When we left Pauline, she was dangling over a cliff by a frayed rope that was coming unwound. Strand by strand, she was nearing her inevitable plunge to the chasm below. Sorry, different story. As I recall, we were recounting the problems we were having with our new web site.
Pointing the URL from the old to the new web site went surprisingly well. Two calls each to ProStores and Register.com ironed out all the details. At 2100 CDT on Sunday, our URL began propagating throughout all the Domain Name Service servers across the globe, a process that could take 24 to 48 hours to complete. At 2102 CDT at our house we were viewing our new ProStore when we typed in www.lemaxvillages.com. Slowly we received reports from as far away as the Philippines about the new site.
The system administrator sobered up long enough to restore some capability to the wounded server, but it still wasn’t hitting on all cylinders on Monday, July 7 – the day of the grand opening. Fortunately, people weren’t complaining about slow response. In fact, most comments were highly favorable. (What? They didn’t like our old site?)
Despite two years of testing, despite trying to anticipate every contingency, when we went into production, we encountered a few bugs. We’ve always offered free shipping on orders over $350. We had also been offering a temporary ten-percent discount on all orders over $350 until August 31, 2008. We learned the hard way that ProStores doesn’t permit two concurrent storewide promotions. After missing two $400 sales early Monday morning, four phone calls to tech support uncovered a workaround, but it required the buyer to enter a promotion code at checkout time. Now, we had to notify our buyers somehow about this promotion code, which led to the second problem.
We decided (and ProStores tech support agreed) that we needed to prominently display the promotion code on the home page and also on the checkout page. Updating the home page was a snap, but there are multiple checkout pages: one for buyers who wish to register themselves on the site, another for buyers who had previously registered, and the third for buyers who couldn’t be bothered registering. (Just let me place my order so I can get on with my life!)
Apparently, when I updated two of the three checkout pages, I put the text smack-dab in the middle of an IF statement, which caused lots of problems. That took an hour or so to resolve, but the solution made sense. The universe was once again in balance.
Not that anyone from ProStores is reading this blog, but I should probably apologize to the entire tech support staff. (This also sets the stage for the next problem we’ll address below.) They all probably needed an extra shot or two of whiskey last night to calm their jangled nerves. I wish I had a dollar for every time I asked them, “What do you mean my ProStore won’t . . . (fill in the blank)? I’ve read the manual cover-to-cover four times, and it plainly states that it will . . . (fill in the blank).”
The next issue wasn’t noticeable to buyers, but it affected us. Our warehouse is laid out with products in numerical order by SKU. We primarily handle Lemax Christmas and Halloween villages, but we also sell ornaments from Kurt S. Adler, On30 scale trains from Bachmann, some A Christmas Story items from NECA, and Toy Presidents (talking action figures that include presidents, first ladies, and notable world leaders). An eclectic mix, each cluster of which is laid out in numerical order by SKU.
To pick an order efficiently, I need a list of items sorted numerically by SKU. So, how is the ProStores picking list organized? It isn’t. The order is random. I called tech support and asked how to sort the list numerically. “Oh, Prostores can’t do that,” she offered. I protested, “Hey, wait a minute. I was a programmer for ten years. It’s a simple matter to sort things.” She retorted, “Well, then, go into the HTML code and sort it yourself.” I asked to make this a formal request for version 9.1.0.250 of the ProStores software. She gave me an e-mail address to send my request to.
Until I can get around to making this (potentially dangerous) change to the underlying code of ProStores, I’ve trained Carol to copy and paste the list into a spreadsheet and sort it there. Then she can print the page, and I’ll use it to pick the order. Aaargh!
Monday, while I was at work, Carol called me frantically. “The shipping is too low on the first few orders we’ve gotten.” I investigated, and all I can tell is that when the store links to UPS to get a shipping quote, it’s retrieving the cost to ship to a business, not a residence. UPS adds a hefty surcharge to each package bound for a residence. Also the shipping quote ignores the weight of the box and shipping materials. I had to make some quick adjustments to the shipping algorithm, but our first five or six customers got a heckuva bargain on shipping.
