Thinking about setting up a web store - any suggestions/recommendations

jimrad

Well I was curious about anyones experiences on setting up and selling products through an online web store.
I would guess that you get better features if you pay a fee but I really don't know and there are lots of free sites.
So please let me hear your pros and cons.

Thanks

Sean1125

Cons= Time commitment
Pros= You sell stuff

You can pretty much do the same thing for free that you could if you paid if you understand and know html

The only restrictions I can think of might be traffic restrictions unless your free hosting service has massive amounts of ads which I'm sure get really annoying...




Like I said you really are only out time if you don't sell anything if you set up a free site...

NickM

Bandwidth is very important. Sports cards sell best with large pictures. Most free sites either don't give you much bandwidth or don't allow you to use it for commercial purposes.

I would look seriously at buying your own domain name and getting a decent hosting plan - total cost would be under $100 a year (not counting the cost of a shopping card if you want one).

Nick

epatmythes

Jim,

First and foremost, yes, there are a lot of free sites out there and/or free shopping cart bolt on's with budget and/or professional hosting packages. However, you are asking about experiences setting up and selling products online... too which the old adage is true... "You get what you pay for". Unless you are a computer wiz, have 6-12 months to invest 50+ hours a week developing your own stable, quality platform on a hosting only web platform... definitely go with a hosted shopping cart solution.

Personally, I am the former Director of Ecommerce Engineering at Network Solutions, and I know way too much about this stuff, both professionally & personally through my own online selling ventures. Unfortunately, I would not in good faith recommend the Network Solutions eCommerce product to anyone I know any longer. Not because I, along with my position and the vast majority of my division, was eliminated... but more so because I do not believe the company stands behind their ecommerce product like they should. For at least over a year now that platform has basically remained static in a stable mode (not seeking market-changing new feature implementations, etc.), engineering support moved overseas, sales & support emphasis is more on selling products and not solving customer pain points... and the big kicker, I don't know if they ever got their PCI accredation back after the system was hacked and credit card #'s stolen several months after they terminated the employment of all the people that actually cared about the platform.

Now, in 2011 (left NetSol in 2008), and still staying current with the eCommerce marketplace... I'd recommend to you either SmartCart or Volusion.

If you're looking to treat this effort like a small business, I'd probably lean towards Volusion. However, if it's going to be a small operation... perhaps go with SmartCart. From their, you need to balance your presentation needs with personal finance considerations. Will you have lots of products, and by "lots", I mean more than say 200 items for sale on the site. If so, then you definitely want to go with the highest level ($69 a month) package with SmartCart... just to get the FTP access capability. Otherwise, you'll hate having to upload your product photos individually with each product listing from the administration panel. With Volusion, I wouldn't recommend anything below their $59 package. You want at least that 5GB of monthly data transfer (IE. bandwidth).

Last but not least, with any of the major ecommerce shopping cart providers... you can typically "free trial" their product for up to 30 days. If you're in no rush to start selling online from your own store (which you shouldn't be anyway until you've fully worked up a plan, process, expectations, marketing plan, etc.)... why not take the next 1-2 months to try out different shopping cart products to find the one that makes the most sense for your needs. Any ecommerce provider that won't let trial-run their product... is not one worthy of your business anyway. The reality is, most sites won't make money for the first 3-6 months... at least not good money anyway. Getting pages indexed & cached on Google, working out your SEO, determining marketing & product feed platforms... and executing those strategies... it takes time... and effort... and patience...

GOOD LUCK!!!


UPDATE: I did check after the fact on the VISA/CISP/PCI site and see that Network Solutions is currently accredited as of 11/30/2010... so that's good (for them)!

kingbeeswax

Webs.com free version is pretty cool. I put a few items on there and have sold some. The only promotion I do is on here(my link below) and sometimes some Ebay buyers. I can add a lot more but I am being lazy about it. Pretty easy page to use once you get the hang of it but I prefer using thumbnails instead of the big scans on Webs.com, but it's a cool free page.

tedh111

I use a customized Yahoo store. I pay $100 per month plus 1.5% of sales. Therere are pros and cons to using a yahoo store but there is a huge user base and a simple store was very easy to set up.... But getting sales is very very time consuming. I have now had my store for 2 years, working at it about 20-30 hours per week and my sales are still not even close to the level that my ebay store was doing before I shut it down.

epatmythes

Just an off the top of my head ramble... here is a little step-by-step guide to starting an online store...

1) Determine exactly what you want to sell & realistically determine if it "can" be worth your time (financially)
2) Get a merchant account with a major provider (I recommend Authorize.Net, USA ePay, or a Business Account with Paypal)
3) Get a good camera and/or scanner, product photos are very, very, very, very important to the user experience
4) Learn as much as you can about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)... if you're not willing to do this... don't bother opening a webstore... you will fail!
5) Research online shopping cart hosting providers, sign up with 3-5 that offer a 30 or 60 day money-back trial period
6) Try to use/learn as much as possible about those 3-5 hosting tools, keep the one that works best for you... cancel the others
7) If you don't have the web skills, pay someone who does to design your website layout (DO NOT use a canned template from the shopping cart software)
8) Load up your products, build your content... and be sure to apply as much as possible from what you have learned about SEO
9) Register your website with Google (http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl)
10) Sign up for a Google Analytics account and get your site setup to track using GA (http://www.google.com/analytics/)
11) Create a Google Sitemap and get it installed on your site (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668)
12) Register your website with Google... Again (See Step 9 above)
13) Register with a product feed site, and spend the money on it... it's not that expensive and can really help sales (I recommend ShopZilla.com)
14) Spend about the first month your site is live (while handling what sales you do make too) learning what everything in Google Analytics means to your business and to your website
15) Keep an eye on everything (How are my search rankings, is my content fresh, is my SEO working for me, how is my site traffic, how can I drive more site traffic)... and work to be constantly improving

Have fun... and when it's no longer fun and/or no longer profitable in comparison to your time... quit as soon as possible (Don't bleed money trying to sell stuff that just doesn't have the demand and/or attention you thought it should/would/could have)

Cheers,

Eric

scotgreb

Jim --

Although ebay gets a lot of grief -- often well-deserved -- I don't believe there is a better alternative, especially for someone just getting started. It definitely gets you the most exposure. If you do well and successfully grow your "business", you can build a clientele and expand to either do direct business or an independent store -- or any combination of the three.

Good luck.

BunchOBull

I really like eCrater.

link

jimrad

Thanks for the fantastic advice.
I am still in the early stages of thought on this.