Contributed by Rishi Shah, CEO and founder of FlyingCart.com - Flying Cart is an easy way to create an online store and sell products. Currently they help over 6,000 businesses create, market, and manage their online store.

A long time ago (August 2005) I had an idea about how great it would be to go into any major retail store, buy something, and it would remember what you bought. You could then enter in your email address and after a few weeks the retail store would email you suggestions based on your previous purchase. I reached out to every major retailer I could find. Using Hoovers and Google Finance I was able to easily find the key people (CEO’s and VP’s) to ask about this idea. After getting hundreds of “No, Thank You” or “Who are you?” or “Call us in a year,” I decided to approach small business owners.

I walked up and down State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. State Street is known for having 30 or so small niche boutiques. I asked each store owner if they were interested in my idea. A few said yes but they were more interested in just a really easy way to create an online store where they could sell their products. I heard this over and over again. After doing some research I found a few “create online store” solutions did exist but they were extremely complicated and I have a technical background!

Because I heard the problem and need directly from small business owners, I was pretty convinced that an easy to use online store was a solid idea. I was able to get a client to sign a contract with me as a beta customer. Now that I had a client and a solid idea I needed to develop the product. I posted a job ad looking for an experienced programmer on Craigslist.org. This is how I found a talented business partner in Margo Baxter. She liked the idea and we were both excited to work on it.

We asked our first beta client many questions and pitched them a lot of feature ideas. All they said they wanted was an easy online store they could manage themselves. At first we didn’t really think the bigger market would want a featureless cart so we went on to build in many features. The results were months and months of development and a product that was over bloated. We decided to take a step back and re think things. After a lot of long nights we decided to rebuild the product except this time with simplicity and only the essential features in mind.

MARKETING WITH NO MONEY
While Margo was cranking out code, I knew we needed more than one client to make a business. So we created a nice looking website showing off what we were developing and an email sign up form so people could be alerted when we launch. The form was essential to us and we were able to create an initial demand before we launched the product. Building a form is simple to do especially with Wufoo.com. Once we launched the site we hit the web world hard and tried to get any free publicity possible. We spent months looking up open directories and submitting Flying Cart to it. A few of the best directories we got into were go2web20.net, feedmyapp.com, wikidweb.com, and DMOZ.org. We wrote press releases and submitted them to any free press release website we could find. The best press release sites for us were ecommwire.com and free-press-release.com. We also wrote to hundreds of blogs personally one by one asking them to write about us. Luckily Mashable.com, BusinessWeek.com and Entrepeneur.com wrote about us. After 3 or so months we had 400 clients waiting to be invited into Flying Cart to open an online store. This kept us extremely motivated to keep building the product.

Flying Cart officially launched in Aug. 2007. We had a dead simple easy to use product. We had a few paying customers but needed more to survive. We knew that marketing would play a key role in acquiring more customers.

REACHING OUT
Before launching Flying Cart we did some major research on eBay to uncover customer wants and needs. We knew there were millions of frustrated eBay customers. We hit their forum boards and asked around what their major problems were. One major problem we heard was eBay’s outrageous fees. They hated giving a cut of their profits (eBay charges anywhere from 3-9% of the final sale amount). We decided that we would give our customers the ability to take home 100% of their profits and we would charge a flat low monthly fee instead.

ADVERTISING
In order to get more traction on the web we decided to sign up for Google Adwords and starting purchasing keywords like “Shopping Cart Solution” so our ad would appear when someone searches for it. Google Adwords was great and it helped us lock down some good customers at a very affordable price.

HELPING CUSTOMERS
Although Google Adwords was getting us new customers our biggest strength was old customers referring new customers. This is when it struck us. Let’s take care of our customers and our customers will take care of us! Let’s ask our customers what they want and need and build it for them!

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Our best feature was our customer support - everyone liked our personal attention and fast responses. Over the last two years we learned how to create better customer service. We allow our customers to set up phone calls with us so we can figure out what is wrong with the store or even give them advice on how to market their products online.

GETTING FEEDBACK
We are constantly asking our customers for feedback. At any point the store owner can submit feature suggestions, take a survey that we post in our newsletters, and communicate with us on our blog. Margo and I can still name each one of our customers and the features they came up with. This feedback drives the development of new features and how we communicate about our business to others.

HELPING CUSTOMERS MAKE SALES
We found a repeating pattern in our business. Customers with no sales cancel. So we went to work. We researched every possible tool we could integrate that would make our customers products more visible on the Internet. We added the ability to add all your products to be indexed by Google Product Search with a click of a button. We created on demand sitemaps for each store and alerted Google, Yahoo, and ASK about it. We reached out to TheFind.com to index each one of our stores in their major shopping directory.

Unfortunately, no matter how many automated marketing tools we added the overall success of the online store lies in motivating the actual owner and teaching them what it takes to be successful. A few months ago we launched a store check list. 20 tips they must do to get their online business rolling. We guide each store owner through marketing tasks like publishing a press release to design guides so they can create a trustworthy beautiful looking online store.

RECURRING SALES
The most important thing to any business owners is recurring sales. Keeping cash flow alive. Our solution was to launch a mini social network inside each store. Each store owner has a “Fan Club”. Old and new customers are given the opportunity to join the store fan club, upload a picture, and create a mini profile. The store’s fans can communicate directly with the store owner right on their store. This way the store owners can find out directly from the customers what they like, want, and need. This creates a lasting impression and turns each customer into a fan.

MOVING FORWARD
We aren’t slowing down. Feature suggestions are always coming in. The hard part is deciding which idea to focus on. The way we look at new feature ideas now is the amount of impact it will have. Before we take on any new feature idea we ask ourselves one big important question: Will it help our customers out?

| Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

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