Selling Online is a dream for many, but most people have very little knowledge of the components required to get running an Online store. In order to decipher the mystery we’ll take a look at a few of the most popular systems available for would be e-commerce entrepreneurs. So here’s how to sell Online.
Priced from $29 with a free 14 day trial.
Charges commission on sales.
No technical knowledge required.
100+ free themes on offer.
A platform which includes hosting in its package, Shopify is a popular all-in-one CMS for building an Online store. Everything you need is available immediately, & they offer clear, easy-to-understand instructions for setting up.
Advantages, also include excellent sales reporting, priceless client support(with quick response), built-in scalable packages which accommodate growth.
Priced from $17 with a free trial.
No commission on sales.
No technical knowledge required.
Approximately 60 free themes on offer.
A relatively new player in this field, Wix has applied its Website builder to the task of Online store creation. Everything you need is available immediately, & includes sizable vouchers for advertising, analytics & performance applications to assist you in obtaining the best results from your store. The interface is clean & easy to understand & offers excellent sales reporting features as well as dedicated customer support.
Priced from $29.95 with a free 15 day trial.
No transaction fees(commission is charged by payment gateways).
Some technical knowledge required.
10+ free themes (many other free themes available Online)
BigCommerce is the leader in the field of headless eCommerce solutions.(dedicated backend CMS, which can be integrated into a number of platforms as a single management interface). However, it also provides “standard” Online stores with a traditional ‘head’ or frontend.
Some technical knowledge is preferred for this CMS, since the documentation & instructions are more technical in nature.
The BigCommerce platform offers an out-of-the-box solution, so you don’t need separate hosting services.(as with Shopify & Wix).
Free open source plugin for WordPress (limited functionality without paid extensions).
No transaction fees(commission is charged by payment gateways).
Intermediate technical knowledge required.
1000+ free themes available.
WP is one of the most popular CMS systems for launching & maintaining websites in the world at present(market share is 59.9%), so it follows that its most used e-commerce plugin, Woocommerce, is equally trendy.
Both, WP & Woocommerce are free to set up, but you require a PHP compliant web host to run the system.
All Online stores need an SSL certificate, so you will need to find hosting that either offers this option as a feature, or buy your own certificate(Lets encrypt offers a free, easy to integrate SSL for most traditional servers, but it does not work well with Windows browsers).
Woocommerce offers a host of paid extensions & many WordPress plugins(free & paid are compliant with the plugin). Woocommerce offers, sales reporting & customer support—this is a free plugin so expect somewhat delayed assistance, but they do offer an excellent forum where experienced users will, very often, assist you immediately.
The social media giant recently launched a ‘shopping’ option for users to employ as a method of selling products directly on the platform, without the need of owning or running a separate Website.
This new feature can be used by any Enterprise, which has a Facebook business profile(Facebook Page). Users need to gain approval to sell their products on the platform, but once ratified, sellers have a market of potential buyers numbering in the billions, rather than millions. This new feature, which is sure to be readily adopted by millions of businesses around the world, could bring a disruptive change to the world of Online eecommerce CMS as we know it now.