Forum Moderators: buckworks
This strikes me as a terrible conflict of interest. I presume that VP had access to detailed sales figures for perhaps hundreds of sites. He could determine which promotions worked well, which affiliates or SEs sent the most traffic. At worst, a renegade employee could make off with an entire email list.
With little effort, an employee could clone his employer's most profitable customer. And the customer might never realize why his business suddenly collapsed.
I'm sure this conflict is common. Even if a company prohibited employees from running their own sideline web businesses, nothing could stop them from doing it in the future or through a spouse or a confederate.
Is this something for a web retailer to be concerned with? Do cart companies have effective policies to protect their customers?
I have always been proud not only to create websites but websites that are highly optimized for Search Engines from scratch on. So it would either mean not to do the optimal work for the customer or to help my own competition.
I also have a bad feeling if someone wants me to do SEO for his site and I already have a customer in the same field. Normally I decline that too because how can I do the best work for both? After all one has to rank better than the other.
And I think that should be something a web retailer should be very concerned with and should at least know before he does business with another company.
Besides, bear in mind that there's a lot more to an e-commerce operation than the site itself. Presumably you'll be putting more effort into your e-commerce site than he has time to do, so you'll win out in the end.
The position of power that he is in (assuming that he is running a managed service and hence your data will be on his servers) is a matter of genuine concern though... you're basically trusting him not to steal your data.
I'm sure many people who produce e-commerce software have websites of their own though. Perhaps it's an indication of his honesty that he is open about it.
OTOH, I have a friend who sells a single bizarre product on ebay at great profit. He has virtually no competition (Few realize there's a demand for what he sells). He buys overseas for $5 and sells on Ebay for $50. There's almost no work involved once a supplier is found. He doesn't have a site;I've suggested it to him. But that's the kind of guy who should take pains to obscure his operation.
--
For most commerce sites, the chief risk is that someone would set up a mini-version, selling only the most profitable products (learned by hacking into stats).
We sell thousands of hard-to-source products, but only about 10% are vital. And we're no gold mine. But I can imagine that ripping off an easily run, highly successful site, might be very tempting for an newly-unemployed IT guy in a position to do it undetected.
Anyone hear of that happening?
It's working out nicely in both regards. In fact we've gotten new clients because of the fact that we opened our own store so we could see all the ins and outs of e-commerce.
As for a conflict of interest - finding good suppliers is the toughest part. We have no idea who our clients use for suppliers and it's doubtful they would ever give up that information. If we had 50 good suppliers we'd open up 50 new stores.....
I'd venture that anyone with the talent and skill in applied data mining and analysis who is able to extract useful trends and successfully apply them is a threat to your business regardless of whether or not the person has access to the source data at their place of employment. They're bright enough to skin that cat another way if need be.
A vice president of a major shopping cart company told me that he knew their product could handle our needs because he owned his own commerce site that was quite similar to what we did. We passed on using his firm.
The first piece of information I'd use for my decision would be honesty/transparency. If they hadn't told me and I found out - then I'd terminate the contract immediately - and may even consider taking them to court. If however, they had been honest and I felt (subjective, touchy, feely, instinct) they could do the job well and not let their own interests undermine their work for me - then I might give them a go. In my experience, finding someone I would trust this much is non-existent.
Now, if a firm told me they had a great system, but they'd never actually be involved in running an ecommerce site before and have no experience with the industry... I'd probably pass on them as well.
I can understand this but I think you might (operative word) lose out on valuable experience. Just because a developer doesn't do ecommerce his/herself doesn't mean they don't understand ecommerce. It depends upon how closely they work with their clients and whether or not they listen and learn from the experiences of their clients.
Do you have to have your own web business to build a cart or to host it maximally? Fielding customer questions, complaints and suggestions from a hundred web merchants would provide even more experience. What you learn on your own site relates more to marketing, customer service and merchandising. I wasn't looking for help in those areas.