All things considered, the glitches we’ve encountered so far have been fairly minor. The lesson here is to test, test, and test some more. You don’t need to spend two years testing, but you need a good test plan on paper that exercises every line of code. Test the credit card payments. Test the credit card refunds. Test the reasonableness of the shipping costs. Test, test, test whatever makes sense in your case.
Cosmetically, make sure you have no broken links. (That little red “x” indicates broken links.) Insure all your products have images. Insure all the thumb-nail images are the same size and the full-size images are the same size. Anyway, you get the idea: spend a little time insuring the site looks professional.
If you’d like to see the site for yourself, click here www.lemaxvillages.com. If you find any broken links or missing images, drop me a line.
Showing posts with label e-commerce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label e-commerce. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
How (Not?) to Set Up an e-Commerce Web Site
How (Not?) to Set Up an e-Commerce Web Site
Have you ever watched Monk on television? If so, you’ve noticed he’s very particular (to say the least!), and he has problems making decisions. Actually, I guess he doesn’t have problems with making decisions, because he simply can’t make them.
Well, for several years, my wife and I had been wanting to change our web site from the archaic, HTML-based version that had served us well for so many years to a glitzy, glamorous e-commerce solution replete with a shopping cart, automatic shipping calculation, on-line payment acceptance, etc., etc.
We searched and searched, at first just looking for tools to cobble into our existing web site. Later we searched for an entirely new full-service provider. Like Diogenes looking for an honest man, we plodded along, seeking the perfect solution.
Perfection, however, was evasive. This site lacked this; that site lacked that; this one too hot; this one too cold. At a trade show two years ago, we thought we found two excellent choices. Infopia was too pricey, but was acknowledged as the Mercedes-Benz within the industry. (For our lower-priced figurines we would have lost money on each sale.) We reluctantly rejected them without a trial. MarketWorks seemed the second-best alternative, and we took them for a 30-day test drive. 31 days later we cancelled our arrangement and resumed our search for the ideal e-commerce site. (For one thing, the MarketWorks people never heard of the word “security” or how to apply it in an IT environment. On top of everything, they billed us $.95 for that extra day beyond the 30-day test, which I thought was chintzy.)
At the trade show, we had also investigated a company called ProStores. (We actually investigated six or eight different e-commerce providers.) I dredged up their literature, gave them a call, and opened an account.
At first I was frustrated. With 1500 SKUs (at that time – now we’re over 2000 SKUs), I didn’t want to have to key everything in from scratch. Had I had only a few dozen SKUs, brute force would have saved time. However, with so many SKUs and so many fields associated with each SKU, I wanted to import whatever information I could.
Navigating through the ProStores Store Administration area was a bit of a challenge. It’s far from intuitive. Ultimately, I read one of their 200-page manuals four times and their other 200-page manual three times. After the second reading of each and a few calls to tech support, I felt comfortable maneuvering around the Store Administration area.
I tried every import technique they offered, including some that were alleged to import from eBay. We had 600 SKUs in an eBay Store, so I hoped I could at least import this chunk to save a little time. Of course, nothing worked. The bulk importing techniques burped when they encountered HTML code. They belched when they saw the funky codes that are embedded within Microsoft Word documents. All the imports failed.
I called tech support. I had them on speed dial. I recognized a couple of them by their voices. Some of the technicians were very sharp, and some were the opposite. ProStores had just hired a bunch of new staff, and the new-hires were still learning. When I got a seasoned veteran, I would pump him or her for all the information I could learn. I made progress, but I didn’t get the store up and running before the busy selling season hit in 2006. Not wanting to throw away what little handiwork I’d accomplished to that point, I kept paying the monthly fees to ProStores until the summer of 2007.
My wife gave me an ultimatum (my mate ulti-mated me – sorry, I digress). “Get the ProStore up and running before busy season, or die a slow, painful death.” From her perspective, everything she did was manual. People would visit our old web site, send us a list of what they wanted to buy, she would compose an invoice and send it to them, and they would pay via Paypal, check, or money order. All the correspondence was via e-mail, unless the customer wanted to pay with paper. On a typical day she would get dozens of orders, plus another two dozen or more inquiries from shoppers in our eBay Store. All this correspondence was driving her mad. It was repetitive and dehumanizing on the one hand. On the other hand, she really enjoyed the interactions with people and made numerous friends over the years. This new e-commerce site with ProStores would give her her life back. At least she was clinging to that hope.
