PlanetLearn – Jim Goodbody

By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
December 19th, 1998

Earlier this month we looked in detail at the key factors that need to be taken in to account when choosing an e-commerce solution or shopping cart. The implicit assumption in that article was that a single product coupled possibly with some HTML pages would form the complete solution. This however is not always the case.

Take for example, PlanetLearn. They sell a diverse selection of Information Technology training videos, computer-based training courseware, and online multimedia courses. With a library of over 1500 titles, no off the shelf solution was ever going to meet all their needs.

Not having access to a large budget prevented them from building their own custom solution. Instead they chose a readily available product – Mercantec’s Softcart – and added additional functionality to it. As a result the total out-of-pocket expenses for building their store were kept to less than $9,000.

How did they do it? PlanetLearn’s President, Jim Goodbody, explains:

Lang: Tell us about the technology behind PlanetLearn

Goodbody: The site is currently hosted on a Unix server. We worked closely with our ISP, PSINet and decided Mercantec’s SoftCart was the most cost effective and flexible option for building our initial storefront. Basically, Mercantec had an established track record and with more than 2700 licenses sold, I felt confident Mercantec SoftCart could meet our current and future needs.

In addition, when we were rolling out our Web site, we needed to evaluate other technologies and programs to help us build and develop the site. HomeSite an HTML editor from Allaire Corporation, was the best product available, and unlike most software products, HomeSite has remained the best product available to help us effectively build a site that clearly communicates our business. Features such as built in FTP, customizable toolbars, thumbnail viewing capabilities, HTML validation, ASP and CFML support have helped keep HomeSite, and our Web site ahead of the pack.

Also, as you watch the URL structure throughout the PlanetLearn Web site you’ll quickly notice that there’s more code at work here than simply raw HTML. In order to manage the database of products that are offered, the variety of methods you can request them to be sent, calculations of applicable taxes and shipping costs, and additional shopping cart capabilities, we needed to augment the raw capabilities of HTML. We chose Perl; CGI applications and JavaScript to round out our development needs and manage the continuity of the customer experience.

Lang: I assume that such a sophisticated solution took a lot of money to put together?

Goodbody: Placing an exact dollar figure on the cost of building and designing PlanetLearn is difficult to do. Out of pocket expenses were less than $9,000. However In putting together an online business there are certain steps involved that all have considerable costs, but steps that can save one considerable amounts of money if you do it yourself. For instance, I adhered to the following steps for putting together my business. The more you’re able to do yourself the more money you’ll be able to save. The steps I followed included:

Writing The Business Plan: I spent nearly five months logging in more than 1000 hours putting together my plan. If I paid a consultant, this process could easily have totaled more than $60,000. Instead, I paid myself nothing and became best friends with the people at the local 24/7 coffee shop. All in all, I spent about $150 on large black coffees and became a little bug-eyed while surfing the Internet for days on end. One point I’d like to emphasize here is that all my research was done online. Anyone interested in getting into the online business must truly enjoy navigating the World Wide Web. Online, I was able to find industry information, competitor information, supplier and vendor information, and most importantly I learned how I could differentiate myself from other Web sites on the Internet.
The Design and Development Process: Having designed several Web sites for other businesses, I realized that the majority of costs associated with developing a site were associated with content development and initial planning, not the actual build out and programming of a Web site. The lesson here, is one can save thousands of dollars if you’re willing to do some initial leg work. Putting in the time to gather information, preparing a site map, and sketching out how the site will look can save you countless hours and money in the development process. In PlanetLearn’s situation, we developed all of our content, determined the look and feel, and developed the product database ourselves. When it came to actual development, we turned over all of our content with a storyboard for our developers to execute.Our goal was to create a storefront that offered the most diverse selection of self paced computer-training products found anywhere on the Internet. We wanted to make the site easy to maintain and navigate. Therefore, we made a strategic decision to build a dynamic database driven Web site from the start. Therefore any changes that needed to be made in the future could be done in the database and just up loaded to our Web site through an FTP connection without having to worry about future programming and development costs. Again, this is an area where one can save a considerable amount of money if you’re willing to devote the time to pull together all your information.

Lang: What were the major problems you incurred?

Goodbody: I wish I could share with you all the amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into building a database the size of ours. Starting from scratch and with more than 1500 products to input, the initial database build-out represented about 60 percent of total development time. One would think that in this day and age, suppliers could provide you with a product database to work with. But the reality is the opposite. When we actually began building the product database, we discovered suppliers did not have or were not capable of supplying a database in electronic format. This ultimately forced us to build ours by hand. A data entry nightmare!

Lang: And are you happy with the final result?

Goodbody: PlanetLearn has only been open for a month and we experienced our first online sale from the get go. The response to our site has been tremendous with visitors coming from all over the world. The magnitude and power of the Internet as a communication and sales tool never really hit home until I started to see visitors were coming from as far away as India, Iceland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, UK, Israel, Germany, Poland, and Russia. Our sales goals are to exceed $500,000 in the first year.

We hope to achieve our sales goal by providing people a one stop shopping experience, by providing the most diverse and largest selection of the highest quality training programs available. Our products are deeply discounted up to 30 percent and we provide free shipping. There isn’t any reason for a customer to shop elsewhere. They will find the training they need and if we don’t have it listed on our site customers can email or call our toll free number and we’ll find the course for them that they need. We have developed relationships with all the major suppliers.

Developing an online presence/storefront is an evolving process. When I started this project, I knew things would not stay the same for any extended period of time. With constant evolution in mind, things I am extremely pleased with are capturing the name PlanetLearn and being able to trademark it. Being able to brand a site is extremely important and PlanetLearn is a name people will not forget. I am also very pleased with the overall design and layout of the site. People can find their products through our search engine or click on a subject heading such as Video training, Computer-based training, or Certification training and find the course they are looking for in under three clicks. The site is very easy to get around. I am also very pleased with our product selection and quality of training we provide. We personally evaluated and researched many different courseware suppliers and have found the very best to provide to our customers.

Lang: What are your plans for PlantLearn?

Goodbody: Over the next year or so, PlanetLearn will upgrade its technology and move our site to a dedicated server and take advantage of new emerging Web applications. We also plan to expand our supplier base and product lines available to solidify our leadership position. In addition, we plan to provide additional value added free information and interactive applications for our customers. And finally, we will continue to improve the shopping experience by improving product presentation and promotion.

I would like to be more specific about our development plans, but users will have to wait and see. One thing about the Internet is that it creates what economists call “Perfect Competition”. Once you go live with your site it is available for the world to see and gaining a first mover or early entrant advantage is extremely important in the Internet world. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Please bookmark our site and return in mid January for an exciting new interactive skill assessment and career-planning tool.

Lang: And finally, do you have any tips or hints you’d like to share?

Goodbody: There are a few of rules that I think all would-be Web merchants need to pay close attention to:

Plan, Plan, and Plan. Do your homework and be ready to change direction on a dime. Things happen very fast on the Internet and staying ahead of competition is extremely difficult. Always keep the future in mind and be prepared to be in the game for a long time. The Internet is still new and there is plenty of room for new players.
Choose your partners carefully. They can make or break you. Align yourself with the leaders and leverage them to the hilt.
Understand your business niche. Learn everything you can about your industry and the forces that shape it including: The threat of new entrants, the strengths/weaknesses of your suppliers and buyers, identify the substitutes for your products and services, and figure out how your competitors may behave or react to your new online presence. Most importantly, one needs to be able to identify exactly who their target market and customer is going to be and make sure you can describe your target audience in a few sentences. This will greatly influence the design of your site.

PlanetLearn – Jim Goodbody – Store Review

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