Ecommerce sites - Do they work for you?

[ArtyGamer]

Was reading another thread where someone was asking for advice in getting an ecommerce store built and I considered replying, but didn't want to put the person off so I thought I'd actually pose a question to see what others thoughts were. I am an ecommerce software developer, and have been for the past fifteen or so years. Obviously, as the programmer/designer, all my time is spent building client sites and I'd never had the opportunity (or the necessity) to use my own software as a 'store owner'. Then, almost two years ago, I decided to get back into merchandise production (I'd done screen printing some twenty-odd years ago as my band couldn't afford to pay someone else for t-shirts) so the first thing I did was to build a store. It was the first time I really got to use the software from the client perspective and it helped me to come up with new ideas that I would never have thought of had I not taken the point of view of the client.

Thing is, when I started the store I also started listing on eBay. Some months later I started selling on Etsy, and then in October last year I set up an Amazon Seller account. In the whole time of having my own store, I've sold perhaps thirty products through my store. At first, I had the same number of products in my store that I did on eBay so that the inventory was identical. Then when I brought Etsy in, I probably concentrated a little more there as it was much simpler to list products than on eBay but it never reached the point where any of the other stores fell behind. That came later. After a while, I realised that I was wasting my time updating my own store as I just wasn't getting the sales... I was getting the TRAFFIC, but not the sales.

Here I am now, with around 60% of my sales coming through Amazon, 25% through eBay and 15% through Etsy... and I've not even updated my own site in a year as I've literally only made aroun forty sales through it since I opened it, which I can sometimes match in a single DAY between the other three outlets.

So I was wondering... do those who have their own stores AND third-party outlets (eBay etc) have the same results that I do, or do they do as well through their own store? My clients all do well, and very few of them sell anywhere else, but I just can't seem to shift products through my own store. Not that I'm actually bothered; I'm just interested to see if it's the same for others.

[Dave271069]

i have had a store now for about 2 years, ive gone through 2 name changes to see if i could bring in new business, i opened a ebay store and facebook store, in two years i would say under 30 items have sold via any of these sites. so how do you sell stuff i hear you ask? WORD OF MOUTH! is the answer, i am doing very well at the moment and every sale is through people i know and people that they know. im getting to a point where im thinking of finishing all my internet sites and just going on the road and out and about because that is where the future lies IMHO.
Dave

[ArtyGamer]

I'd never actually considered a Facebook store, to be honest. I suppose I see Facebook as a place to moan and bitch about stuff, oh and for blocking various lolcat pics.

I honestly don't know if word of mouth has anything to do with where my sales come from. I only know for sure that one phone case was sold because their work colleague got one and the wanted one for themselves, so they ordered on the back of that one sale. The rest, I'm assuming, have come through on-site searches. Oh, actually I suppose this counts as word of mouth - I ended up selling something like sixty phone cases overnight because someone posted theirs up on Reddit and others followed.

[pisquee]

Interesting post - we've just shelled out quite a bit of cash for a new website, after giving up trying to do it ourselves, as we never have time to make it as good as it needs to be - but the company are offering to integrate the store back end with Amazon, Ebay, Rakuten/Play, and Etsy. So only one 'store' to administrate, but lots of outlets.

[ArtyGamer]

I'd considered writing that into my store but my greatest concern was that I describe items differently depending on the audience, and the terms of each listing varies depending on the audience... so Amazon listings are very generic with pretty much no personality whatsoever while Etsy listings have a little bit more personality, and eBay listings are quite sarcastic. So in order for my store to feed data to all of the other platforms, I'd have to enter three or four different values for each product and it negates the point of the simplistic data-pull.

Would be really interesting to know how you get on though, as I'm not sure if I've ever known anyone to serve so many platforms from a single data stream. Very interesting!

[JBDesign]

I would be interested to see your various shops to see the difference in tone for each place. I recently opened an Etsy shop but am not expecting much for a while. Getting seen seems to be the hardest part in this online selling lark. That's why I haven't tried my own website shop. Woocommerce for Wordpress looked pretty good when I had a play with it.

[pisquee]

Not sure if they are the same data streams in terms of descriptions yet- I do know we'll be translating to foreign languages for the international stores.

[NikGrey]

All of my work is coming from Word of Mouth, I had to have a website as a business without a web presence just would not do these days.

I spent months of heartache, gord knows how many hours personally and a few quid on my website (as I needed developers to make some tools) but its there now - I dont sell much through it but it gives me a place to showcase what I do.
I must admit though, facebook is essential for me since most of the people in my friends list are from previous business ventures - I just post images of my creations there, not overly about the business - just showing what I am doing and I am having success that way.

I'm never going to make a fortune at this, but it does buy me nice toys and new machines to play with

So to answer the question - I think you need something on all the major platforms, they all work together.

[bigj2552]

All of my work is coming from Word of Mouth, I had to have a website as a business without a web presence just would not do these days.

I spent months of heartache, gord knows how many hours personally and a few quid on my website (as I needed developers to make some tools) but its there now - I dont sell much through it but it gives me a place to showcase what I do.
I must admit though, facebook is essential for me since most of the people in my friends list are from previous business ventures - I just post images of my creations there, not overly about the business - just showing what I am doing and I am having success that way.

I'm never going to make a fortune at this, but it does buy me nice toys and new machines to play with

So to answer the question - I think you need something on all the major platforms, they all work together.

..............

same as you Nik....it gives us a web presence to show what we do ect.....and every business in this day n age should have some sort of web advertising...its a big, big market out there.....
having a web site that dont cost the earth to run & easy to operate ( opencart ) can only be a good thing......i aint never gonna make the millions with this business, but same as you, it pays the bill and buys me the tech toys i so desire at the end of the yr ... but i am always looking for othrs ways to expand and diversify it Nik....no point in getting stale....the business or me lol...cause it does get boring printing out phone case after case after..zzzzzzzzz.

so yes is the answer to the OP.....its worth it just for the advertising presence on the net....if you go hard at adwords, it can pay dividends...and eat yer wallet if you not careful lol
so why we