Of course, after your e-commerce site is up and running, the cost of actually taking orders
gets close to zero??”you don??™t need to pay for checkout staff, assistants, security guards, or rent
in a busy shopping mall.
If you have a sound business idea, and you execute the site well, you can receive these benefits
without a massive investment. What??™s important is to always focus on the almighty dollar:
Will your site, or any particular feature of it, really help you get more customers, retain existing
customers, and get customers to spend more, or will it reduce costs and therefore increase
your margins?
Now it??™s time to introduce the site we??™ll be using as the example in this book and see just
how all of these principles relate to our own shop.
Let??™s Make Money
We??™re going to build an e-commerce store that sells t-shirts. On e-commerce sites, there??™s always
a trade-off to make between building an amazing site that everybody will love and creating a site
on a limited budget that will make money. Usually, I??™m on the all-the-bells-and-whistles-reallyamazing-
site side, but I??™m always grateful that my ambitions are reined in by the actual business
demands. If you??™re designing and building the site for yourself and you are the client, then you
have a challenge??”keeping your view realistic while maintaining your enthusiasm for the
project.
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