Ok, contary to what everyone suggested my partner and I have started an E-Store here in Taiwan. We are currently buying food products from importers here in Taiwan and using the post office to deliver COD all over the Island.
Take a look and as with all things, sugggestions are welcome almost as much as orders are.
if i were to order can i order online and pick up and pay at a store?
No, unless your in Taoyuan. Then I could arrange something, though we don’t have a store front. (yet) right now just a warehouse out by CKS airport.
The idea’s great, and your products seem reasonably priced.
If I were to want to order a case of soda from you though, I’d worry about the shipping cost. Since most of your products seem to be canned and heavy, why not consider setting up a place in Taipei where people can pick things up? Doesn’t have to be a storefront, but just somewhere for people to pick things up and pay for them at the same time. You could drive the previous week’s orders up on certain days of the week and leave the stuff at a friend’s house for people to pick up, even. The drive up and back is probably equal or less than the time you’d spend packaging and mailing each individual order.
That’s of course, if you have access to a car. If not, um. never mind.
Not to be offensive or anything, since I’m sure you spent a lot of time on it, but I find your website kind of intimidating. Everytime I click on a different link, it leads me to a completely different-looking webpage.
It’s be less confusing/distracting if you mainly stuck with one layout, like the layout on Taiwan Information. A heading and sidebar for every page so you can move around the site without having to scroll to the bottom or hit the back button sometimes. And decrease the font size so we don’t have to scroll up and down to read just a little bit of text.
Perhaps you could add a price for buying a case or a box of stuff instead of selling everything per item. Like :
Nature Valley Trail Mix Bars.
These make regular granola bars look like candy. Get real, get these today.
NT$12 per bar, NT$570 for box of 48
It would encourage people to buy whole boxes of things too.
You also don’t have to cram everything you can possibly think of onto your website, since you are mainly focusing on being an E-store that sells stuff, right? So why would you want to distract your potential customer by having them click on infoontaiwan/english lessons/chinese lessons/free motivational wallpaper/famous quotes/etc?
Tempted by the root beer, but not by the amount it would cost to ship it,
Lupillus
Lupillus,
Thanks for your advice. Yeah, I think I agree that I need to simplify the look. I was reading about the golden rule of website… KISS… Keep It Simple Stupid.
About opening a store in Taipei, the main purpose of this is to offer items to those people not in Taipei and that can’t get to the Breeze Center or Jasons.
If your in Taipei and wanted a case of Mountian Dew or Root Beer I’m sure we could arrange something. We are going to be getting in a lot of dry stuff, soups, dressing and helper stuff. Those should be better for selling and shipping.
Thanks for your input, every little bit is appreciated.
Oh and just wanted to add. your probably right about the quotes and wallpaper. That’s from my previous site and I put a lot of work into them. I just hate to see them fade away… But I did keep the links small and at the bottom.
The Information links are just something to help guide new people. As I said. we are putting on a strong marketing campaign to reach people that don’t know about Forumosa or things like how to check the weather on-line, how to find Taiwan Cams or even ICRT.
Now I know… it seems stupid because everyone knows these things… Well, no they don’t really. I am always surprised to find people that don’t know there’s government web cams set up all over the island.
Just some ideas for courier, did you try contacting Da Rong? You can push them as low as 80TWD for any size package around Taiwan island. (You might have a weight restriction though.) They also do a COD service, and charge less for that than the 7-11 cat one you are using now.
I didn’t contact them but the post office will send up to 5kg for 80NT. I have that on my site but think I need to make it more noticable.
Also, I put on there if they use Pay Pal I have adjusted the prices so shipping is included. It’s a bit more expensive for them but no shipping hassles. So now there’s 2 ways to buy. And of course, everyone in Taoyuan county is asking me to deliver…lol
proto_tw, i think what asiababy is trying to say is that you can get express service for any size package and they can collect the package right from your warehouse. maybe you and your partner should look into that.
I’m open to any and all ideas… I’m sure I’ll be picking some minds at the Ent. club meeting, that’s for sure.
Thanks for the clarification, yes, we use Da Rong’s courier (not their general freight one, I’d stay away from that), they come to our premises to pick up packages, same day delivery for the same city, next day for rest of Taiwan, 80TWD for any size package (but our packages are generally light-weight). They also deliver from other places to us for the same price if we ask for it. To outer islands is 180. They collect the money on delivery and deposit it in our account for a small fee, our customers like that system. If you are set up as a company, paying taxes etc and want to claim expenses, remember that if money is put in the company bank account through a courier you will have to write invoices and pay taxes, so some people opt to use the ATM system only. We were using the 7-11 T-CAT but they just couldn’t offer the same prices for the courier, and their phone system was a bit frustrating for me to handle getting them to pick up everyday.
Regarding paypal, an acquaintence (spelling…) is the owner of http://www.ezpay.com.tw/. Not sure of the English-language ability but it has the advantage of being in Taiwan dollars. Very popular now on yahoo auction taiwan. Never used it myself, just passing on some alternatives to consider.
Hope that helps.
Dude, I don’t know what you did, but I think your avatar image is prompting anyone who views your posts with a username and password query.
I’m looking at Forumosa and I get a pop up box asking me for a username and password for estoretaiwan.
It’s odd.
I hope that’s fixed now. My stupid homepage designer (me) put a security lock on my image file…lol. If it’s still going on let me know right away so I can remove it. I’d hate to be screwing up Forumosa. The Admin here get’s angry at me it’d be BAD