Everything  German-American! http://store.german-usa.com

Q. What first attracted you to the idea of selling your goods online?

A. We have always sold our goods online.  When we first started our business it was a simple German-American (GA) resource guide; a listing of German stores, restaurants, clubs, book stores and so on in the US.  The reason we started the resource guide was because there was no one place to find GA goods and services.  Katharina started collecting information and posting it on a basic home page on AOL in 95.  It was such a success she decided to expand to a real site and came on board with WebCom in 96.  Soon we had GA business contacting us with inquires about the German Corner (GC) selling their goods, such as T-shirts and cookbooks, on our site.  Also, we noticed that 5 or 6 publishers print GA books (printed in English, in the US) and there was no one place to find them all.  Just as we had created one resource guide from many different open source publications, we created a selection of books from several publishers that we felt the GA community would be interested in.  Also, nobody else was selling these particular items on the web.

Q. What were your goals when you started out?

A. Earn a living while performing a service to the GA community.  We don't just sell stuff.  We publish a bi-monthly magazine and we have a GA history site.  We create web pages and sites for other businesses as well.  Our main audience is Germans in America, or Americans of German decent.

Q.. How easy was it to set up and integrate e-commerce into your existing website?

A. Fairly easy.  It was so easy that we decided to take it a step further by custom building our shopping site.  WebCom doesn't require custom creation; their back office can create the entire site instantly, without much HTML knowledge.  In a matter of fact, the only thing you need to know is how to use your scanner and how to upload the images.  Katharina likes to go beyond, and as a result you can see a very appealing e-commerce website.  We have a customer whose catalog we are putting on line right now.  When they decide to go for the on-line store, it will be a simple matter of adding their items to the back office and linking from their existing pages.

Q. How does selling online differ from selling in the 'real' world?

A. We haven't done much selling in the 'real' world.  We have gone to several fairs since we opened the mall.  People of course can touch and feel the items they are buying when we go out.  On the other hand, we don't have to stockpile change for people buying on our site.  The overhead is extremely low, since we do not have to rent a 'real' store space.

Q. What specific marketing efforts/techniques do you employ to increase your online sales?

A. Our main marketing effort has been through our GC site and search engines.  We may have worked backwards, compared to other e-commerce site.  We first built a site attracting customers.  Lot's of free service to the community, and the visitors numbers have been rising.  We added the e-commerce site when we were close to 400,000 hits per month.  We already have ads for the GC in most, if not all, GA pubs in the US.  We are working on getting the store's URL as part of those ads or putting in larger ads just for the store.  We feel that a big misconception is that you automatically will get visitors to your site once you have it online.  You have to advertise the old fashioned and Internet way.  We use Web Site Traffic Builder to register with search engines.  We have an add-on component for Net Objects Fusion to automatically create and include meta tags.  We made sure to get a credit card merchant so we could accept credit card orders.

Q. What effect does having the ability to shop via your website have on your walk-in customers?

A. None really.  We have had some people tell us they saw us at an event where they got a rudimentary catalog with our URL for the store.

Q. What are some of the advantages to you, as a merchant, in making your goods available online? Any disadvantages or pitfalls?

A. The store is online 24 hours a day for everybody - anywhere.  We do not have to print a full color catalog, since everything is available online.  We are physically located on the Monterey Peninsula.  We moved from MD two years ago and will probably move again in another year (if we're all still here after Y2K J).  Our target customer base is mainly in the US and to a lesser extent Canada, Germany and anywhere where people want to buy from us.  There is no way we could get these people to our store.  We do plan to open a store/office (in concept with the online store) in several years for those people who want to look/feel our items.

Q. What, if anything, surprised you about selling online?

A. Some of the items we thought nobody would ever buy - were.  We're still excited every time we get an e-mail from WebCom with another order.

Q. How easily did WebCommerce fit in with your existing business practices?

A. As above, no problem.  We don't have a storefront.  While the store is online 24 hours a day, we are on the net about 16 hours a day now, so we get immediate notification of orders and response for customer inquires.  We get the credit card orders out the next business day.

Q. What do you like best about WebCommerce?

A. The fact we are selling things and the low cost involved!  WebCom offers the cheapest package on the net, and no additional software packages are required.  You don't even need an html editor, if you use their back office as is.  Again, we took it a step further.

Q. What advice would you offer to someone who wants to open a WebCommerce store?

A. Do it your self.  Read a good book, and take a college class in HTML.  Buy a good, complete web-authoring program, and don't waste your time with cheap programs.  A good program will pay for itself, and saves you from learning another program after dissatisfaction.  We use Net Objects Fusion 4.0 for its ease of use, layout control and other feature you won't find in Netscape and Microsoft's authoring tools.  If you need to take pictures, either spend a lot of money for a top of the line digital camera or get a good but less expensive regular camera and scan the photos in.  We don't use a digital camera, but we rely on a standard good quality Minolta camera.  Get a good scanner and computer.  We say do it yourself because we know how much time we put into ours and how much we're going to charge our customers.  As developers we are less expensive than other companies, but if you have a lot of items (more than 100) it's better to do it yourself, no matter whom else might do it.  Read the technical documentation that WebCom has online, and you soon will know that you can do it.  Customize your site like we did.  Using WebCommerce is easy, and friendly technical support is always available.

Q. What marketing advice would you offer to a new web merchant?

A. Good pictures.  Quality pages.  Consistent style throughout the site.  A constant change may make the customer believe that he has left your site.  Prompt shipment of orders.  Follow up swiftly on questions/concerns.  Advertise your store in other media that fits your target audience.  Register with search engines.  Get a good, memorable, short, easy to spell, domain name.  Think about putting your catalog online first and use a secure order form.  This will test the waters and give you an idea of consumer interest.  It can be a less expensive step than the WebCommerce, but it is an easy step to upgrade to WebCommerce with WebCom when you're ready.  If you do have someone else custom designing your site, cut your costs by inputting the items to the back office by yourself.  This is half the work for the WebCommerce and doesn't require any special HTML or coding knowledge.

You can visit Katharina, Paul, and Eve at the German-American Mall, and find a wide range of information, products, and services at: