After getting your domain name and hosting service, next comes designing the page. It used to be that you needed to hire a web designer to handle that, or maybe you could get your hands on web development software and work on the design yourself.
For eCommerce websites, there’s a more intricate phase of the design that requires creating databases, implementing checkout processes and managing security aspects.
These responsibilities were often delegated to a web administrator after your page was done. Of course, that was a process that required a heavy investment of time and resources, so creating a website, especially an eCommerce website, was a process that needed to go through several stages before it could go live.
Now it is different, and you can create eCommerce sites in minutes and get them up and running in less than 24 hours! This can be done thanks to template based website builders. These platforms implement all the graphic and database design in their coding, so you can get them done fast and easy.
These template based platforms offer you the tools to create great looking websites by dragging and dropping elements. Some of them even offer you domain names and limited or unlimited hosting capabilities, so let’s check what’s out there!
Shopify is one of the most popular and widely used website builders around, thanks to its user friendly website building capabilities and full spectrum of features. On the Shopify home page, go to the “features” section to review some of them.
Some of these features include: more than 100 free themes to customize your storefront, a mobile-ready platform, web-based website builder, shopping cart implementation with SSL certification, multiple payment options, automated tax deduction and multiple language support.
Its store management features include customer profiles and accounts, drop shipping integration with third party services, email templates and order fulfillment. It is already optimized for search engines and encourages customers to review your products.
It has social interaction capabilities, like management of coupons, discounts, email marketing campaigns, gift cards, integration with social media platforms and a Facebook shopping cart. You can manage your product inventory through its platform and sell unlimited digital goods.
Web hosting capabilities include unlimited bandwidth for traffic, daily backups, and automatic updates, email forwarding service if you buy your domain name with them, and server stability guaranteed with an outstanding 99% uptime rate and 24/7 live monitoring.
It also hands you analytic tools, a mobile platform to manage your store on the go and 24/7 support. To see a live example of a Shopify store, just head to the “examples” section and check for yourself.
You can start using Shopify today with a 14-day free trial. After your trial ends, you can choose between the “lite”, “basic”, “pro” and “unlimited” plans for $9, $29, $79 and $179 respectively, which can be billed monthly or annually.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that will take care of the eCommerce aspect of your WordPress website. All you have to do is install WordPress and then integrate WooCommerce within it. WooCommerce creates product pages and integrates a shopping cart and checkout process solution on your WordPress site.
WooCommerce boasts about powering a staggering 30% of eCommerce sites on the web, and with good reason. It is good for store owners that want to have control over their site, and for developers that want to create ideal eCommerce sites for their clients.
Go to the “WooCommerce” menu and click on features to review them. You will find that WooCommerce is built for WordPress and reaches a worldwide community that it’s great for selling ANYTHING. It is open source, so you can experiment with it, and its mobile friendly.
It will integrate an intelligent shopping cart system with preinstalled payment gateways. You can control every aspect of the checkout process, giving you the tools to enable or disable guest shoppers, for example. You can also set which countries and currencies your eCommerce site supports.
It can automatically deduct taxes, manages cart behavior, and calculates shipping prices while making multiple shipping methods available. It also has social interaction capabilities like discount coupons or codes and product reviews.
The great thing about managing your eCommerce store from WordPress is that it is self-hosted, which means that you won’t run into bandwidth issues and you can choose your domain name on the platform.
The best part of all it? It is free. Yes! Using WordPress with WooCommerce is completely free, so you will not have to pay monthly or yearly fees for all these features!
Storenvy is another great eCommerce platform which proudly distinguishes itself for being a platform offering two ways to sell your products: a free custom online store and a social marketplace.
You can easily promote your products on Storenvy because it works like a social marketplace for shopping in which you can place your free customizable online store. You can easily customize your store and change its colors, text and background images at any time.
You can set up your store in as little as 5 minutes! You can list up to 500 products for free! Its management tools are smart and simple to use. You can use promotional codes, and you can also manage inventory and fulfillment from the app itself!
Storenvy platform is mobile ready, and as you can see millions of people support doing business on Storenvy! You can interact with an active and passionate community and integrate payment solutions like credit card payments and PayPal into your store.
Do you know what else makes it great? That it doesn’t make you pay any monthly fees. You only pay a 10% fee for every sale you make, the rest is yours!
