Losing the electricity for two weeks after Hurricane Fran blew through turned out to be the least of the problems for the Queensboro Shirt Company as it attempted to create its Web site.
It all started in August 1998 with the “lofty” goal of capturing 20% of all orders via the Web by the end of 1999, Steven Little, the company’s former president said during a session at the MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op and E-Com Marketing conference in Stamford, CT, which outlined a case study of the site’s development and launch.
A total budget of $123,000 included $73,000 for Web development; $10,000 in design costs; $27,000 in consulting fees; $9,000 for software licensing; and another $4,000 in miscellaneous costs, mostly for travel.
The development team included Kansas City, MO-based Web development company Cephas, consultants in networking and marketing; a designer; an in-house HTML programmer; and a public relations firm. The PR firm generated 50 articles in the last two years that brought in a “significant” amount of business, Little said.
The plan was to go live by Nov. 1, 1998. “Just in time for the Christmas rush,” he said.
However, a number of problems arose. Getting internal design approval was much more difficult than anticipated and prevented some of the goals from being met. “Everyone had an interest in the design and no one could agree,” he said.
Hurricane Fran shut down the works for two weeks and tensions rose over lots of finger pointing, Little said. “The honeymoon was over.”
To make matters worse, the doldrums set in, he said. He lost the support of key senior management that began to think the Web site would not make money.
The results? Despite the problems, the site went live on Jan. 15, 1999. “We missed the holiday season completely,” Little said. But the project had stayed within budget and within 10 weeks of the launch, was capturing 30% of orders over the Web. Little credited some of the success with waiving the company’s policy of a fixed shipping-and-handling rate of $25 per order for the first year for all online orders.
But just as things seemed to be running along smoothly, what Little refers to as “The Fiasco,” descended. With no warning, the banks pulled the plug on Cephas, the company that had built and was hosting the site, (allegedly for defaulting on loans among other issues), he said. The site was gone. “It happened lickety-split,” he said.
With the help of Web Emporium in Phoenix, and after six “long” days, the site was back up and running.
The lessons learned? Consider “mirroring,” Little said. “You should have a Web site running simultaneously someplace else at a cost of about $500 a month. It’s worth it.” And work out the maintenance contract early. “Do it before the honeymoon ends,” he said.
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