hellraiser1 - 8:11 pm on Jul 25, 2007 (gmt 0)

hi
im writing as i think about the question "what next" I mean, having an ecommerce site in the first year (as everyone knows) is kinda like a hobby, maybe selling 1 or two units a month.
Then what...

so, what if you dont have a shopping cart.... do you say "well when were busier well just add one. Then reinventing your site in the process... or having a system from the start, that will scale with you.

so, lets say you have a cart, spent a lot of money, or did it yourself and learned programming...

what about shipping. 1 or two orders a day is easy... just put aq label on the package, double enter the shipping address on the USPS/UPS site, print a label, tape it on the box, etc. what about 80 orders a day, many with multiple items going to multiple addresses... cant do that, or would have to hire people to do what should be automated. What i did was create an application that integrated with my backend for bulk shipping, error handles and sends up to 100 label requests to a UPS label server, and then the labels are printed via a thermal label printer in real time. programmed it myself as we are undercapitalized, however, what do people do about this

why dont shopping carts have this feature built in, that is how to fulfill and scale the interent business you have the shoppin cart for. see i had to implement this before it was needed in the hopes that i would reach the volume (and minimums of the shipping company) just seems so advanced for a site that started with 1 sale a month..... but sooo necessary in the business now

what do people do when they scale?