Let's Share Our Experiences With E-commerce Systems

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Many people are attempting e-commerce ventures or planning to do so. However, what I have seen in myself and many others is that there is confusion and a lack of information regarding how to make a start and which methods to use to achieve sales.
Here, I want to speak not from assumptions, but from experiences, and I want you to do the same. I believe that clearer results can be obtained based on live examples.

Now, I am waiting for your posts regarding open-source (OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop) and software that rents systems (Ideasoft, Tacirnet, Bilginet, Tsfot, Projesfot, Kobimaster); advertising models (Facebook, Google AdWords, other sector sites); and other experiences.

So far, I have had the opportunity to manage an e-commerce system on 3 separate platforms. The first two of these were not on my own behalf. In other words, they were actions I carried out on behalf of our family company. The first of these was on the Ideasoft system. In general, in what I write, I want to write without including personal mistakes made. I never saw our Ideasoft site fail to open or give an error. I think the example I mentioned was in the year 2010. Their system was fixed; as everyone said and they also admitted, it was impossible to make additions to the system or they just weren’t doing it. However, I always reached the company and received a response to every email or ticket I wrote. The answers I received were basically that if it went beyond the limits I mentioned, they couldn’t do it. But their help regarding things and variations already existing in the system was present. Nowadays, I see that the company has developed itself further. At the time I worked with them, they were not doing theme designs. They had 4-5 different designs of their own and were selling them as ready-made systems with 80-100 themes through 8-10 different color combinations.

The second venture was on the Kobimaster system. The system had a very complex structure when I worked with it; in terms of help and support, help beyond their limits was out of the question. However, the adequacy of the help was problematic. I especially cannot forget the issue of the site shutting down during a holiday and staying closed for 4-5 days. I could not reach anyone from the company. This venture of ours ended very quickly because we got fed up with the troubles caused by the company. Kobimaster caused us despair during this venture time in 2011.

My third and final venture is the first one I undertook on my own behalf. With the experience I gained during the time leading up to this venture, having grown cold towards companies, I carried out the venture with the support of an agency built on OpenCart software. I had a special design made for myself. However, the agency has caused me a lot of trouble so far. I think the developers and designers in our country need to gain a lot more experience regarding theme design. Over a long period of 3 months, they finished the HTML coding of the theme and integrated it into the system as I wanted. However, because the agency was newly established and I encountered different inexperience, discouragement and lack of courage occurred. Now I have reached the point where I don’t even add new products to the system. E-commerce is a job of enthusiasm and pleasure. With the power behind you, you must continue on the road without thinking about certain things. Thoughts about where an error will appear in the theme, where the system will give an error, whether the system will shut down (server-side) set a person back from some things. Now I am in search of a company for myself. But the fact that a lot of money I have spent so far has gone to waste pushes me back from some things.

In short, I haven’t had a clearly successful e-commerce venture so far. But sometimes I ask myself if I am acting a bit too hastily…

Besides these; I had experiences regarding acquiring social links for different people and Facebook paid ads. I do not think they are methods that very clearly convert to sales or increase circulation. Apart from this, for a period of 3 months, I was worn out under the name of social media consulting just to have things shared by only doing design. In my opinion, social media work is a job of planning and programming. That is, you will know what you are doing for what reason and do it accordingly.

All this time, companies, and people helped my experience to accumulate. I think I will soon start doing this business entirely by myself. The fact that I personally do not have knowledge of a software language has always kept me behind in these sorts of things. But I am of the opinion that after learning some things, not knowing a software language will not be much of a problem.

