Tag Archives: Shop

Another lesson worth learning

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Not only did the lesson should be learn, it should always keep in mind about it.

Furniture

You see, my mother, owns a furniture stores, selling all type of furniture tables, bedroom set and dinning set and all that you can name. Me however, getting bored in the store back then. Well, I went to the store when I’m having holidays, I was already a college student back then. Of course staying at the store in holiday is not an option for me.

Sometimes too, I went to the store to save it from flood, it was located somewhere near Rejang river, sigh…

IKEA

Anyway, as I grow up, I need to get myself furniture. Usually, IKEA is not in my list of shopping when it comes to furniture, the big one. Bedroom set, 6 feets working table, office chair and etc. Those are rocket high price in IKEA, so I hop to some normal furniture store.

Without the experience from my mother store, I always pick on the bad one, or rather worst of its kind.

Lesson number one: Learn EVERYTHING even if you don’t like it, it helps… In the future.

Then, it comes to… Research. We can almost find anything and everything to have a clue how to start something on the Internet nowadays. Professional bloggers of all area of field, eweb magazine and of course, Wikipedia.

Lesson number two: Everything research before act.

I learn my lesson big this month :)

eShop, eMall and eCommerce

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Yesterday, an old friend called me out for a dinner. The purpose is to get into the eCommerce in Sibu, and probably Malaysia.

I personally monitoring Sibu eCommerce closely. I wanted to see how it grow and how it works currently.

Forum as a starter

Forum
A lot of Sibuan like to start off with a forum, or selling in a forum instead. Having their own eCommerce store is time consuming and waste of money. After starting off a forum, they will offer a very competitive and affordable banner advertisement in forum, to get themselves going longer.

I can easily name more than 5 Sibu forums which all have above all points, banner advertisement, selling products on (specialized) thread and they are still young.

Well, look closely, each of those forum actually linking each other or buying advertisement with each other, spliting visitors all around the web and hardly get royalty and ended up not much sale on forum.

In short, those forums does not actually provide a platform for the seller (or themselves), but are looking for a profit themselves through the forum. That is the problem with forum as eCommerce.

Unfriendly user interface

User interface
Majority, if not all eCommerce store are using the same China made eCommerce script. I’m not saying it’s not good, it’s good and I did a test myself as well, function wise is great, but front-end interface is not.

Like most China website, crowded with images, big and small, and lots of text on the front page.

A while back, I spend a lot of time with my wife outside in malls, we find out that a lots of those stock are from Internet. Those eCommerce stores are actually more protifting as a wholesaler than a retailer. (You can check into forum too).

The key-point to actually winning in eCommerce store, is to get to know more retailers instead.

Login before paying is so yesterday. It is now against the concept of eCommerce nowadays, the convenient become not so convenient. Let me tell you more about the so-called, payment.

Payment gateway

Payment
There is absolutely no payment gateway on those eCommerce stores I visited. Don’t mind those Maybank2u or Credit Card logos on the footer.

Forget it, I ended up a message telling me “Our representative will contact you within next 24 hours.” Some even ask me to made the payment first and contact them about the payment and item I needed, right! What is the whole point of having a product clicked and added to cart?

So far, the best thing about eCommerce in Sibu is that I don’t get cheated. I am ensured with the location. With population of 25,000 only, basically to get to know a person and location is easier than flipping yellowpage.

Do I continue shopping online? Yes! The hassle are all away after I know the price is competitive compare to retail :P