Website with online shop advice

cherylanne_2

Hi everyone, I am trying to find a place where I can get a free website and allow people to buy the products on my website as well (I know I will probably have to pay for the shop side of things) but I am so baffled when I google 'free website' that I just don't know where to start. I will be selling fashion jewellery and gifts.

I am rather in the dark ages where technology is concerned and would need something so simple that a 5yr old could do it!

Any suggestions gratefully received.

InsideInsurance

So, you want people to spend their money on your site when you arent willing to spend your own money on your site?

Before you get into the technicalities of how to setup the site, how are you actually going to generate traffic to the site?

There are plenty of free ways out there but most of them you dont want to touch. The normal route is to pay for a webhost, use a free/ opensource ecommerce solution and use a free or paid for template. Most are relatively simple to use but your more in the 12 year old space than the 5 year old but to get the most out of it you are either going to have to up your game technically or pay for someone with knowledge to assist if this is to be anything more than something that may get one or two sales a year

gb12345

InsideInsurance wrote: »

So, you want people to spend their money on your site when you arent willing to spend your own money on your site?

++1


If you want to go into business and expect people to take you seriously then you need to invest a bit of money to set things up. At the very least you are looking at:

• Domain name registration - a tenner max for 2 years for a .co.uk
• Hosting - you can get reasonable hosting for 50 or 60 quid a year. If you went for free hosting you would have to accept potential relability issues and 3rd party advertising.

Your biggest problem will be the building and maintenance of the website. You (by your own admission) don't have the skills for this, so you will have to pay someone. You are talking a couple of hundered quid here minimum (if you employed a freelance developer) go get the site set up and integrated with payment providers.

You will also need to think about getting your products into the backend for the website and who you are going to use as a payment provider and then how you are going to get traffic to the site.

InsideInsurance

gb12345 wrote: »

Your biggest problem will be the building and maintenance of the website

Even for a novice I wouldnt put that close to the top issue. Getting customer to the site (at a reasonable price) is by far harder, you cannot have the mentality of "build it and they will come" and many start ups do.

Secondly is then the finances in terms of getting suppliers with low enough pricing to allow the sale price to be competitive and still make a profit after advertising costs -v- companies that have much greater buying power than you. The web is much more price sensitive than the high street

gb12345

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Even for a novice I wouldnt put that close to the top issue. Getting customer to the site (at a reasonable price) is by far harder, you cannot have the mentality of "build it and they will come" and many start ups do.

But it is something that can be done by the business owner far easier than learning the skills required to install and customise a CMS and e-commerce solution.

There is little point in having a marketing strategy in place when there is nothing to market - the website needs to be designed, built and tested thoroughly - so that will be her biggest issue in setting up the business. If she can't get the website set up then she can't move onto the marketing stage.

InsideInsurance

gb12345 wrote: »

But it is something that can be done by the business owner far easier than learning the skills required to install and customise a CMS and e-commerce solution.

There is little point in having a marketing strategy in place when there is nothing to market - the website needs to be designed, built and tested thoroughly - so that will be her biggest issue in setting up the business. If she can't get the website set up then she can't move onto the marketing stage.

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.... you can get turn key solutions, some free some for a fee, that are very easy to use to "create the site".

Learning SEM, doing keyword analysis, optimising long tail and short tail leads to get the best return on investment is more difficult in my opinion and it is compounded by the fact that this is an ongoing thing. As you say, you can pay someone £300 to set up ZenCart, upload a theme and give a 101 training on how to use the admin section and then thats it. With marketing, merchandising, supplier management, cashflow etc this will go on for as long as the site is running

Mistral001

cherylanne wrote: »

Hi everyone, I am trying to find a place where I can get a free website and allow people to buy the products on my website as well (I know I will probably have to pay for the shop side of things) but I am so baffled when I google 'free website' that I just don't know where to start. I will be selling fashion jewellery and gifts.
.

I know you are perhaps set on your own website, but there is a way to sell online which is free to set-up and fairly cheap to run for low volumes.

It is called Ebay.

I know plenty of people here do not like it, but if you are new to online selling it is the place to start and you will have access to millions of customers. Also Amazon is worth a try.

lil.smartie

Try EKM Powershop (no mobile option though) or Absolute shopping cart (new but generally helpful)

Kate

Savvy_Sue

Mistral001 wrote: »

I know you are perhaps set on your own website, but there is a way to sell online which is free to set-up and fairly cheap to run for low volumes.

It is called Ebay.

I know plenty of people here do not like it, but if you are new to online selling it is the place to start and you will have access to millions of customers. Also Amazon is worth a try.

Especially as you need to be aware of what's on Ebay and Amazon anyway, because that's where lots of people will look for fashion jewellery and gifts. And you need to work out why they should buy from YOU rather than a.n.other.

Tech101

cherylanne wrote: »

Hi everyone, I am trying to find a place where I can get a free website and allow people to buy the products on my website as well (I know I will probably have to pay for the shop side of things) but I am so baffled when I google 'free website' that I just don't know where to start. I will be selling fashion jewellery and gifts.

I am rather in the dark ages where technology is concerned and would need something so simple that a 5yr old could do it!

Any suggestions gratefully received.

weebly.com websites are free. You can use your own choice of sub-domain, e.g. my-business.weebly.com and offer payment by PayPal to your online customers.

It's not kids stuff, but it won't cost you anything but time and a bit of effort.

gb12345

Tech101 wrote: »

weebly.com websites are free. You can use your own choice of sub-domain, e.g. my-business.weebly.com and offer payment by PayPal to your online customers.

It's not kids stuff, but it won't cost you anything but time and a bit of effort.

And you'll end up with the least professional looking domain name possible. No one in their right mind is going to buy from a website that is a freebie sub-domain.