This document summarizes a presentation about starting an online business. It outlines three key points: (1) Most of the work is done offline in setting up products, pricing, taxes, and inventory; (2) Businesses should carefully select an e-commerce platform that meets their needs rather than using whatever platform is recommended; (3) Building the online store is the easy part, ongoing analysis, marketing, and improvements are needed to keep the business running successfully. The presentation provides examples and tips for each of these stages in starting an online business.

1. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Ready to Sell Online?
The ABCs of Getting Started
(animated gifs from giphy.com)

2. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Nice to meet you

3. WE BUILD
WEBSITES

4. WE HOST
WEBSITES*
* Which really looks a lot like building them
when you take a picture of it happening.

5. We also ...
Love what we do,
ride bikes to work,
love our clients,
bring pets to work,
love to learn,
know the web inside out,
have been building websites for 15 years
debate the virtues of various beers,
help our friends with web projects

6. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Key Point #1:
Most of the work of creating an
ONLINE
business is done
OFFLINE

7. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Example of running afoul of Key Point #1:
Product images?
EASY!

10. My new store and awesome image:

11. Some other store:

14. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Things to keep straight:
images, prices, variations, taxes,
cross-product associations,
inventory, features, suppliers*
* And anything else you can think of related to your products

15. You could use a spreadsheet …

16. Or you could use your STORE ...

17. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Know thy market:
geography and demographics
give big hints on
design, online marketing,
translations

18. Quick, which one is the cell phone?

19. The responsive dream:

20. The reality:

21. But it doesn’t have to be that way ...

22. Confused?
So are clients in your target demographic
that you didn’t bother to translate for

23. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Key Point #2:
PICK THE STORE.
Don’t let it pick you.

24. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Example of running afoul of Key Point #2:
I’ll use whatever store my web people tell me without
even logging in and trying it. I don’t like the word
“backend” and it’s not as if I’ll be logging in very
often.

26. E-commerce tool test drive guide:
Your
list of
store
tasks
Expert
shows you
how to do
them
Make
sense?
next store

27. Exciting?
NuRelm is hiring.
Uh, no?
Consider a hosted store or
hiring a vendor to manage the
technical details.

28. What should your store do?
Buy Local needed:
A site like Groupon …
except different.

29. What should your store NOT do?
Silver Dollar Optical
needed:
No way to checkout
unless logged in
No CC processing
No reviews
No cross selling
A lack of lots of
other thingsHow do you
buy stuff?

30. Custom design or template?
Not cheap
Nice (maybe)
Yours
Cheap
Nice (maybe)
Generic
http://v2.centralstory.com/about/squiggle/

31. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Keep going until you have ...
… figured out and setup shipping,
credit card processing, product imports,
fulfilment workflow, returns*
* And anything else you can think of related to store operations

32. Finally, a time-honored development tradition
Test Break Fix
you will do this more than once

33. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Key Point #3:
PLANNING AND BUILDING
THE PERFECT STORE ...
was the easy part.

34. The following cheeseburger is magical*
* Unlike your store, which requires great external effort to remain aloft

35. It sounds easy
Analyze
Make
moves
Sell
rinse, lather, repeat

36. Analyze Part I: Ask
Where did we
think sales would
originate? Where did sales
really originate?
Where are
people
abandoning
their cart?
What kind of
feedback are we
getting?
How is
shipping
working out?
What opportunities
are we missing?

37. Analyze Part II: Answer
Google
Analytics
Store
Reports
Customer
Feedback
You and
employees

38. Analyze Part IIa: Answer with Analytics

39. Analyze Part IIa: Answer with Analytics

40. Social Networking
RSS Feeds
Blog Contributions
Improve Store
Work on internal
processes
Organic Search
Search Directories
Paid Search
Social
Bookmarking
Content
Aggregators
Make Moves!

41. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
The do it all over again. And again. And again.

42. PA Business Technology Conference - Sam Shaaban - NuRelm, Inc - 11/21/2013
Thank You
My name is Sam and
my email is sam@nurelm.com