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Buying an Existing eCommerce/Website - URL

COJOECOJOE subscriber Posts: 7
I am considering buying an existing e-Commerce website that simply drop ships a niche I am interested in.  The site(s) have some traction - but both relatively new.
 
What criteria should I be considering when looking to acquire (buy) such an entity?

Comments

  • vwebworldvwebworld subscriber Posts: 40
    Well, like any other business purchase - you`d want to see the profit and loss for the business for the current and last few years. So you can determine the source and diversity of income and major cost components. You`ll want to then rework those to reflect your expected costs (if different).
     
    Find out why the person is selling?
     
    Important is the drop ship relationship... what are the terms, will they be the same for a new owner? Are the terms changing?
     
    Perform an analysis to determine if the business itself can support the purchase price or if you have to kick in some $$?
     
    For the ecommerce site - find out all the details about how the site runs now, do you have to keep the same web host, the costs, and how the site is maintained. 
     
    Traffic and competition - certainly look at the traffic both historical and current for the site. Where the traffic comes from (direct hits, referrals from other site, and searches) and the volume for each source. Is the traffic sustainable? Can it be increased? What SEO methods are used, back links, keywords... and who are the competing websites?
     
    ~Roland
     
  • COJOECOJOE subscriber Posts: 7
    Thanks.  This is just some of the info I am looking for.
     
    How can I "educate" myself on some of the traffic and competition issues as that part I am more unfamiliar with? What type of issues and metrics should I be analyzing?
  • vwebworldvwebworld subscriber Posts: 40

    How can I "educate" myself on some of the traffic and competition issues as that part I am more unfamiliar with? What type of issues and metrics should I be analyzing?
    You can do some of this yourself by looking up the website (you`re interested in purchasing)... looking at the keywords that site uses, then search on those key words to see what sites appear  on the first page and/or above your site. As for the traffic to the site, that information is best gotten from the current website owner. If you use Mozilla Firefox web browser, there are some tools you can install that provides some good information about a website. If you`d like, I`d be happy to look up some info for you (no charge).. just PM or email me the web site name. The typical stats to look at are (there are all standard with cPanel /awstats):unique visits per month.
    Robot traffic (to see what bots and how often they visit the site).  
    visit duration to see how long people stay on the site
    Page-url hits to see what pages are visited more / less
    referral sources - to see where traffic comes from (searches, links, direct)
    top keywords - what keywords people used to hit the siteIf the site has Google analytics installed... ask for access to the reports. ~Rolandvwebworld7/25/2008 7:35 PM
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