Heading into the summer of 2007, I had just about figured out everything associated with launching our ProStore. All the products were uploaded into our new store, and I just had to finalize how to handle shipping. Like Monk, I got wrapped around the axle with some very arcane shipping problems. I lost sight of the fact that a gazillion on-line retailers are selling stuff on-line, so the shipping calculations must work reasonably well. I spent quite a few hours at the ProStores booth at that same trade show in 2007 working on shipping-related matters.
Well, you may have guessed, I missed Carol’s deadline. We went sailing into our selling season in 2007 using the old web site. That winter was the coldest recorded in Oklahoma since 1889. We even had an ice storm in December. (Now, that’s a story unto itself!) I didn’t think one woman could affect the climate so dramatically. Yessir, that’s my baby!
This year there would be no excuses, only executions. Forewarned, I got the ProStore primed and ready before the annual trade show. I spent the first two mornings at the show this year speaking with the ProStores staff, finalizing the store for the grand opening. The staff was gracious. I worked with four different people this year, including one of the original software developers, so he knew the code inside and out, all the tricks, and where the skeletons were buried. We went over every setting in my store and found two that were set incorrectly. Those poor ProStores people were sick of me, I’m sure, by the time I left, but I had my store ready to open.
When I returned from the trade show (Carol decided not to go), we set the date for the switch-over. We updated our web site to warn people that we would cut over on Monday, July 7. One week before the grand reopening, we sent out 4,000 e-mail messages to our closest friends and customers. Then, this past weekend, we put the finishing touches on the new web site, updated the on-line inventory, and adjusted the home page.
On Sunday Carol recommended some last-minute changes. So I signed onto ProStores to make the changes. However, things weren’t working right. Changing between screens was taking ten minutes. (That’s worse response than when we had dial-up Internet access!) I called tech support, and they said that our server was malfunctioning, but the on-call system administrator had been called, and, as soon as he sobered up from his Fourth-of-July celebrations, he would come out and take a look. (Okay, I’m embellishing a little.)
Holy #%^$! One day till D-Day, and the &*%^*@# server isn’t working! What else can go wrong? Well, stay tuned . . .
www.lemaxvillages.com
Have you ever watched Monk on television? If so, you’ve noticed he’s very particular (to say the least!), and he has problems making decisions. Actually, I guess he doesn’t have problems with making decisions, because he simply can’t make them.
Well, for several years, my wife and I had been wanting to change our web site from the archaic, HTML-based version that had served us well for so many years to a glitzy, glamorous e-commerce solution replete with a shopping cart, automatic shipping calculation, on-line payment acceptance, etc., etc.
We searched and searched, at first just looking for tools to cobble into our existing web site. Later we searched for an entirely new full-service provider. Like Diogenes looking for an honest man, we plodded along, seeking the perfect solution.
Perfection, however, was evasive. This site lacked this; that site lacked that; this one too hot; this one too cold. At a trade show two years ago, we thought we found two excellent choices. Infopia was too pricey, but was acknowledged as the Mercedes-Benz within the industry. (For our lower-priced figurines we would have lost money on each sale.) We reluctantly rejected them without a trial. MarketWorks seemed the second-best alternative, and we took them for a 30-day test drive. 31 days later we cancelled our arrangement and resumed our search for the ideal e-commerce site. (For one thing, the MarketWorks people never heard of the word “security” or how to apply it in an IT environment. On top of everything, they billed us $.95 for that extra day beyond the 30-day test, which I thought was chintzy.)
At the trade show, we had also investigated a company called ProStores. (We actually investigated six or eight different e-commerce providers.) I dredged up their literature, gave them a call, and opened an account.
At first I was frustrated. With 1500 SKUs (at that time – now we’re over 2000 SKUs), I didn’t want to have to key everything in from scratch. Had I had only a few dozen SKUs, brute force would have saved time. However, with so many SKUs and so many fields associated with each SKU, I wanted to import whatever information I could.
