Are Free Online Shops Really Free?
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With so many choices available to help you set up your own online shops it can be confusing wading through the options to find the correct solution for your requirements.
If your budget is limited, wouldn't it be great to find a provider of free online shops. There are certainly plenty of companies offering free online shops as their headline promotion, but does that mean they are really free, or are the hidden costs once you get past their home page?
Does Free mean Free?
If you start from scratch building your own eShop you need to consider whether to do it yourself using off-the-shelf online shop software, engage with a web design company to build your shop for you, or choose a hosted eCommerce solution to establish your online presence.
With the do it yourself approach, there are several excellent open source online shop packages, the most popular of which is osCommerce.
Open source means they are free to use, and if you have some programming and design skills they are an excellent way of getting your online shops created, and retain control over its design and functionality.
But there are costs involved with this approach. Your online shops need hosting on a web server, and the better hosting companies cost that bit more but in return provide a good level of support to make sure your shop is available to visitors.
Using a web design company is never free! This approach is ideal if you are happy to pay a premium for a custom designed online shop, built to your exact requirements. A word of caution here, make sure that if you do engage with a web design company, it is made clear up front that you will own the final online shop build. Some web design companies simply reuse code from previous online shop creations and hold on to the intellectual property of the code, making it impossible to move your online shops elsewhere to another hosting company.
The third approach, the hosted online shops service, is often the quickest and lowest-risk approach of establishing on online presence. Typically a hosted online shops service will charge a low set-up fee and ongoing monthly or annual subscription in return for taking care of all the hosting and maintenance of your online shops.
Some of these companies make big claims about free online shops. Again, in this case free does not mean free. They might be offering to create your online shops for free, however to maintain the shops over a period of time you will be required to pay their monthly or annual subscription.
Finding the Right Online Shops Solution
In reality, setting up and running online shops will always cost money. The important question is how much you can afford to a) invest initially in the shops creation, and b) how much can you afford to spend for hosting, maintenance and support on an ongoing basis.
Even with truly free online shops, after creation they will need marketing, optimising for search engines and promoting in other imaginative ways to attract visitors to generate sales.
With Internet Retailer's easy to use eCommerce shops we design and create your online shops within 7 working days and provide unlimited support and advice when you need it. This includes advice on marketing, setting up trading accounts, sourcing suppliers and integrating payment choices for your customers.