| General > General Technical Chat |
| Just launched my Electronic Components Store and need the Communities Guidance |
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| hans:
Purchase decisions for electronic components is driven by price but also largely on stock. If I want to build a board next week, I don't want to find out the components are on backorder. I also wonder why I cannot add more than 10 of a single IC into the cart, or then need to select multiple of them. Finally I would really consider your business implementation if on 1 hand you say there is low overhead, but on the other hand you're spending 16 hrs to reprice every item on the store. I'm pretty sure the large guys use automated systems to track incoming inventory pricing, add margin/overhead, add multiple price brackets, such they can keep overhead and mistakes down. All the administration and packaging time must be paid out of product margins. For example, I think the pricing for this part is incorrect: https://juriedengineering.com/collections/integrated-circuits-sockets/products/lm567cn-lm567-socket-tone-decoder-dip-8-new-ic E.g. the LM567CN and socket individually can be bought for 1.95$ and 0.49$ respectively. Finally, to attract international audience, please look at the shipping options. I have never heard of FlavourCloud Express, and 32$ is quite steep shipping price. A nice feature I really like from the big guys like Mouser, is that their pricing is DDP. This is great for orders above e.g. 22 euro in NL, as those are charged with steep additional fees by regular carriers. |
| cjuried:
--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on October 18, 2020, 02:35:06 pm --- --- Quote from: cjuried on October 16, 2020, 10:41:18 pm --- --- Quote from: tpowell1830 on October 16, 2020, 10:16:55 pm ---I believe that shipping should be calculated at checkout based on all items and not included in price, for my 2 cents. Otherwise, I checked out your site and have thoughts on that as well. I tried searching for 1000 uF electrolytic capacitor, 1000 uF capacitor and got resistors as result ( I need to order some 1000 uF caps). Also, from a website perspective, you never want to put your phone number, 954) 300-905, in plain text because you will get inundated with scams and cold sales calls. The phone number should be a bitmap or jpeg. Robots are looking for phone numbers by the millions. Also, if you intend to sell worldwide, you need to add your country code to phone number (such as 1-(954) 300-905). Just my 2 cents... --- End quote --- Ahh, yes, another good point. I will make this changes! --- End quote --- I just want to be clear, I want you to be successful at your enterprise, so I am being honest about my observations. I see you changed the phone number, but it is still text, good luck with the robots. Also, the search really sucks if all I can search for is "capacitors" and not zero in such as "electrolytic" or "1000 uF". As I mentioned before, this search does not work at all on your site. One of the most important aspects of running a business is to listen to your customers. You skimmed over my previous comment and only saw the phone number observation. I would have been a customer if I could have found the item in search. --- End quote --- Thank you for your constructive-criticism. I am still in the process of making all the changes as I have taken all your points into consideration. It is a lot of work for a 1 person team, however, I am doing the best I can. Not being the greatest at search, seo, etc, I am learning as well. Thank you, again, for you thoughts, as they are greatly appreciated. I do need to figure out how to add an image in place of the phone text. |
| cjuried:
--- Quote from: hans on October 18, 2020, 03:39:34 pm ---Purchase decisions for electronic components is driven by price but also largely on stock. If I want to build a board next week, I don't want to find out the components are on backorder. I also wonder why I cannot add more than 10 of a single IC into the cart, or then need to select multiple of them. Finally I would really consider your business implementation if on 1 hand you say there is low overhead, but on the other hand you're spending 16 hrs to reprice every item on the store. I'm pretty sure the large guys use automated systems to track incoming inventory pricing, add margin/overhead, add multiple price brackets, such they can keep overhead and mistakes down. All the administration and packaging time must be paid out of product margins. For example, I think the pricing for this part is incorrect: https://juriedengineering.com/collections/integrated-circuits-sockets/products/lm567cn-lm567-socket-tone-decoder-dip-8-new-ic E.g. the LM567CN and socket individually can be bought for 1.95$ and 0.49$ respectively. Finally, to attract international audience, please look at the shipping options. I have never heard of FlavourCloud Express, and 32$ is quite steep shipping price. A nice feature I really like from the big guys like Mouser, is that their pricing is DDP. This is great for orders above e.g. 22 euro in NL, as those are charged with steep additional fees by regular carriers. --- End quote --- Thank you, for all you insight! That you for finding the pricing error on https://juriedengineering.com/collections/integrated-circuits-sockets/products/lm567cn-lm567-socket-tone-decoder-dip-8-new-ic as it has now been resolved. FlavourCloud is the Intenational Shipping integration I implemented which searches, in real-time, for the best international shipping rates and offers them to the customer (including duties and other potentially applicable customs fees). |
| tpowell1830:
