If you have decided to dip yourself in E Commerce world and you wish to sell your products online, the first question that comes to mind is, where you can list your products and how easy or difficult the options are to setup a store.
The question then boils down to the comparison between self – hosted e commerce solutions and established marketplaces and how to decide which one is right for you.
Let us look at criteria which may help you to decide which way you need to go.
Are you a newbie or experienced in E Commerce field?
Would you like your visitors either to have a full-fledged ecommerce experience or would you just list out your goods on a known marketplace and outsource most of the related things for e.g., billing, carts, payments etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options.
Platforms like Amazon, eBay and Etsy help you to forget about other things (like billing, cart management etc) and just focus on listing and selling. They are great for a beginner. You would just need your Id and a bank account to start listing your product. The advantage is ease of setup obviously.
However, disadvantages are that you are dependent on platform policies for example restrictions on things to sell and ever-changing commission structure.
On the other hand, an expert in ecommerce however may use software which may be customized to their needs. They have a technical team to support their software. Thus, they are able to provide a personalized experience to the visitors rather than a generic store look offered by standard e commerce sellers.
The experienced e commerce seller is often well versed in not only trends in software but also how to market the website, SEO related optimizations and expertise in backend operations.
Your own technical expertise
If you do decide to go for a custom software like a do-it-yourself or employ a vendor, you will need to know and understand the technical aspects of the software you are going to use.
A lot many business problems are solved by already developed software. You may need to either use plugins or perform code enhancement to further change the software for your own need.
You would thus, need to be able to understand how to configure the software. If the standard workflow provided by the software is not good enough you may need coding and development. You would also know to test them and then deploy them to the production.
You would also need to understand security and logging of data events. You would also need debugging skill in case you encounter errors.
Fixed costs for setup
Ideally, cost for listing on a popular platform is lesser than if you were to run an ecommerce store on your own. You do not spend on, for example getting a domain name (though it is a good idea) , setting up a ecommerce software on it and then maintain it.
The cost for starting an ecommerce store can vary from $1000 – $50000+ on wix
These are not minor costs, and they do add up based on the number of features that you plan to add. Additional integrations may cost more.
With open source free to use projects, one can reduce the cost of setup and use free plugins to help with functions.
You may use open-source software which are free to use such as WordPress, PrestaShop, Magneto Ecommerce store for setting up the ecommerce stores at almost zero prices.
Ongoing fees
There is cost associated with both self-owned and platform owned e commerce business.
In case of cost of self-owned website and a store running on it costs may include
- Domain costs
- Website hosting
- Plugins and optimization
- Legal compliances
- New Features
- Support to existing customers
- Handling returns and referrals.
- A detailed cost structure
Using a known marketplace can help avoid some of the above costs. However, even those marketplaces may charge you following.
Costs related to
- listing products
- Per sale
- Additional tools (amazon)
- Additional features or upgrades
- Annual costs
- Fulfilment costs
Depending on your size of project and budget you may decide to utilize self-hosted or on an established marketplace or have presence on both.
Need for customization
Customization can be a complex topic as there are so many aspects to it. Let us study them in detail.
You may wish to completely build an ecommerce store from scratch as no software currently in the market suits your requirements.
You may decide that a standard template is good enough for you, but you should be able to change colours, fonts and upload your own logos.
The third option is a mix where you decide to heavily modify the front end (themes) to suit your brand needs while keeping the backend mostly outsourced to known vendors.
You may also decide to use plugins/coding to alter both front end and backend.
The choice that you make will depend on your business costs and revenues and your technical expertise. You may also outsource the customization to your technical consulting partner (the costs may be high).
Conclusion
Choosing a platform for your E Commerce project is not an easy task. It involves thoughtful consideration about your sales and budget. It comes with additional tasks related to management, and further customization.
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