Trailmarkers

I've just returned from over a month of holidays. Internet access on the road to the Yukon territory in western Canada is difficult to achieve while on the road. I have a Bell LTE hotspot, but cell towers in mountainous regions are difficult to connect to. I received emails notifying me while my wife was driving that a few products were ready for approval from a client store on Trailmarkers.ca.

After I managed to find a consistent connection at our next stop, I logged in to review the products. We have a policy to review the first few products for new stores so that we can help them improve their product listings. I noticed that for all 3 products, which were car decals, that she didn't mark the subcategory as "decal". I narrowed it down to the fact that the category/subcategory picker was a small arrow next to the category in a hierarchical tree view. Unfortunately the small arrow was light blue on white and difficult to see. I wrote to the plugin developer for an improvement, and they sent back a code change in about a week which separated product category and subcategory as now two mandatory fields using pulldown controls. Perfectly clear, difficult to mess up.

Last entry, I mentioned how onboarding is too complex. Before I tackle intro.js and add onboarding help for vendors, I wanted to improve the site's navigation.

I used Etsy and Amazon for inspiration and best practices. They use a minimal header with the logo on the left, a large search bar in the middle, account information, and lastly the shopping cart. The products and categories below this are 4 - 6 images wide. Because a lot of my products are small, I want to show more detail, thus kept 2 rows of 4 product images as I did in the past.

Previously, my home page for unregistered customers showed the newest products, plus a large prominent SHOP button that they click to view all products. I changed this to show the newest products, with prominent tabs for TOP SELLING, TOP RATED, FEATURED, & SALE. It's instant, too, no waiting for the page to reload.

I've also improved and simplified the wording on the About page, to describe the site, and the options for registering as a customer vs becoming a vendor.

I was unable to change the Wordpress theme's menu to pulldowns instead of a vertical bar. I have the option of adding yet another menu plugin, but I decided to leave it for now and build a side menu.

As well I improved my pricing table. Added one new price plan for a total of four, and generally improved the descriptions. Previously, you had to create an account first before you could pick the plan, which was awkward, but now you pick your pricing plan first then create your account.

I offer a 1-on-1 free onboarding for prospective store owners, because at this time I don't have any kind of walkthrough set up to help new signups. I've already researched commercial vs free and decided that I'll be using intro.js, but my biggest obstacle is time to set it up.

In the meantime, a few evenings ago I had a new prospective store owner onboarding session. We did a phone call with me remotely accessing her desktop computer, for this I use self-hosted Connectwise Control product (https://www.connectwise.com/software/control). If I didn't already have this commercial software, Windows 10 Quick Assist would have also worked just fine.

It took roughly an hour to onboard her as I stepped her through creating a vendor account, naming her store, uploading her logo, setting her store terms and conditions, plus shipping and refund policies. Then we created her first product, which she already has on Etsy. Her Etsy store is doing okay, but they take a larger commission chunk than I do and also my market is much larger and far more targeted, which is why she is interested in opening a store with us.

I don't mind 1-vs-1 onboarding, but I'd like to have it automated with intro.js, and broken down into steps so that new store owners can accomplish steps as they have time in smaller chunks, not all at once as it is too complex to absorb in one sitting.

If you were the owner of a new shopping mall and did not have any stores rented out before you opened, it would be a hard sell to get those stores filled afterwards, as all people would see is a big empty mall. The same goes for an online marketplace.

My strategy is to fill it with a high number of low-volume products from my own store, thus giving it the appearance of a busy marketplace, until such time as I get more tenants.

I've already made a small profit on the marketplace with a very small number of products. But I need to create more products, so I've been doing research on one of the highest selling items in my market: vehicle decals. I researched high-volume professional vinyl cutters vs low-volume home/small business ones. I have determined that with the purchase of a home/small-business cutter along with the other necessary tools and supplies, I can design, create and sell an appropriate number of decals.

I am ready to purchase and will be making room in my home office for this equipment, setting it up, getting used to the equipment, and then designing some decals to add to the marketplace. I can manage some of the design myself, while outsourcing to a friend of mine who is a design professional. These will be JIT (just-in-time manufacturing) goods. I give myself the goal of end of August to begin adding new ready-made decals to the marketplace.

I have a ton of ideas for products to sell. The big question is sourcing. There are many local shops that make decals from your designs, but the pricing is high for small quantities. I have a great local patch maker, but the market here for patches isn't as strong as the market for decals. That got me thinking, perhaps I should invest in a vinyl cutter to cut my own decals? My indecision has led my own store at the site to falter with almost no activity for the last few months. :(

I began to talk to individuals that might be interested in setting up their own shops on the site. For instance, there are many 4x4 clubs and they all sell shirts, hats, club decals for their trucks, etc. I ran into a problem, the people I thought would be the most interested were the ones the least interested. The typical excuse was, "I prefer to hand out my goods in person and meet with people directly". Even though setting up a store didn't mean they had to give that up (they could just as easily skipped shipping and deliver the goods by hand), the site gave them the impression that it reduced their contact with fellow club members. Oh oh.

Using Canada Post for local shipping is relatively inexpensive. So I created flat-price shipping at $2. Stupid me. Shipping to the USA is extremely expensive. First off, if the product (say a small sticker) is inside a brown envelope, Canada Post assumes it is commercial (even though any grandma can buy a brown envelope) and requires you to fill out a US customs declaration. Which potentially means my package will be opened by US customs, which means I'm now exporting as a business, and thus require a company with an export license.... Here in Canada we can have a small personal side business and pay no tax up to a certain income level, and do not need to incorporate. I was hoping this would remain at this level for a while, but instead I might have to spend hundreds or thousands for a paltry tens of dollars in profit.

As well, my flat rate pricing works for Canada, but I lose roughly $1 for everything I send to the USA. I thought flat-rate shipping would make things easier but it's actually making things harder. Time to rethink.

My first customer was the easiest customer anyone could ask for. The first customer was me. Not only did I want to sell my own stuff, but I also wanted the site to enable others to sell their stuff. So I created my own store, drank my own koolaid as they say. The process was quite simple actually. I could add products, keep inventory, get reviews on the site, accept payments, and I even have a companion mobile app that notifies me of sales and keeps track of my store.

Fortunately for me, I had a friend who was in the film industry that is a graphic designer. She and I had a couple of sit-down meetings, and we came up with something outdoorsy, a little intentionally rough around the edges (this is a recreational activity for people after all, unrelated to work), and bit cheeky (you should see the profanity in some of the decals people like...) She designed the logo and color scheme, and I came up with the tagline, "Ridiculously Unnecessary Politically-Incorrect Outdoor Enthusiast Paraphernalia"