By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
July 31st, 1999

See Also   Terrence Sherry and 1 World Sarongs   Andrew Bridgeman and eART-originals   Mark Annett and Scruplestore.com   David Sabot and Cheaphumidors.com   William Waite and Nemmelgeb Murr   Mary Lu Wason and LampLink   Michael Campbell and Cellwest   Bob Rankin and Flowers Fast   Louis Jay and Health4Her.com   Jeff Swearingen and TheGift.com   Bill Broadbent the T-Shirt King   Jim Goodbody and PlanetLearn   Todd Mogren and coastaltool.com   John D. Einhorn and CapShack.com   Beverley Wood and the Gift Ship   Sgt. David Hack and US Wings   Brenda Do and MindFood Media.com   Rory O'Connor and Shopirish.com

Usually the first piece of advice I give to small businesses thinking of opening their own Web store is to identify a market niche where there is very limited (if any) competition and then to go out and try to capture it for themselves.

Now while I stand by this advice, there is, of course, always "more than one way to skin a cat".

Take for example Bob Rankin and his Web store, Flowers Fast. Opened in January 1998, Flowers Fast was built to go head-to-head with major national brands such as 1-800-flowers. Whilst many might consider this to be a recipe for disaster, the results at Flowers Fast have far exceeded Bob's expectations with orders being received from all over the world including Russia, China, Paraguay, Switzerland, Israel, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

So how has Bob done it? Read on and learn...

Lang: Why did you decide to open a Web store? Why did you choose fresh flowers?

Rankin: My wife runs a flower shop in the real world, and we were already tied into the Teleflora network, which gives us access to 50,000 member florists around the world. So given my interest in the Internet, deciding to sell flowers online was an easy decision. We were never worried about the bigger players in our industry, since we can offer the same product at better prices and provide excellent customer service.

Lang: What were your goals when you opened your store? Have you achieved them?

Rankin: Sometime in 1997, I read an interview with Jim Clark, then the CEO of Netscape, on the value of "showing up". His philosophy was that just by showing up in a given marketplace, you will capture a certain percentage of the sales. My gamble was that brand names didn't matter a whole lot in the mind of flower buyers, and that people would be just as likely to buy from my site if I picked a good name, made things look professional and offered products at a reasonable price.

So our goal was to "look big and act big", in the hopes that we could attract a significant customer base without spending much money on advertising. We served over 700 customers during the Mother's Day season this year, which far exceeded our expectations. So we're very happy with the growth so far.

Lang: How much online experience did you have before starting your store?

Rankin: I'd been actively exploring the Internet and selling online since 1994. Always a believer in the "give, then get" philosophy, I published free resources such as "Accessing the Internet By Email" and "The Internet Tourbus". This made me an expert in the minds of hundreds of thousands of people, and allowed me to sell my $5 Internet guides. Later on, I sold my books "Dr. Bob's Painless Guide to the Internet" and "Juno - Free Email and More", accepting credit cards on a secure server. The Tourbus newsletter allowed me to preach on the safety of online credit card transactions to people with an interest in buying my books.

Lang: What server and shopping cart software are you using and why?

Rankin: Our website is hosted by Westhost.com. They offer an excellent level of service and lots of goodies for under $10/month. I can't remember any significant downtime in the past year, and throughput is quite good.

We don't use a shopping cart for our site, since it's rare for someone to send more than one flower product to the same person. We felt that a cart would be confusing, so we decided against using one at Flowers Fast.

Since we promise same-day delivery, we need real-time online credit card processing. For that we use The Processing Network. They've given us excellent service and have even been willing to implement several of my wish list items. For a 2% transaction fee, they process the credit cards and the money just shows up in our merchant account like magic! I felt good about going with TPN because their technical guru is Tom Boutell, famous for his "World Wide Web FAQ" and other online activities.

Lang: What were the major problems/challenges you faced?

Rankin: Finding a reliable online credit card processing company was the biggest challenge. Another issue any business has to deal with is customer service. When we hear from an unhappy customer, we consider that an opportunity to distinguish our service from the competition. Most times, the customer is surprised to learn that we want to make things right and keep them as a customer! The word of mouth value you generate by excellent customer service is amazing.

Lang: How much did the store cost to build? How much to maintain and promote?

Rankin: I do all the website development myself, including implementing the e-commerce system, and constant search engine tuning and submissions. If I had to pay someone to do all that, the bill would be a couple thousand dollars a month.

For promotion, we use reputable opt-in ezines almost exclusively. One that's worked well for us is Bert Pasquale's Laugh-A-Lot "clean jokes" newsletter. I think banner ads are a waste of money, but we have found that buying keywords on GOTO.com helps to bring good-quality traffic to our site. Working with GOTO requires some experimentation to find the best value for your money. My suggestion is to bid for top 10 placement, then gradually increase your bid to get higher rankings. Eventually you'll hit a point where the cost per click ratio generates the optimum sales benefit.

Lang: Looking at your store now, what aspects are you especially pleased with?

Rankin: I'm quite proud of the professional look we've achieved while making the site fast and easy to use. We keep our graphics as small as possible, and make navigation to any product page possible in just two clicks. Our JavaScript-powered Intelligent Order Form makes the ordering process easy, especially for returning customers.

Lang: What are your plans to develop the store over the coming 6-12 months?

Rankin: We plan to add an affiliate program in the next few months, to help build our traffic. We're also going to open two new sites, one catering to the bargain hunter, and another specializing in high-end flowers.

Lang: Finally, what are your top tips for anyone considering opening their own Web store?

Rankin:

• Figure out what you want to sell, find people who are already doing it, and then determine how to do it better, faster, and cheaper.

• Stick with yesterday's technology - basic HTML, lightweight graphics and maybe a little JavaScript. You don't need Shockwave, Java, VRML, or RealAudio to sell online.

• Above all, learn all you can about search engines. 80% of your business will come from search engines if you do it right.