Advice on selling online?

[pinkgoodesign]

Hi all,

It's beena while since I used this forum. I am finaly back into the swing of things.

At the moment, I sell my products on Ebay. It has been going really well but I am a little tired of the Ebay fees taking a large chunk out of my profits each month.

Can anyone here recommend a good place to sell? I have started creating a website with Wix and have had a look at their online stoor open. Has anyoe used this or does anyone know of a better way?

Many thanks

 

[HBC]

The problem (in my opinion) is that more and more customers now deliberately opt for buying on these marketplaces. This is because they trust them more, they know they can get a refund with no questions asked, and it's all Amazon's fault So by all means check out Wix for starters (you will see how that works depending on your products) but I would say the ebay/amazon fees are a necessary evil.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Thanks for the reply. I actuallt sell cards, invitations and the like. I will still sell on Ebay but would like a website just to use as another avenue... I have looked at a few of them and they seem to be quite successful. They have a huge follsing on FB though so I bet that helps!

 

[Clinton]

The secret is to have your own ecommerce site.

You find new customers on eBay etc., and then cultivate them and sell more stuff to them directly.

That's why some of your competitors are absorbing hefty fees and maybe even selling on those platforms at a loss.

Stop treating platforms as destinations for your customers and start treating them as tools to build your own customer base.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Thanks for that Clinton. Are there any eccomerce sites you could recommend? Is Shopify any good? Ideally I would like it to look like a website but with a shop element to it.

 

[Clinton]

Shopify is well known, of course, but I'm not the right person to advise you if it's the right solution for your particular product / market / self-hosted website.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

Using a site/store builder such as Wix might be OK to start out with but there will be less flexibility and options (particularly with payment options) compared to having your own website on something like WooCommerce (WordPress). Alternatively, if you do use something like Wix then look for the option to integrate 3rd party store software such as ECWID or Shop Integrator as this will offer you more flexibility.

 

[Paul Norman]

We have been selling online for about 9 years.

Other than as Clinton mentions above, I avoid Amazon and Ebay. I would be entirely unable to make a profit on those platforms, and although I would sell larger amounts, it would add nothing to my profitability.

As to what ecommerce site to use, that is a big question. Avoid wix. Personally, I would get a professional to build the site, but understand that for some people that is not financially possible.

The key is not so much the platform you use, but the skill of the builder, and the effectiveness of the marketing you do afterwards. If you just build a site and do not understand how to market it, your sales will be approximately zero.

 

[MaureenP]

alibaba is one of the options to sell your products online. Don't know about its fees but you should consider this too.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Thanks so much for all of the advice. One of the reasons I didn't pursue all of this years ago was the lack of a website. I did start building in a Dreamweaver but that was a headache as I was basically learning as I went along.

Wix did seem like a good option, but now I am not so sure. I have started looking into Wordpress. Is it correct that I need to purchase a domain name and also hosting before I can even begin designing on Wordpres? A bit worried about doing this as when I have purchased those two, I have no idea if Wordpress would work out for me. Last time I found that uploading pages to the host site was a bit of a pain. Can anyone recommend a good domain and hosting site? I have heard that Hostgator is good but this is based in the US. I am in the UK and have found that they don't offer a .co.uk extension for my website which is what I want.

Many thanks

 

[Raw Rob]

I have started looking into Wordpress. Is it correct that I need to purchase a domain name and also hosting before I can even begin designing on Wordpres?

You can give it a go for free at https://wordpress.com/pricing/ - although once you have decided that you want to continue with Wordpress you will need to buy a domain name, and probably upgrade to one of the paid plans or switch to your own hosting.

 

[Clinton]

I wouldn't advise wordpress.com as it's not on your domain. Get a domain, get hosting and download the free version of Wordpress to install on your new hosting account. There's a lot of help around for this platform but you could save some time and money by hiring the likes of @fisicx to set it all up for you.

Hosting: I recommend you start with the likes of Hi Hosting and Ngage who are members here, not hostgator.

 

[UrbanRetail]

I think it would be worth spending 5 minutes looking over OpenCart.

It's pretty much good to go out of the box, with changing a few settings. Of course you'll still need the domain, hosting etc.

 

[ffox]

Can anyone recommend a good domain and hosting site?

