You can’t just take and make an online store for $200. That is, of course, you can make a site for $200, technically you can and cheaper, including an online store. There are ready-made solutions for well-known CMS, both paid and free. There are free “assemblies” and “turnkey online stores for $1000” on self-written CMS from site developers …
CMSs are written by programmers and make them as universal as possible. Such that “they can customize for any store.” They have a goal: to make their solutions bought by as many customers as possible. In the best case, sometimes (when the solution costs about $2000), such a “shop out of the box” has an individual “packaging”. The design on which the designer worked. But quite often for customers and sometimes developers, the approach to creating a store is one – fast and inexpensive.
Some entrepreneurs think that you can quickly, easily, and inexpensively make an online store that will work.
But there is a problem: programmers usually understand the words “the site works” one thing, and businessmen know how to count money. For the former, the site is a software product available online that responds to inquiries. For the latter – a sales tool that should be profitable. That is why almost all “sites for $200” are not even connected to search engine analytics: the criterion for the success of such sites is simply their very existence. Therefore, it is pointless to track statistics.
If you have decided that you need a website, clearly state what role it will play in your business. For example, if it is an online store, decide for yourself and record: how many orders, or calls, you want to receive from the site per day (week, month) to believe that the site works well.
After you formulate what you expect from the site, think about your customers:
- Who are they?
- How will they get to your site?
- How much time do they have to find your product?
- In what conditions do they use your site – at home, at work, in transport?
- By what parameters are they looking for your product?
- Why should they buy it from you and not on the site of a large retailer?
Before you start choosing a CMS or web studio to design an online store, you need to answer all these questions for yourself.
Look at the universal solution “online store for $100”:
- Will this decision help you choose favor of your company?
- Will the user be able to find the directory on the home page without scrolling?
- How many pages do I need to look at to find the buy button?
- How many clicks do I need to put in the cart?
- How many fields or steps do I need to complete before ordering?
The answers to these questions will most likely not please you because the universal solution design for some “universal user”, and if you start to adjust it to your customers, it turns out that it will not be $200. And maybe not even $500 …
It seems that any small store can have only 2 advantages over large online stores: low price and individual attitude to the customer. It is difficult to compete with retailers for the price. But how can you ensure a particular attitude to the customer, using a universal software solution – an online store out of the box? It seems that no way. Therefore, if you are not selling a super product that no one else has, the decision to shop online for UAH 3,000 is most likely money for the wind. You will usually encounter the following problems:
- There is an online store but in a separate section. It is terrible: the goods must be sold immediately from the main page.
- There is no catalog of goods on the main page of the site.
- The pages where the lists of goods present do not have filtering and sorting systems, or are not suitable for the presented goods.
- Long conversion path: 3-4 clicks to the desired product and 3-4 clicks to place an order. Usually, users on such sites view less than three pages and buy in such a store. Therefore, you need more than 6.
- Very complex forms of ordering: why do you need a username or address if you plan to call him back to confirm the order? Even the e-mail field did not require in this case!
- A basket “out of the box” usually requires skills to work with it.
- None of the analytics systems is worth or configured – that is the effectiveness of the online store did not monitor.
In conclusion, I want to say that people choose and buy, for example, shoes and tablets in very different ways. Therefore, selecting a universal cheap solution for your online store, you consciously offer your customers a suboptimal way to choose and buy goods. Do you want this for your customers? Will they want to buy from you in that case?
Need a quality online store? Contact us. And good sales to you!