Selling Customized Work From Your Site

Orders For Customized Work Too Complex For The Web?

We get a lot of inquiries from craftspeople and artisans who make and sell customized items through various venues, such as art/craft fairs, or from storefront co-op sites such as Etsy, who are considering building a site of their own.  Though they may have a few stock items in their inventory that they can sell through typical point-of-sale systems, any customized work they offer is usually handled outside of them.  Why?  Because the typical web-based ecommerce systems have the following limitations:

• They don't allow the seller to define the customer's options for a made-to-order item, or the types of options available are very limited.
• They may not be able to calculate the correct price based on the chosen options.
• They don't allow for different payment requirements, such as allowing the seller to charge only a deposit when the order is placed, rather than the full price, or deferring payment processing entirely until the order is ready to ship.

So one of the first things they often tell us is, "I do mostly 'custom' work, so online order processing is not going to work; customers are just going to have to call me to order."

They know that most web-based shopping carts are designed to sell existing, ready-to-ship items, and cannot handle the complexities of ordering custom, made-to-order work without a lot of costly custom programming.  So their "strategy" is to just build a site that shows examples of their work, and encourages site visitors to call the maker to discuss the item they want made for them.

The problem with this approach is that they are losing sales from customers who don't care to shop by phone, and don't want to talk to a "sales rep" who may pressure them to buy more than they want.  Another strike against them is that the customer doesn't know the price tag until they're on the phone with the seller, so they have no idea how serious they are about buying until they've already taken up some of the sellers' time.

Defining and Choosing Options

We now offer a web-based order processing solution that can be added to your site, which can handle order processing for customized, made-to-order items.  This is an off-the-shelf add-on that does not require custom programming.

With it, your customers can choose many types of options with the item they order, such as colors, sizes, art patterns, and design features.  The system automatically calculates the price depending on the options your customers choose.  It processes or pre-authorizes the payment, and sends complete order information to the seller's email.  This article demonstrates how this system works.

Let's take an example of a custom guitar strap.  The basic design is the same regardless of the options chosen, but it can be made with a number of customizations, including:

• Choice of colors,
• Choice of different stamped patterns,
• Option to add carved letters,
• Option to add fill-in stamping,
• Option to make it extra-large, and
• Option to include a carry bag for the strap.

Many other types of options can be defined in this system.  The customer can also be prompted for information about how they want their order filled, and the information is sent to the seller with all the other order information.

In this example, images were added to the item description to show customers the different stamped borders they can choose from, and the different colors the item can be made in.  Customers can choose among these options from the ordering form before adding the item to their shopping cart.

The stamping designs are displayed in the item description and given option codes.  When a customer clicks on the Border Pattern option in the order form, the list of available codes is displayed, along with the price of each.  So they can see how each choice will affect the total price before they even make the selection.

Some options, such as color, have no effect on the price of the item.

The customer in this example wants to order the strap with letters spelling the name of the owner.  The name contains 7 letters.  The "number of letters" box determines how much more to charge for the lettering, and the "letters" box lets the customer specify what letters to carve into the strap.  The customer also wants the carrying bag.

Just about any variation on a basic item design a seller may want to offer can be defined as a purchasing option in this system, including design variations, different materials, different decorating option, different trimmings and hardware choices, etc.  All that's needed is to be able to fix a price on each option.

Calculating Payments

When the customer clicks the Add to Cart button, the total price of the guitar strap is calculated and placed in the cart as the price of the item.  The customer can clearly see how the price was calculated, based on the options they chose.

Processing Payments

One of the things that complicates custom ordering is that many sellers prefer not to charge all, or any, of the money to the customer until the item is made and ready to ship.  This system provides the flexibility to do this.  It can be set up to do pre-authorizations at the time of sale, which only confirms that the customer has the funds in their account to cover the total purchase.  The seller can then charge a deposit to the customer at the time of sale, then charge the remainder when the item ships.

The system comes with built-in support for Authorize.net and Paypal, and other payment processing services can be added.

Applications

Obviously, this doesn't work in every scenario.  In the case of truly custom work, where the seller allows customers to request items that are not part of their regular line of customizable items, the ordering process actually includes the design work, and it is virtually impossible to put a price tag on that until the maker has some idea what the item will be.  Still, this system will put automated order/payment processing in the reach of a very large number of sellers who offer items that are already designed and have room for customizations.

Let us know what you think of this add-on, and feel free to ask questions by leaving comments.