Last week I wrote about how you need to make sure your e-commerce platform can sell your products. Once you determine that a platform can handle your base needs it's time to start looking for those extra features that can make the difference between just scraping by or having an avid fan base that buys your products as soon as you release them. I'll be writing about one feature each day this week. Let's get started with the first and probably most important feature…
It's surprising how many people recommend just one e-commerce platform – a solution that should work for everyone and every store. They may be brilliant developers or sales people but they probably aren't trying to solve your problems. You need to choose a platform that fits your needs.
You should first choose if you want either a self hosted or a hosted platform. After that you should look at your products. The type of products you have will determine the features you need. There are plenty nice-to-have features like pretty reports, order management, & newsletter integrations but you first have to make sure the platform can sell your product.
There are a few questions that I typically ask people about their products that determine what platforms I recommend.
In case you haven't guessed yet from the dozens and dozens of posts on this site I'm a huge fan of WooCommerce. It's such a great tool for e-commerce. But just because it's a great tool for me doesn't mean that it's the right solution for everyone. There are a ton of other great solutions based on your needs and your abilities.
There are dozens of e-commerce solutions out there (although I'd only recommend a 1/2 dozen or so) but before we get into the specifics of each platform you need to understand the difference between a hosted & self hosted solution.
Anyone new to e-commerce might think that getting paid online is easy. After all, watching any number of intro videos makes it seem that way. Unfortunately it's actually very complicated. There are hundreds of different vendors, complex fee structures, and an infinite number of ways to implement the solution.
I had a great time at WordCamp Grand Rapids last weekend. In addition to meeting awesome people I think that my presentation went really well and I had some awesome questions at the end. One of the questions I was asked during my presentation at WordCamp Grand Rapids last weekend was whether or not WordPress is even the right choice for an e-commerce solution and can it scale to handle high amounts of traffic? The answer is YES!