Here are a few mistakes from my own experience that should not be repeated.

At the time, as I sat, wondering how to get started writing a post about creating a website for my online store, the post office received a letter.
One of our clients told me about how to order a certain quantity of goods on our website in the amount of 2,981 rubles, received an order worth 3009 rubles. Of course, the difference is small, but the impressions were unpleasant.

Here is such greetings I received from the developers of our site!

First start

I must say: the development of the sites I absolutely do not understand it, I can not discern any scripting languages ??or platforms. At the very process of development, I only watch as a visitor and manager. The most important thing for me – that on the website I was comfortable. That was my main requirement.

As for the deceived customer, we will try not to lose it, so that little will refund the difference in the amount with the next order. But it is so frustrating to find a mistake again! The problem we see at once, but that is why it has arisen – that is another question. The fact is that all registered users can receive discounts when ordering goods and recorded not only in the database, but also in the personal office customer. Perhaps, in this case the discount was calculated only in a private office, but not in the database, so there was a similar error.

On this basis, I can say that finding a good developer for the site – a difficult task. In addition, many acquaintances often ask me, I do not recommend them a good developer for the site that immediately answered in the negative. Unfortunately, these do not know.

In the matter of developing the site the most important thing to always remember that it is not just the face of the company or a sales tool, but the database, which is designed to manage an online store. And it is better if the database will be reflected as much as possible your goals, because it will help you more effectively manage your sales. But I realized it’s not right.

Finding a good developer and failed. Maybe because so long looking for. And indeed all the solutions we adopt without delay so that readers of our blog (start from the comments) think that business is growing without any problems. In fact, it’s not just taking quick decisions and implementing them immediately into practice, we hide some of the complexity of the process. Back in the spring of last year, we were trying to find a developer, following the recommendations, but this attempt was unsuccessful. Then we found a company that has been developing websites for online shopping. We were asked for 70,000 rubles, and it was relatively inexpensive. In addition, the design of the site took our friend, and it took us a total of 20 000. By the way, Valeria and is now working in our team, by all means rooting for our business. A complete site we had to get in 3-4 weeks.

As a result, the site was ready in just three months, but still we continue to fix bugs.
Now I would like to give advice, never skimp on building a website, but I will not do that. The fact is that the poor quality of the development can be obtained at great expense. Therefore, developers do not choose by price range, and quality.

To all my approach

Since the implementation of your project, we decided that a nice design and ease of use – the main tool to attract customers, so we followed their preferences. It was decided to create a two-level catalog of our products, which seemed to us a clear and transparent. Of course, sometimes received complaints from customers that the product is very difficult to find, and the time to do it they do not. Therefore, they returned to where they came, that is, in the “platypus”.

Not Important and functionality of the site, because it is primarily a management tool. But starting a business, we know nothing about the features of content management. In this case, TK to develop the site was my partner, who is not the only sense in programming, but also, as a customer, meticulous enough, so well known that we need. Yes, and the developer was giving advice on how and what better to do. Still, it turned out that those functions that we were not missing.

Here is one very obvious example. On the Admin tab in the “database” shows all information on orders and customers. In addition, in recent months, we have added several more columns: “payment”, which specifies the method of payment (shops, bank card) and payment status, “the card number Mnogo.ru” for these customers, we regularly carry out various actions, so need to see them in the mass, and the “Comments” column, where we see the comments from our customers. They are quite different: some specify the time of delivery order, someone interested in the shelf life of products, and some even asked to cover up the amount of the order from the parents that they were not worried mom indicate the time at which it is impossible to deliver, so as not to wake the baby . And sometimes such that wrote our neighbors, promising to come and pay the entire order on the spot, but to get later. But after 8 months of our services and the neighbors began to use the office.

Of course, the column “comments” became for me almost straight way into the hearts of customers. After comments could follow the whole process, from visiting a client site, ending with production order. Also, if there were any problems, customers immediately wrote reviews, so I was able to quickly solve the problems that arose. A year ago we had no idea what was once will create such a column, and the more that it will bring a benefit.

But there is another difficult task – we would like to enable clients to receive information about new products, new promotions and gifts indicate the article in the blog. But how to make sure that the client can any of this read for those 2-3 minutes, that he is on site. Then came the idea to allocate space for banners. And now, for us was not enough.

After a month since the launch of the online store before our programmers had the task of correcting all errors that occurred on the site, as well as to write codes for the new functions. Then they made up only 15 points. Now our task described on several pages in a format ?L, and every week these lists updated with new tasks.
I note that, by choosing a developer for your website, first of all refer to how well he can grasp and understand the idea of ??your project, and how comfortable you will be working with him. In fact, in my experience, will have to work very much. Just do not forget to sign your contract developers for revision or maintenance of the site in the course of the emergence of new challenges and ideas. After all, when finalizing the site deals with the other specialist, the problem becomes more complicated, because you first need to understand the workings of the previous one, and then offer their ideas.

So we spent about 150 000 on completion of all the necessary functions and to correct all the mistakes that added up to two times more than we initially invested in the site. I think it’s good for the conviction of those who try to save money on development of the site.

CEO and co-owner of the grocery online store onovamnadom.ru, Natalia Kulakov