First off, I’d wanted to run my own record store since I was at school, I did actually run a high street store at the age of 19 with a mate called Greg who was 17 I think?
We made a great success of it in a short space of time but the lease of the building came up for renewal and the prospect of taking out a new lease with minimum 6 month contract was a little scary, large amounts of cash up front, higher rates, new premises to establish and fit out… we decided it was a step too far for us so the dream was once again put on a back burner.
I then found myself in a position where I could start thinking about an store again, but this time it would be online or virtual. This way costs such as high rent, rates and decor could be cut out of the equation.
The name www.heydj.com was conceived, ideal for a compact house, funk and disco record store for DJs. A kind of micro record shop easily reachable from anywhere in the world by the click of a button. Not stocking everything around but just what we felt would be quality for DJs who don’t have time to trawl through every release online.
I checked for the domain name and it was taken, I contacted the owner who wasn’t doing anything with it and we agreed on a price which seemed reasonable.
Next up was a rough master plan on paper and then gradually a designed static site on photo shop, through this process I had to think in advance how the site would navigate, this was extremely difficult but was aided by a technical brief which I wrote so that the web programmer would know in detail how I wanted features to work.
I submitted my plan to the programmer who started to build the site, a rough mock up was made first which had to be tweaked and then the main site began to take shape.
Because of some of the advanced features the site had to be database driven which means it’s not a straight forward website and you have to have someone who really knows what they are doing, my programmer is extremely competent.
The website went through several design changes but the overall concept remained the same.
As the site neared completion I started thinking about Search Engine Optimisation, this is crucial as it is the equivalent to passing trade on a high street. My friend Temi suggested carrying this out as soon as possible and in truth I probably left it a little late so for any one in the same position, think about SEO as soon as you can, it’s an ongoing process but essential if you want to succeed.
My final process to set up the working record store was to sign up for a payment gateway and in my case it was with HSBC. I set a launch date and then paid up front for the payment gateway script, I then discovered that HSBC didn’t support PHP, this was a massive blow as I had already paid them up front which was non refundable and it was way too late in the game to change to world pay or alike, I had to pay the extra cost to get the programmer to rewrite the gateway script into PHP which luckily enough he knew how to execute.
HSBC were helpful as much as they could be but in all honesty their incompetence cost me time and money and in retrospect I’d have gone for word pay to begin with and see how that fared. It does have the advantage that whatever transactions go through appear the next day in my account but it’s a high price to pay.
The website is now up and running and I am pleased with it’s progress, it is an ongoing game though and no website is ever “finished” IMO so I decided to sign up for web maintenance from Velnet which for £22.50 per month enables simple tweaks and changes to the site as and when the need arises - and it does 
Post by Nick Byng, Webmaster Online Dance Music Store - HeyDJ