I've used Extendnet for years. They support Wordpress, although I don't use it myself. I've never had any complaint and the prices seem reasonable.

Hope this helps

 

[Raw Rob]

I wouldn't advise wordpress.com as it's not on your domain.

You can use your own domain name when using Wordpress.com - I think you might have to get a paid account to be able to do that. (But the main reason I suggested it is that it is a free way for the OP to test out Wordpress.)

 

[Ava Williams]

I have not heard good things about Wix. If you need an e-commerce solution I would recommend Shopify.

 

[stender]

I setup my first ecommerce site using wordpress and woocommerce. Cost me nothing apart from a bit of study. You're not going to beat Ebay and Amazon for audience so I would suggest selling on those but when delivering your products include a 10%/20% discount voucher that they can use for their next order on your own site. It's likely they will return to your site for any future orders assuming they bookmark it or your site has a memorable name.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Thanks so much all. You've all been great with great advice.

I have checked out Shopify, it seems lilke a good solution but I don't like it's lack of customising options. I really want something that looks like a website but with a shop added in.

Stender - How did it cost you nothing? Did you not have to set up hosting and buy a domain name?

I think I am going to go down the Wordpress route. I have looked on Wordpress.org and they have recommended hosting sites for Wordpress specifically. I have narrowed it down to two, Bluehost and Siteground. Does anyone have experience with these?

I am not sure which to go for.

Blue host for the basic plan will cost £48 for the year and Siteground will be around 36 a year for thaie basic plan. The main difference I can see is that Siteground offers 10gb webspace and the basic plan with BlueHost offers 50gb webspace. Should I go with the higher webspace or is 10gb enough?

 

[pinkgoodesign]

I have now scrapped the Wix idea

 

[UrbanRetail]

I have now scrapped the Wix idea

Did you have a look at opencart?

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Yeah I did have a look at it but from what I can see, it is similar to shopify and is more of just an online shop rather than a website?

 

[stender]

Sorry when I say free, I already have a hosting reseller account so can add small sites at no extra cost. if they take off I move them onto other deals. There was also a $40 cost for the wordpress template I chose to use but there are cheaper and free ones if you so choose. Regarding hosting It's not so much the space they offer but the bandwidth. The more traffic to your site the more the bandwidth will get eaten up. I'd also suggest looking at reviews and uptime before choosing a host. There are a lot of bad ones out there. Like I said I have a reseller account so I could easily pass myself off as a hosting company when you would be sharing on a crowded farm with no support.

 

[gustavowoltmann]

Thank you all for your helpful tips, and advice. I am looking at setting up an eCommerce store as well. Is there any way to create an eCommerce store for free without paying any fees? I know that with Shopify there are fees even for the simple solution. Couldn't I just get some free hosting, and install opencart?

 

[fisicx]

wordpress + woocommerce is about as free as you can get

All you pay for is hosting and the fees the payment provider charges

 

[antropy]

I have started creating a website with Wix

Have you thought about going to an ecommerce agency and getting them to set you up on something like OpenCart or Prestashop?

 

[mw40784]

Nowadays, online shoppers are pretty savvy. So First, I think you build a trusted brand of your products and build your own store online & start selling on it. Shopify and Magento platform are the best for eCommerce website. Also, you can take a benefit of digital marketing, PPC & SEO services for your personal eCommerce store.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

I ended up going with Siteground as the host and using WP. Unfortunately, WP seems to be rather annoying so far!!!

 

[UrbanRetail]

WP is a good platform, but it can be quite in-depth depending on your requirements. If you post any questions I'm sure you'll be put on the right track.

 

[fisicx]

I ended up going with Siteground as the host and using WP. Unfortunately, WP seems to be rather annoying so far!!!

Annoying in which way?

Woocommerce does take some getting used to but once you have the hang of things you will discover all sorts of fun features.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

I don't know much coding at all. The themes are customisable to a point, but not enough. I can't seem to customise any of them fully to my liking. I have installed the Woocommerce plug in. Set up a shop but it messed up my menu so for now I have deactivated it. With Woocommerce and getting to know it, do you mean from the WP plug in? I am trying to make sure that I used themes that support woocommerce also

Right now, I am going dow the path of trying to use Dreamweaver to edit the themes in wordpress on a local host server.

I am sure I am making all this so much more difficult than it has to be.

