Selling a product online has never been easier with free tools and competitive web hosting you can get a professional store up and going within a couple days or less. First, it’s good to decide if you want a professional store or just something basic. Also we’ll try to explain what a professional store offers over something turn key. We are not here to suggest one way or another, just to try to be unbiased and have you decide what’s best for you.
What is the main difference between a pro and basic e-commerce site?
- Professional e-commerce
A full website built and managed by you or a third party designer. - Turn-key e-commerce
Turn-key e-commerce services like shopify or etsy are all pre-built for you.
Why should you get a professional e-commerce store?
- It’s cheaper
Pro services allow you to have your own merchant account which charges much less for your sales. It’s also cheaper to run a pro e-commerce site. Turn-key hosting has hidden and high fees. A pro service only charges for the hosting like any other type of website. A pro service does not charge more because your are doing e-commerce. - It will rank higher in Google
Turn-key services are also called cookie cutter sites because they all use the same basic system. Google doesn’t like this and will file you under blah. Were your own full website with an e-commerce solution has the exact same chance to rank high as any other quality site on the Internet. - It will have substantially more options and abilities
Magento the most popular professional e-commerce script for a website allows for third party plug ins, a mass amount of customization, third party template themes, and is run by EBay so you know it’s going to keep evolving with new tech. - It will not be labeled as cheap
No major e-commerce business would be on etsy or shopify. This makes a certain taboo that any site on there is not big. This could be good or bad though. Lot’s of people like little stores! - You can switch hosts and grow
The main reason why etsy and shopify survive is because they trap their customers there on purpose. Since you cannot move / transfer your website ever, most people pay the high fees and deal with the negative condensations. - No hidden or product fees.
Having your own e-commerce store with a professional host like Web Host Pro means you have one fee and one fee only. You can add more products grow your site and all the while still just pay your web hosting fee.
There is always pros and cons with all e-commerce services. We simply pride ourselves on honesty and freedom. If you ever have questions or even find a host would like better, we will help happily in each situation the best we can.
For more details on the history and technical stuff behind e-commerce view the Wiki page here: