One of the most important decisions you can make when building an online business is which service to use for your online store. It seems like there is an infinite supply of choices for building an online store, and it can seem kind of confusing at times. How do you go about deciding where to build your online store?
Here are some things to think about:
1. Your image. First impressions are important. Many times a website visitor will decide whether or not to investigate your store further based on what your store looks like. If your store looks unprofessional or amateurish, many web visitors will leave your site. So, you want to make sure that your online store enhances your business image.
2. Your web building skills. Some web store building options require that you know how to build web pages, or install software on a server. If that is not your strength, then look for a hosted solution, a store that is already built for you, and all you have to do is add products and customize it.
3. Your income. Obviously some web store hosting solutions cost more than others, so don't sign up for something that you can't afford to pay for.
4. Store features. Will you want to offer your customers coupons, real time shipping quotes, rewards points or a monthly newsletter? Do you need to upload listings to ebay or amazon? Do you need your store to keep track of inventory for you? Decide what you need before committing to any one solution.
With all of these things in mind, here are our recommendations for building a webstore:
1. Mal's ECommerce (http://www.mals-e.com)
Benefits
- offers free and paid solutions
- can offer coupons with both free and paid carts
- built in affiliate program for both free and paid carts
- offers real time shipping quotes with paid carts
- offers a support forum
- no per transaction fee (yes, some stores actually charge you every time you sell something)
2. Vendio (http://www.vendio.com)
Benefits
- integrates with Amazon and Ebay (you can upload to vendio and put listings in amazon and ebay too)
- keeps track of inventory
- offers a free 60 day trial
Vendio offers several tools to enhance their online store offering. They integrate nicely with amazon and ebay, meaning you can list products on those two platforms through the Vendio interface.
3. 3dCart (http://www.3dCart.com)
Benefits:
- Lots of beautiful templates to give your store that upscale look.
- Can offer coupons
- Has a built in affiliate program
- You can do dropshipping
- You can have several different types of accounts, each with their own pricing structure.
- Has a built in newsletter so you can keep in touch with your customers.
- No per transaction fee
- Very fast support team