Ecommerce is evolving fast, and for you, that means easier and faster accessibility to tools that once loomed large and out of reach for your small business. Without the confusion of figuring out sales integrations, payment forms, and tax rates, your website can be turned into a money-making machine with just a few simple adjustments.
Here’s how to turn your IM Creator website into a web shop:
Buy Now Buttons
Perfect for: Websites that want to sell just a few unique items
Okay, so their underwhelming webpage might not look like much, but PayPal’s Buy Now Buttons are possibly the easiest way to start selling online.
Buy Now Buttons allow you to sell individual items on your website using credit card or bank transfer payments, at fees on par with the rest of PayPal’s services. You can create your own button on PayPal simply by filling in some information about your business, sales tax, and delivery. PayPal will then generate HTML code that can be easily implemented into your website using the “HTML” element in your drag & drop editor.
Buy Now Buttons do come with some limitations, though: They won’t help you manage orders and payments or let you view sales reports and customer analytics.
For more information on how to make your own Buy Now Button, check out this IM Creator tutorial.
Shopify
Perfect for: Small businesses that need a fully-functional e-commerce set-up for their own website.
Shopify is the posterboy for simplified e-commerce. Employing the simplicity of a website builder, sellers can add a webshop to their own site simply by customizing a template, and adding products and billing information. What makes Shopify really useful, though, is its detailed analytics tools to help you keep track of customer accounts, sales, and SEO. Shopify also comes with a host of integrations, from MailChimp to Olark.
Shopify plans start at $29/month plus a 2% transaction fee for 1gb of storage space, mobile e-commerce, and 24/7 support, then jump to $79/month plus a 1% transaction fee for 5gb of storage, 24/7 support, and added features like abandoned cart recovery.
Amazon Webstore
Perfect for: Businesses that are anticipating fast growth, businesses that need help handling shipment.
Amazon are the undisputed champions when it comes to e-commerce – their payment processing, ordering, and shipping processes have been optimized to near perfection, and with millions of dedicated shoppers worldwide, selling via Amazon is a great way to find an entrance into the market.
With Amazon Webstore, you can apply Amazon’s technology to your own domain and design. Your webshop’s payment plan can be customized to suit your business’ needs, and best yet, you can send your inventory to an Amazon storage facility so that they can be shipped automatically when an order is made.
At $79/month plus a 2% transaction fee, Amazon’s services don’t exactly come cheap to newcomers. Still, their monthly package does come with unlimited bandwidth, storage, and SKU’s, as well as instant access to Amazon’s enormous pool of customers. Amazon Webstore offers a 30-day free trial to make sure their services are right for your business.
Google Wallet
Perfect for: Brands selling online goods like apps, mobile e-commerce
Selling online is all about making things simple for prospective customers. If there’s a lengthy form to fill out or a payment process that seems to take ages, buyers will flee. Google continue their takeover of just about everything web with their take on online payments: Google Wallet. For buyers, Google wallet simplifies the transaction process (especially for non-material goods) by bringing the payment process down to a couple clicks. What’s more, Google Wallet is built specifically with mobile e-commerce in mind.
For sellers, Google Wallet makes reaching the millions of US customers already using their service a breeze, and with highly competitive rates: Google Wallet is free to use, with each transaction costing at most 5% or 1.9% + 30c (USD).
To learn more about how to set up Google Wallet on your website, take a look at their how to page.
