Do you have a small business? Do you need to sell online? Then you need an online shopping website for your small business, and you have come to the right place for advice.

Shopping websites can be complex, but for most small businesses all they need is a few products arranged into a few categories and presented properly.

If you were a large company, your categories would look something like this extract from a well known online retailer.

But you are a small business and you need a simple online shopping website, so your menu selection may be as simple as this:

There is a problem for online shopping websites for small businesses and it is this:

"The structure and functionality of a shopping website is much the same for both complex and simple sites, and in fact the biggest difference is the amount of effort that goes into putting the actual products onto the shop".

Underlying this is the matter of cost which is made up of

• creating the site structure, and
• populating the shop with products.

How do you go about putting your products on line?

If you have already built your own website and are familiar with HTML try RomanCart, as it is really good for the basics and the annual fee is low cost(ish!).

If you are having an online shopping website built for your small business, then consider VirtueMart or RedShop. Both have their pros and cons, but the biggest difference is that Redshop allows you to have different prices and/or products for different types of customer, especially distributors and other outlets. You can also consider sites such as BigCommerce that host your shop for you, and these have some very powerful features indeed, but they charge a monthly fee, and it still takes time and effort to set them up.

The cost of setting up these sites depends upon your website developer, but you can reduce the costs significantly if you are prepared to enter most of the product information yourself. It is easy. And once you know how, all it takes is time.

To find out more, please contact us.