Storefronts are an excellent way to start selling right away. Having a storefront can vary in price and some can be a bit pricey but others are entirely free.
Storefronts such as Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo have developed ways to simplify your job and make it easier for you to sell more on their sites. There are many options to choose from, but after you weight the options and decide on a storefront you will soon realize their ease of use.
The Essential Features Of A Storefront
Although you’ll more than likely stick to the 3 main storefronts (Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo) you may decide to use a smaller one because it better suits your business.
If you decide to go with a smaller, less known storefront, make sure they have the following elements:
- Shopping cart
- Payment processing
- Free hosting
- Reliable
- Tools to assist you in marketing.
- An administrative back end that offers you a good amount of control.
Storefront Reliability
Reliability is made up of many elements and is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects when choosing a storefront. If your storefront isn’t reliable you can be in for a lot of frustration and wasted time.
Before using a storefront you should thoroughly check out their website and make sure they have and offer:
- Fast loading speed
- Fast Payment processing speed
- A high amount of data storage
- Data security
- A high limit on how many products you can sell.
- Digital product delivery support (customers are able to access the digital files upon payment).
- Import and export tools (so you can upload large amount of inventory).
- 24/7 support
- Editable templates, styles, and themes to make your storefront unique.
Marketing Tools
When looking for a storefront, be sure that they have proper marketing tools. Since storefront providers get a cut out of the sales they’ll usually have a lot of tools available for you; USE THEM!
The following tools are the main ones you want to look out for:
- Option to display multiple product images
- Forms and tools to allow users to customize their purchase (not just shipping options but also color, style and etc.).
- Cross-selling/up selling tools that automatically recommend similar items to the customer when purchasing a product.
- The tools to support coupons, gift certificates and promotions.
- Email subscriptions, newsletters, and auto responders.
- Utilities to control the SEO aspects of your storefront.
- RSS feeds
- Affiliate support
Administrative Back-End
The back end is the part you (the business owner) see. This is where you set up the website and have control of all its features.
The best storefronts give you oversight and features like:
- An inventory management system
- QuickBooks integrations (so you can upload all your accounting data to QuickBooks).
- Payment system with various payment gateways (PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, etc.).
- Integrated delivery systems to communicate with UPS, FedEx or DHL.
- Analytics software so you can keep track of users.
Recomended Storefronts
The following links are the most recommended storefront, they vary in price and we suggest you check them all out:
- http://www.ebay.com/
- http://www.shopify.com/
- http://www.prestashop.com/
- http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
- http://checkout.google.com
- http://www.e-junkie.com/
- http://www.yabdab.com/payloom/
- http://storefront.paypallabs.com