Website/Online shop

Mercedes12

Hi

I've been running a small business selling scented wax melts via Instagram for around 6m and want to create a website for customers to buy the products online (I'm currently just taking orders via direct message and paypal). I don't want to spend a lot and it doesn't need to be anything too sophisticated, just a basic online store

What is the best site to use? Is it best to use a website builder? Sorry, I'm not good at IT when it comes to websites

Many thanks!

Aquamania

eBay will expose you to the largest marketplace ... and the most competitive pricing

Percy1983

As above ebay is he biggest market but will of course eat into profits.

Could try a wordpress install of WooCommerce as a simple shop to forward social media users to.

martindow

There is no problem creating a website, the difficulty is getting people to find it. As the other posters have said this is what you pay Ebay for. A new web site inevitably takes time to build traffic and also has expense attached.

You will also need to set up a shop on your site with the expense involved in that. In my experience an information only site that requires people to phone to place orders really doesn't work. Any hindrance placed for customers is likely to lose them - the moment goes and they don't get round to placing an order.

Ideally you want to offer card payments and not just Paypal. You can of course use a card with Paypal, but on my site about two thirds choose to pay directly by card.

I'd go for it and set up a site but try to keep the fixed costs of payment processors etc. as low as possible. Ebay is also worth considering as a means to getting sales and giving out your site details with order to try to encourage repeat orders via the site. I don't know about instagram, but if it lets you, put your web address on there too.

Mercedes12

Thank you for all the responses

I think for now I am going to set up an Etsy store - after some investigation, I found that the majority of similar small businesses use this platform. Then in the future I will look in to my own website, as I know it will be more costly.

For now I can direct my social media followers to the store and fortunately seller fees are quite low on Etsy.

Thanks again for everyone's advice

lucyfrancine

wordpress x