E-commerce site

pledgeX

I'm in the very early stages of setting up a crafts business.

I'd like to setup a website that I can use to show off my products. I'm wondering whether to sell products on the site as well, or leave that to places like Etsy/Ebay etc.

I'd create the site using wordpress, and if I went down the full on shop approach I'd use woocommerce. I'd probably use someone like vidahost or Krystal to host the site.

My two main concerns are:
1) Risk. What could go wrong? With woocommerce the payments would be done externally so I wouldn't be storing any card details etc, but obviously there would still be customer details stored on the site so I know where to post things to.

2) Complexity. I'd probably sell via ebay/etsy etc at first to gain more exposure, so I'm not sure if allowing purchases via my website would just cause additional headaches. How easy is it to manage compared with selling on an existing shop?

Has anyone been in a similar situation and have any thoughts?

forgotmyname

Unless you can attract a lot of visitors to the site go with an ebay shop and the website offering more information on you and the items that you sell.

You can check the site stats and see how many actually visit it. Once you get a reasonable amount of traffic then start to sell from the site, but will it be any cheaper than an ebay shop and paypal?

Its amazing how many still buy from ebay even though your shop is cheaper. People often feel safer buying from ebay.

AndyPix

^^ Good points above, also FYI, customer details dont need to be "stored on the site" .. You could just have your web form send you the details entered by email ..

Neil_Jones

Things to think about

eBay is ready to go near enough - just fill in a form or two, generate a template and be selling in minutes and eBay have already taken care of everything. eBay charge fees for listing, enhancements, taking PayPal payments (3.4% + 20p), scratching your nose, etc. But is the biggest marketplace going - you and hundreds of others.

Going your own site way - you have to set it all up yourself, drive the traffic, drive the sales, set up the payment methods, process the orders, etc. May have trust issues initially and the site may not take off. Can be expensive to get going and if you're taking card payments you have to be careful about this even if you do farm the process off to somebody else.

forgotmyname

Getting traffic is the biggie. It used to be so easy.

I had an AOL account where you got your own webspace username.aol.com. It used to generate a lot of traffic and i found links to my site and my content all over the place.

With certain search terms it would be the top spot on a google search.

But these days there is so much competition, you need a good customer base first unless you can spend £££££ on advertising and even them you may not get your moneys worth.

Are your customers going to be a one time visitor or repeat customers?

pledgeX

Thanks for all the replies folks.

@forgotmyname. The majority of customers will likely be one time visitors.

I understand about the whole issue of traffic (or the lack thereof). The original idea of the website would be to supplement the listings on ebay/etsty/wherever so the users could find out a bit more about the products (I could put a link to the site within the external advert). I just think it would be a bit more reassuring to the customer if they found me on ebay for example then googled the shop name and came across a (hopefully) professional looking website.

unholyangel

From the other side of things, you should have a privacy policy/terms of use agreement and if selling, a terms of sale. You'd also be required to detail somewhere (usually done at least via T&C's) the entity they're trading with, registered company number if they have one, business address (where consumers can contact you about issues they have with purchases) and if you provide a phone number for customer services, there are rules about what kind of number it can be as well (no revenue sharing numbers).

FWIW, I'd have more peace of mind buying off etsy/ebay if you also had an official website. However, a poorly constructed website (especially one missing the above information) would put me off. But then Im possibly an oddity - most consumers don't check the legal stuff where its the first thing I check.