You can also write your comments on what I have written here and convey your own experiences to me and the topic readers. Let’s get your opinions on how I should act from now on…

2

Actually, all the negativity you have experienced has become a very important lesson for you, and I am sure you will move forward with more solid steps from now on. Rest assured, you are not the only one suffering from the companies selling their own systems that you mentioned. We also build e-commerce websites for our customers. Initially, we started out selling our own software, and the software improved a little with each customer, but in the end, we had to switch to selling the open-source OpenCart infrastructure. The biggest reason for this is our inability to provide hosting information to the customer (no matter how much you secure it, it doesn’t help, as proven by experience). If you are not providing hosting to your customer, you have to provide all kinds of support on the server side yourself, and most importantly, it is essential that you can perform daily backups on e-commerce sites. For this very reason, we now only work with OpenCart, and rest assured, it lacks nothing compared to a website you would have built by paying billions to Ideasoft. And since the system belongs entirely to you, you can back it up whenever you want, and change hosting providers if you wish.

My advice to you is to definitely start your next venture with open-source software. Even if you do not know the programming language, you can get enough support from forums to at least install and use the plugins you want. I believe that vendors provide sufficient support for the paid plugins and modules you purchase. Instead of commissioning a custom design, you can get very nice mobile-friendly designs from ThemeForest.

If you are doing e-commerce, you must definitely be active on Instagram as well. The visitor traffic resulting in sales comes mostly from there. You can also actively use social media platforms like Facebook and Google Plus. In fact, if possible (which is also possible with OpenCart), you can achieve more engagement by creating or having a Facebook store application created.

3

In your opinion, which open-source software is the most useful and either best suited to conditions in Turkey or could be adapted to them?

4

I only use OpenCart and I recommend it. At the very least, there is nothing you cannot do with its support and modules. To use Magento, you need to find suitable hosting; it does not work on every hosting service, and in my opinion, its support in Turkey is very weak, but it is a very high-quality system. I have never used PrestaShop.

5

These days, I am also thinking about focusing on a single product. But maybe it can’t exactly be considered e-commerce. I will sell the wholesaler’s products through them. I am considering taking a 15% profit. Taxes, invoices, and shipping will all be the wholesaler’s responsibility. This way, I plan to make my first e-commerce attempt. That is why I carefully read your experiences.

6

E-commerce in Turkey is a bit of a complicated matter, especially when working with agencies, things get completely out of hand.

To give a simple example;

In Turkey, the mindset of getting a dealership and selling on commission is very dominant (ready xml files, etc…) but this is always overlooked: entering fierce competition requires significant capital. -don’t tell me a Robin Hood story-

First of all, there are 3 big mistakes made by those who want to enter the e-commerce business;

1-) Determining the target audience

You are selling a product, but you must find out yourself which social media platforms your target audience is on, rather than leaving this analysis job to agencies or consultants.

Let’s say if you are selling an anime-related product, it would be a more logical move to advertise on well-known anime sites instead of Adwords.

2-) Determining the product

You took the dealership of a big company and they gave you an xml, the biggest mistake made is putting up that xml and then trying to do business.

For instance, the competition you will enter for PS4 sales is different from the competition you will enter for PS4 spare parts and accessories. Analyzing the products one by one and focusing on products with less competition in terms of SEO might not make it flow in the short term, but it will put you in a position where it at least drips.

3-) Platform selection

First of all, not everyone in our country knows programming, etc… Although opencart and wordpress commerce are good options, structurally they do not allow everything and they are not successful in every task - unfortunately - therefore, if you are thinking about what kind of system you will need, research it and make a platform selection accordingly.

Finally, my humble advice is to do boutique businesses in e-commerce instead of the businesses everyone is fixated on. By boutique business, I mean ventures with low volume and small audiences; the competition is more relaxed, so even if it doesn’t flow in the short term, it is easier for you to transition from drops to profit and invest in new product lines.

The e-commerce business requires long-term planning, and do not think about printing money in the short term; you need the investment that will earn you that money, do not forget this.

