The idea of setting up your own online store to sell products over the internet still sounds like a daunting task, but the latest ecommerce platforms make it a breeze. If you are comfortable browsing the web and sending emails, you already have the skills to setup your own store.
Some ecommerce solutions are still quite technical, but services like Wix integrate an easy-to-use website builder with a simple ecommerce solution that makes it simple for anyone to get their shop online without any knowledge of coding or even html.
Such a simple solution opens the door for everyone to sell their wares online, whether that is a traditional bricks-and-mortar boutique looking to increase their sales by opening an online store, or a struggling artist looking to sell prints and postcards to a wider audience, or a smallholder looking for an easy way to sell their produce over the web. No matter what you are selling, the internet offers access to millions more customers, and that can have a huge impact on sales.
Ecommerce platforms have matured over recent years, not only in making them much easier to setup and use on a day-to-day basis, but also in presenting your products that shows them off at their best. Wix Stores offers a variety of beautifully laid out templates for you to use for your store, that service both as a way to show off your products, but also specifically crafted to funnel potential customers towards a sale. Whether you want a design that reflects your fashion-forward flare, minimalism, traditionalism, or anything in between – there will be a theme for you. First impressions matter, and a stunningly designed ecommerce website that reflects your brand can make people customers for life.
People love to see photographs of what they are buying, and a beautiful gallery is a great way to highlight the best of what you have to offer. This does mean that it is worth investing some time in sharpening your Photoshop skills or even spending the money on a professional photographer. But once your see these beautiful pictures available online in galleries that look fantastic across all devices from smartphones, to iPads, to laptops – then you will know it was worth it, and you should see a dramatic uptick in sales, with your customers similarly excited about how good your products look.
On the back-end, again everything is now attractively designed and easy-to-use as standard. There’s no hunting around under sixteen submenus to find the right setting to edit, with platforms like Wix Stores keeping everything simple to view and edit from the main dashboard.
Adding taxes or delivery charges to orders can be set with advanced rules, so that everything is automated and everything “just works” for customers whether they are based next door or in a completely different country – you just set the rules once and everything is worked out for you automatically for each order.
Orders can also be tracked from the main dashboard, so that it is straightforward to keep track of your inventory and keep on top of sales, even at the busiest of times such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the post-Christmas January Sales. And for those times when you want to drive additional sales with deep discounts or other promotions, coupons are simple to create from the back-end dashboard.
Traditionally, payment processing has been a major sticking point for ecommerce platforms, with financial institutions charging a fortune for their services, which were difficult to integrate and came with little to no support. Luckily, those days are well and truly gone and you can be setup and collecting payments by credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal within seconds. Wix Stores lets you choose the best payment processor for your needs, with market leaders like Stripe taking just 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and Wix takes nothing more on top – leaving you with better margins per sale.
The Wix ecommerce package starts at just $15 per month for a two-year deal (or $20 per month if paying monthly), which is a revolutionarily low figure to get your own online shop with everything else handled from web hosting to SSL encryption and premium support. Only a few years ago, it would cost thousands of dollars for a solution that did far less, and with the fierce competition in the hosted ecommerce space right now the platform is only set to improve.
Amazon and eBay may still be the 100-pound gorillas in ecommerce, but with platforms like Wix it has never been easier or cheaper to get your own unique online store that allows you to market to millions of potential new customers across the globe.
Photograph by StockSnap