Selling Online

There are many ecommerce systems out there and an essential part of ensuring your online store is a success, is selecting the right system for your business.

The right ecommerce system for you will depend on...

• The average price of your products
• The initial number of products on your website
• The kind of products you will be selling
• Whether you will be selling just in the UK or overseas also
• Whether you need to manage stock

There are many other factors and I always ask a series of questions designed to give enough information to make an informed decision. 

What is an Ecommerce Platform?

Websites are generally made of pre-built components and that's especially true when selling online. We don't want to build a brand new ecommerce platform everytime we build an online store. Some of these platforms are more sophisticated and fully featured than others and therefore they cost more. Some ecommerce systems are provided on a subscription basis - usually a monthly payment. Even with systems that are 'free' you would usually need some sort of yearly budget to keep it current and you may need to pay a monthly subscription for added features.

The Most Common Ecommerce Platforms

There are a multitude of online shopping platforms out there - some are better suited to certain types of products or markets whilst other are more general and suite dto more or less any market. I tend to work with the most flexible systems that should cover most requirements.

Shopify

With 4 or 5 different pricing plans, Shopify covers the needs of very small businesses with a handful of products, right the way through to enterprise level concerns. Shopify is a platform I would recommend for  most small businesses who need a straightforward way to sell online with the minimum of fuss. It can expand as your business expands and there are different ways of using the platform with an existing website.

Commerce by modmore

This system is a relative newcomer but it's fully featured and easy to use. It works alongside the MODX content management system and can incorporate payment methods such as Stripe. Commerce is a good, solid platform with an expanding base of users.

WooCommerce and WordPress

There are a great many companies out there that use this combination to great effect. I find it works well for larger businesses that may already have a customer base or those companies that have a solid business plan and product base. Many website design companies offer this platform by default and some offer it very cheaply. If you opt for this system it has to be built professionally - there's no room for cutting corners. The Wordpress and WooCommerce combination relies on many 'plug-ins' to get to a point where it is completely usable. Having the knowledge to pick the right plug-ins for the right product combination is vital as is attention to security measures.

Magento / Adobe Commerce

I started using Magento in 2008 and it really was a revelation at the time, being well ahead of anything else out there and importantly it was open source i.e. free. In 2018 Magento was acquired by Adobe and is now called Adobe Commerce. It's still available as an open source system and the inbuilt features allow for any size of store to be built around it. It's a platform that I believe is still way in front of anything else but it is very much a heavyweight - the sophistication of the system means that it needs a level of hosting that can handle both security and the complex processing it's capable of. I would really only consider this system if dealing with thousand of products across multiple stores that would be selling retail and wholesale.