Online stores are an interesting area and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of options to choose from. Which of these is best suited to YOUR needs will depend on the functionality you require, the number of items you plan to offer online (and therefore need to manage). In addition, if you want the store to be fully integrated with your existing site then that may also have a bearing on the choices made (e.g. if you’ve used a platform such as WordPress, Joomla etc.)
A Handy Checklist
Features required will depend on your business model – so here’s a quick list of questions to ask yourself that will help in your deliberations!
- Are you using a platform such as WordPress to power your site?
- Do you intend to offer a fully integrated store on your main website, or link through to the store?
- Will you ship overseas, interstate?
- How do you want to calculate shipping costs (weight based, fixed fee etc.) ?
- Do you need any form of stock/inventory control – i.e. mark a product as “out of stock” once you’ve sold a certain number?
- Will you offer customers discount coupon codes?
A Word to the Wise
I thoroughly and heartily recommend keeping things as SIMPLE as you possibly can. The more complexity you add to your store solution, the more work you create for yourself in management and configuration.
As for what I use personally, having explored all manner of potential solutions, I finally came to the conclusion to build sites on the WordPress platform and use the Marketpress plugin to provide users with ecommerce capabilities. Generally speaking it’s simple enough for self-managed stores.
You can get a good overview of what Marketpress does in this video
If you want to see a real world example of Marketpress in action, check out Outback Aromas
Above all else, take your time to compare the ecommerce offerings out there, make it a personal rule to simplify where possible and you will be sure to find the ideal solution for your needs!
I guess there really should be a 7th question – it’s possibly so obvious that I didn’t even consider it!
What payment gateway support do you need?
Options to consider will include PayPal, manual invoicing (take the order and handle payment processing offline), Google Checkout or full integration with your own merchant account.
From a WAHM perspective, PayPal seems to be the most popular and the most fully supported across all online shopping solutions.