Non Essential Shop - lockdown closure - which multi-platform ecommerce site is best to use?

Harrington-Moss

Hello
I've had to close my small independant card/gift shop due to lockdown.  I'm being encourage to set up an online selling site, but I have no idea which of the ecommerce sites are best i.e. ease of use, monthly costs, selling fees etc..  Is anyone able to help shed some light on this for me as I am a complete novice when it comes to such things.

Thanks 

Savvy_Sue

I have no idea. but my local yarn shop just posts on FB, encourages people to message / phone (during working hours) / email to discuss what they'd like, and gets people to transfer money to their own bank account. Free delivery locally, adds postage for things going further afield. 

I'm sure there are limitations with this, but it's a quick'n'dirty solution, especially if you already use FB - if you don't have a business page you'd need to add one and then publicise it around all your friends and family etc. 

They do have a 'normal' website, and at one time I think they were planning to allow people to order from that, but it's not been developed much and the FB option has taken off. 

I think they already know most of their online customers, which clearly helps. 

oldbikebloke

what will you be competing on?
- price?
- quality?
- home made / artisan?

if you are simply selling bought in goods online the obvious platforms are full of competitors who are probably better placed than you in terms of volume and/or price. So how will you convert your customer base that comes to a bricks and mortar shop to a loyal one that can buy your stuff cheaper elsewhere?

gingerdad

i run a small gift shop/ice cream shop 
during the first lockdown, we did some sales via Facebook and social media - mostly ice cream deliveries as we had a full freezer as easter was coming. 
As this lockdown was looming we decided to set up a website - its taken a bit of time, guess we have only 1/2 our products listed so far - but we've used Shopify - so far two weeks from setting up the site and pushing it via our social media channels we have just over £1000.00 in sales - has been fairly straight forward in doing, we are learning day by day but happy with the results so far

Browntoa

This is free , limited number of items you can list unless you pay more

https://www.ecwid.com/

oldbikebloke

it appears the OP is no longer interested in any answers 

Phil&Michelle

Shopify is a great platform for small businesses launching online. The advantage of Shopify is that you don't need coding experience, so you can download a theme and customise it yourself. If you are not confident enough to do it yourself, have a look on Fiverr and find a search for Shopify Store Set up to find someone who can help, just check their reviews before you purchase a gig. Yo should be able to find someone who can do it for under £300 to get the store launched. Running an ecomerce is store can be rewarding if you put in the work but make sure you write good content pages, nice photos, product descriptions, set up a blog and post articles 1 or 2 times per month. Also important for SEO is to make sure you do local citations such as setting up a GMB listing (google my business), set up your business name, address, website etc - it's all free to do! (also do Bing Places) Other local citations good for free backlinks are local directories such as Yell, Yelp, Scoot, Thomson Local etc. Once you're up and running to grow your organic traffic you could hire an SEO expert or have a go yourself, HikeSEO is good software to guide you through it and not too expensive. Good luck with your new project!