Selling online during sales: how to open an e-commerce
How to sell online during sales by opening a new online store for free (or almost)
The first online sale was made by Dan Kohn in 1994. And do you know what the first product ever sold was? A Sting CD! Dan, born in 1972 (USA), founded NetMarket that year, the world's first e-commerce site. Since its inception, online commerce has steadily grown, but never as much as in this past year, marked by Covid-19. It is estimated that by the end of the year, e-commerce sales growth will reach +55%. This double-digit growth has impacted all sectors.
Why sell online
Giving customers the ability to purchase products online is a huge opportunity for stores. Online shopping is increasingly liked for its simplicity, convenience and convenience.
The increasing popularity of smartphones also allows customers to shop quickly and easily through mobile, and this has actually multiplied the sales opportunities and visibility of e-commerce.
During the Sales period then offering the opportunity for customers to buy online is a trump card. Especially for convenience.
Take your time to choose from the catalog; avoid queues and crowds; pay quickly and securely through cards and ATMs.
Who can sell online?
Tools for selling online have become increasingly flexible, allowing anyone who wants to start an e-commerce business to open their own e-commerce.
Whether you already own a store or business and want to start selling online as well, or whether you are starting from scratch and want to start an online commerce business, the market today offers numerous tools to achieve your goals.
There are solutions such as Dropshipping that allow even those without a warehouse to quickly and easily start an online store, without having to worry about either goods or shipping.
And the other great news is that many of these tools are also free!
How to open an online store
To understand what steps to follow, you need to start with your specific situation.
Are you starting from scratch or are you looking to expand your sales to the online channel as well?
If you already own a store and are looking to expand online,you may already have a good site and therefore only need to integrate an e-commerce tool on your current website.
If, on the other hand, you need to create your first website that also has e-commerce capabilities, you will need an all-in-one tool.
In either case, you can skip straight to the section “How to choose the best tool to sell online”
Starting to sell online from scratch
If you are setting up your business from scratch, first of all you will have to worry about Marketing and sort out some bureaucratic issues.
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At the Marketing level, before you start looking for the right tools for your e-commerce business you should have already thought about and clearly defined:
- What industry you are trying to enter and what products/items you intend to sell;
- Who your customers are and what needs and preferences they have;
- The Name and logo of your business;
- What suppliers and partners you need to get products to market;
- Your total projected costs and revenues, setting yourself goals in terms of sales volume and revenue;
- Your Marketing strategy to promote your business and maximize profits (especially what your communication plan will be).
Now all that remains is to take care of some final paperwork.
An e-commerce is considered on a par with other economic activities, and therefore you will have to:
- Open a VAT number as electronic commerce, i.e., Retail Trade of Products via the Internet;
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- Register with the Registry of Enterprises and the INPS craftsmen and traders section;
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- File the SCIA (Certified Declaration of Commencement of Business).
Choosing the best tool to sell online
As we have already mentioned, some tools are all-in-one, that is, solutions that allow you to create a website with integrated e-commerce functionality from scratch.
Others, on the other hand, are plug-in type tools, which you can go and integrate with your website, if you already have one!
You can choose from a truly vast number of e-commerce solutions on the web. To select the best ones, we focused on three parameters: simplicity, functionality; price. Here are the ones we chose:
- Shopify;
- Wix;
- WooCommerce;
- OpenCart
Let's look at them individually below to understand the features, benefits, price and guide you in choosing the one that best suits your needs.
Shopify
What kind of tool it is:
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Is of the all-in-one type, meaning it allows you to create a website from scratch with an integrated e-commerce.
Functionality:
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is also optimized for mobile sales and also allows you to integrate e-commerce with third-party marketplaces (e.g., Amazon) and with selling via Social Media (e.g., The Facebook shop).
Difficulty level:
despite the advanced features, it is really simple and intuitive to set up and use.
Price:
the price is slightly higher than the other tools, however justified by the quality of the tool.
It starts from a minimum of 29 USD, for the Basic version, up to 299 USD for the more advanced version (you will hardly need it).
Free trial version:
YES. You can try the tool for free, for 14 days.
Who is it for?
Certainly if you are starting from scratch and are looking for a tool to create your website with an integrated e-commerce software, Shopify could be the best solution.
Especially if for your business mobile and social channels will be important sales channels, then you should definitely consider it as the best option.
WIX
What kind of tool is it:
is always all-in-one type, so it allows you to create your own website with integrated online store from scratch.
Functionality:
it integrates all the standard features of a good e-commerce, but the feature that is certainly most interesting is Dropshipping. By activating this feature, you can immediately start selling third-party products, without having to maintain a warehouse and worry about shipping management.
Difficulty level:
Is perhaps the easiest website editor in the world. You can create your e-commerce site with drag-and-drop in a few simple steps. More than 500 templates are available to set graphics and content, all already optimized for SEO.
Price:
the price is lower than Shopify, very low considering that the fee includes both the website and the integrated e-commerce. The fee ranges from US$23, to US$49 per month.
It starts from a minimum of 29 USD, for the Basic version, up to 299 USD for the more advanced version (you will hardly need it).
Free trial version:
Not for e-commerce. But you can start creating your website for free and then upgrade to the paid version with e-commerce when you are ready
Who is it for
Truly for everyone. If you start from scratch and want to create your website with an online store, the drag & drop tool and the variety of Templates to choose from make the work really simple and fast.
If in addition the activity you want to start is that of an online retailer, the Dropshipping features make it the best choice on the market.
You can choose from a vast catalog of products to promote on your showcase site, without having to worry about having a warehouse and managing shipments.
WOOCOMMERCE
What kind of tool is it:
unlike the tools seen so far, WooCommerce is a plug-in that allows you to integrate the functionality of a typical e-commerce software to your current WordPress website.
