Need an Online Store? Flying Cart walks you through the entire process and makes it super easy. A store with 5 products or less is FREE! Use our online marketing guides and tools to promote your products all over the web. You will be able to create and manage your own online store, accept credit cards and PayPal, submit all your products to Google Product Search, generate more traffic by using Store Networking, and much more! Hosting and subd omains are included.

About

Team | Challenges | Vision | Solution

Team

Rishi Shah

Rishi is obsessed with the power of the web. He fell in love with the internet at the age of 11 when he learned you can find jokes for free. If you ever meet Rishi, he will probably try to convince you to start your own business so you can stop working for the man.
rishi@FlyingCart.com | Rishi on Facebook

Margo Baxter

Margo enjoys creating useful web tools that are fun and user-friendly. She loves the way the web allows people to create successful businesses from home, how it creates communities, and she believes that most problems in life can be solved using Craigslist. Margo is also a competitive Ironman triathlete.
margo@FlyingCart.com | Margo on Facebook | Personal site and blog

Brian Beermann

Brian lives and breathes the web. He is always trying to find new ways of pushing web technology. Before joining Flying Cart he co-founded MyOutdoors.net, a web based mapping application for sharing outdoor activites. When Brian isn't busy coding "the next big thing" he spends time hiking and camping.
brian@FlyingCart.com | Brian on Facebook


The Challenges of Online Retail

Many people dream of owning their own retail business, but only a handful of those people are willing to take the risks involved in getting started. The financial commitments required to open a store are enough to scare away even some of the most motivated entrepreneurs.

The development of online retail has provided a revolutionary new way to own a business. Highly successful stores can operate without a physical space. Inventory can be acquired after it is ordered. Online retail is not without risks, however. The expertise needed to set up a customized, full-featured, professional-looking store with inventory management features requires a team of experienced IT professionals. Hiring a firm to do this or hiring freelance developers is no small task, especially for a technical novice who doesn't know where to begin. The process can take a year or longer and will cost thousands of dollars to get a professional and nicely-designed end product. After the store is online, there remains one additional challenge - getting customers to visit the site.

In talking with retailers, we have found that consistently these are the biggest obstacles that are faced when considering setting up an online store.

The Flying Cart Vision

We believe that it should not have to be a major ordeal to get an online store up and running. The process should be quick, easy, and accessible to people with no technical expertise. Store owners should be able to customize their storefront and manage their product inventory online. The store should look nice and it should offer a modern set of features. Online stores should offer a pleasant shopping experience that will make customers want to come back. Store owners should be assisted in increasing their product exposure through partnerships with high-traffic shopping sites. We aim to offer this to all of our Flying Cart customers.

The Flying Cart Solution

Our goal is to remove all the barriers in starting an online store, make it as simple as possible to begin making sales, and provide online marketing assistance.

Keep It Simple

We make the store setup process as simple as we can, making it possible to begin generating credit card sales from a custom domain name within about an hour. Our stores offer the most useful features of the best online stores while keeping things simple. Including all the latest bells and whistles doesn't necessarily make a piece of software better. Sometimes it just adds clutter. We carefully consider the positives and negatives in all the features that we choose to include. Our approach reduces the amount of work required to run a store, and it keeps customers focused on the products.

Remove the Financial Risks

Starting a store with Flying Cart is easy and completely free. With no initial cash outlay, anyone with merchandise can start a store. If you like what you are getting, our full-featured version is available for a very low monthly fee. All that is needed to start is a PayPal Business account (which is free). We don't charge any transaction fees - it is your hard earned money. We believe that stores should be able to post products, with no listing or transaction fees. This model strips away many financial risks of owning a store.

Create a Pleasant Shopping Experience

People like to shop at stores that are professionally designed, easy to navigate, and fun to browse. Wouldn't it be nice if all online shopping experiences were pleasant ones? Wouldn't it be nice if all stores made it easy for customers to find what they came for and also made some helpful suggestions on other products that they might be interested in? Our goal is to make all shopping experiences fun so that customers return again and again. We design all of our store templates by hand with an attention to detail and quality. We strive for clean design and clear organization of products.

For online retail, the website creates much of the customer experience and it is our responsibility to make sure that the site reflects well on the business. We believe that the store website should enhance the buying experience and add credibility to the store.

Increase Product Exposure

The biggest challenge for online stores is gaining product exposure. The bottom line is that if customers do not know about the store, it doesn't matter how nice the store is. Partnering up with a variety of high-traffic shopping sites provides automatic product exposure. If a product from an online store is purchased through a third-party site, it provides a store with instant visibility. Next time the customer buys a similar product, there is a good chance they will go directly to the store site. By running these and other types of online marketing campaigns in the background, we can help to maximize product exposure and increase revenue.