The business sources stock from all over the world
I Love Designer, an online business selling luxury accessories, was founded in 2011 and stocks jewels from Jaipur and leather from Bali. I caught up with co-founder Larry Ojala to find out how he built the site and what the experience has taught him.
So Larry where did the idea come from to start online?
I knew that I wanted to start an online store when I was in college a number of years ago but realising the idea took a great number of years. Once I had the idea of exactly what I wanted to do I set about researching how to built the store.
I had some experience working for a web development company and planning sites for clients but it was different being on the other side of the fence.
What were your options when it came to building the site?
We had the option of either building from scratch or using an existing ecommerce solution like Magento. We deliberated over the two options and we decided to go with Magento for a number of reasons. Overall we felt that when it came down to the possibility of scaling up in the future, it was best to go with something that was tried and tested.
Choosing this option also made it a quicker process because the amount of testing that needs to go into a site that has been built from scratch is huge – it takes a lot of effort. It also worked out a lot cheaper – although we outsourced the development of our Magento site, it would have taken so many more man hours to create something completely new.
Did you feel that you had enough control over the look of your site?
Yes we had total control over the look and feel of the site – it was so important to us to have creative control. The site is exactly what we had envisaged, it represents who we are and what we stand for perfectly.
What was the process of creating the site like?
It took about almost two months from start to finish, we outsourced and got the developers to complete the project. Although services like Magento are designed to be quite easy to use, you still need to have development skills to get exactly what you want.
My coding was a big rusty and I felt we needed outside help. Magento is contains a huge amount of software – my developers describe it as a beast. Even if you have the development skills using the software is a huge learning process so we sped it up by using experts – this still worked out to be better value than hiring a developer to create something new.
Luckily we didn’t come across any major challenges – just small ones. When you are outsourcing you lose 100% control and there are naturally some miscommunications.
What was the process of getting payment technology in place like?
We had to apply for a merchant ID which wasn’t too difficult – there were some credit checks but that wasn’t a challenge. Then after we needed to arrange for a company to process the payments - transfer the funds into the bank for us. We went with SagePay – we looked at the pros and cons and the overall cost of payment processors and they came out on top. Plus we liked using them as they are a British company.
Once that was in place we needed to organise the payment methods that we would offer to our customers. We now have Amex, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.
Was it hard to add many payment options?
No it is easy to offer them as SagePay has a list of payment options that it will accept. It is important to offer as many options as possible because there is no one solution fits all. You are talking about individuals and they might have different ways they would like to pay.
It doesn’t cost you any more to do so. We have considered offering even more but that will be in the near future.
What was your main consideration when building your checkout?
My main considerations were security, easy of use and efficiency. Security is one of the most important areas because you are going to be processing credit cards. We have a company that tests our site to ensure its secure.
We also wanted to make the process of checkout as quick as possible. It is important to have the least number of steps possible. All online shoppers are looking for efficiency so we decided to go with a one step checkout. We still get enough information on our customers from doing this.
Looking back, would you do anything differently?
I wish I had an in-house developer through the whole process – that would have eliminated some miscommunication and the challenges that arose from that.
What advice would you give someone wanted to build an online store?
I would say research, research and research. Have an idea of exactly what you want your site to look like from your landing pages to your payment pages before you approach a developer. What kind of route you should go down depends because again, no one solution fits all. It depends what you want to do with your site.
Saying that I think going with an existing ecommerce solution is a wise idea – why try and reinvent the wheel?!
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