck, the kid probably knows how to find this stuff better than me anyway. Total cost, fifty bucks. Got your competitors figured out? The next thing to figure out is your typical on-line customer. If you're selling a particular kind of software, then you know who most of the customers will be. If you're selling a hardware device or a whole range of products, then the customers could be anything from kids to grannies. Many e-commerce sites make the mistake of trying to sell everything to everyone. This won't work. Narrow your product and your customer base down. You can always expand later, when your site is up, running, and making money. The final thing we're going to worry about at his stage is our business plan. No, we're not going to create a hundred page blurb for the bank, we're going to keep it short and sweet. We need to determine how much time and money we're willing to sink in this e-commerce project, what we hope to get out (realistic as well as optimistic and pessimistic numbers), the timeframe we are assigning for the multiple parts of this project (discussed in the next column), and a bail-out condition. The latter is just common sense: if you've been at this for a year and haven't made a penny, are you still willing to go on? Set an exit condition (time or money spent) and stick with it. Sort of. Next column, we look at the project plan. Sort of. |
|
Send mail to
tparker@tpci.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|