[Russ.W.]

You can't complain about being charged shipping by small vendors. Amazon can give you free or significantly reduced shipping costs because they ship about 1,000,000 parcels a week. Read that again.

A million. parcels. a week. Approx 150,000 transactions per day.

Heck, a smaller vendor might be cheering if he/she/they get 20 orders in a week. Denouncing them for not dipping into that small profit margin to save you $10 is a nit naive. Heck, I'd nearly call it rude.


The website part? That I can get on board with. Not saying they need some hi-tech whiz-bang setup, but some basic re-organising for some of them wouldn't hurt. Simple, easy to follow menu's. Plus use some kind of frames, so you don't have to keep clicking the back button to navigate 5 pages to get back to the menu. An up-to-date Stock indication would be a bonus.

Decent product descriptions. If, as others have said, they prefer calling because of the knowledge the vendor has, put that knowledge on the website. If it's a part that people often incorrectly order thinking it's something else, jot it down. Eg: "Will only fit '67 with single notch. Those looking for '68 with double notch need part # XXXXX". etc etc. The more information you can put on the website, the less time you have to spend taking calls and answering the same 27 questions every day.

The other part to that, is images. Take a nice clear picture of every part you list. Photo's of the items you have, not generic stock photos (unless it's a great photo that can't be improved upon). Also removes half the guesswork for a potential buyer. If they can clearly see that's the part they need, they don't have to contact you to confirm. Put an image on the product page, and also a link to a higher resolution version of it. Nothing worse than having a tiny little image with "click for larger" under it, only to have the same crappy small image pop up that you can't make heads or tails of.

Granted photographing your entire catalogue will take some time, but you've only got to do it once, and from then on, only each new product as it arrives.


An adequate search function is always handy. There's an auto parts store here in Australia - which shall remain nameless - that has the worst search function I've ever used. Aside from the site being a disorganised mess forcing you to need a search function, if you search for "1970 tail light gasket", you get 500 results with everything from 1965 bumpers, to Marvin the Martian rubber floor mats. 10 pages into the search results you'll find buried the part you were after. Kind of misses the point of a search function.


Outside of that, simply answer emails swiftly (48 hours absolute maximum), and process/ship orders in a timely fashion (also 48 hours maximum - excluding weekends).


Being in Australia, most parts I need have to come from the US. For smaller stores without automated stock levels listed on their site (like Amazon etc), I'll usually email first to confirm items I want are actually in stock anyway - and if they'll ship internationally if there's nothing written on the site. The timing and content of that response also gives me an indication of whether or not they're worth taking the risk ordering from.

I won't use phones. The time-zone differences are a pain in the arse, plus I hate talking on phones - so email is the only way for me. Unless it's an absolute emergency, email is a better choice. It allows me to ask a question at a time that suits me, and it also allows the vendor to reply in their own time. It doesn't have to be that very second which takes them away from other work.


Well that's my 2 bob's worth.