From TNPC issue #3.23...

Putting Together an E-Commerce Store

by Dan Butler
November 9, 2000

UPS has a television commercial showing a young upstart Web company eagerly awaiting their first online order. Euphoria erupts when the sales counter ticks to one. Consternation sets in as the hit counter spins out of control and the magnitude of their task in dealing with the orders sinks in.

Last issue we announced the opening of the TNPC Store. Your response greatly exceeded our expectations, and we thank you! While we didn't quite experience the same level of growth as the company in the UPS commercial, we did have to do some scrambling to get on top of things. Putting all the necessary systems in place taught us a lot about what we didn't think about.

We expected modest sales. We got a more enthusiastic response, which required rush shipments of inventory. We had more overseas orders than we thought we would, and where we thought we would be selling Micro-Lights in single units the majority of orders were for multiple units. This meant that our shipping procedures had to be revamped on the fly. These are problems that confront many companies that venture out onto the Web. While we had a handle on the technical aspects of electronic selling, the physical realities of getting products out the door caught us somewhat unawares.

From a technical standpoint the store took two of us approximately twelve hours to get up and running. Cosmetically it still needs work but we focused on putting up a viable Web storefront that allowed us to take electronic orders on a secure server. To that end we simply applied the tools and knowledge we've accumulated over the years to the task and this was easiest part of the entire process, yet was the one that we thought would present the greatest problems. It just goes to show that you have to be flexible when starting up an e-business and have a number of contingency plans that can be adapted as your "plan" is subjected to reality.

E-commerce is a fairly specialized topic but if you run an online or offline business you might want to head over to:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/323/tr.cgi?dan1

Here you can sign up for a special interest bulletin by me, Dan Butler, on the topics of e-commerce and other related areas covering the doing of business on the Internet. You'll learn about the automated tools we use and other little tricks that we've learned to make our life easier. More importantly you'll learn *why* we choose the tools we do. And please do visit the TNPC Store:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/store/

You can reach Dan Butler at:
mailto:danbutler@TheNakedPC.com

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