Originally published on February 3, 2009.
Around about 5.12PM today, my web developer took the password protection off the Frankly Wines shopping cart, effectively opening my web site for business! I should be jumping up and down, sending out email messages, blowing up balloons, all that fun stuff.
But no, I’m trying to fully understand the credit card processing functions, decide where to put the printer for on-line invoices, develop a process for manging incoming on-line orders, sort out how to best update inventory on the master POS system, all while fighting with UPS over the weekly fee they charge me to essentially ship nothing. Oh, the glamour of e-commerce!
You might think all of this would be ironed out before going live with a web site, and I suppose it could be…if I was a biggish company that was able to hire consultants and trouble shooters and process planners to map out every step before it was taken. But I’ve worked in that biggish company environment where everything gets mapped out, and it usually turns out the map is all wrong and everything has to be changed anyway.
Watching that happen more than a few times, I’ve become a big believer in starting small and keeping things flexible enough that you can change on the fly. I bought the basic cash register that is far from perfect, but it’s easy to use, does about 80% of what I want it to do and costs a fraction of the “perfect” system…if such a system even exists. I opened a tiny store with no storage knowing that if things went well I could build a basement (done), launch a web site (done) and rent a bonded storage space (maybe soon.)
I look a similar approach to the site – I think we have the basics right: it looks great – clean and simple. And it will look even better once I get some content and pictures in place. The search function is streamlined and about as user-friendly as any wine store site I’ve been on. Sure there are plenty of bells and whistles I would like to add: customer account tracking, additional fields to capture regions and countries, automated inventory synching back to the master computer…but all of that costs money, especially if it’s to be done in a secure way. But that’s Phase 2…
…and that’s the real benefit of the start-small approach…you stand a much better chance of having enough cash to actually make it to Phase 2!