1. The business
When local businesses began signing up to take part in Ennis’ eircom information age town, Custy’s music shop, established in Ennis in 1992, considered that if the amount of requests they were getting by post was anything to go by, then there had to be a niche for their music shop on the Internet too.
‘At first we were a bit hesitant about going online and how it would change our business, but we decided to take the plunge as long as it was done our way,’ says John O’Connor, Website manager for Custy’s music shop.
‘We were willing to give it two years before it would bear fruit, but we were quite firm that the site had to pay for itself and not be a drain on time and money. If the site provided no practical use, it would have to go,’ stresses O’Connor. This is where GoSell comes in.
‘We needed to be able to maintain the site with maximum ease. Initially we were expecting it to account for maybe 8 to 10 per cent of overall business, but clearly it is ticking over better than that.’ Three years on and online business has grown with Web traffic representing a total 25 per cent of the shop’s trade.
2. Customer contact
You can work long and hard to make your site function well and look good, but technology will only take you so far – there is no substitution for old-fashioned customer service, it seems. ‘We don’t really advertise the site on the Internet, instead we’ve found the best way to increase trade was by building rapport with existing customers, and hope that this good will would be passed on by word of mouth.’ says O’Connor. ‘We have been very careful to give all of our online customers careful attention and respond to their requests promptly and in a personalised manner.
You also want to make sure you are selling quality,’ continues O’Connor. ‘There’s a limit to what you can sell on the Internet, we don’t want to go down the road of flogging tourist junk just because we can. We take our specialty seriously and because of this our customers do too.’
Custy’s caters to a specialised niche community who are highly literate in Irish music, so there is a certain standard that has to be maintained. In one sense, all Custy’s has done is stick to what it knows best, the Custy family are well-respected Irish musicians and therefore have a certain expertise, other musicians appreciate dealing them.
Custy’s online shop sells mainly CDs, videos and books with an emphasis on independently produced Irish music-related materials. ‘The site wouldn’t be there without the shop, so we’ve always felt it is important that our presence on the Internet is faithful what the shop is about, both in terms of the way we operate and the look-and-feel. Online customers from all over the world have come in person to the shop and are always surprised at how closely the site resembles the shop.’
3. Shop maintenance
An initial three months’ work went into the development of the site, now Custy’s uses Go Sell to maintain the site of 400 products and growing, and keep it up to date and in order. ‘It’s quite important to continually maintain the site – we tend to spend up to 20 hours each week updating, mostly adding and changing new products. We are not a technical bunch, but the Go Sell product has proven very easy to use as it provides a number of options for displaying our content. For instance if I want to add a new CD, I can upload a cover image and can also include information about the CD and a listening piece so visitors can sample the CD first.’
A shipping matrix was also incorporated into the site to ensure that orders are promptly fulfilled in a cost-effective manner. In terms of shipping, Custy’s is able to reliably get goods out to customers within two working days within Ireland and to the England, and about four days for the rest of the world.
‘Luckily we haven’t really had any problems on the security and shipping end. This is important for our customer’s confidence in making transactions with us as not everyone is at the same level of acceptance using the Internet. It is important for our own confidence in transacting over the Internet as well. Retailers, especially small ones, incur a lot of responsibility once they get into this arena, so they have got to weigh up the risks and find a system that works for their own needs.’
4. The cost of the solution
Go Sell provides e-commerce solutions enabling businesses to build, sell and receive payments for products and services and maintain their web sites. In association with Eurocommerce, eircom can offer customers real time authorisation via 128-bit secure socket layer encryption. The Starter package enables up to 50 products and begins at €630 per year.
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