We have truly changed how things work in the twenty-first century. Shops are closing down because so many people are selling and buying online nowadays. As with any trend, everyone will slowly follow along with it. If you don’t know how to, one very important thing is selling software or e-commerce software.
This software helps power and runs an online store. It can start up and make an entire website without having a ton of background technical design knowledge. But as with any product, there are competing products with similar attributes. E-commerce software helps a normal Joe Schmoe run an online business.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “what exactly does this software do for me?”Well, worry no longer. When we say it runs the online store, we mean it does everything to run the store. It walks you through each step of the store making process. Ecommerce software can show you how to add and sell products like eBay does. Anything you find can be uploaded and set up to be sold for a certain price. You can easily organize and manage all of your selling products and sort them out based on if they were sold or not. It is easy to set up your own information to accept payments and set up deliveries. This software can even help calculate the taxes owed for the products.
Best Software for Sellers
Three of the top e-commerce software selling currently are Shopify, BigCommerce, and Volusion. On a one to five scales, they rank a 5, 4.5, and 3 respectively.These software help one start selling products without knowing anything about coding. It is like working along with a very helpful set of instructions. All it needs is your input. These are very user-friendly and easy to work with. The more complex software requires some programming knowledge. Professional or advanced users prefer software that can be altered to exactly what they want.
Both types of software can be used by anyone. They all depend on the level of experience the user has the number of products they plan on selling. This process simply takes trial and error for what you prefer. An important thing to consider though is the amount of time that you want to put into maintaining this shop. Using a hosted e-commerce software, your website will be running at high levels of efficiency by default. The website will load fast leaving less time for viewers to be stuck sitting at a never-ending loading bar.
If you go with a self-hosted e-commerce software, you have much more customizability. On the other hand, this can involve much more technical problems. The website won’t look like a standard website, but it will take more time when it comes to fixing issues. The worst part is that if you do not know what to do to solve your issues, you will have to shell out extra money on a developer.
You know the old expression “you need to spend money to make money”? When starting an online store, you need to find out how much money you want to put into it. The most hosted software is up to fifteen bucks a month. This is usually a fixed rate as most of the process is done for you. The self-hosted software can be tricky. The number of different changeable features will affect the pricing. Not only are you spending money, but it takes a lot of time to learn how to work these features as well. Another common expression, time is money, can be used in this specific situation.
Knowledge of online software is important. This selling process can take a lot more time if you don’t have enough knowledge on this specific subject. It also can take more than one person. When starting up an online store, hosted sites are helpful for those working on their own with little to no knowledge on the subject. The self-hosted software is definitely much tougher but requires a plethora of knowledge on online programming as well as help from multiple people. If you can’t or simply don’t wish to put in too much time, always go with a hosted e-commerce software.
As mentioned earlier, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Volusion are popular hosted software. These threes all allow a free trial which can help a lot when it comes to figuring out how they work. Both Shopify and BigCommerce have basic and advanced features depending on the type of account you have. Volusion only has an advanced version. Features that are important to each software are premium customer support, cart recovery, and free SSL certificate.
Support when trying to start up an online shop is important as the more help you have, the better off you will be. Premium support helps mentor you through the process. Allowing cart recovery can help a customer put an item in a cart at one time and come back to it later. SSL certificates or secure sockets layer certificates are so your customers can see the website in HTTPS. This allows all of the data to be passed from owner to viewers.
Using any of the above-listed software, one can easily build an online store in a very short amount of time with plenty of help through online and over the phone support. These make things much easier as it is not necessary to know much about coding with e-commerce software.
Some common self-hosted e-commerce software includes Magento, WordPress, and Opencart. These require setting up and configuring your own service with a separate shopping cart software. While this means you have more options to what you want to be done, it will be more difficult to actually tinker with. The amount of code needed depends on the software picked out. Magento requires little knowledge of code, but can still trip up an inexperienced person. On the bright side, Magento has a ton of support to help one out selling products. WordPress, on the other hand, requires much more coding practice. Due to this, they also have a ton of support and customizations.
When it comes down to buying e-commerce software, it all just matters on what you want. You can search up any software and see what it does. From there, it is easy to break down if you want hosted or self-hosted software, and from there, you can pick a product based off of its attributes. Anyone can bring their shop online with e-commerce software. The best software for sellers just takes time and a little research.