After years of trying things on, have you decided to run an online shop? It's a good step, provided you answer the fundamental question "what do I really want from my shop?". The answer is probably simple: profits. In that case, read my article to sensitise yourself on what mistakes not to make.
Running an online shop - Magento, PrestaShop or WooCommerce?
I read an article a while ago: "How to set up an online shop with a budget of £100?". There is a huge amount of naivety contained in this question, because Setting up and running an online shop are two different topics. And you need to keep a little more in mind than that to remember to renew your domain.
If you don't want to bet on SAS, i.e. a subscription-based shop (you pay £2,500 or so, go in and the shop works), then the first step would be to choose a script. The options are three:
- Magento - A dedicated solution for the largest shops, whose product range can be counted in the hundreds of thousands of products. A great deal and support for the largest operators, but from the perspective of the SEO The situation is much less rosy and can be difficult to deal with. And there are far fewer Magento developers than there are WooCommerce or Presta developers.
- PrestaShop - less advanced than Magento, but much easier to get to grips with on both a developer and SEO level. If you have some experience, you should be able to handle this engine.
- WooCommerce - the simplest solution due to the fact that it is actually a WordPress plug-in that creates an online shop from WordPress
Remember the certificate SSL. Without it, you run the risk of browser warnings about an unsafe website - let's agree that such a warning will dampen the enthusiasm of even your most loyal shopper.
Not having an SSL certificate is also exposing yourself to trouble in Google's indexes.
Running an online shop in a difficult industry
Running an online shop is more difficult in some industries than in others - a trite thought. However, you need to take into account that if you want a customer to fill a shopping basket with more than one product, you need to ensure you have sufficient resources. Probably bigger than in any other industry. Example?
Let's say you run a clothing shop (leaving aside the huge competition in this market, dominated by the really big players) with smart clothing for men. If you have a sufficiently large selection of jackets, trousers, shoes, socks, braces and ties then it's very likely that your customer will be dressed head-to-toe for the upcoming wedding. Or at least he will throw these 2-3 products into his basket.
The situation is different for a shop selling accessories for players of popular RPGs. Here the shop has to be much better equipped, because a customer who buys a manual for supplement X also wants to buy figurines for it. He needs 10 of them and only finds 4 on offer in the shop, because the rest are:
Here, the customer not only fails to put new products in the basket. He will probably not buy at all and will order the textbook and the figures from another shop, which will send him everything packed in one package and with a standardised delivery time.
The situation in a model shop will be similar. If I want to buy a model of the Messerschmitt Bf110 C-2/C-7 from your shop, I also want to buy all the necessary paints for it (modellers know that sometimes it can be about a dozen shades). So you need to look after a huge stock of tens of thousands of products to meet potential customer needs.
Aha, I warn you in advance of one of the more common pitfalls. If you are uploading an extra 50-100 shades of desert camouflage to a model shop website then the copywriter responsible for the descriptions may need medical attention. However, don't try to follow the thought "if I have so many product descriptions to edit then why don't I outsource them to an amateur who will write 'pretzels' for £0.5 per thousand characters?".
Much depends not so much on you as on your competitors
Running an online shop contains another pitfall - that of misestimating the budget. You need to know that your budget, even if it is the one that an SEO agency will offer you, depends largely on the rate at which the competition in your industry is developing. It is definitely easier to break into relatively underdeveloped niches in the market. When, on the other hand, you have to compete with giants from the furniture industry or even erotic lingerie at the start - know that there is really little room at the top of Olympus and that everyone is pushing with their elbows. Entering this competition comes at a significant cost. And a £2,000 net per month for an interior design shop campaign means less than a £1,000-1300 net for an organic fruit bag shop.
However, running an online shop and the cost of running a campaign is a completely different tale.
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