Best (free?) ecommerce building website

sylvia_glover

Hi, I need a website for my little jewellery business to sell from but I'm not too clever on the computer. Can anyone please recommend a way of doing this. What about these 'free website builders' that advertise? Thanks

gjchester

sylvia_glover wrote: »

Hi, I need a website for my little jewellery business to sell from but I'm not too clever on the computer. Can anyone please recommend a way of doing this. What about these 'free website builders' that advertise? Thanks

Most hosts include some software to install software like this for you, Mines uses the Softaculous software that gives you the choice of a few shopping software packages, all free.


However that only installs the software, you then need to configure it. Depending on your level of knowledge that maybe too much and you need to pay someone to set the entire system up for you.
Its not hard, but can be a little fiddley.




Some sites will set up the entire shop for you and offer payment facilities, however they charge, only you can decide what you want. For example if you have a shop already and can take payment by card it may be cheaper to use that then use an online card system.


Finally consider how it looks, if you want to sell it needs to look swish, if your not technically minded you may be better paying someone to design a nice site rather than have one that does not attract customers as well as it could.

Moneymaker

In view of your lack of knowledge and cash I'm going to recommend you sell on eBay.

Farway

Have a look at freewebstore, limits number of items, but is free

fishybusiness

Pay someone to do it for you.

You can't always see where your upfront costs go when setting up a website, but believe me, when you get in to it, you are likely to get bogged down.

Domain name is easy, you can just buy it, maybe self host, maybe use one of the hosted solutions out there, sort the payment processing - Paypal is a good start, integrate it...maybe have a look at Stripe too.....

Settle on a look for your site, select the template, that is of course for a hosted package, tweak it to your needs, sort out the SEO and off you go....

That is the bare bones of it, it gets more complicated, especially for someone not so computer literate.

Free isn't always good, and in the world of eCommerce a cheap looking or free site is likely to have a low or nil conversion rate if not done well.

Moneymaker's idea is a good way to get going, I'd say the same and find someone to build you a website and ebay template that compliment each other and show off your brand.