Ecommerce really isn’t all the difficult. Sometimes people make it overly so.
There are tons of options for your CMS (Content Management System) and ecommerce platform (or shopping cart software). Some are way more complex than others, and maybe this is part of why people get confused.
Many businesses end up paying WAY too much for their websites, particularly if it deals with ecommerce. I’ve seen people paying upwards of $5,000, even over $10,000 for a (rather basic) ecommerce site!
That’s just insane! Granted, if you’re doing millions of dollars in sales (or maybe in the 6 figures) you can justify spending that much. But you don’t have to!
The biggest problem and expense with these large CMS/ecommerce websites is that people want to have a custom design with lots of fancy features. Well guess what… that’s where most of the time and cost comes from!
You don’t need a custom theme and amazing features in an ecommerce site to sell stuff. In fact, in most cases a simpler website is preferable.
When people are buying things online, they want to see a familiar checkout process. A web-based storefront should be simple and allow people to navigate it easily. The more bells and whistles you throw at people the more likely they are to bounce on off to another site or hit the back button on their browser.
KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid – this is very true in the world of ecommerce.
There are tons of ecommerce platforms out there: Magento, Ubercart, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, DrupalCommerce, osCommerce, Zen Cart, VirtueMart… the list goes on and on. Some of these are more complex than others, have different features, more plugins and extensions and different learning curves.
It can become quite a headache when you’re trying to decide which platform to use!
Some like Magento and Ubercart have a huge learning curve but can let you do more powerful stuff (and for free). Others let you get a site started TODAY (i.e. Shopify and BigCommerce) but adding features or theming it exactly the way you want can be a HUGE pain in the ass. Both of these routes has it’s own problems.
We’ve found a nice solution that rests in the middle path. You can have your cake and eat it too!
We rely on using the WordPress platform with WooCommerce as the shopping cart software.
This lets you get going pretty quickly while still having the ability to add all sorts of amazing features down the road! You can keep development costs down which allows you to spend more on marketing your awesome products!
We believe in focusing on the things that matter most, the things that contribute to the bottom line: revenue and the customer’s experience.
Let’s sell a whole bunch of stuff together.
Talk with us about creating an amazing ecommerce system and internet marketing strategy. If you’re not selling online now or want to increase your sales, talk to us! We can create a custom plan to increase revenue to your site many times over.
