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Ask HN: Opinions on New Business Launch

7 points by eli_s ↗ HN
Hi all, It's not my intention to spam HN. I posted a story about my new business and it disappeared very quickly on the list (maybe wrong time of day to post?). Anyways - if this get ignored then i'll assume ppl are not interested and i'll scurry away with my tail between my legs hehe :)

I've been developing an ecommerce startup in my spare time over the last 2 years.

Ecommerce site builders are a-dime-a-dozen, so i tried to differentiate myself by including a fairly feature rich print catalogue builder.

I'd love to hear your opinion on a few things: 1. What do you think of the product/site? 2. Do you think there is a market for another ecommerce product (the shopify guys seem to be doing well - this gives me hope)? 3. Do you think that the catalogue builder can be enough of a draw card to get people to try wizifi? 4. Any marketing advice for a total marketing noob?

Thanks for your time - I value HN opinions.

site: http://www.wizifi.com

demo store: http://www.wizifi.com/nexus_login un: hn pw: hn

ps: you;ll need to use a webkit based browser to log into the admin the reasons for this are another story altogether :)

9 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] thread
tjoozeylabs
i would have uploaded vids to vimeo.
eli_s
yeah that was my first thought too, but they don't allow commercial videos - even for their paid account :(

Are you getting slow download of the video? It's hosted on amazon s3 so should be ok.

patio11
Who is the customer that you identified who wanted "e-commerce with printed catalogs that don't suck"? If you haven't identified someone who said that, DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING and DO NOT CONTINUE until you have verified that there is at least one actual person who sees the need you are trying to fill. If you have, in fact, talked to a person who was willing to rip out their existing e-commerce solution and replace it with a new one just to get a printed catalog which does not suck, a) get their money and b) start identifying other people who want a printed catalog which does not suck.

Marketing advice: you will find that "e-commerce" is extraordinarily, extraordinarily broad and, as a wee little guy on the virtual corner of Nothing St. and Nowhere Bldv., it is impossible for you to penetrate through the din. Start by digging into niches. For example, if you have that customer who wanted the printed catalog that does not suck, start banging virtual doors in their industry because presumably other merchants have the sort of tech-negative clients who respond well to printed catalogs. If for example you find that it is impossible to sell, I don't know, porcelain dolls without a printed catalog, then you could try dominating the "porcelain doll e-commerce" niche, which shouldn't be nearly as hard as e-commerce proper.

After you get a bit of traction and the porcelain doll merchants are eating out of your hand, you can expand horizontally into related industries. Additionally, the bigger the snowball gets the better your chances of attacking the fat head from the Long Tail are.

eli_s
Some good advice here cheers :)

The customer that originally wanted printed advertising was my dad :) He'd been struggling with keeping his printed advertising in line with his website for some time.

The product I'm building was originally aimed more at bricks-and-mortar store owners who wanted an website (most of these guys don't need ecommerce) - the ecommerce part of it came much later.

Most bricks and mortar stores rely on some type of printed advertising - it forms an important part of all physical retailing - just look at all the large retailers - Officeworks, K-Mart etc - they all have printed catalogues being generated on a 4-8 week cycle. These types of catalogues were out of reach for small business owners - they either have to pay $500-$1000 for each one to be designed or they have to try to create their own marketing materials using Word or Photoshop.

I certainly see what you mean about ecommerce being difficult to break through - there are just so many options out there.

My gut feeling is that local bricks and mortar merchants in South Australia, where i'm from will respond to a site builder + catalogue designer more strongly than purely online retailers. Thats why I've also registered www.localsa.com.au to promote this product under that brand. This approach will of course require a more traditional sales approach ie knocking on doors and cold calling.

So my approach will be two pronged - ecommerce merchants targeted through the generic wizifi brand and local merchants tageted through the localsa brand.

Will be interesting to see which works better.

I know it's probably naive to think this way but I only need 125 customers to match my current salary. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but that number doesn't seem too unatainable - especially since what i'm really selling is hosting with the site builder and catalogue software as value added.

The idea of targeting a niche is a good one - now to find a bunch of under-serviced people ;)

rms
I have an ecommerce site running on Prestashop and the features of your site are not particularly compelling to me. However, if there was a good hosted ecommerce site builder available at the time I installed Prestashop that only charged a monthly fee and not a percentage of sales, I would have used it.
eli_s
Thanks for taking the time to give me feedback. Could you elaborate on 'the features of your site are not particularly compelling to me'.

Would help me to build a better product :)

rms
My business has no retail presence so a printed catalog is unnecessary. At this point it doesn't make sense for me to switch to another shopping cart, but I think you're going after a perfectly fine market. The market for online store builders is really quite large; it's mostly a marketing challenge. If you have a strategy for reaching out to businesses in your region I think you're going to do fine.
eli_s
Thanks rms I appreciate the feedback. I think you're right that the success of this product really boils down to a marketing challenge. I guess that applies to all products, but maybe more so when dealing with so much competition.