Navigating through the ProStores Store Administration area was a bit of a challenge. It’s far from intuitive. Ultimately, I read one of their 200-page manuals four times and their other 200-page manual three times. After the second reading of each and a few calls to tech support, I felt comfortable maneuvering around the Store Administration area.
I tried every import technique they offered, including some that were alleged to import from eBay. We had 600 SKUs in an eBay Store, so I hoped I could at least import this chunk to save a little time. Of course, nothing worked. The bulk importing techniques burped when they encountered HTML code. They belched when they saw the funky codes that are embedded within Microsoft Word documents. All the imports failed.
I called tech support. I had them on speed dial. I recognized a couple of them by their voices. Some of the technicians were very sharp, and some were the opposite. ProStores had just hired a bunch of new staff, and the new-hires were still learning. When I got a seasoned veteran, I would pump him or her for all the information I could learn. I made progress, but I didn’t get the store up and running before the busy selling season hit in 2006. Not wanting to throw away what little handiwork I’d accomplished to that point, I kept paying the monthly fees to ProStores until the summer of 2007.
My wife gave me an ultimatum (my mate ulti-mated me – sorry, I digress). “Get the ProStore up and running before busy season, or die a slow, painful death.” From her perspective, everything she did was manual. People would visit our old web site, send us a list of what they wanted to buy, she would compose an invoice and send it to them, and they would pay via Paypal, check, or money order. All the correspondence was via e-mail, unless the customer wanted to pay with paper. On a typical day she would get dozens of orders, plus another two dozen or more inquiries from shoppers in our eBay Store. All this correspondence was driving her mad. It was repetitive and dehumanizing on the one hand. On the other hand, she really enjoyed the interactions with people and made numerous friends over the years. This new e-commerce site with ProStores would give her her life back. At least she was clinging to that hope.
Heading into the summer of 2007, I had just about figured out everything associated with launching our ProStore. All the products were uploaded into our new store, and I just had to finalize how to handle shipping. Like Monk, I got wrapped around the axle with some very arcane shipping problems. I lost sight of the fact that a gazillion on-line retailers are selling stuff on-line, so the shipping calculations must work reasonably well. I spent quite a few hours at the ProStores booth at that same trade show in 2007 working on shipping-related matters.
Well, you may have guessed, I missed Carol’s deadline. We went sailing into our selling season in 2007 using the old web site. That winter was the coldest recorded in Oklahoma since 1889. We even had an ice storm in December. (Now, that’s a story unto itself!) I didn’t think one woman could affect the climate so dramatically. Yessir, that’s my baby!
This year there would be no excuses, only executions. Forewarned, I got the ProStore primed and ready before the annual trade show. I spent the first two mornings at the show this year speaking with the ProStores staff, finalizing the store for the grand opening. The staff was gracious. I worked with four different people this year, including one of the original software developers, so he knew the code inside and out, all the tricks, and where the skeletons were buried. We went over every setting in my store and found two that were set incorrectly. Those poor ProStores people were sick of me, I’m sure, by the time I left, but I had my store ready to open.
When I returned from the trade show (Carol decided not to go), we set the date for the switch-over. We updated our web site to warn people that we would cut over on Monday, July 7. One week before the grand reopening, we sent out 4,000 e-mail messages to our closest friends and customers. Then, this past weekend, we put the finishing touches on the new web site, updated the on-line inventory, and adjusted the home page.
On Sunday Carol recommended some last-minute changes. So I signed onto ProStores to make the changes. However, things weren’t working right. Changing between screens was taking ten minutes. (That’s worse response than when we had dial-up Internet access!) I called tech support, and they said that our server was malfunctioning, but the on-call system administrator had been called, and, as soon as he sobered up from his Fourth-of-July celebrations, he would come out and take a look. (Okay, I’m embellishing a little.)
Holy #%^$! One day till D-Day, and the &*%^*@# server isn’t working! What else can go wrong? Well, stay tuned . . .
www.lemaxvillages.com
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