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Ben son girişimim için detay vermedim. Fakat sektör olarak butik bir sektör diyebilirim. Fakat ulusal bir marka yada teknolojiye dönük bir firma olmadığı için bayilik alsanız da xml olayı burada yok. Onun için bazı şeyleri kendi dişiniz tırnağınızla yapmanız gerekiyor…

8

@yasaronal

I said these things in general. :slight_smile:

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Actually, I didn’t direct my answer at you either; I wanted to provide details on the point you mentioned. After all, we are sharing experiences… :smiley:

10

E-ticaret için güzel bir konu olacağı kanısındayım. @kranos tek ürün üzerine daha mantıklı gibi bu konuda bana da haber verirseniz sevinirim hocam. %15 çok olmasa da az da değil. Teşekkürler.

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If you are going to work with a dropshipping wholesaler for shipping and invoicing, I suggest you thoroughly research the wholesaler you will be working with. Do not start working without detailed discussions on issues such as product quality, warranty, delivery time, and payment methods. After all, when there is a problem with the product, the customer knows you, and you are the one they will report to the relevant authorities.

12

Başka tecrübeleri olanlar yok mudur acaba? Tecrüblerinizi bizlerden esirgemeyin…

13

opencart + bootstrap
payu + good supplier
target audience + right advertising policy
fast support/shipping + money counting machine

14

That was a very concise answer. :slight_smile:

However, if you could expand on the “target audience + right advertising policy” part with your experiences and explain it with examples, it would be much more useful.

15

Such a world does not exist.

Additionally: I have used Platin Market, Ticimax, and Ideasoft. I am still using two of them. Design-wise, Platin Market’s free designs are good, but the site is heavy due to its coding type. Ideasoft’s designs are terrible; even if you have a custom design made, they cannot change the main template because it doesn’t fit the system… My recommendation is Ideasoft.

As for advertising, Facebook is cheap but its conversion is also lower compared to Google. However, the ads definitely should not be stopped until your company Facebook page reaches 1 million.

When it comes to AdWords, if you are inexperienced you will lose a lot, my advice is to constantly bother the AdWords consultants until you learn. There is absolutely no need for paid consulting; it won’t add to your experience.

16

I think I will start an OpenCart venture on my own again. I am thinking of planning this venture well to ensure a clear and steady progress. I have my eye on a theme on ThemeForest. After purchasing it, I will buy a virtual POS plugin and get started. Do you happen to have any person or company recommendations for a virtual POS?

17

I recommend iyzico.com, they don’t charge for the plugin.

18

OpenCart because, even if you cannot intervene, your programmer can do whatever you want.
Bootstrap because there is no need to reinvent the wheel, it has the best browser-compatible infrastructure, and currently only 40% of shopping/browsing is done via mobile.
PayU, because we know payment methods are important. There are those who offer installments for 15 TL; for those without a registered company, PayU is the best option. If you have a company, I don’t think it’s necessary.
Your target audience might also be on sectoral portals, they might be profiles not interested in shopping while browsing Facebook. I believe a sectoral analysis is necessary.
Fast support is required, as we know that communication is instant nowadays and most people do not use email actively.

There is also another scenario where you buy a system you cannot touch or interfere with at all, and you aggressively run AdWords ads.
In commerce, let’s make a profit when buying.

19

You can work with payu.com.tr for a virtual POS service. Instead of paying separate fees to each bank, you can offer installments across 6 banks with a single infrastructure, and best of all, it supports BKM Express. The billing cycle is at 24:00 on Wednesday, and they make the payment on Friday of the same week. I think the PayU module for OpenCart would be much cheaper. Most of my clients use PayU. You can find the current commission rates on their website. The only issue is that they used to not charge an activation fee and would deduct 50 TL per month once you started using it, but now they demand 600 TL upfront for 1 year. In Turkey, when something gets popular and there is no competition, the … kicks in.

Other than that, iyzico is an alternative. I haven’t looked into it too much, but I believe they offer their OpenCart module for free and don’t charge an activation fee, although I understand their payment process is a bit different.

20

@yasaronal I don’t know what kind of budget you will have for your venture, but why don’t you start by selling via PayPal and bank transfer? The buyer can pay with a credit card through PayPal.