Thanks for all the advice

 

[Iain_Henderson]

Have a look at pootlepress - I bought the storefront pro and a doddle to use. Considering buying his sitebuilder one too.

 

[fisicx]

I am sure I am making all this so much more difficult than it has to be.

Editing themes is fraught with problems. They get updated regularly which means all your customisations will get wiped out. If you don't update then you could end up with a security issue. Which is why you should use a child theme.

What sort of customisation do you want? I suspect it's the woo templates and you won't be able to change these by editing the theme. And dreamweaver probably won't help.

Rather than trying to do it all on your own, why not get someone in to help. What is taking you hours and hours to do, someone who knows how to configure wordpress can probably fix in a few minutes.

As an example, I'm working with someone at the moment who spent two days trying to figure something out. I fixed it with one line of code.

 

[Cathey]

Would Etsy suit your product set? It could be another option if your products are right.

As for website platforms, the big ones are the obvious ones to recommend. These include Magento, woocommerce and opencart as others have suggested.

The upside of going with these carts is that there are often lots of other tools that are integrated with them. For example, Zapier which allows you to "zap" data etc. etc. This list of tools is only likely to get longer as time goes on.

Another upside with these carts is that they are more often supported by multichannel management software. This may be way too early for you to be thinking about but if you think there is a chance that you would want to be able to centrally control listings to ebay/etsy/amazon and your website then you may want to choose a platform that you could integrate in the future. The big platforms are all generally supported.

 

[Paul Babiak]

Its very easy to get stuck in planning process. Any shop is better than no shop. Of course, you don’t want to waste time on one platform just to be forced to transfer to another in few months.

For WordPress guide I recommend Lynda.com

Very detailed tutorials. They have 14 days or so trial period so if you gone sit down and set aside few days to master it than go for it, and it will be free

With e-commerce website, monthly bandwidth is more important than disk space. 10gb is more than enough for a small to medium shop. Thing is that if the bandwidth will be small your website will be crushing if you reach the limit. Sounds lie not a big deal but it just takes someone to post one of your product on social media and this spike can crash whole website.

 

[brianlee1982]

I am using WP with woocommerce. Bought my themes from themeforest. It's better if u read and scout their themes first before purchasing. Read the reviews for support especially. It's very important.

Other than this, don't forget for ur hosting, better to put SSL if there is any transactions. Google make a requirement for this when I registered for google merchant.

So ur cost is only Hosting + SSL + Themes.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Thanks everyone for all your help. As you can all probably tell, I don't really have a clue about all of this stuff yet. I am hoping to learn as much as I can though. It seems my difficulty at the moment is getting a theme to look how I want, which is why I was going to edit them in DW. Not massivley, mainly just rearranging objects and taking things out of the site than I don't want. Pootlspress seems excellent and exactly what I want, only downside is that its $99 to downliad :/

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Aw thank you I'm finding it's stupid things. Like just moving something with the customisation options. Like if a menu is too high up in the header, then I get frustrated, try another theme and I don't get anywhere. I'm not the most patient person in the world :/

 

[fisicx]

You are trying to do things most themes won't allow - because changing one thing often affects something else. Which is why I suggested getting someone on board. Wordpress themes are complex beasts and it will take you many months to understand fully how they work.

Or just bit the bullet and get a reasonable looking theme and launch the site. Nobody in the world apart from you cares what theme you use, all they care about is the products.

 

[justinaldridge]

I'm so relieved you dumped Wix! And Shopify recently we have had issue with so I wouldn't recommend that either.

You have gone for a good solution now. Siteground is a great host, I use them myself. And Wordpress and Woocommerce are a great combination, I use them too!

BUT, I think you are getting too bogged down with details. @fisicx is right, just get a nice theme, upload your products, create some info pages and run with it. You can always refine it later when it starts working for you and generating you some money. Just get the site up even if you aren't completely happy with all of the details. Having something up is better than nothing.

 

[pinkgoodesign]

Yeah you're both right. I am getting too far into it i think. I am a bit of a perfectionist and usually am not happy when things aren't as I like/want them. Shopify and Opencart put me off as it just seems more of a decdicated online shop, rather than a website of that makes sense, I could be completely wrong though. I find a lot of themes come with a hugh image slider right on the front page which I don't want. I do actually want something quite simple so I have just been looking for ways to achieve that.