--- Quote from: cjuried on October 18, 2020, 03:49:59 pm --- I just want to be clear, I want you to be successful at your enterprise, so I am being honest about my observations. I see you changed the phone number, but it is still text, good luck with the robots. Also, the search really sucks if all I can search for is "capacitors" and not zero in such as "electrolytic" or "1000 uF". As I mentioned before, this search does not work at all on your site. One of the most important aspects of running a business is to listen to your customers. You skimmed over my previous comment and only saw the phone number observation. I would have been a customer if I could have found the item in search. --- End quote --- --- Quote ---Thank you for your constructive-criticism. I am still in the process of making all the changes as I have taken all your points into consideration. It is a lot of work for a 1 person team, however, I am doing the best I can. Not being the greatest at search, seo, etc, I am learning as well. Thank you, again, for you thoughts, as they are greatly appreciated. I do need to figure out how to add an image in place of the phone text. --- End quote --- Hmmm, Sounds like your weakness is web knowledge. You might try fiverr to find someone to do a little one off tasks to help you with the site, or there are other options. Find someone with website maintenance knowledge to re-swizzle your site a bit for these low hanging fruit that would help tremendously. Working an online store requires that you have all of these things worked out to manage things in an automated methodology for your own sanity, as well as the users. There are tons of people out there with this knowledge that should be fairly inexpensive and will take a lot of this drudgery off your back so that you can make sales and business decisions on the fly. Putting a bitmap or jpeg on the page is very trivial. Search has more to do with your parts database and how it is indexed, etc. FYI, if you work out more of these kinks, you will get business from people like me who do this as a hobby, as well as professionals doing this as their livelihood. I went to both Fry's in my area and capacitors and other components were sparse, as they are phasing out that part of their business. Needless to say, I didn't find my parts that I needed. I am left with Digi-Key or Mouser and if you can't offer the same level of pricing and service, as well as a clean website with some what of workable parametric search, the only reason anyone would buy from an independent online store like yours would be pricing and service. Your pricing structure would need to be much lower than the big 2. I would buy from you if I could easily find the part that I need and get it shipped to me at a reasonable, competitive price. Customer service would be incredibly important as well if there are glitches. Secure checkout is also paramount. Having stock is very important as well. Again, I am only looking at this from a customer/hobbiest perspective. My purchases would be sparse and probably less than $50 purchases. If that model works for you then you will find customers like me, if not, I can get reasonable service and pricing from the big 2. I would rather buy from an independent. If all of this falls in line for me, you will occasionally see me as a customer. Just being honest. |
| cjuried:
--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on October 18, 2020, 05:28:12 pm --- --- Quote from: cjuried on October 18, 2020, 03:49:59 pm --- I just want to be clear, I want you to be successful at your enterprise, so I am being honest about my observations. I see you changed the phone number, but it is still text, good luck with the robots. Also, the search really sucks if all I can search for is "capacitors" and not zero in such as "electrolytic" or "1000 uF". As I mentioned before, this search does not work at all on your site. One of the most important aspects of running a business is to listen to your customers. You skimmed over my previous comment and only saw the phone number observation. I would have been a customer if I could have found the item in search. --- End quote --- --- Quote ---Thank you for your constructive-criticism. I am still in the process of making all the changes as I have taken all your points into consideration. It is a lot of work for a 1 person team, however, I am doing the best I can. Not being the greatest at search, seo, etc, I am learning as well. Thank you, again, for you thoughts, as they are greatly appreciated. I do need to figure out how to add an image in place of the phone text. --- End quote --- Hmmm, Sounds like your weakness is web knowledge. You might try fiverr to find someone to do a little one off tasks to help you with the site, or there are other options. Find someone with website maintenance knowledge to re-swizzle your site a bit for these low hanging fruit that would help tremendously. Working an online store requires that you have all of these things worked out to manage things in an automated methodology for your own sanity, as well as the users. There are tons of people out there with this knowledge that should be fairly inexpensive and will take a lot of this drudgery off your back so that you can make sales and business decisions on the fly. Putting a bitmap or jpeg on the page is very trivial. Search has more to do with your parts database and how it is indexed, etc. FYI, if you work out more of these kinks, you will get business from people like me who do this as a hobby, as well as professionals doing this as their livelihood. I went to both Fry's in my area and capacitors and other components were sparse, as they are phasing out that part of their business. Needless to say, I didn't find my parts that I needed. I am left with Digi-Key or Mouser and if you can't offer the same level of pricing and service, as well as a clean website with some what of workable parametric search, the only reason anyone would buy from an independent online store like yours would be pricing and service. Your pricing structure would need to be much lower than the big 2. I would buy from you if I could easily find the part that I need and get it shipped to me at a reasonable, competitive price. Customer service would be incredibly important as well if there are glitches. Secure checkout is also paramount. Having stock is very important as well. Again, I am only looking at this from a customer/hobbiest perspective. My purchases would be sparse and probably less than $50 purchases. If that model works for you then you will find customers like me, if not, I can get reasonable service and pricing from the big 2. I would rather buy from an independent. If all of this falls in line for me, you will occasionally see me as a customer. Just being honest. --- End quote --- I appreciate you thoughts and honesty. I am going to track someone down to knockout these bullet points, per your suggestions and look forward to the future upgrades. |
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