Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

I ran a 10,000 product ecommerce site. For large-scale operators, product population and management is complicated and time-consuming.

Fulfillment can also be complicated, particularly in a drop-ship model with multiple vendors. This is true for the following reasons:

Visitor purchases one item sourced from drop-ship vendor "A" and another sourced from drop-ship vendor "B". Scenario 1: Ship both products from one location and the shipping charge is, for sake of discussion, $10. Well, do you charge customer $20? Or do you write-off the second $10 shipping fee? What if the second product sold for only $0.30? You'd literally be losing at least $9.70 on this order. Do you eliminate products from the mix which could be problematic?

You could program logic into your process that would force shipments from one location. Or it could determine the lowest cost option and choose that one. Or it could flag the order and let a human intervene in the decision process.

Additionally, an ecommerce site will likely require PPC to survive. Managing thousands of keywords and ads on multiple search platforms can be burdensome.

SEO needs to be part of your marketing mix prior to selection, development and deployment of your cart/site solution (disclosure: I'm an Search Engine Optimization Strategist).

These are just a few variables which need to be considered. There are many more and each of us will have a different perspective.

Selecting the best cart option based upon your budget, anticipated transaction volume, marketing efforts, and back-office process (purchasing, inventory management, fulfillment, tracking, etc.) requires resources.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Greg Hill
Trinity Search Engine Marketing

Competition. Because it's unlikely that you're selling unique products online and search is so easy. This translates into a difficulty to get good search positioning for your store and also ease for your potential customers to find better offers.

Make sure you research and choose an excellent e-commerce and order management systems. Also, make sure you develop sound practices for delivering an excellent service or product to your customers.

You will find that repeat customers and word-of-month will help you grow once you get going. That means it is important for them to have a good experience.

As someone noted above, being remarkable and standing out from the crowd are challenges but, I have to say, i do not think they are unique to online business. They are business challenges for any prospective entrepreneur and fear of failure should not stand in your way! It may happen but that is the way it goes sometimes. You can always pick up and start again.