Ecommerce Store Owners - How Do You Get Things Done

[moe46664]

So we're in the process of launching a new store, and the following questions might not be related to Software / Dev specifically:

1. Biggest question - where do you source your cheapest packaging materials from? (Boxes, bubble wrap etc)

2. What are your most valuable automation tools? We are running a Woocommerce site and we find that Zapier is proving to be quite useful. If you have specific automations for Woocommerce that help you, feel free to share them

3. Shipping - What are your average shipping costs and do you offer free delivery? Do your shipping rates vary from province to province?

4. What is the biggest lesson you have learnt running an online store?

Looking forward to your input here.
~Mo

 

[flamevector]

if it is IT hardware generally your supplier will deliver for you no need to worry about packaging and such. if you need any one though for packaging

Future packaging and machinery is a good start.

biggest lesson always confirm with banks on payment that is came from physical deposit and not a cheque.

Good luck

 

[moe46664]

if it is IT hardware generally your supplier will deliver for you no need to worry about packaging and such. if you need any one though for packaging

Future packaging and machinery is a good start.

biggest lesson always confirm with banks on payment that is came from physical deposit and not a cheque.

Good luck

Thanks man. Will check these guys out.

I'm currently running Instant EFT and a Embedded Credit card gateway - so i think that the cheque issuemay not apply?

 

[FoXtroT]

The one thing I would say is to try get your courier integrated somehow, even if it means hiring a developer to do it.

It takes so much time if you are having to do that side of things manually. SA couriers aren't exactly set-up for easy integration by non-devs. Dawn Wing has the closest you get but even then, their implementation is dated and not suited for large volumes.

We are an existing brick & mortar retailer and launched our store at the end of 2015 using Shopify as a backend. Our biggest challenge has been tying in with our ERP; which we still have not been able to do due to a lack of resources and a recent change in ERP systems. So we have to manually capture each sale on our ERP before sending the sale out. Very time consuming and an integration that Shopify is not suited to at all.

I am going to be recommending that we transition to a Magento install as it will give us a level of flexibility in this regard that we haven't had before.

I second your use of Zapier, it is a big help, but because of our set-up it hasn't been much help for our e-commerce business. But I can certainly see how it would help with a beginner who is using all the newer software/apps that Zapier supports (and even some that they don't natively).

 

[moe46664]

The one thing I would say is to try get your courier integrated somehow, even if it means hiring a developer to do it.

It takes so much time if you are having to do that side of things manually. SA couriers aren't exactly set-up for easy integration by non-devs. Dawn Wing has the closest you get but even then, their implementation is dated and not suited for large volumes.

We are an existing brick & mortar retailer and launched our store at the end of 2015 using Shopify as a backend. Our biggest challenge has been tying in with our ERP; which we still have not been able to do due to a lack of resources and a recent change in ERP systems. So we have to manually capture each sale on our ERP before sending the sale out. Very time consuming and an integration that Shopify is not suited to at all.

I am going to be recommending that we transition to a Magento install as it will give us a level of flexibility in this regard that we haven't had before.

I second your use of Zapier, it is a big help, but because of our set-up it hasn't been much help for our e-commerce business. But I can certainly see how it would help with a beginner who is using all the newer software/apps that Zapier supports (and even some that they don't natively).

I also think that we are very far behind wrt integration and automation as opposed to our western counterparts. Althugh therres some really cool tech being produced in CT and we wont stay in the dark for much longer.

Zapier definitely helps a ton for us especially with order management.

 

[abvrnd]

Integrate a courier company such as MDS who have an API, for payments, sign up with PayFast...