The foundations of an online shop are incredibly important!
The foundations of your online shop are one of the most important decisions you need to make before getting started. But that does not mean spending all your money building a huge, custom-developed solution from day one. Start by finding out whether you can get going, learn something and sell goods on a simpler platform.
The video is from April 2009 and introduces a chapter about the foundations of an online shop. The solutions and suppliers mentioned are examples from that time.
Your online shop’s foundations start with a choice
Perhaps you have not started your online shop yet. Then you face a big question: Which platform should you choose?
There are many options. In the video, I mention standard solutions such as ScanNet and DanDomain, open source options such as osCommerce and Magento, and the possibility of building something yourself.
What is right also depends on you as a person. If you are unsure about many things and do not quite know what you need, I would start with a standard solution.
Choose one, get started and find out whether you actually want to be an online retailer. Does it work? Do you enjoy the work? You can get a long way on a platform like that.
Turn your experience into a requirements specification
One advantage of getting started is that you discover your needs along the way. When you run into something the solution cannot do, write it down.
Why can’t the shop do this? Why is that feature missing? Gradually, over the first year, you can gather those questions and shortcomings into a requirements specification.
When you later need to move on, you will have both practical experience and a concrete description of what you want. And hopefully you will already have made your first money.
So you do not have to guess every need in advance. You can discover them through a business that is actually up and running.
Look into other people’s experiences
I also recommend following the discussions on Amino. There are lots of debates about platforms, suppliers and problems other people have encountered.
Read what people recommend and what they are struggling with. It can help when you choose your next solution.
Because that is precisely where things can get difficult. When you leave a standard solution and want something more tailored, it is not just a matter of downloading an open source platform and switching it on. There may be a great deal to change and build.
Do not build a castle on rotten foundations
A poor technical structure is like buying a building plot in a swamp and building a beautiful castle without getting the foundations right. At some point it will fall over, and rebuilding it will be expensive.
That applies whether you start with open source or build entirely from scratch. The solution needs to be flexible.
Search engine optimisation needs to be considered from the beginning. Get help with your requirements specification so you do not overlook anything important.
In the video, I mention Mikkel deMib, Thomas Rosenstand and Grosen Friis as examples of people with experience in this area. The point is to get qualified help before burning through a lot of money.
A small change can become a big project
If the shop is built in a way that makes it hard to change, even a new feature may end up requiring major work.
You may need new database tables, changes in several places, and data exports and imports. Suddenly you are spending a month on something you thought was a minor adjustment.
That is why a proper requirements specification matters. You need to know what you want and how the solution should be able to develop.
Get started before building everything
If a standard solution cannot do everything you dream of, you may need to say: Sod it, I’ll start anyway.
If you begin by building a huge solution, you could go bust before you even open the shop. And perhaps you will later discover it was not for you at all, or that the work was not as easy as you imagined.
So think carefully. Read the chapter, seek information and learn from other people’s experiences before choosing a platform and committing to a big project.
In the video, I say that an hour spent understanding this can save 50 hours later. That is my way of emphasising the point: Preparation can pay off. But you also need to give yourself the chance to get started and learn from reality. Also read E-pusher about my experiences with e-commerce.