The purpose of this website is to provide an online pharmacy aimed at selling Australian products into Vietnam. The break-down of the proposal is below. But first I’ll address the questions submitted regarding pricing, integrations and other elements outlined in your proposal questionnaire.

Pricing

Monthly fees will be required for hosting and maintenance. I’m suggesting a dedicated virtual private server (VPS). This way you can regulate your sever size based on your traffic. Initially $US40 a month will provide a server with adequate specs. Upgrading is a simple one-click process.

Maintenance costs can be agreed upon depending on demand. We’re able to provide full service, from troubleshooting to solving customer queries and website updates. For services expect to pay between $100-200 a month initially. As an example, Murkani pay $200 ex GST for services that include helping with set-up of new collections, adding codes for competitions, integration with Mailchimp, sign-up forms, answering queries from customers, and general advice. They paid extra for the recent addition of a facet search. We kept the fee for that to an extremely modest three hours in recognition of our ongoing support agreement. We have other clients who pay $500 a month for SEO, content and other services.

Integrations

WordPress is the single most popular website platform worldwide. As such, there are a massive quantity of integrations available. APIs are often used to connect to the website. We’ll suggest a number of integrations such as Stripe, WP Affiliate, EasyShip and WordPress Multi Language (WPML). Mostly products integrate through plugins, which we’ll detail below.

SEO

WordPress is a fantastic base for SEO. We personally use WordPress on a number of websites we optimize for search results and they are excelling in their class.

WPML is fully SEO compliant. The website can be SEO optimized in English and Vietnamese.

The Yoast plugin allows for full control over meta data, provides sitemaps, and directs you toward content optimization.

Mobile

The website will be fully mobile responsive. The elements we use to build the website are all mobile responsive. We also analyze the website for mobile optimization and change elements to more specifically suit mobile, tablet and desktop environments.

Support

We have support available within business hours. And outside hours when urgent. Our team is small and hence response times can vary. All urgent requests are resolved promptly.

We can team up with our friends at WP Genie if required. They’re also a small team but have a staff member in Philippines to cover after hours. Paul and I have very similar work methods and have collaborated in the past.

Security

The sever is properly firewalled and is always kept up to date. The WordPress installation within that has it’s own security. We use software that automatically updates all elements of WordPress. We also keep external backups in our AWS storage. Small errors (like when an update causes a conflict) can be resolved by reverting to these backups (but are usually resolve by fixing the problem that caused the conflict).

The server is also backed up and a copy of that could spin up within the hour if there was a disastrous problem.  Multiple levels of security and back up mean the website is always reliable and no failure results in undue down time.

Most malware and hacking problems are caused by the owners’ allowing them to fall behind on updates. Hence why we automate this process with our software. Where problems have arisen we either fix it (it was a simple problem) or reverted to a backup.

Scalability

With the website hosted on your own virtual private server you can scale it up to any size you need. Changing to a larger server takes a few minutes.  A server with 4 virtual CPUs is $US160 per month. That server would run 20+ websites in a shared environment, which gives you an idea of how easily you could scale up to handle massive traffic.

Product Catalog

Your catalog can be any size you want. AO Adult Store have 1,900 products in their store and they’re on our shared server.

Products can be simple (one type) or variable (such as multiple sizes). You can also have combined products.

You can have wholesale and retail rates.

And affiliate marketing.

This being WordPress there are as many options possible as can be considered.

Marketing & Conversions

There will be cross sells on each single product page.

Upsells are possible also. Numerous options are available. For instance, Smart Offers: https://www.storeapps.org/product/smart-offers. This plugin gives you enormous scope for upselling in  a huge variety of ways. We won’t include this in the quote for the initial build but it’s super easy to add later on. Adding a product like this to your existing store is the sort of thing we would do under out maintenance agreement. If you include it in the initial build I think you’ll find it confusing. First get accustomed to your existing store and then add elements like this when you’re ready for them.

We work with our clients to help them with their marketing. Often they bring an idea to us and we make it happen. Or we bring the idea to them. Some have their own marketing team and we work with them to provide the necessary coding. All options are available to you.

