I hired a company to design a webstore, which is pretty limited in what Amazon will allow you to do, and is slot and widget based. Plus, SEO work for the site when it launches.

They’ve done an excellent job at pissing me off, by making multiple promises and not delivering.

So I’m wondering, if anyone knows anything about the Webstore, or wants to give it a shot. The reason why I’m using the webstore is because I’m a 100% Fulfilled by Amazon business and it interfaces with their fulfillment centers natively.

Along with that I know there are some SEO guys on here. If your interested in helping me out let me know.

I’m not expecting charity either. I’ll pay a very fair amount. $1000 minimum, for each task, but am able to spend more as needed if there is value shown.

Since OT is full of experts on everything, I’m hoping I can find someone to work with pretty much one on one, and not have to hire some firm with a huge sales staff an a handful of shitty people actually doing the work.

I’m of the mind that I’d like to find someone good at what they do, and then let them do their thing without much of my own involvement. I don’t want to have to micromanage and spoon feed people.

If this is something that sounds interesting to you, let me know. Or even if you can point me to somebody. (I’d consider a finders fee if you find me someone good)

Mod’s I apologize if this is against the rules. But since I’m not looking to sale service, but buy it, I think it’s cool. If not, feel free delete this.

Not against the rules and welcome to the subforum .

Can you tell us a little more of what you actually need? Are they building a storefront from the ground up or using something already premade?

Are you trying to build a fully self contained "store" or are you looking for something that people shop on your site, find items they like and add them to their carts and then are sent off to amazon to complete their orders? If that is the case, there are scripts out there that are pretty slick and will do that for you. You could just add your own products on your site or pull feeds for any other products you want, even if not "yours" to sell for the commissions. And even if just selling your own products fulfilled by amazon, you might as well also try to get a commission on top of it lol.

I’m kinda working from scratch.

I sell on Amazon currently. I don’t have any other sales channel. I’d like to replace my current shitty website, which is a wix.com template site.

It’s low value purchase so Webstore makes it feasible, since they give you a $2 discount on fulfillment. But I am open to any and all options.

Anyways, I want to replace my current site with a all in one site that is e-commerce and also has some basic content pages as well. I’m trying to make it appear as it’s own separate store from Amazon, I don’t want to do referral sales. But the main reason for doing this, is so I can advertise my stuff and not just send them to my Amazon store front.

I mean what we can do is pull your products from your amazon web store and make it look nice on your current page.

If you use the fulfillment by amazon, you can place the orders right from your site right into amazon.

sellercentral.amazon.com

check it out

I’m trying to make as little of this public as possible, so forgive me.

The thing is, the brand is sold 100% on amazon. That poses a problem from a marketing sense. I don’t feel comfortable marketing, just to send people to Amazon, where they can possibly see my competitors products.

I want to make my site a full functioning e-commerce site, without it looking like it has any connection to Amazon. But, in reality, the backend is all Amazon. That is the benefit of the Webstore system. I can make my site standalone, have a cart that looks different then Amazon’s, doesn’t pull over any of the stuff they have in their Amazon cart, etc. For the user, I want them to feel that they are purchasing directly from me, and not on Amazon.

That way I can market, do SEO, advertise whatever. I can send all of the traffic to my website and capture all the customer info and their business. And then Amazon.com selling my product is just another sales channel. Right now it’s my only channel.

Here’s an example of a Webstore that is up and running and the backend is doing what the same thing I want to do.

Someone halp… I’m eager to fire the company that’s working for me.

Also, here are examples sent to me by one of the competitors to the company I currently have "working," for me. This company, straight up told me, "we are the most expensive company offering these services, but we feel we are hands down the best, and that shows by our customer list."

Here’s some of their stuff. $12,000 minimum, some projects well over $100,000 but that’s mainly because a high number of product all set up and everything turnkey.

Other Webstore clients include nickelodeon, MTV, Motorola, Taylor Swift, Bang & Olufsen and dozen of other major international companies and TV networks.

I don’t really know why it’s so expensive. Their shit does look nice though, but is it really that difficult?

honestly those sites don’t even look that good IMO. The best looking one is the Tintin one. The Audiotopia site looks like any basic wordpress site. Good luck in finding someone that suits your needs though. Surprised that more oters aren’t jumping at the opportunity.

I didn’t know you can do css over it.

I know checkout by amazon will work for what I’m doing, but I don’t think it’s clean enough. I don’t really want the customer to see any thing Amazon. I want it to appear to be a completely standalone store. But it’s really just a facade.

personally I think being associated with Amazon gives your site more legitimacy and trust?

I just get the feeling that it’s kind of clunky. I don’t know, maybe I need to look further into it.

Yes thats why you need to checkout FWS by amazon.

FWS is being phased out and replaced by MWS, which is more expensive for me to operate then a WebStore based site. If I was selling higher priced products, it would work… but I’m sell low priced items in large volume. The solutions are set up to be more beneficial to sellers that are selling items $25+. My average sale calculates to $11.50. So using MWS and FBA, the $5.95 fee doesn’t leave much room for me to make money.

So I took the plunge and just fired off a novel of an email to the company explaining my concerns, the input I’ve received through here, and other channels, and told them we can no longer do business together.

The CEO accepted my request for a LinkedIn connection earlier. So I sent him a message as well. "Just a heads up… I’d ask your team what happened on the XXXXXX project."

Their are a bunch of A-Rab towel heads messaging me on odesk saying they can do the work. I’m kind nervous about doing that, but I guess it can’t be much worse then what I’ve experienced so far.

You want to use the amazon backend, correct?

I think I found someone who knows what they are doing.

I had no idea amazon offered this, I think I found a new side project

I didn’t know you can do css over it.

I know checkout by amazon will work for what I’m doing, but I don’t think it’s clean enough. I don’t really want the customer to see any thing Amazon. I want it to appear to be a completely standalone store. But it’s really just a facade.

personally I think being associated with Amazon gives your site more legitimacy and trust?

I just get the feeling that it’s kind of clunky. I don’t know, maybe I need to look further into it.

Yes thats why you need to checkout FWS by amazon.

FWS is being phased out and replaced by MWS, which is more expensive for me to operate then a WebStore based site. If I was selling higher priced products, it would work… but I’m sell low priced items in large volume. The solutions are set up to be more beneficial to sellers that are selling items $25+. My average sale calculates to $11.50. So using MWS and FBA, the $5.95 fee doesn’t leave much room for me to make money.

So I took the plunge and just fired off a novel of an email to the company explaining my concerns, the input I’ve received through here, and other channels, and told them we can no longer do business together.

The CEO accepted my request for a LinkedIn connection earlier. So I sent him a message as well. "Just a heads up… I’d ask your team what happened on the XXXXXX project."

Their are a bunch of A-Rab towel heads messaging me on odesk saying they can do the work. I’m kind nervous about doing that, but I guess it can’t be much worse then what I’ve experienced so far.

You want to use the amazon backend, correct?

I think I found someone who knows what they are doing.

I had no idea amazon offered this, I think I found a new side project