Robin and Marion Jones, Croque-en-Bouche,
The Old Post Office, Putley Green, Ledbury HR8 2QN. t: 01531 670809 f. 0870 7066282
E-COMMERCE
The Web is a great place to sell stuff. I sell wines and use some specialist software,
but then I have a list of 400 wines to manage. The wines are in a separate database,
and there’s a shopping basket and processing forms. Payment is made direct to HSBC,
without my seeing any card details, which makes it doubly secure (web buyers worry
about security!)
Destination Champagne is a book site. Check it out. It has only one product, a guide
book. But the price is different depending on where you want it sent, and you can
also buy it as a download. The book is £14 but the download is a bargain £3.50, though
still nicely profitable. We use a Paypal account, which is quick to set up. Punters
pay them, using their existing Paypal account or a credit card. Email comes, and
we send back a standard message, telling them a password to download the book. Paypal
charge about 3.5% plus 20p. The rest is clear profit. And not pricey to set up.
On the Destination Champagne site you are only going to buy one copy of one product,
but Paypal can do multiple purchases, and have a simple shopping basket too. Bacchus
& Comus sells books, software, event tickets, allsorts.
Costs depend on complexity. A shopping section like on my wine site would swallow
£800 easy. There is a lot to set up - and test! But some basic Paypal stuff? £50
- 100 would cover it. Not much work but you have to set yourself up with a Paypal
account. (I’ll tell you how.)
An added extra that is useful is Google Analytics (free to use but a bit of time
to set up) you can know exactly who is visiting, when, which pages are looked at
and how many pages per visit. And what keywords they are using to find you in Google.
Helps tuning your site no end. Ask us about this stuff.
