Website online shop

betafeet · Oct 12, 2008

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Hello All,

I was wondering if any of you have added a shop for your patients to buy products etc from your web site or have registered with the online doctor store, this appears to be a hassle free benifit to our web sites but at a cost and not sure if the rewards are there. Shopping online is becoming the norm for alot of people today and directing them to our own websites to buy may be the way foreward.

http://www.ourdoctorstore.com

If you have an online shop has it worked?
How much trouble has it been?
Are there any other companies doing this particulary in the uk?

Jude

Admin2 · Oct 12, 2008

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Craig Payne · Oct 12, 2008

In those previous threads linked to by Andy, I wrote:

I will speak generically....I would be very doubtful if its worth it.

eCommerce is not easy. You need a lot of website traffic to even get people to look at the products, let alone convert to sales - its not as easy as it sounds.

Ranking well in search engines is not an easy task to pick up traffic from there.

There are some already big payers in the market - esp foot.com and Footsmart - look at the the list here:
http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Health/Feet/ which is nothing more than a sample (on top of that list there are >70 other sites waiting to be reviewed and added to the list) (DMOZ is the webs largest directory of websites)

IMHO, if your website gets less than a few hundred unique visitors (NOT hits) a day, there is no way its worth it. If you get more than a few thousand uniques, then maybe consider it. (Most podiatry sites do not come close to this). I say this as to offer products on your site, you are competing with all of the "big boys" who rank well on search engines for a whole range of keywords and optimizing sites to do this is a big challenge. So either you go head to head with these people or you capitalize on traffic you already get, and you need a lot ---
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I have seen the testimonials on the company that provides "foot product stores" for podiatrists websites in the USA and not sure I want to fully believe them.

eCommerce is hard. Gone are the days where you put up a site and the masses come. To succeed with a eCom site you need a huge amount of traffic, that you can only get through a lot of paid advertising (costs money) or an very high ranking in the search engines (most eCommerce companies have paid search engine optimiser to get those rankings).

I find it hard to beleive that a regular podiatry clinic website will come close to generating the kind of traffic to make an 'add on' web store worth it. The only one making any money will be the company that sets it up for you and ships the products.

Personaly, I would not put the effort in.
Click to expand...

In the UK, the market is already dominated by 2 big players: DrFoot & FootHealthCare

betafeet · Nov 23, 2008

Thank you Craig, sorry about my delayed response to your valued comments which confirms my original thought that it would be difficult to generate enough income to cover the outlay cost.

Jude

betafeet Active Member

Admin2 Administrator Staff Member

Craig Payne Moderator

betafeet Active Member

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