There are many chooses for how you want to use coupons. For instance, the sending of automated coupons when someone spends over a certain amount. (Again, this is done via a plugin that can be added.)

Coupon codes can be used in any way you see fit, including every way you listed in your questionnaire. Coupons are also very useful as an incentive to sign-up to a mailing list. We’ve done this with Murkani. When a customer completes the double opt-in sign up process with Mailchimp they are emailed a coupon code for a 15% (one-off) discount.

You can have as many coupons as you need, providing multi-tier options for different groups.

You can also sell gift coupons.

Shipping

Most shipping options are available for WordPress and WooCommerce. I suggest you stick to an integration partner such as EasyShip: https://www.capterra.com.au/software/170399/easyship. These are great because they allow for full compatibility between your ecommerce platform and your shipping partners. Plus they give your customers a much better range of prices and expectations than you would get if you used a single freight provider.

See also: https://www.shipstation.com/au

Accounting & Taxes

WooCommerce has pricing and tax information but does not generate profit and loss etc. It will integrate with accounting systems such as Xero.

Taxes can be set for different regions.

Sales information is stored and can be managed from the website. When using a capture and authorise credit card system like Stripe, the normal process for the sale process is to capture the credit card info when a purchase is made. Once the order is marked as complete in WooCommerce (ie after the order is processed and sent), Stripe is automatically communicated to via the their API to authorise payment. By doing this you can see each order, whether it is pending, processed etc. And the charging of credit cards will occur in sync with the status in your WooCommerce dashboard.

You can also integrate WooCommerce management tools to give more comprehensive reporting.

Site Management

From the WordPress dashboard there are no restrictions over what you can control. WordPress and WooCommerce are as flexible as you could want, allowing any kind of layout, template and content. You can have individual templates for products or product categories.

You can only control this one site from the WordPress dashboard.

WordPress’ built in permissions allow for a range of access from admin, to shop, to editor. Fine grain permissions can be set by adding an access plugin.

Checkout & Payment

The standard WooCommerce template is for a single page cart and checkout. These can be configured to suit your requirements.

Guest checkouts are allowed as standard.

Sign up during checkout is allowed as standard.

Integration with mail-out (eg Mailchimp) during checkout is also possible.

Order Management

You can view, edit and control orders from the dashboard. eg

It’s normal that an order cannot be edited once it is created by a customer (by buying something in the store). There are ways to enable editing a purchase but it isn’t normal practice.

You can create purchases through the dashboard.

You can print and email invoices. You can print packing slips and shipping labels. Though in the sections above I recommended EasyShip. If you used a service like this they would do everything, from ordering the courier and the shipping documents.

Customer Accounts

Each customer would have an account in the dashboard. That will include order status and history.

Re-ordering can be added to this via a plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/repeat-order-for-woocommerce

Analytics & Reporting

This site will include Google Analytics.

Additionally, any kind of code (Facebook pixel, re-targeting code, competition codes) can be included for the sake of marketing or other purposes.

It does not generate full sales reports but can send data to Xero and you can add plugins to give better sales info as mentioned above.

Plugin example: https://metorik.com

Catalog Browsing

Faceted search will be included via the excellent and very fast WP Facet. Filters could include brand, price and sub-categories. I can work with you to create appropriate taxonomies for filters for your store.

Auto-suggest is also possible. A search form (distinct from the filters mentioned above) will have a function enabled that suggests as they type.

Each product must have a feature image and can then has as many other images as you see fit.

The layout of the store will depend on what you want to show to your customers. Some clients have long product descriptions. I would think that you would not. A layout similar to Good Price Pharmacy would be advised. eg https://www.goodpricepharmacy.com.au/kleenex-ultra-soft-pocket-tissues-aloe-vera-6-pocket-pack

There are many forms of search available for WooCommerce. I’m not aware of one that would show results for displaying results that are incorrectly typed. We can use predictive text so that typing part of the word will immediately suggest products. Those who aren’t full literate can use this search to aid them.