Finally, a real online store

Our Geek Gear experiment is now a full online store. What started off as a demonstration e-commerce shop with a dozen or so products has now become a real online business with a product range to match.

Geek Gear launched in February so we could bring you the inside story on an e-commerce site. We called it "Reality E-Commerce" because we didn't want to bore you with a textbook on e-commerce. Instead, we wanted to give you a warts-and-all look at our attempts to create a real online business.

We brought you reality, alright. As our last blog outlines, we didn't sell enough products to cover the 35K we spent on stocking the initial store, so we had to make a big decision: whether to go the way of many failed startup businesses or apply the lessons learnt and come back wiser and better. We chose the latter, addressing the biggest problem we faced: our limited product range.

We found a supplier that would let us dramatically expand our product range. Anyware Computer Accessories, a computer products wholesaler, has come on board and given us a much bigger product catalogue.

The deal with Anyware Computer Accessories was done by e-commerce developers NetMerchant who also built Geekgear for APC (and recently merged with On Technology, makers of the popular eziMerchant cart). NetMerchant's managing director Luke Amery says: "The biggest change in our new Geek Gear store was based on feedback from the users. They said we didn't have enough product. So we spoke to Anyware Computer and we went through their entire catalogue and picked out things that were kind of targeted towards our audience. Basically, we picked up a lot of geeky products targeted at gamers or box builders.

"The first part of the deal that we had to iron out was the logistics, who was going to ship what from where, to the customers. We found that Anyware were far more capable of shipping around Australia than we ever could be, so we instantly decided that it would be better to actually use them not just for product, but also for shipping and warehousing."

Luke can say that again. At one point with Geek Gear version 1, we were warehousing gear in a family member's garage.

Anyware has a huge catalogue of products for retailers. To ensure the products selected for Geek Gear were right for our audience, we even got feedback from real "geeks," as opposed to just trusting our own opinions as professional geeks. Amery's sister Sarah Dawson organised for a real "geek" from the IT department of a local high school to work his way through the Anyware catalogue and point out the products that made him drool.

It seems that the real geek wanted more product for system builders and gamers, as well as an expanded gadgets section. This also accorded with earlier feedback from visitors to Geek Gear, so the expanded store now features two big new departments, Builders and Gamers.

girlshirt

As well, there are new product sections for Communications, Multimedia, and even one for Geek girls. "We had a lot of feedback from women complaining that all our T-shirts were big sacks for big blokes, so we sourced some geek girl shirts that are shapely," Luke says.

The new T-shirts are figure-hugging and also come in girl-friendlier pink or hardcore black. The old T-shirts are still there, including the most popular-selling ones, with the slogans "Geek," and "There's no place like 127.0.0.1". As mentioned before, my favourite T-shirt, "No I won't be your Tech Support," wasn't the big seller I expected. With hindsight, it appears our online shoppers were spooked by the gun in the character Helpdesk Ed 's hand.

I don't want to sound like a spruiker for our own APC shop, so I will just point to my favourite gear in the store, the products that I will probably buy for myself (I don't have a special deal with Anyware, so I will need to pay retail prices for them).

In the Builder section, the Flexiglow see-through acrylic PC cases are cool. What's nicer than being able to peer inside your PC and chat about its components to a friend, particularly if you're a modder? The A$165 case is just one of eight cases in the store, which also sells case badges and toolkits.

In the new Gamers department there are some great mice for gamers, but I'm more into car racing, so I will probably want the $92.95 racing steering wheel because it will work with all my devices, including the PCs, the PS2, Xbox and GameCube. I should then be able to rationalise the different steering wheels which are stored in various in cupboards around the house, to my wife's annoyance.

In an extended Gadgets section, we've got fun stuff, like flexible keyboards, toy screen cleaners and one of the old favourites, the binary clock. For me, the webcams are the most interesting gadgets. Incredibly, I started using a webcam with instant messaging only recently and it's changed the way I communicate: anonymity disappears and it's almost like talking to your friends in person, with all the visual cues that come with it. I think that if your girlfriend or boyfriend is on the other side of an instant messaging exchange, a webcam should be compulsory. But for my less exciting communications, I've been using a basic low res USB webcam which also has the failings of most webcams - it doesn't keep me in shot if I move around the desk. In Geek Gear's webcams department I'm now eyeing off the motorised motion tracking webcam, that will follow me wherever I am in the room.

In the new Communications section we also have a device that I want to test out: a A$69.95 USB key with fingerprint recognition security. That would just about remove all my reservations about using USB drives for storing important documents. I'm obsessive about ensuring that confidential data, such as strategic plans, client proposals, email, etc. remain confidential, which means that the best option is never to leave them on a PC (which can be stolen, or reposessed by the IT department, or accidentally searched by your friends or colleagues who might be innocently looking for a lost file). But placing the data on an a USB drive (which can be lost) means having to worry about encrypting and decrypting the information each time. A USB key with fingerprint recognition should make all that a thing of the past.

I could go on, but just check out our expanded store for yourself, and then leave us your comments. As on the day we first launched Geek Gear, we're happy to tell you how the store is progressing and what the customers think.

Also, no store relaunches without a special offer. If you buy something on Geek Gear we'll also send you a bonus APC cap . Order something from the store and put the words "APC reader" in the note field of the order form.

In coming blogs, we'll take you through specific elements of the e-commerce operation, including our new checkout option using PayPal.