Online Stores and COD
By the way, you might want to learn FREE Internet Marketing Basics (You know, so you can sell stuff online)
I’m now officially managing another blog - annexstore.com. My writing skills are put to the test. I now need to write more relevant and valuable content among different websites. It can be mentally draining sometimes just thinking of what to write. Luckily, I have you readers to suggest a lot of topics.=)
For the AnnexStore blog, I just posted an entry on a new Cash on Delivery (COD) system we’re putting up. It reminded me of my experiences in setting up an online store.
This is related to something that me and my buddies have been thinking long and hard about… how to fully implement a Philippine e-commerce store. I’ve helped my friends with their onlines stores (thriftypinoy.com, parasayo.com) and have gained significant insights from it.
Some of you might think that it’s easy to set up an online store. Perhaps you could just go to an online store system, pay them to set it up for you and just sell whatever items you have. This is much easier said than done.
One thing we’ve learned is that there are important backend elements that need to be recognized. There is the courier/logistics support and then there is the online payment system.
Logistics
The important question here is, "how will you deliver your products to your customers?" If you are going to ship it to them, then you need to set up a working relationship with some of the courier companies like fedex, lbc, ups and such. This entails significant additional charges to the base price of your products.
Payment System
The next question would be, "how would your customers pay you?" The simple, logical and proven choice has been to use credit cards. There are a number of international payment gateways. Locally, I’ve already mentioned YOSSN and Yespayments.
The COD Option
One of the things we really wished for was a real Cash On Delivery (COD) system. Right now, COD is done by web sellers on tipidpc or ebay.ph. How do they do it? Sellers usually schedule up a meeting with buyers on selected public locations. They go there and do the exchange (money for products).
Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just hire a courier company to do it for us? Have them pick up the product, deliver to the intended recipient, get the money from the recipient and deliver the payment back to you? Wouldn’t it be great to have that? This would basically solve both the payment and delivery system for any online store!
The problem is, there is a huge risk for the courier company to take this on. If the COD system becomes too popular, there is a real risk that criminal syndicates take a keep interest in it too.
Yet, this system would definitely work for the Philippine market. Just think about it. Our culture is a ‘human’ and personal one. People like to actually meet other people and socialize. We also prefer to hand over cash for products, rather than use credit cards and such.
COD may be coming very soon. Hopefully it becomes successful. It could signal a new era for Philippine eCommerce.
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Hi Joshua! Have you heard of “CCNow”? It’s a Payment Gateway provider, similar to Yossn, YesPayments, 2Checkout. Have you heard of them? Any comments?
Thanks again!
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