Functionality:
with the plug-in you integrate all the standard functionality of an e-commerce within your WordPress website. It is highly customizable and thanks to the many available extensions it allows you to add a lot of additional functionality (even creating and printing shipping labels).
It integrates with all major payment platforms, such as PayPal and Amazon Pay.
Difficulty level:
To install it, simply download the plug-in from WordPress and configure it. Configuration is simple, however, but perhaps not quite so trivial.
Basic assumes a minimum of familiarity with the use of these tools (especially WordPress).
Price:
the basic plug-in is totally free. Some extensions are paid, however, so the expense will depend on the functionality you wish to integrate into your e-commerce.
Free trial version:
already free.
For whom it is suitable
to install the Plug-in you must have a website developed on WordPress.
It is an exceptionally modular tool, like all those designed for the WordPress environment on the other hand.
Free and with functionality that, thanks to extensions (some paid), can really succeed in handling every aspect related to order management, payment, shipping and post-sales.
OpenCart
What kind of tool is it:
this is a tool unlike any other. It is a real Store Management software, open-source and free (in the Server version). It therefore does not allow you to create a website, but to integrate the store management tools into your existing site.
Features:
with the plugin you integrate all the standard features of an e-commerce within your WordPress website. It is highly customizable and thanks to the numerous extensions available it allows you to add many additional features (even the creation and printing of shipping labels).
Difficulty level:
It depends a lot on the type of installation you choose.
Installation on Server (the free version) is more complex, targeting users who are familiar with the use of software and application programs.
The cloud version, on the other hand, is "ready to use" (but requires a fee, albeit very modestly).
Price:
the open-source software can be downloaded for free from the website. As mentioned, you pay for the cloud version, even if it has a very low cost, from 9 euros per month for the basic version up to 16 euros for the all-inclusive version.
Free trial version:
not offered.
Who is it for
Of all the solutions we have presented, this is probably the most professional. It does not excel in graphics and the templates are not particularly attractive (like those of Shopify or Wix).
However, for those who have a certain familiarity and knowledge in the use of programming, this open-source software offers many customization possibilities in the back-end (programming, precisely, on the code side).
We therefore recommend it to a more expert audience, while it is less suitable for those looking for more versatile and simple solutions to configure and manage.
Bring traffic to your e-commerce
Even before choosing the most suitable tool for your project, try to understand how you would like your e-commerce to be. Search the web for other sites that do e-commerce activities (in the same sector as you) and choose the ones you like best. By having a clear idea of how you want your e-commerce to appear and what features you want to be present, then it will be easier to guide your choice.
Bring traffic to your e-commerce
Now that you have chosen the most suitable tool for your project and your e-commerce has come to life, the going (so to speak) gets tough.
It goes without saying that the web is full of e-commerce today. In fact, with the growth in online shopping, the number of shops has also increased and competition is increasingly fierce.
To sell online it is not enough to offer a good selection of products; you will also have to carefully take care of the graphics and contents and act with cunning and planning to bring traffic to your store.
Once you are online, you will first have to try to bring traffic to your site and make yourself known. And then you will have to try to retain your customers, so that they come back to purchase on your store.
In the next article we will see which aspects you will have to work on.
We bring them to you in advance:
- organic traffic and SEO;
- paid Advertising.
Site and brand authority
Blogging is a strategy that really should not be underestimated. Also and above all because in addition to the benefits for SEO and site traffic, it is truly a more unique than rare resource for sales and the image of the company.
Multi-format and multi-channel
- We will dedicate our article to the Blog, to enrich our site;
- the Infographic, very "sharable", we could instead share it on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter);
- The Tutorial will be perfect for our YouTube channel.
We will have published on the site, posted on social media and uploaded to Youtube. Not bad considering we initially thought we only had some texts for a blog article!
By reworking content in multiple formats, we will not only have enriched our content offering in the strict sense, but also created an omni-channel strategy. All traffic, audience, which will be diverted to your site.
4- Optimize for voice search
Alexa, search for “women’s clothing store near me”. Or: Siri, search for “how to do SEO to increase web traffic”.
Voice assistants on your smartphone, at home, in the car.
According to a study by His Holiness Pwc, 65% of users aged 25-49 use the voice assistant to perform at least one daily search on the web.
When they provide search results, they always do so through the web and using the device’s search engine. But compared to a manual search, “voice SEO” has its own peculiarities.
Specifically, we are the ones who when we ask the voice assistant to perform a search, we place ourselves differently compared to when we do the same search ourselves, manually.
First of all, we are much more verbose, for the simple fact that we converse.
To earn a good ranking in voice searches, we need to optimize “Long Tail Keywords”. Let's see with an example what it means.
Suppose we want to prepare a cake and we need to search for the recipe on Google:
- if we are in front of our PC, we will simply type: chocolate cake recipe;
- if instead we turn to Alexa, we will ask a more colloquial question: what are the ingredients to prepare a chocolate cake?
5- Mobile Optimization
Did you know that the algorithm that Google uses to rank search results uses mobile versions of pages? Maybe not, and in that case the news will have shocked you quite a bit.
In essence, this means that if you have created an impeccable site, with unmissable content, but you have not optimized it for mobile...Google will still leave you behind.
Why the giant Google has decided to act this way, is simply explained by the data. In fact, today 60% of web users perform more searches from mobile than from desktop and in the near future the trend will only increase.
To make the mobile-friendly site we must pay attention above all to two aspects:
- loading speed of pages (and of the site in general);
- responsiveness of content (adaptation to mobile format).
For responsiveness, editors like WordPress take care of it, which typically have integrated the optimization functionality for mobile formats (smartphone, tablet).
You will have to pay attention to the loading speed.
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