Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`ve heard some good things about Miva and some bad things.  Personally, I`ve had more experience with the open source ecommerce packages and many businesses have made great use of them without spending a cent on a license including multimillion dollar businesses.

In any case, an ecommerce solution can be the best thing and the worst thing to implement, at the same time.   I highly recommend getting your hands on documentation, print if possible, and cracking it open and reading through it.  Even if you`re hiring someone to make and customize the website for you, it`s important that you know the basic workings of the software so you can save time and money by doing much of it yourself.

I took a look at the online demo and some documentation as a courtesy.  The XML compatibility will help you in the coming years as that format becomes more popular and easy to use.  The language it`s coded on does worry me in that you may need someone specialized or Miva itself to help you get the site the way you want it.  Hard-coding is a must no matter how much good the administration panel or graphic design is. 

If you can give me some details on what you`re trying to do, who`s doing it, and your product, I can give you a better idea of the work involved.  The most important thing once you get used to using Miva is to set up a procedure for getting inventory data and updating it on a regular basis.  One thing is to make sure you have things like product SKUs and the like so search engines properly index your business inventory.

You mean like this?? Go to Google ... enter ... gt180001 or 0210tgs .

Google indexes every one of GoTruckStop.com`s SKU`s (for those from Loma Linda, CA ... that stands for Stock Keeping Unit).

And again, all this in less than 5 months of being up and running.

I noticed that Miva requires you to be on-line to access / edit the data base (items) in the store. Is that true or did I read it wrong?

I think that you do need to be online, I am not 100% certain though. I know that I can export into Access or Excel.

I noticed that you`ll be drop-shipping. Do you have multiple vendors now? Do you plan on having multiple vendors ... or plan on only having 1 vendor?

From Miva web site ... "Notification emails can also be copied to a third party for drop-shipping, among other uses".

Does it allow you to set individual e-mail addresses for each vendor for each product?

In other words, I order 3 products, from 3 seperate vendors, on one order (you have 10 vendors total). Does Miva automatically split the order ... sending each vendor (of the 3 items ordered) an individual email ... with just their products order information?

Or does each vendor (all 3 or all 10 vendors) get a copy of the order ... even if they have nothing to do with the order ... or other items in the order?

 (A different way to ask this question) When I set up a vendor ... do I set up a vendor profile ... with an email address ... then when I input a new item into the data base ... is the email address automatically created for each product entered? And does the system split the order based on vendor codes and sends that vendor only their part of the order?

I`m wondering how Miva 5 handles this drop ship issue.

You have a good start then.  Supply chain data integration and simple text-based data formats mean you can train someone into your business in a matter of days because the information is simple and being handled by multiple trained parties.   A few solid pieces of advice.  I apologize if you`ve heard them already or if they seem too elementary.

- Shopping search engines now accept spreadsheet-based/csv format inventory data which means advertising and searching for leads just got that much better.

- Make sure your shipping operations are firmly integrated into inventory information.  Customers will often want to know where their package is before it arrives and reducing errors such as shipping the wrong item or a typo in the ship-to address are critical.

- Run the website through as many error-checking bots as possible for deadlinks and code errors.  Checking the site yourself is a great first step, but every potential customer has a unique OS/browser/ISP configuration.  While it is their responsibility to make sure their computer is compatible with your business, it is your necessity. 

- Make sure customers know they can search by keywords, multiple keywords, manufacturer SKUs or your own system.  One of the leading reasons people abandon an order before going to the shopping cart is a weird categorization system for products.

- Get feedback.  Even the most professionally designed  five-figure-budget website has flaws and the most researched low-budget website can beat it if it has the right function.  There`s a reason most people search on Google and not Yahoo and most people look for jobs on Craigslist and not Careerbuilder.

TJG: I`d like to answer both your questions if you don`t mind.

1) You need to be online.  While you can certainly compose and fix the database offline, the changes can only be applied when they`re uploaded and being connected means you can make immediate changes to any errors.  When you`re first working with an ecommerce platform, there will be a high rate of human error as you get used to the automation.

2) Unfortunately, I don`t think I`ve ever heard of any ecommerce platform that allows the drop-shipping options you`re describing.  The problem is that most major distributors will simply NOT allow you such unfettered access to their systems.   Most will also not have a company-wide policy for how their sales reps handle e-mail orders.  And the minor ones typically don`t have the capital or people to set up a complicated system.   You`ll have to manage multiple-vendor drop-shipping with some manual intervention.

