Have you considered selling online? Whether you’ve tried it before or are new to the experience, the e-commerce options available can be overwhelming. We tend to break down the myriad of choices into three distinct groups, depending on your needs. (And if you’re new to this, click here for the 3 things you need in place before you start selling.)
The Plug and Play Options
These are the preconfigured platforms that allow you to set up your e-commerce store quickly and easily. Options include SquareSpace, Weebly or Wix. While they are simple to use and well-made, they don’t offer a ton of flexibility. What you see is what you get. They do allow some customization to reflect your brand or product, but don’t offer as many options as other platforms. Another option in this category is SamCart.com, which provides sales landing pages.
The Middle Ground Options
These include the e-commerce that are installable and more customizable. The most common option that we recommend is Woocommerce for WordPress. Woocommerce is an open-source plug-in that you can add to your WordPress site for free. The customization options are extensive, including affiliate marketing, referrals, automatic rates for shipping, tiered prices, coupons and more. Other options might include BigCommerce, Volusion and Shopify. These are subscription services.
The Custom Route
This is certainly the most expensive option so we don’t recommend it often. Built from the ground up, a custom app or website can integrate exact specifications. If you’ve tried the other options and have found them lacking, and if your business model is rather unique, this could be the best option for you.
These three tiers of options may help you narrow down which e-commerce platform is right for you. After you figure out how much customization and flexibility you really need, you may want to do some research on the prices of the platforms in the category, to choose the one for you. If you ever have any questions about which one we recommend, drop us a line. We’d love to hear more about what you’re trying to build.
And if you’re looking to build a whole website around your goals, click here to read more about the 3 types of websites we recommend.
Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash