When to "open"?

I've started an e-store, selling lingerie. It's all set up and everything, works fine, etc. I've just got to get a phone call from PayPal to finish validating my account so I can set everything up.

There's one problem though. On July 19th I'm going on vacation, and then moving across the country almost immediately afterwards, so between July 19th and September 4th or 5th probably I wouldn't be able to take orders, and if I did they'd be quite backed up.

So, my question is should I open the store asap, start marketing, etc. and then put orders on hold while I'm away, or should I wait until September to start marketing and everything.

It may help to say that until July 19th I've got all the time in the world on me, as I'm on summer vacation, yet in September I start University so that will mess with the amount of time I have to promote.

Thanks

 

You can outsource fulfillment, there are lots of companies that can help you with it. I would recommend that actually.

It's your web site and your product, there's just this third-party warehouse out there that does your mailing i.e. matches up the orders and mails out the product for you.

Eric

 

I you can not hire anyone else to do it for you, wait. I see no reason to start it if you can not deliver and give good service.

Good Luck!

//Andreas

 

I think you should wait after your vacation. Because then people won't be complaining about how slow your service is.

 

There are two ways of looking at it I think. They both depend on the traffic you expect opening day. Depending on the pre advertisement and promotion you have done, you might want to just open it and let google and those guys index it, so at least it shows up when someone searches for the site. Also usually it takes a while for a new site to actually produce sales, people like to window shop for a while, let them. Point is if you don’t expect lots of sales right a way open it the sooner the better.

 

Hey, Hannah, where are you from ?
I'm going to start lingerie affiliate websites with and partner(unknown so far) in Europe or US ... interested ? PM me for details.
Yoook
I can prove I'm serious.

 

you should wait until you came back to your vacation because
when you start your business as soon as possible knowing that
you'll be gone your reputaion in that business will be ruin
instead of having a good quality and connection to your clients
and having their trust...

 

Get your site up as soon as possible, and list your products as 'Up Coming Products' , Disable your checkout and let shoppers know the expected grand opening date.

the sooner you get your site up and running the quicker you will get indexed.

but dont make your site live unless it is 100% complete, dodgy looking temp sites are a NO NO.

good luck!