However, if you do develop a very significant relationship with your distributor, you can develop a custom software package that does let you do what you want done.   In the meantime, the best answer is to  pre-order items that tend to be shipping together a lot and create split orders (giving you a chance to create product bundles to boost revenue).  To tell you the truth, even large resellers such as Office Max, Dell, or Circuit City aren`t able to coordinate with distributors well even if they did spend the money.  You can either pre-order or make custom software that tells whoever`s doing the shipping that there is a distributor conflict.

The biggest advantages of these e-commerce software programs over a plain .html site is the one-button-fixes-all uniformity.  It can automate things that are prone to human error but it can`t prevent it and a distributor that refuses to play nice is one of those problems. 

I still find it funny that so many people in IT and business think open source ecommerce solutions can`t do what they want.  You basically have a small army of people who know how the software works, can tell you in technical or Layman`s terms how it works, and have a vested interested in doing so.  While the business incentives of trying something without having to pay (ever) are very appearant, the technical incentives are more hidden. 

You have that small army of programmers constantly developing add-ons and plug-ins for a product that are also typically free.  Customizing the website also becomes easier because there`s no license that prevents from modifying this or that.  The fact that the language itself is open source, such as PHP or MySQL, means that the skillset required to use the languages is not limited to just this software unlike proprietary solutions, or even to ecommerce.  For anyone who has worked in website design or IT, they can certainly appreciate having expertise that can keep them afloat through layoffs or clients who often drag out payment. 

Ok folks ... now that we`ve got what this Miva 5 system CAN`T do ... now lets describe a system that will allow you to DO do what I`ve described.

I`ll call it "GTS" ... (for conversation sake).

This shopping cart/data base WILL ALLOW a number of things that I`ve asked about.

1. GTS will allow you to set up multiple drop shippers, in fact there is no limit to the number of drop shippers you can have.
2. GTS allows you to have an unlimited number of products, user defined product categories,  user defined departments, and user defined search criteria ... for easy product maintainace and merchandising. Any product`s "profile" can be change with the click of a button.
3. GTS will allow you to split the order, based on vendor code. As an order comes in, with multiple products with multiple drop shippers, GTS will automatically split the order and send individual emails to each of the drop shippers, with only their part of the order.
4. GTS will allow you to work off-line, inputting multiple items into the store, doing multiple price changes, changing the order in which items are displayed in the store (dynamic change - which the search engines LOVE), allows you to edit the text and description of multiple products, allows you to delete a product from the store (without eliminating it from the data base) ... and much, much more!!
5. GTS allows you to maintain multiple templates for easy product creation. Add-on pricing, multiple colors, multiple sizes ect ... can all be set-up, maintained and edited by the user ... off-line.
6. With a click, GTS will upload the new revised data base, with ALL  the changes you`ve made to 1 or all of the products, through an easy to use Admin Console.
7. GTS allows the shopper to ship multiple products to multiple locations.
8. GTS integrates the check out process with multiple credit card authorization gateways, including Authorize.net, as well as integrating a seamless gateway to PayPal. No need to batch your transactions manually. Your gateway will automatically batch the credit card transactions at the end of the day.
9. GTS allows for the issuance, maintenance, control and printing of your very own Gift Certificate program. The Gift Certificate program integrates directly into your check out module, including maintaining a balance on the un-used portion of a shopper`s Gift Certificate, just like a gift card from Applebee`s or other large chain operation.
10. GTS allows you to create, maintain, and/or print multiple catalogs, for both wholesale and/or retail presentations, in .PDF format, for easy reading, presentation and distribution.
11. ... And many more features too!

Now, does this sound like a shopping cart/database that is too good to be true? Its not. And its very affordable. My understanding is that , you can have many of these features, including the off-line data base capabilities ... and have the web site designed ... for less than $4500 !!

In the next few weeks, you`ll hear from several of our members here at SuN that have realized the benefits of GTS (development name).

To see GTS in action, simply visit GoTruckStop.com at http://GoTruckStop.com

GoTruckStop.com carries no inventory. All our products are drop-shipped, and the ordering process is automatically maintained by GTS !!

(*GTS is a development name.)